<p>My son is a sophomore now at Swarthmore. He was rejected ED from Columbia but Swarthmore was his last application and one in which he paid particular attention to the 'Why Swarthmore' essay and also refined his main essay (personal statement) a bit before submitting. He did his own research into why he wanted Swarthmore and was able to articulate well enough, I guess. He got an early write from Swarthmore in the RD round, so he must have done something right.....</p>
<p>I just discovered CC about two months ago. Our D is our 6th child going off to college (the other 5 are all graduated and on their own). Naturally, the college search game was old hat to us, but since our next youngest graduated in '95, we had not been involved for almost 16 years.</p>
<p>Still, the path to (relative) success is clearly dependent on your child and her/his willingness to heed advise and search. Our D was wonderfully agile and interested. In the summer of her Sophomore year, she went to a four week summer program at Grinnell. She loved it and was not homesick in any fashion.</p>
<p>When I picked her up we drove back to NJ via campus. We stopped at Coe and COrnell in Iowa, Knox in Ill, Earlham in Ind, Kenyon, Ohio Wes.,Wooster, and Hiram in Ohio. She took a tour and had an interview at all. Of Course, we stopped at a son's home for a visit and took some side trips, but essentially the drive back home was for her to get a solid idea about LAC's.</p>
<p>Later that summer, I and D traveled to Alfred U., and Penn State and my wife, D and her younger sister took a trip up into Maine/Mass/Conn., they shopped, tree gazed and stopped at Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, Smith MoHO and Wesleyan, toured and interviewed.</p>
<p>The trips were leisurely set up and casually done. No pressure or time constrains. D enjoyed the trips, she had a great abilty to sleep in the Van, so the travel time was not painful.</p>
<p>During her Junior Year, she visited a couple of close by colleges to tour. By the spring of her Junior Year, she knew that she wanted to study Creative Writing and felt that she would like to learn the Japanese Language. So she selected (via the internet and mailings) a number of schools that offered both or were very strong in one and ok in the other. </p>
<p>In April/May, we visited a couple of schools to overnight and visit classes and in the fall of her senior year, arranged for her to visit and ovenight at six colleges using the holidays in October and November.</p>
<p>D used the common application for all her schools, completed her essay before the end of summer and did the supplementary essays in September over 4 diffferent weekends (using about 3 hours total each weekend). All of D's applications were completed by October 15. She had talked to two of her teachers in the Spring of her Junior year, so they were able to plan to write their recomm. in early Fall.</p>
<p>Since most of her applications were no-fee, the total spend for 12 schools was $150.</p>
<p>She applied to 4 EA's and 8 RD's, two of which responded prior to February.</p>
<p>Since she visited each of her schools at least once and had overnighted (by November) at 10 of the 12, all of the schools had her on their mailing lists and expected her application.</p>
<p>Her GPA is 3.4, ACT Com 29, Sat V650 m600, her HS is highly competitive, but does not rank students.</p>
<p>To date - she has 6 acceptances and is waiting to hear from the other six. She has 4 scholarships ranging from 13,000 to 7,000. Since three of the schools are in Wisc/Minn, D and her mother went to visit overnight at all three in February. Although there was a heck of a lot of snow, and a blizzard like wind with wind chills down to 0 and -#, D found all three schools functioning and doable.</p>
<p>We have spend a lot of time and some $$ to get her to these schools, luckily, I am retired and my wife is able to use her vacation time for some of the visits. D has been on each campus for an overnight (two of them twice) and has meet with professors in her interested fields and taken class, met students etc.</p>
<p>What school will she choose, is up to her, once all the information is in and should any of the remaining 6 accept her, she will weight the factors, discuss the $$$ with us and then in April, visit once again her top 2,3 or 4 choices.</p>
<p>It is a long tiring process, but the results are worth it. Start early, listen to your child, be honest about your finances, and be available for advise when asked.</p>
<p>By the way, our youngest child, is now a sophomore and this summer all of the above is awaiting us once again, except this D is different and wants the whole exercise to be over before it begins, her mantra "I just want to know what college I going to attend".</p>
<p>It is going to be a long two years until April 2008!</p>
<p>Rdad, I agree, this is no fun at all for us control freaks. Hard to know whether I am feeling regret or panic. Certainly regret over advising D to apply EA to school she wasn't that interested in but was a reach. She was outright rejected, really surprising her counselors who thought at least she would be deferred as she is in top 5 of 900 plus from school that generally gets 6 plus admits each year. She didn't have a real top choice at the time but I now wish she had applied EA to a couple of her other schools where she would very probably now be holding a couple of acceptances. Also wish she would have applied to Princeton where she is a legacy and has a sister attending, certainly her only hook anywhere. Anyway, these next 3 weeks will be tough.</p>
<p>"Mom, why does everyone make such a big deal about finding the perfect college, which is 4 years, but from grades K through 12, no one goes all over the country looking for the "perfect" grade school, then the perfect high school? And mostly we are happy with where we are and do fine."</p>
<p>Wow, this statement alone has made me feel a lot better about the the colleges I am choosing from. I keep worrying about how my list could be looking better right now, about where else I should have applied. Perhaps the options sitting in front of me are just fine. I could get used to anything and find ways to enjoy it.</p>
<p>Though not traveling all over the country, we certainly traveled all over the city (and neighboring cities) to find the best schools for our kids. We were lucky, the schools turned out to be public schools.</p>
<p>Roger that, IDad.</p>
<p>In my experience, decent elementary schools can be found fairly easily. Decent high schools take some work. Decent middle schools are the test, at least around here. And work all those problems we did.</p>
<p>I think "good enough" is in part dependent upon one's ambitions. If one is driven and wants to be pushed, one may have a different universe of options than someone whose aims are fairly conventional. It takes all kinds in the world and there's nothing wrong with either one. Though this board does a self-selection heavily biased in one direction.</p>
<p>I regret waiting until the last minute (literally, for some applications). I regret not applying to some middle match schools (it seems like I have a safety and everything else is a reach). Most of all, I think I regret finding this site- it makes me feel especially inadequate :) On the other hand, I think I write best under pressure and was really happy with how my essays turned out. Top schools tend to be reaches for everyone, so there wasnt much I could do there. And, now that I think of it, this site does have its perks</p>
<p>rikataka--i totally agree; this site was really helpful when i was filling out applications and anticipating interviews, but i think it has caused me more agony than it is worth because i feel so unqualified and unprepared compared to everyone else. my college search and application process was basically a shot in the dark; not until the last couple of weeks did i decide to apply to my reach schools b/c my guidance counselors were completely unhelpful with the entire process for me (since i didn't want to go to state schools) and my parents didn't really know how to go about it (i'm the oldest child.) so now all i can think is "i should have...." (applied to schools x, y, z and not schools q, r, s.....started visiting schools earlier.....gotten my family friend who is an alum of a reach school to write me a recommendation....etc.)</p>
<p>to make matters worse, all of my friends already know exactly where they're going (their schools had rolling admissions or early action, etc.) or they are certain they will get in to the school they want to go to. i am one of the only ones at my school who applied anywhere that is competitive and/or out-of-state.</p>
<p>i think the stress i'm feeling is partly just the pressure of april 1st and having to wait so long. i can barely stand it! i just want to crawl in bed and not come out until then. i applied RD to all of my schools except the state school, to which i have already been accepted and offered a considerable scholarship. so i get mail from that school almost every week and it makes me just want to cry because i feel like i'm doomed to end up there instead of brown (!!!!) or georgetown (the schools that i'm afraid i won't get into) or oberlin or emory (the schools i probably will get into but won't get scholarship $ or aid.) i try not to count down the days or think too much about it though, because this is my senior year and i need to enjoy these last couple of months of highschool before i go off...wherever that may be.</p>
<p>anway, good luck to every one of you (or your S's and D's) as you find out where you get in and decide where you will go. we're all going through this, so at least i know i'm not alone.</p>
<p>Good luck with getting into Brown and Georgetown!</p>
<p>And I hope you get scholarships from both Oberlin and Emory.</p>
<p>Now that would be a set of problems worth having!</p>
<p>I regret not starting the scholarship search earlier, not applying to Pitzer Early Action, letting my friends' college talk stress me out, stressing out to the nth degree about every little detail--particularly those I couldn't control, and borderline bragging in one of my college essays.</p>
<p>But I wouldn't change the list of colleges I applied to, my essays and a whole slew of other things :)</p>
<p>Our tiny high school did very well ED and EA with the Ivies - at least ten percent of the class (note - it is a very small school). However, over half the kids accepted early to Ivies were athletes and most of the rest were legacies. The three best students in the grade were deferred. The top student in our school (great grades, perfect SATs, top ECs) was rejected from her first choice Ivy, while a B- athlete was taken and an A-/B+ legacy. I just say this because it shows me that while there are really bright students at the Ivies, there are a lot of other students who are bright, but no brighter than the kids you will find at Tufts or Michgan, for example. At least that is what I see from the acceptances at our high school. For instance, Duke and Dartmouth took every athlete that applied ED. These are bright, nice kids and will do fine in those schools, but there is no pretense they would have been accepted otherwise.</p>
<p>Most of the kids at my S's school who got in ED to ivies were also athletes. Not so true with legacies (unless they were heavy duty legacies with buildings named after them etc). Several of the very top students were deferred - kind of sad that they choose the athletes over the scholars. I know that the coaches use ED to fill their spots, but there should be some room left for the others.</p>
<p>For the very first time in recent memory, our town had a non-athlete get into HYPS, in this case Yale. (He may turn them down, though, to go to Swarthmore or, perhaps, UChicago - he's undecided.) The last two I remember were about 5 years ago, and both turned down Harvard to go to BYU. But no val or sal from any of the 5 high schools in the area who wasn't an athlete had gotten in since.</p>
<p>From my son's prep school, 1 athlete (my son) and 1 non-athlete got into Penn ED. A non-athlete was deferred. Another athlete (son's roommate) did not apply ED but was the top recruit in his sport and got a likely letter. No one got into Brown ED, although the candidates were not the strongest students. A strong academic international was deferred by Columbia. I don't know of any other ED applicants to Ivies.
davann- athletes can also be scholars, and in the case of Ivy recruits, many (perhaps even most) are! Just because they may be a notch down in class rank doesn't make them less deserving of the ED spot.</p>
<p>momofwildchild - of course athletes can be scholars, and I applaud those who are. it's just that sometimes it seems that the athletes are chosen to the exclusion of some of the very top students.</p>
<p>That's odd, I live in an "off the beaten path" for Ivy admits state, but here, of the kids I know of , it is about 60-40 academics, maybe even higher, because at least one of the athletes would have been a pretty good bet even with out the athletics.</p>
<p>In our town, most of the Ivy admits are not athletes, but OTOH, most of them are not HYP, either. The year my s graduated, six kids were accepted to 1 or more Ivies--4 to Cornell, 2 to Penn, 1 to Columbia--none athletes.</p>
<p>This year we may have a "banner year" with likelies to two students from Princeton and Yale, both URM/athlete/tip top academically/major talents in other fields. I don't know the Yale likely, but the Princeton one is a dream applicant in every sense, and the cutest thing was his family had no idea. Princeton had to come looking for him, as they had no idea what a catch he was.</p>
<p>Hmm. My D also goes to a tiny independent school (graduating class of 67). There was one ED admit to Dartmouth, one to Princeton, two SCEA to Yale, then two to Duke and several to top 10 LACs. Not a single athlete among them, no URMs, no development cases. The one student that everyone thought was a shoo-in, an athlete in the top 10% of the class (though few APs compared to others) considered to be a development case was deferred by his ED school. Doesn't sound like the typical experience, but is pretty typical for her school.</p>
<p>The reason I mentioned the athletes from our school is not that they don't deserve to go. It's just that here on CC, many people say one of the great advantages of the Ivies is that you are surrounded by the "smartest" kids. Sure, a lot of the "smartest" kids are at Ivies, but a lot of kids there, while bright, are not especially brighter than kids at many other schools who didn't have a "tip" or who came from an area of the country where there are "too many" 2400 SAT scores, etc. As an adult who went to an HYP Ivy, I can say that it did help with my first interviews, but once hired I had to prove myself, and a lot of the "smartest" people I know as an adult did not go to Ivies. There are brilliant kids at Ivies and then there are a lot of just normal bright kids (the majority) who studied really, really hard, or who had a "tip", such as sports, legacy, where they lived, played an instrument the orchestra needed, etc. Once out in the working work, the brilliant people will shine through, whether they went to Harvard, or to Reed (like Steve Jobs), or to USC (didn't Spielberg go there?). So while it's nice to go to an Ivy, I don't think young people in this compettive atmosphere today should feel that if they don't go to an Ivy they will have less intelligent friends or less of a chance at a career. The smart kids who don;t go to Ivies will be surrounded by other really smart kids who for some reason also didn't get in (or want to go).</p>
<p>Go for a true reach school. I probably should have applied to a lower IVY even though I would have been rejected.</p>