<p>^agree with novaparent.</p>
<p>I believe VADAD1 said that both he and the guidance counselor thought that his daughter would be successful with this list of 5 schools. And that paying for more applications beyond that was an issue for him. Good luck with Duke! You never know. I really wish your daughter the best in getting off one of her waitlists (if Duke doesn’t come through) or finding another good school that is still taking applications.</p>
<p>I agree with novaparent and woosah. It is clear from earlier posts that even though VADAD1’s daughter’s SAT score was high, her grades weren’t perfect. Even if they were perfect, UVA is not a safety school. No guidance counselor should recommend a student apply to only reach schools.</p>
<p>What VADAD1 may have believed is not relevant. He’s not a professional. The guidance counselor is. And any guidance counselor in the state of Virginia who advises a less than perfect student that he or she can safely apply no “lower” in state than U-Va isn’t doing his job. In the state of Virginia, this is Admissions 101.</p>
<p>oldUVAgrad, I also really do agree with you,novaparent and woosah that miscalculations were made. VADAD1 does realize that. You are right. UVa is not a safety school. My UVa grad did have all the pieces(very high SAT’s,very high GPA, excellent EC’s with leadership,etc.) but we never viewed UVa as a safety school when he was applying as it really is not a slam dunk and anything can happen in competitive admissions.
novaparent, I agree that the guidance counselor should have advised her to apply to other Virginia schools but we really don’t know for sure that he didn’t. VADAD1 did say he only had so much he wanted to pay for applications. Who knows ,maybe they WERE warned . Only VADAD1can answer that. He seems to have moved on from blaming anybody for this and I think that is good.</p>
<p>True. Maybe the real story is that they were in fact warned and disregarded the advice. And even if they weren’t warned, well, I have no doubt that the guidance counselor has now learned a lesson. He’ll never make the same mistake with another student.</p>
<p>Well my daughter has an acceptance in hand at Mary Baldwin now with a 19K a year academic scholarship, so she has the safety covered.</p>
<p>Congratulations on Mary Baldwin!</p>
<p>I’m not disputing or asking anybody to apologize for anybody’s view point. In my view, this situation was ultimately a failure of parenting, not counseling. I made a mistake. Now we are fixing it.</p>
<p>Congrats, VADAD1. Mary Baldwin is a fine school.</p>
<p>Congratulations to your daughter, VADAD1! It was one of my daughter’s safety schools too! She also received the $19,000 scholarship. If you send them the fafsa, you will probably also get a nice aid package:). You might also want to consider VCU and Mary Washington.</p>
<p>Thank you. I’m not that familiar with it other than knowing it is in Staunton, but we will check it out this weekend.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure that VCU was so overwhelmed with applications that they aren’t taking anymore for fall. I’ll check into Mary Washington, one of her childhood friends is going there.</p>
<p>VADAD1 I cannot say enough wonderful things about Mary Washington. It would be worth your while for you and your daughter to take a trip to Fredericksburg. Great school with much to offer. My daughter went for a visit last September and we were both very impressed.</p>
<p>The first rule of any person hired to be a guidance counselor in any state is to recommend applying to a college that is BOTH a financial and an academic safety. The guidance counselor is supposed to know much more than the average parent.</p>
<p>Also, people should keep in mind that there are some less selective colleges that are free for applications, as long as the application is not submitted on paper. Many other less selective colleges only require a token fee. There is a list of colleges with free applications on this website. Some colleges don’t require that you have a score sent directly from the collegeboard, if the score is on the high school transcript, which saves a couple bucks. There are also many many colleges that will waive an application fee if they are asked. </p>
<p>For persons of limited income, high school guidance offices have fee waivers for SAT and ACT tests.</p>
<p>Charlie, I agree with you on all fronts, although reading between the lines it’s now pretty obvious that the guidance counselor here did recommend safety schools and that VADAD1 elected not to follow the advice. I can’t blame him for that. He wouldn’t be the first parent (especially of a first child) to wrongly assume that high SAT scores trump everything else – especially since, at some schools, they do. They just don’t at any of the schools on VADAD1’s list.</p>
<p>novaparent, you are making assumptions that simply aren’t true. I understand why, but just take my comments at face value, and don’t try and read more into them, because you aren’t doing a very good job.</p>
<p>I mean here is the thing. The counselor probably has 400 HS students he is reponsible for, and 125-150 students getting ready to go to college.</p>
<p>I’ve got one child getting ready for college and I’ve been obsessed with nothing but her future for the last year. I feel like I failed her, and I’m not in the mood to place blame anywhere else.</p>
<p>But I wouldn’t make assumptions about what did or didn’t happen based on that.</p>
<p>VaDad: Attending Baldwin may be best for your daughter. It is probably a more supportive environment than UVa, with much smaller classes. UVa has many large first year classes, and the smaller first year classes are often taught by young grad students (some with strong accents). If you come from a less competitive high school (like my son did), UVa can be a tough adjustment. Also, there are more temptations to distract a student away from studying at UVa than you will find at a smaller school.</p>
<p>VADAD1: I wish you the very best of luck. College is completely what you make of it, and I’m sure that your daughter will be outstanding wherever she goes. A boy from my high school attended Georgetown College (in Georgetown, KY) and later became a Fulbright Scholar, while a close friend of my dad graduated from UofL and is now the boss of Harvard and Penn graduates!</p>
<p>I sympathize with your daughter’s situation because the same thing could have easily happened to me (our stats are very similar). I have relatively high test scores but didn’t feel confident about my ECs, my grades, or my essays (I took a risk and interpreted the CAS prompt very loosely. I thought that I was being creative and funny but my dad, a college professor, read it afterwards and told me, “This will get you rejected.”) </p>
<p>Somehow, I was incredibly fortunate and was accepted to UVa, UChicago, and Dartmouth. On a different day, your daughter could have gotten into her top schools, but I think that she was just unlucky with the admissions process. Don’t let this get her down!</p>