Thank you all for the thoughts and support. I have told him multiple times even before the rejection that he will end up in the right place. While he is still a bit upset, he is doing better. He’s still confused on why other kids at their school that have much worse ECs got in or were deferred. Hopefully that second guessing will stop and he will move on. Christmas should help take his mind off things.
I think pretty much all of us have heard “I’ve worked so hard for nothing.” Following not only a rejection but also deferrals and WL. They know they odds.
Some students may see a Wl as a win, the super high achievers do not for the most part.
There are always those super zen types (that I really admire!) who take it stride. Rare imho.
So you are not alone and neither is your son. This will pass with time like grief around a sad high school break up or dropping the big pass.
It’s emotional but not life threatening.
They’ll be ok. You’ll be ok.
Just be there and keep it light for a bit. And if they want to saddle up and relook at some schools, pull up a chair and dive in.
Take him out for ice cream! Seriously, do something he likes with him and tell him he will do good wherever he ends up.
Cornell was a reach and so is UChicago, to everyone. (but you dont have to tell him that, he already knows) He sounds like he would have enjoyed UChicago though - that is if he took to heart what he learned from you about hard work. (Now if he did not, then UChicago would have been hell for him, so maybe he was lucky to get rejected)
Either way, you should maybe try to research everything good about his safety school and highlight those. Help him visualize a plan of maximizing the benefit of going to a good school, even though it was not his dream school.
And now that he has a safety, there is always opportunities in RD. He may be interested in other schools… if you tell us what he likes, we may have some suggestions for you for RD. Get some apps out there to schools that are comparable to UChicago. You never know, Cornell might just be it - it is just as cold over there in the backwoods of Ithaca 
and it has a higher acceptance rate too
I’ve been working with students applying to colleges for several years now and one of the biggest mistakes parents make is forcing kids to miss out on normal high school experiences in the quest for admissions to an elite school. The result is often an uninteresting kid who has very little to write about in their essays or for teachers to say in their LORs that make the student stand out. So OP, I’m sorry your son was rejected and even more sad that he missed out on high school trying to “do all the right things” to get into UChicago. Please let that be a lesson learned and step way back and let your son forge his own path. Don’t micromanage his college experience like you did his high school experience. Most kids will thrive where they end up if allowed to find their own way. He will be fine. Good luck to him with his RD applications.
It is hard to tease out all of the emotions involved with this decision with a high stats kid. (Just sending my third kid to college and the first two were nowhere-near-high stats kids and they were WAY easier in this front).
I have kind of the opposite kid to yours, in some ways. He almost immediately rejected the notion of zeroing in on any particular school, and eventually decided on his safety. We, his dumb parents, pushed him to apply in addition to reach schools. He refused over and over, yet we kept pushing. Why did we want to spend $50k more per year, you ask? For me (the mom), I will admit that I wanted to be able to brag to friends, to visit him on Parents Weekend with all the other Ivy League parents who have convinced ourselves that we have a great kid (must be genetic!), and know that for the rest of his life, he would have that ability too…to say ‘I went to IvY League School.’ This is a powerful urge which made us pretty much fail to listen to what our son was saying for weeks regarding his reasons for the safety as the right choice. You may not have those feelings, but we did, and it hurt our son, I think.
There is also the sentiment that this is an ‘all-or-nothing’ game, where if your kid doesn’t get the big prize, he goes to Booby Prize College. Along with the kids in his HS who barely showed up and certainly never gave up a Saturday night party.
A few Thoughts have occurred to me since our S20 basically told us to knock it off and that he is going to his safety, period. They may relate to you. First, your son’s accomplishments in his HS are not a secret to anyone. Everyone knows how smart and hard working he is. He competed, and he won. That will never change.
Second, your son’s HS accomplishments are truly only the beginning. Our two older kids have blown us away with their young adulthood accomplishments. (Which we had absolutely nothing to do with). While learning of our youngest’s SAT scores was a happy day around here, what the other two have done, as adults, were happier days for us.
Your son has felt the agony of defeat very recently, but mostly the joy of victory. And there is much, much more to come. So, to your question…how to deal with your son? I think you should of course be there there for him, but maybe you can adopt an attitude and tone of ‘this is just a blip…no biggee.’ Because, this is actually true.
My oldest made gigantic personal and professional sacrifices for two years to stand in line to purchase a lottery ticket for a ‘dream job.’ In the last round, he did not get it. We half expected him to need therapy to get over this, as we chanted the same ‘hard work will get you there’ mantra for those two years. He did not need therapy, though. He instead shifted to Plan B, another two years of personal and professional sacrifice for another lottery ticket opportunity. He had survived the first one, and this emboldened him to do it again. But was smarter this time. And when he scratched the ticket, it was a winner.
Your son’s future is bright. He has learned how to compete and win in HS. Those same learnings will stay with him forever. Look deep to make sure your disappointment for your personal dreams are not impacting how you deal with him, and then buckle up as he will soon blow you away with his accomplishments. You will need a bucket to store all of your pride.
No tough love here. I’m sorry to hear that. Good luck and may he land where he is content and proud. Moms can’t help but wish the best for their hard working over achievers. best wishes!!!
@cypresspat Thanks for you candid post. We live in a community with a large highly competitive affluent high school. I would say my kid had an equal part of “keeping up with Joneses” as we may have had. I think we both got caught up in it. I know we shouldn’t have, but anyone with a competitive spirit will. Having said that when we received one of the safety acceptances that had a scholarship, the rationale side of me took over and I really feel it’s a great option. With the money left over, I could probably give my kid more than $100K to start his life off or use for grad school. But my kid who has never experienced financial struggles doesn’t see how valuable that is, although I have told him I will financially support whatever school he chooses. Perhaps that also may have been a wrong strategy. At least now we can have these discussions and look at the totality the acceptances he will get. My younger son is bit greedier and asks me if he goes to a state school can he use the difference to buy a car :). He has already decided he has no interest in the rat race.
What my older son has accomplished in the four years is quite amazing to me already. In fact I am amazed at all of these kids and what they accomplish.
We are still puzzled however with the rejections we are seeing across the board at our school this year. The number of acceptances are down at almost all of the schools. In an unfortunate way this is helping my kid cope as many of his friends are in the same situation.
Last night after calls from grandparents and cousins, the kid was laughing again and in better spirits. What he is saying now is the biggest frustration is the uncertainty and wait for another three more months before we find out about the RD rounds which I completely understand.
BTW, why does UChicago think it’s a great idea to give notifications during the week of finals! Most IVYs and Northwestern do it the week before. At least the kids have the weekend to recover.
@wjp007 You sound like a great parent who is doing everything right, and your child sounds like a high achieving student, so I don’t think you and your child did anything ‘wrong.’ You and your child did everything you could toward a certain goal, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it sure does hurt when your child is hurting, and it will probably take a while for the pain to subside for both of you, and nothing wrong with that either.
Your child sounds like a high achieving student who will thrive at where ever he decides to attend. All your efforts of helping him navigate this morass is not for naught because it will help him in other areas of his life. College admissions is such a random thing, and just because he did not get into a dream college does not mean anything. Some schools just have too little slots for too many kids who are the right fit, and I’ll bet those schools would love to enroll all of them, but are limited by available slots.
When we were looking at schools, we liked the vibes/student body at the University of Rochester (and also super cold, like Chicago lol) and Brandeis too (smaller in size, and some people say their campus is looking a little run down, but we were more interested in the student body and the academics). Those also aren’t safety schools either, however, but maybe worth a look.
I guess the point is that trust that it will all work out for your son and you. Your son’s ability to achieve so much along with your guidance already means success, and with his qualities, he’ll be successful no matter which school he attends.
I really like @cypresspat ’s post! So true. This is not the last time your son will get turned down for something he really wants. It hurts each time. You can do everything right, sacrifice, work hard , and you just don’t get something in return. Returns tend to come in the long term and we love those short term shots of immediate gratification.
It hurts the parent each time too. I should be used to it, but there is no getting used to the hurt from your kid’s unhappiness and pain.
Seems to me that the reach schools get reachier every year. My D experienced the same two cycles ago in terms of stats from her school.
I agree that it helps soften the blow to realize you aren’t alone. My D had an EA deferral that stung but her school’s val also was deferred so they commiserated and she did feel better ; ).
Happy to hear that your son is in better spirits already. He’ll do great wherever he lands!
“My younger son is bit greedier and asks me if he goes to a state school can he use the difference to buy a car :). He has already decided he has no interest in the rat race.”
- Smart kid!
^ The reach schools get reachier due to application numbers and the shifting mix of admits in the early round. UChicago in particular is targeting very specific groups as part of the Empower Initiative and encouraging them to apply ED. With the automatic - and generous - aid package available to them, there may be no need to price-shop elsewhere; ED becomes an attractive option if they are keen to attend UChicago. I met some of those admits last year at the April Overnight and they had all applied ED. That will naturally make the ED pool even more competitive than it has been. We are used to seeing ED1 at UChicago as primarily for the high-achieving unhooked kids - and that is still true - however, it’s a more diverse admit group at UChicago than it used to be.
A great way to get even would be to set your sights on UChicago for grad school. Reject THEM when they offer you admission! YEAH!!!
Yeah! Who needs UChicago? They’re the chumps anyway, for missing out on your kid.
Not everyone’s finals is this week.
So here’s my comment…Re-read your initial post. Do so from an outsiders point of view. I think you’ll see what many of us who are not in the throes of your disappointment see- a temporary inability to maintain perspective.
Before our son’s portal updated, we were preparing our response to rejection. Hadn’t even thought of what we’d do/react if he were accepted, because who cares? That is natural and everyone would be elated. But the rejection was our primary focus.
Significant others will break his heart, he won’t receive promotions he thinks he should get, he’ll lose out on jobs he thought he was qualified for. The greatest skill in life is the ability to recover. The fact that he is forced to do so now- with loving parents right next to him as opposed to having to face this alone- is a gift.
It is a major advantage that this occured in college application process. Those of us who are successful (and I am absolutely assuming you and your family fall into this category)…think about the colleges all of our colleagues have attended. With very rare exceptions, they are literally all over the map in terms of “prestige”. I love the WSJ’s article of a few years back. They measured what the T20 possessed, 10 years out of college, for their graduates in terms of success, quality of life, etc. Do you know what they found? No difference at all. They took the top 30% in terms of graduates from all of the top 100 colleges, and there was literally only one factor that separated them. The graduates of top 20 schools were much more likely to have come from privilege. That’s it.
Your son has phenomenal stats. I am pretty confident he’ll get into a school he can be “proud” of, but everyone will realize within a year that it’s more important for him to get into a school he can see himself thriving in- regardless of what the USNWR says.
My kids are very different from one other. When my D19 faced rejection after not being matched by Questbridge she turned to us for her cue. She is a competitive gymnast, so she knows well that losing is a part of life even when you try your best- but she was worried about our disappointment. It was so important that what she heard from her parents was that it was ok, not a disappointment at all- just a small bump. We made sure before she applied to a single reach that she had a safety acceptance where she would be happy. For D20, who is a dancer, she takes rejection even better. She doesn’t look to us for approval at all really in these matters, so as long as we stay out of our own way she simply takes it in stride. She was recently deferred from her number one choice, and she rolled with it. I personally would have preferred a rejection to a deferral. I think they’re the worst.
After being deferred by Cornell…all I can think about is how to improve my chances during RD. I’m hanging onto every last bit of hope as I drag myself through this process. Almost better to be denied.
Watching close friends who are brilliant, get deferred from MIT & Chicago…has me feeling worse for them, than I do for myself. Two friends had perfect SAT scores, and top GPAs in my very competitive HS.
This has become such a crazy, unfair, yield protecting process.
I feel like all my “plans” of what course of action to take if I got rejected in ED1, are all mixed up. Deferral keeps you hanging, wishing, and grasping for hope!
I lost so much confidence in myself as a student. I feel like all our hard work is not paying off.
I’m afraid to commit to ED2…because I’m holding out hope for my deferral.
ps. Mom my is my biggest fan and supporter…she tells me that she will be just as proud of me in a safety school…as she would be if I was in Cornell. She just wants me to be happy. She’s acting so excited for every safety acceptance I get …(it’s a little funny) I’m so lucky that i’m not pressured at home.
I just want so much more for myself. I just wish I could wake up tomorrow and it would be April 1st!
ps your son is better with a denial…they set him free!!
Random thought. Is it slightly more difficult for the traditional high achiever to get into Chicago with its new test optional approach?
As many high gpa students with excellent ecs etc but non correlated test scores turn to Chicago now as a option. Perhaps they wouldn’t have in the past. This In addition to some of their new focus areas mentioned above. It adds a layer of competition at the top. Perhaps the time spent test prepping should be used on ecs and community service to best align with Chicago Bowdoin etc.
The formula might be a little different going forward over time.
@Wjp007
First, just in general about what you said regarding the stats: was his courseload very difficult? filled with aps & honors? if not, a student with a very heavy courseload would be preferred even with a few Bs. Weighted is a better indicator than unweighted for this reason.
Also, low 1500s SAT probably won’t count much in his favor: it won’t put him out of the running, but it’s not a boost.
Now then, for specifically UChicago:
Essays WILL make or break the application, unless the applicants credentials are completely world class.
UChicago’s uncommon essay is a major factor in whether or not a student gets accepted, and even the other two (Common App & Why UChicago).
For almost all top tier colleges, a stellar student with mediocre essays will easily get passed over in favor of a mediocre student with stellar essays.
For UChicago in particular, the essays can be considered the majority of the application. The stats get you considered, the essays get you in.
@privatebanker at #58 - Not sure. I think we are seeing evidence that it might be harder to be the conventional high-stats student and expect to get in with the same odds that existed maybe four-plus years ago. Application numbers are up and they have stepped up their efforts to bring in a more diversified pool. However, the College is also much larger than it was back then. This time next year there will be 1,000 additional students over and above the number in Autumn 2016!