<p>Teachers and GCs are not fools - the letters will count hugely and they will almost certainly not be too good for this silly girl. But the daughter of the OP also has issues to work on. The kids at her own school are not her competition. The world is, literally. Smart kids from every state and every country. Such a provincial attitude that it’s all about her little high school does not indicate an understanding of the process.</p>
<p>I agree with everyone else. No good can come from ratting out the other girl. </p>
<p>I would just like to add our own little anecdote: for many years, no more than one student from our high school had been accepted at a certain top university. DS and one of his friends both badly wanted to go there. Both got in.</p>
<p>Yep, ADad, our little HS had multiple acceptances to several Ivies last year, too. It happens. I do not agree with Mammall’s position that kids at your own school are not the competition. They are part of the competition. But admissions officers don’t sit around their table and say “Well, we’re only accepting one kid from ABC High this year. Which one of these two exceptional candidates shall we deny?”</p>
<p>“Teachers and GCs are not fools - the letters will count hugely and they will almost certainly not be too good [for the competitor].”</p>
<p>Definitely agree with that. But agree with wjb that in-school competition is always in play at the admissions table, & that a school’s historical trends are broken when the competition for any given year warrants it. It completely depends on the class & who applies.</p>
<p>Well, some actually do do that, but that doesn’t change the situation.</p>
<p>S was wait listed at a school who sent him a likely letter! It was a bit of a surprise, though not an upsetting one since he’s already been accepted at his #1 choice. They emailed exactly four days later offering a place in the class. They had accepted a student ED and had a policy (a small LAC) of one kid per hs.</p>
<p>What a lousy experience for your son, mythmom. Glad he had been accepted to his top choice. </p>
<p>I’m curious. Did the LAC in question state the policy to you or your GC directly? What a dumb, arbitrary policy. And they circumvented it by sending a likely followed by a waitlist followed by an offer off the waitlist? Double dumb.</p>
<p>Yeah, it was dumb. And the likely letter was so assuring and included, “especially because you have had close relatives at our institution.” And the college he was accepted at was more selective, though he was seriously considering the one under question.</p>
<p>The regional rep stated this to another parent who called when her son was rejected (something I would never do.)</p>
<p>Her son ended up at a slightly less selective LAC, but one that I think is a better fit for him anyway, and he is deliriously happy.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a lousy experience for my son because he doesn’t care about much. He had his acceptance in hand and all the other schools could have said he was the worse candidate to apply in 1,000 years and he would still have been smiling. That’s him.</p>
<p>I was a bit miffed, but just a bit. Probably because I expect the world to be a rational place, all evidence to the contrary. It was very surprising for this particular school and I did call admissions and speak to a counselor to let them know that a rejection after a likely isn’t too wonderful. Then they emailed with offer, so perhaps it was a mistake? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I gave our names when I called. No, I didn’t.</p>
<p>wjb: You can PM me if you want to know the school. I don’t want to say negative things about a particular school. It hurts people’s feelings and this school is wonderful in a lot of other ways.</p>
<p>My heart goes out to you and your daughter, kjbny. Just reading your original post brings back all the stress and strife we were going through last year! </p>
<p>For all the wise and knowledge-based reasons stated above, your daughter should focus on what she can control to put herself in a positive light: her own application. It may happen that this seemingly lesser-qualified/deserving competitor gets in and your daughter doesn’t, as happened to my daughter at numerous schools last year. If that happens it will hurt terribly, and not feel fair at all. But if your daughter does what is right, she will have her integrity intact, and I think that is far more important than any college acceptance. </p>
<p>It is virtually impossible to see or believe at this stage, but these things do seem to have a way of working out for the best.</p>
<p>I believe in doing nothing about situation as unfair as it might end up being. Your Ds actions against another girl might be perceived negatively towards your D by outsiders, might picture her as a troublemaker. You know her as a good wholesome person, but they do not. Actions speak much louder than words. The action of your D conveying negative information about her competitor as truthfull as it is, might reflect negately on your D’s character.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about anyone else. Stay out of the other student’s life. Its none of your business. Don’t spread any rumors or say bad things. Athletes are considered differently in admissions. Worry about your own school work and applications, and be a good person.</p>
<p>I guess I would want to challenge my child with the premise “would you want to be judged guilty the REST of your ENTIRE life for one mistake? And NEVER get out of jail as a result?” Everyone deserves a second chance…provided they do the work to redeem themselves. Try to identify a transgression of your own and think about how you would feel if you could never, ever recover from it and would always have that Scarlet C for cheater, in this instance on your forehead. Also, would your daughter be willing to stand up in the middle of the auditorium or cafeteria at school and point a finger in front of everyone. It’s almost like the politicians who get caught saying something in a sidebar when they “thought” the microphone was off… we need to act as though someone is watching…there are those who think someone is watching…</p>
<p>I also agree, as others have mentioned, that the athletic tips happen in a separate sphere of influence and will not affect your own chances. Once you have done all you can to package and represent yourself, then one has to let go and let God…and learning this around something like a college application is useful so that you are steeled to handle something potentially larger later in life. I remember a girlfriend waiting for the child custody outcome of her divorce…she was so afraid…once the judgement came in, she realized she had no reason to be afraid, the judge saw who the ex-husband really was…but, that final interim approach to the verdict was truly the most difficult in her life. </p>
<p>Good luck in helping your daughter see her way to worrying about her own glass house. It is so challenging with kids…it is so challenging with adults.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, the rest of your post seems to not “agree” with this statement. Here’s the thing - our hs with a graduating class of slightly over 100 is sending two to Harvard, and multiple kids to U Penn, Columbia and Stanford. Last year five got into Stanford. Just because my daughter took so much stupid flack from students and their silly parents on this issue when she didn’t immediately accept her SCEA offer from Yale, I asked the Princeton admissions office rep who presented the day we visited last spring (she’d been accepted). I asked this nice woman if it was really true that schools like Princeton had high school quotas - that is, they’d only take so many from a high school. She laughed, shook her head and assured me that is not how it works, that in fact sometimes a high school with a particularly strong cohort of graduating seniors attracts undue attention from schools like Princeton that year and an exceptionally high number of offers to those students are made.</p>
<p>It is provincial and really dumb to go on insisting that the competition is the kid next to you in AP Bio. As is so often the case with this sort of narrow begrudging perspective, it is almost exactly wrong - a very strong cohort of peer students at your school probably increases your chances of acceptance at a reach school.</p>
<p>We witnessed a number of parents and their kids make fools of themselves during the last semester of high school senior year. Several over-involved moms told everyone who would listen to them that my daughter had applied to every single Ivy and therefore was blocking their darlings from acceptances. My daughter applied to three Ivies, fewer than the kids of these hysterical parents.</p>
<p>Just like in sports and everything else, parents forfeit their dignity and reason when their kids enter into competition.</p>
<p>This happens a lot. THere really is not anything that can be done. Your D is not competing directly with this girl. I don’t believe that the college in question has a quota for your D’s high school. I have heard this many, many times and it has always been denied and I have seen multiple kids go to the most selective colleges from the same school. I remember the panic at S’s high school when more than a dozen kids applied to H one year. Oh what stress there was as each parent was sure that their kid was competing against the others. They were all incredible kids, and the top 8 of them were picked. I say “top”, because I think that most folks knowing the group would agree that the 8 were in a class of their own and the other 4, though great kids, were not quite as phenomenal. That was the only time that many kids got into HPY from that school; there have been years when only 1 or 2 per school have been accepted. </p>
<p>If the young lady becomes an athletic recruit, she certainly has an edge in the chances to get accepted. I doubt a school will hold a 9th grade situation against her either.</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Maineparent and Mammall.</p>
<p>For all we know, the topic of the competitor’s essay could be what she learned from the cheating incident she was involved in. The price was obviously very high for her and she might have learned a life lesson. Has there been any allegation of cheating behavior in her new high school?</p>
<p>Our small public high school also has had success with the very tip top schools. Two years in a row, Harvard accepted 3 students–and for various reasons, only one chose Harvard. Harvard actually checked with our gc to find out why. Every year at least one or 2 get in to Harvard–yet it was 9 years with no one ever getting in to Brown. Last year, two were accepted to Brown. So who knows how or why the decisions are made.</p>
<p>My older kids both had “bad boy” attachments to their apps. I do not believe it made a difference in the results. S1 got into all but the most selective school on list, including those that were real reaches for him, and S2 into every school academically (just not always in the program of choice). Again there were reaches there.</p>
<p>Mammal: You and I have had this conversation before. Epiphany hit it just right, IMO, when she said “in-school competition is always in play at the admissions table, & a school’s historical trends are broken when the competition for any given year warrants it. It completely depends on the class & who applies.”</p>
<p>You say your D “took so much stupid flack from students and their silly parents on this issue when she didn’t immediately accept her SCEA offer.” I sympathize with you for that: I don’t believe that any student should feel compelled to “immediately accept” a Yale or Stanford or fill-in-the-blank early acceptance. I do think that students who get an EA acceptance should promptly withdraw all live applications to schools they absolutely know they will not attend over the EA school. You have made clear in the past that you and your D did not agree with my position. I suspect that at least in part, that is what raised your D’s classmates’ hackles. Indeed, you said as much in discussions about this subject last spring. </p>
<p>In the end, we do not know precisely how admissions committees make their decisions. If there are loose quotas from schools, they will almost certainly be overridden when multiple exceptional candidates present themselves. But we can’t divine exactly what goes on at the table. After his SCEA acceptance, my kid did not want to risk standing in the way of classmates who might want to attend schools to which he had applied and which he absolutely knew he wouldn’t attend over his SCEA school. He withdrew those applications. It was dead easy. All it took was an e-mail to admissions.</p>
<p>Of course there is some in school competition since students are compared to their peers in the high school. But they do not have quotas per school. At least not unless it is a small school getting double digit applicants from a single college, and even then… My son’s high school currently sent a dozen kids to a selective LAC, their most ever, during a super selective year.</p>
<p>I am with the others, just do your own thing. If your D is better as you suggest it will come through. My D is at a top Ivy and had 4 girls apply from her graduating class of 50. So in essence they “competed” but all got in. You don’t want to get into some sort of ugly situation, where the school simply says we don’t want to deal with either.</p>
<p>Perhaps your daughter just needs to hear you confirm that what she wants to do is wrong.</p>
<p>LAC’s may have different rules than the Ivies and other universities because their student body is so much smaller.</p>