I would also say that for some people (like our family) applying to Ivy schools and other “top tier” schools was not about prestige. It was about affordability. I cannot afford for my daughter to attend state schools. The Ivies, Standford, Chicago, Duke, Caltech, MIT, WashU all would have cost us thousands of dollars less than our state schools.
When you make 65k as a family, you make too much for many state schools to give much, if any, financial aid.
Because CC helps many “normal” students or their parents to figure out the process to find schools that they can afford and attend. Most of the country does not earn 200k a year.
I have a d who will be applying next year. I feel your pain (and your daughter’s). However… this is only a blip on the life road. Her hard work will pay off; she has developed a good work ethic which will serve her well throughout her entire life.
Pleasing our parents with college admissions is another thing; my dad wants me to go to Harvard to impress his coworkers who treat him like ****. Another day closer to applying and I’m getting really nervous.
And Pat1120, that is bull. Love to see the support your getting.
emberjed, can you appeal rejections at super-selective schools? As has been pointed out ad nauseum on this website, there are simply too many qualified kids for the available spots. And since the schools in question use a “holistic” admissions process, you can’t cite “unfairness” (i.e., “I had a 2350 SAT and got rejected but Mary from my school had a 2180 and got in”). What do you hope to accomplish?
I do not think a person needs to go to an Ivy school to great good education. Sometimes, other schools have a better education than the Ivies. My mother is actually a prime example. Granted this was many years ago, but she went to CUNY Hunter for nursing but switched to pre-med. When she went to Mount Sinai for med school and she knew a lot more than the students who had gone to Yale. Afterwards. She did a fellowship at Stanford and did a career as a pediatric pulmonologist.Anyway, the point is, she may not have gone to a hot shot school, but she did perfectly fine, and I hope to do the same.
Tell her the work ethic, good habits, and knowledge she has accumulated thus far are all far more valuable than an acceptance from any college and that in the end hard-work pays off more than luck or privilege.
Pat1120, comment 138. Your parents grounded you for not getting into an Ivy? What were supposed to learn from that? My condolences to you, it can’t be easy having such jerks for parents.
I hate seeing kids feel bad about themselves because of their buying into the importance of getting into “name” schools. I’m talking to some kids who were very disappointed with their results. I used to say “the end of the world is not the end of the world.” Community college can be a great option for some kids; my son went one year and then applied to 4 good liberal arts colleges, got into 3, with almost full financial aid at 2. Also, out of 488 schools on the Common Application over 200 are still accepting applications. Are you going to tell me that they aren’t “good” schools?
My heart goes out to any kid who is feeling the pain of rejection, because whether it’s true or not, that’s sure what it feels like. But there is life ahead, and for some kids this may be the best thing that ever happened to them. It’s a time for self reflection about what’s really important, a time to ask “what am I defined by, the school I attended or who I am?”
Last year my nephew applied to MIT and 9 mid range LACs. His Stats were SAT 2200, ACT 34, SAT II 800, 780, 720. Top 5% of graduating class, publication quality essays! Rejected in MIT+5LACs, Waitlisted in 2, accepted in 1 with 50% Tution aid. He was devastated. His fault, he was asking for FA! If you are middle class, and don’t have any minority/sports/refugee/special category hook, your chances are zilch!
My heart goes out to your child, but the fact that she is capable of such hard work will stand her good, she will be successful in whatever she does.
There are many more qualified applicants than spots - we all know this. What we don’t all see, usually, is the entire application. Some people jump to the belief that one student gets in over another because s/he was an athlete, URM, geographic diversity admit, etc. but it’s easier for me to believe the secret lies in the recommendations and to rise to the top of a pile of academically qualified students, that rec had better sing that this is the student who the writer will remember long after retirement, who pushed and pulled class discussion along, who showed compassion and tolerance in the classroom, and who will make life in the dorm fun/bearable for roommates.
If I were reading apps, once I put all the qualifieds in a pile, I’d choose the ones who were lucky enough to have recs that made them come across as the people you’d like to invite to campus for 4 years. And there still would not be enough seats.
@sally305: To be fair, I didn’t qualify this: I’m writing appeal letters because I know that some materials went to the wrong hands (at least at first - I don’t know about later) and some just didn’t get sent at all. I’m just also taking the opportunity to let the relevant schools know about some stuff I’ve done since applying.
There are so many applications to the top schools now that random chance/luck play a major role if you have no hook and a pretty significant role even if you have a hook. Hooks still do count but less so- what used to be a great hook is now a weak hook! Of course URM status still counts, it is just less influential than in the past, its just one factor, not the only factor. So you have to go into this with that mindset. Unless you go ED, it is unwise to become wedded to any specific school that is in the top 20 or so of either the major university or top LAC lists. The schools that top kids from my D school got into easily 3-4 years ago are now waitlisting or rejecting many equivalent kids and it will probably get worse not better.
Its going to sting for a while, not getting into places for which you (or your child) is clearly qualified for. Since there are so many people competing, thats just the way the math works, but it is amazing how many nobel laureates went to the State U! If your plans include grad school or a professional school, those schools are more important than the undergrad school one attends anyway.
Give you child a big hug. Acknowledge her hard work and let her know you are there to listen. Just be supportive. Disappointment will take time to heal but let her know there are many paths to her goals.
As a high school senior myself (who has seen her fair share of shocking rejections) I have always thought when I hear about these things that it really wasn’t meant to be. I know that may not be comforting, but I truly believe that rejections from a school just mean that a student is meant to be somewhere else. Your daughter will end up in the college she is supposed to end up in! I personally use my faith in God to help myself understand why things happen the way they do, but even without faith I think you can reason that if a school doesn’t want you, it wouldn’t have worked out there. Not that I can speak from experience (I only applied to three schools, all of which I was accepted to), but if I had been rejected from my dream school, I would just want to hear that it wasn’t right for ME. Colleges are so much more than their names and rankings, and a student’s personality really has to fit with where they chose to go.
I disagree. You know that you’re going to get chocolates from the box. No matter what flavor, what size or shape, you’re going to eat a yummy chocolate and be happy. Unless you don’t like chocolates. Then that’s your problem
Colleges open doors, some more than others, but you only need 1 door, not 10.
I suggest that parents, school personnel and students view the movie “Race to Nowhere” which attempts to combat the sickness that some CC parents and students have bought into. (I know this movie has been discussed on other CC threads.)
I’m glad that our community/school did not significantly buy into the sick “Ivy vs. Failure” culture that one sees reflected in a significant group of CC parents/students. I think it is abusive.
This happened to D1 in 2007. She was rejected/WL at all of her top choices. The night Ivies results came out, H had to hold a bag over her face for her to breath. When I came home that night from a business trip, I crawled into bed with her because she was so upset.
D1 did wonder if all of her hard work was for nothing. I asked her how she would have felt if she didn’t give it all she had. She said she would have felt worse because there would have been “Would have, could have, should have.” I told her that we were proud of her, not for getting into college or not, but for her effort and attitude.
D1 was WL at 2 of her top choices. We (D1, her GC, and parents) did put in a lot of effort in getting her off the WL. The happy news was she did get off both WLs. She was very appreciative of the opportunity to go to one of those schools. She did very well in college and went on to get her dream job after graduation.
I tell my kids that it is important to be able to pick oneself up and move on when hard luck hits, life is long, don’t let one event define you.
Getting rejected by colleges was heartbreaking to D1. I didn’t try to make light of it. We grieved with her and validated her feeling. But we also tried to show her there were other good options. She asked me at one point if I was disappointed in her. I told her absolutely not. I still get teary when I remember back. So I feel for a lot of you out there.
Northernbadger, I agree with you. Unfortunately our school/community has a sizable population of the “Ivy or die” crowd, but we have been lucky in that our kids are self-assured enough to know they will be successful wherever they go, and neither cares about impressing their peers with acceptance into the “right” colleges.
So much of it comes from the parents–one of my best friends is one of these people, and her son is miserable as a freshman at a second-choice school (after rejections at EVERY place he wanted to go). I remind her that some of the most successful people we know in common went to places like UW-Eau Claire and Bradley University and other places no one on CC (or even in our community, in some cases) has ever heard of. Intellectually, she knows it doesn’t matter where you get your undergrad, but she can’t let go of the prestige thing. I think in some families and some cultures it is just beaten into the kids from an early age that they WILL go to a “top” school and their parents do everything in their power to make it happen. In my friend’s case, it is also a source of pride that they saved enough money to pay for an elite education, which makes the sting of rejection even worse.
