if it will help your son - more often than not, someone who read his application liked him. But sometimes Admissions Committees are like Congress - everyone has an opinion and a favorite and sometimes there is some jockeying to come to consensus on who makes the final list. My DH is an Adcom and I can tell you stories about raucous discussions over who prefers whom and having to compromise to get consensus.
After removing students who are deemed not academically qualified, there is still a large list left over. It is not the cut and dry process that some think it was. So yes - someone probably liked your son and is miffed at his/her colleagues that your son (or anyone’s child on this list) didn’t make the final cut. When he gets a firm “yes” he should feel good that quite a few felt he’d be a positive addition to the campus. That’s the feeling to hold on to.
Truthfully, the prestige of the college matters less than what one majors in these days. I know many people whose children have recently graduated from top universities with a BA in English or Global Studies and have not found jobs yet. Meanwhile their parents are in debt from paying top dollar for the most fancy name college their child could get into. Go somewhere good and affordable, be friendly and active in the college community, and- if you want to be sure of a good job after graduation - major in an in-demand field. Virginia just published a list of all the private and public colleges in the state and the average starting salaries of their graduates. At the top of the starting salary list was George Mason University- above UVA, VA Tech, William & Mary or any of the private colleges in the state. Starting salaries, when broken down by school and major, had much more to do with the student’s major than the university name. And you can have fun and meet great people at any university.
No matter how much anyone prepares for rejection, it is always going to hurt. No matter how much you know and your student knows that the application process is a bit of a “crapshoot” and “numbers game” and no matter how many “safeties” and “financial safeties” and “matches” and even <em>admits,</em> being rejected is hard. For adults and especially for 18 year olds who might have never put themselves out there very often. The senior year is a time where many of them will experience more rejection than they ever have or ever will. Scholarship rejections, admission rejections and its hard. Its part of life’s experiences. Knowing that when it all settles out, most people are happy where they end up. Whether this is a psychological acceptance or not, doesn’t matter. Most students end up happy. And, so,my advice is to tell them, you are right. This sucks And take them to whatever coping skill place they need to go for tonight. it might be playing unlimited video games, or a nice dinner or leaving them alone or a movie or whatever you would do for someone who is having a bad day. Give them a break for today! Or at least that’s my advice!
What do you tell your daughter? “Well, this is what we expected.<br>
We knew you likely would be rejected at most of the top schools, but would end up being accepted at a school that you will enjoy. It is like applying for a job – you send out a hundred resumes, you get ten interviews, and you receive two offers.”
Golden.
What if you get rejected to all the schools. What will you tell your student?
We must also consider this: What will the student tell him/her self?
)
Just make sure they don’t quit if they really want those top schools they can keep going and re-apply.
If they really want to take a year off of school (or college) there are programs where they can volunteer internationally (free and paid).
As a very surprised and rejected student from my top college, all of these posts from parents really encourages me to realize how to move forward from this. Thank you all!
Who does not dream to go to an Ivy League school, when applications are easy and everything so palpable? But the truth is that Ivies can no longer be the sole holder of knowledge as it was in the past. Today any student with a good college library access card can tap into any database and learn. Rejections are hard, specially if they are many but there is one place out there that is the right fit for the student and it takes time to find it. Learning is a process. First lesson: when you don’t succeed you try again. That is a lesson that no college can offer.
If this happened to my kid, I would say “Blame me. It is my fault that I didn’t use my adult wisdom to help you hedge your bets with a couple of safeties.” I would let my kid be mad at me for a few days, or longer, because I would agree that I had failed him/her.
Then I would look at colleges with rolling admissions, and start over.
ddahwan’s point is excellent, and one I have been thinking about a lot this week. Why do some people think their lives will be ruined if they don’t get into an Ivy or other highly selective school? Is this the only way they can be successful in life? If so, isn’t there a larger problem? Life is what you make of it.
There are so many ivied-qualified applicants out there for so few seats - it has become more like a strategic game on who gets admitted. I am glad this week is over.
Years ago, that happened to the son of a poster who went by andismom (IIRC). He was rejected everywhere and was forced to take a gap year. If memory serves me correctly, he got into MIT.
The other thing I would say to really high-achieving students who love school is that there is always grad school, and grad school means more than undergrad in terms of prestige. One former poster here went on full merit ride to a very well-respected, but not super-top, liberal arts school. He graduated with close to a 4.0, did all sorts of ECs, played hockey, had way more fun than his friends at UChicago, and had his pick of law schools. As in, he had his pick among the top 3.
Being a top student at a respectable, but not super-prestigious, school is often a far better thing for grad-school oriented students than being one of the fish at a top university. You get the high grades, research opportunities, and everything that comes with being a top student.
The fact of the matter is that if you apply for a few spaces where everyone applying is going to have similar credentials as you do, there will more very well qualified people turned down. That is what happens when one goes after something that a lot of people want and most of them going for it, top drawer. Having to pick the top of the top is not always easy, and though there may be some in that stack that are true outliers in excellence, for those spots left where more applicant fit the specs than there are post, the rejection rate is high. But you never get the spots without trying. So learning to move on after such rejections is very important because anyone trying for selective things in life will likely get many rejections. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so if the pain of rejection is too much, one never tries for anything but sure things which give you a zero percent chance at those hard to get experiences.
I’ve got to admit, until I started reading the forums on College Confidential, I had no idea that so many people were so obsessed about what colleges their children were getting into. If our children are becoming obsessed with where they go to school, its because they are getting that obsession from us, their parents. The way I see it, the cream is going to rise to the top no matter where these kids end up getting their undergraduate educations.
Meanwhile, my very bright but not overly motivated daughter just selected one of our public universities with a beautiful campus, great facilities, fitness center, dorms, student union, etc. And it is also very reasonably priced. I couldn’t be happier for her. And she is happy for herself. No regrets about not attending a top tier school whatsoever.
davidg - I believe in some cases the pressure may come from the family. However, a lot of the pressure also comes from the schools and society as a whole - friends, teachers, and guidance counselors are all asking, “Where are you applying [for college]?” And then they may ask for the outcomes, which can leave students feeling pressured and embarrassed of their results.
Good students can be highly competitive on their own. I graduated first in my class and didn’t think it was a big deal - I had a very small high school class. But those who graduated 2nd, 3rd, etc. were highly competitive amongst each other and tried to bring me into the drama. It was all about what college you got into, what you were majoring in, etc. And it didn’t seem like they were getting this idea from their parents. In some cases, it only took one competitive kid to get the rest riled up.
Guidance counselors try to get students interested in college who otherwise might not be interested. Let’s face it - we live in a society that believes a college education is necessary to find meaningful work. And because of this mentality, it is becoming true. I am seeing a lot of articles pop up all over the web claiming that college degrees are now so common, McDonald’s can soon require them to get a job flipping burgers.
I think because of this some parents may feel their children need an edge, and the children feel this way, too. A college degree isn’t good enough in their minds - it needs to be from the best college so they don’t end up serving coffee at Starbucks. This of course isn’t true. Not all students will do well at a small LAC, and not all will do well at a large state university. Not all will do well in college at all. But those who are self-motivated and have clear goals and a plan to achieve them can do well anywhere. We need to foster this concept.
Washingtongirl17, with that positive, grateful attitude, you will succeed wherever you go, which I suspect may not be your first choice, but is still pretty impressive. One more idea: when my S gets down, I tell him to look at all the options before him and determine his worst-case scenario. Then, I ask him how bad that option really is. He invariably realizes that, not only could he live with it, but that it’s a really great option. Good luck!
But that is exactly davidg’s point. Most kids are not “embarrassed” to go to a state school or a local Catholic college or a regional LAC. According to some people on this site, they should be.
I think the reason the OP and her daughter are disappointed is because she had every reason to believe that she had the stats and ECs to be admitted. And she probably does. Berkeley and UCLA turn away 4.0 unweighted students all the time. For EECS, 2100-2200 SAT is AVERAGE. It won’t guarantee you admittance. The bar is just being raised so high, it’s unfathomable.
As for admitting lots of international or OOS students, I’m actually all for it. I’m a CA resident and costs for us are skyrocketing so that the money we’ve set aside for a private education will now just about cover a UC education. I’m happy they are trying to keep tuition down, even if it means fewer slots. If I can’t afford to pay for them to attend, it doesn’t really matter if they can get in.
“My parents grounded me for not getting into any Ivy’s or Northwestern. Although I was accepted to Mich, UVA and UCLA.”
Huh. I wonder what their point was. Usually the punishment is somehow relevant to the deed. I surely hope you learned your lesson! HAHAHAHHA (I’m joking, because I can’t imagine what lesson you were supposed to take away from that … unless they thought you went out too often and that’s the reason you didn’t get in).
David, 'If she didn’t get into a top school, I assume its because her standardized tests were not where they should have been""
That is a false statement. All you need to do is go today to any of the Top 20 schools results threads today to see that there are quite alot of students with perfect standardized test scores and perfect GPAs who were rejected from every top 20 school that they applied to.
I am not of the opinion that these schools are the goal for high school students. In fact, given the odds of getting in, IMHO, I think the best gift you can give your child is to do a realistic assessment of affordability and admissibility well in advance of applying and/or visiting any colleges.
But, rejection by these schools in no way indicates a student’s ability or inability to “compete” when they get there. In fact, “competing” when you get there depends on a whole lot of other factors. (Is your kid super happy to be away from your monitoring and drinks/has sex themselves silly and doesn’t study?; is your kid super sad far away? Are they unhappy to be at your local community college with the same old friends? is your kid super unhappy about being at their school for whatever reason? its about their emotions and the temptations and socials skills and self discipline and the necessity of working very hard at times no matter where you attend.
IMHO having a happy college student is more about giving them the coping skills for these issues (which will arise pretty much no matter where they attend) rather than where they attend. Most kids will be able to perform at the schools to which they are admitted. The schools would not admit them if that wasn’t possible. There are a handful of schools with lower GPAs and lower retention rates and lower 4 year graduation rates, all of which might imply that they let in more kids that are not fully prepareed to be there. But, those are few and far between. In fact, if that is the standard, most 4 year state universities with their 50 percent graduation rates, would be the school to which a student was most likely to be unable to perform (at least statistically) and not top 20 schools which generally have very high 4 or 5 year graduation rates.