<p>Sorry to start yet another thread, but a quick question for parents: Suppose your S/D gets the competitive acceptance that they really wanted - something that might have been considered almost impossible to get into, yet they did it! Some of the parents of ED/EA acceptances may have already been through this. Is it appropriate to have some kind of celebratory activity? And what should that be? A "great job" speech? A dinner out? Some kind of gift appropriate to the college or program? Something more? Or just jumping around with excitement? Or maybe even a "well of course you got in - why wouldn't you?" attitude?</p>
<p>Also for the students and non-parents here: What do you think?</p>
<p>My kid thinks we should go out to dinner for EVERY acceptance he gets! Last night he said (and this is funny because getting him to do applications was like pulling teeth), "I should have applied to a lot more schools." Ha!</p>
<p>For the first couple of acceptances, I bought a sweatshirt from the school for my son. For the ED acceptance, we opened a bottle of champagne! And the next day I ordered t-shirts, sweatshirt, etc. from the ED school.</p>
<p>I think a lot of excited jumping around followed by a dinner out would be appropriate. Although in my experience both the jumping and the dining tend to decrease as the acceptances pile up.</p>
<p>For my daughter's ED acceptance, I got her balloons in the school color. She liked it a lot! There was one mylar one that says Congratulations and I had her name put on it and it is still hanging around in our family room even though it is over a month old now :)</p>
<p>A family celebration of whatever style appeals to you is highly appropriate; one that involves other kids and/or their families may not be, since those waiting for decisions or not receiving acceptances are not yet in the celebrating mode. For celebrations beyond the family, better to save it for graduation--there was an earlier thread on this issue that you might be able to find in the archives.</p>
<p>we were pretty excited but we didn't do anything special until end of year and had a combination graduation from high school/turning 18, and for her sister turning 10, family and friends party.</p>
<p>Surely you wouldn't begrudge anyone a private celebration, Mensa. After all, with your logic, we couldn't celebrate the birth of a baby because somewhere, somebody just died. If we can't be happy unless EVERYBODY'S happy, nobody could EVER be happy.</p>
<p>There was a thread in December about opening your child's mail that had a lot of cute ideas. We did what others have suggested-- I'd preordered a tshirt, hat and car window decal from the college store, and when he got in (ED) I pulled them out of the closet and presented them to him! If it isn't your child's clear first choice, though, that might not work. We've also seen the school color balloons on people's mailboxes. That is clever too. How have you celebrated big events in the past?? Do take a picture of your child with the acceptance letter too. Nice memory.
And mensa, I hope you are kidding.</p>
<p>Oh- one last thing-- the best photo is of our s. throwing the huge pile of college mailings and such up into the air- with this great look of glee on his face!!</p>
<p>mensa160 - FYI - not many of my daughter's friends applied ED, and actually the school she will attend accepts most of its ED applicants. So we were in no way gloating at the expense of others. We were just very proud that her hard work and accomplishments allowed her to be accepted to the school of her choice, and relieved that the stressful application process was over for her!</p>
<p>At the most recent PTO senior parents meeting, the class dean suggested that all parents should "celebrate their children during this time with something thats unique, big or small, whether its the party at graduation or the favorite meal or the special charm - something thats tangible and doesnt have to cost a lot of money, something that allows them to see that you recognize this to be a special time."</p>
<p>After S got accepted ED to his college of choice, he threw out all the other apps (biggest celebration of all!), then Mom ordered TShirt from the college of choice that S wore to HS with great enthusiasm.</p>
<p>I think the scale of the celebrations mentioned so far is about right -- buy a teeshirt, go out to dinner, burn the old applications, plan the summer trip. A symbolic rite of passage of some kind. The one thing that I wouldn't do is hold a party and invite all the kid's friends -- some of whom aren't going to have such a happy landing. This is one of the harder things to deal with sometimes at school, with some classmates striking out or at least being disappointed by their college applications. No need to rub it in.</p>
<p>"Do take a picture of your child with the acceptance letter too. Nice memory."</p>
<p>Jym that's a great idea! I wish I had thought of it back on Dec. 15. </p>
<p>Mensa, I don't understand your post - unless you were saying that you shouldn't overdo the celebration publicly. Our celebration was a private one - just the nuclear family. It was a big milestone for all of us.</p>
<p>Wow, so many responses so quickly. But some clarifications:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I'm talking strictly a family thing. Of course it would not include outsiders.</p></li>
<li><p>This is not JUST an acceptance, but something which is "against-all-odds." </p></li>
</ol>
<p>As a matter of fact I probably think that "first-choice acceptance" may be the wrong model since there are so many of those. Think of a scholarship that had enormous nationwide competition and somehow your S/D came out on top! I know that you thought that S/D deserved it, but you also knew the competition was probably overwhelming and so you didn't really expect it to happen. You've thought long and hard about that talk when the "Thank you for applying, but..." letter came, but gave no thought whatsoever to the "Congratulations..." letter. In my mind, this would be something beyond a t-shirt, but worthy of a very special night out on the town(?).</p>
<p>We made a small family fuss over every acceptance (e.g., flowers, a small cake)--in part to try to get our daughter excited over other schools in the quite likely event that she didn't get into the one she had her heart set on. When she did get into that school on April 1, we all screamed and cried and called relatives, then brought in champagne and our daughter's favorite take-out, so that she could talk on the phone and IM her friends. We'd been too superstitious to buy college merchandise in advance, but the school isn't far, so the next day I drove there and bought a ridiculous array of stuff: sweatshirt, pennant, stuffed bear, etc. (even, I blush to admit, an a really cute crib mobile that plays the fight song). It was all waiting for her when she got back from HS that afternoon, then we went out to a nice dinner that night.</p>
<p>Frankly, I don't think she'll remember many of the specifics, just her family's overall feeling of joy and relief.</p>