Do you post your kid’s acceptances on social media?

That is what Naviance is for…

You know, FB has a feature where one can customize who sees your post. Just block all the would-be salty parents from seeing it…Problem solved!

But I’m of the opinion that most parents at least from my region aren’t braggarts about college, just posting about excitement and anxiety. I have one friend on FB that posted a pic of her kid’s acceptance letters all fanned out and I didn’t find that offensive at all. I commented my congratulations on her post.

Yes, I share my daughter’s acceptances. She likes that I do, but of course I wouldn’t if she didn’t want me to. The way I see it, other parents post their kids’ accomplishments, from sports to performances, and all other sorts of talents. My kid is not an athlete, or a musician, or a dancer, or a gymnast, etc. Academics have always been her “sport”. So yes, I’m proud of her accomplishments and share them with our friends and family.

We don’t have Naviance or anything like it.

Everyone on c.c assumes all schools have Naviance meanwhile no-one at my kids’ school has ever heard of it.

Hey I know this is probably not the place for it but I am a teacher from outside the US and one of my students asked me to write letter of recommendation for him. However I am not entirely sure if what I have written is good and what us colleges expect. if anyone could give me feedback on my rec that would be great! Just inbox me

When my D2 was admitted to her first college, I posted it on social media. It was great because she has limped through high school and really felt good about it. And many of her relatives attended the college to which she was admitted OR its major rival. She received all kinds of messages congratulating her or telling her she was a traitor (in a joking manner). Fall grades have really improved her senior year. I think her first admission and the feedback she received, helped propel her.

It appears that some people categorically believe posting on social media is bragging and/or offensive. To make a determination about something without understanding the context, is narrow minded and judgmental.

I have no problem with someone saying why they wouldn’t post. To each their own. But I do think it is incredibly offensive to tell others that they are bragging, prideful, lacking humility, etc, when you don’t know the person or the context of their social media posts.

I feel the need to address a complaint I often see on CC, “‘My friend’s kid gets accolades for sports. What about my non-athlete academic kid?”

First, no one says parents can’t glory in their kids’ academic successes. They can and do all the time. Valedictorian/Sal, science fair wins, math competitions, writing contests, arts awards, NMS, NHS, debate competitions; the list goes on and on. I doon’t know a small town newspaper that doesn’t publish honor roll lists. I hope we can all agree that college admission is not a competitive sport, but even there we seem to be in general agreement that kids should be congratulated for their final college choice.

Second, one of the things I love about competitive sports is that they teach kids to both win and lose graciously. Even the most successful team occasionally loses and that loss is publicized for all the world to see. That’s different from academics, where we rarely see dissections of kids’ academic failures.

In other words, I’ll grant you the sports analogy when I start to see articles in the local paper with headlines like, “Despite Prepping Hard, Joe Jones Receives Disappointing PSAT Score, Misses NMF” Or “Sarah Smith Knocked of the Valedictorian Position by Poor Chemistry Grade” or “Washington High Crushed in Opening Round of Science Bowl -Johnson Gets 8 Questions Wrong”.

^^^ Totally agree with Sue22

If you are one of the parents who posts all their kids acceptances (and i don’t think anyone has a problem with posting final decisions) I wouldn’t be so sure that everyone on your friends list feels unambiguous delight at your crows of triumph. It’s very unlikely that anyone will actually tell you how they roll their eyes every time you list yet another in a series of acceptance letters for your offspring and frankly I’m amazed that your kids wouldn’t be mortified that you would be sharing their news in this way. Most teenagers I know would be shutting that stuff down asap.

Look, I don’t personally know anyone here and I don’t care how obnoxiously you brag to your social media circle and tell yourself that everyone reading your list is thrilled to pieces that your kid has gathered X acceptances from various schools. My kids are done with all that and none of my friends would ever dream of doing anything of the sort. We post graduation pics, sometimes homecoming and prom pictures so grandma and the aunts can see them (but only after having that cleared by the student). But listing all the acceptances to your entire friends lists strikes me as a bit crass and vulgar, but such are the times we live in.

@BearHouse, I agree we should all be more careful in our language and in imputing the motives of others, but it’s hard to talk about why we don’t do something without saying why we see it as negative. Perhaps the answer is more “I” statements, as in, “I feel like I would be bragging”.

At the same time can we please dispense with using language like “snowflake” and “fragile” in discussing students? No one says kids should be shielded from disappointment but there’s nothing wrong with being sensitive to the feelings of others.

@BearHouse - That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to share. As many people here keep saying, it’s all about context, intent and spirit of the post.

Also, what @Sue22 said. Both posts, but especially enough already with terms like “snowflake” to disparage showing consideration for others.

My 2 cents:

The school your kid will be attending next year = news.

The schools that admitted your kid = not news.

This holds for the students themselves as well as for proud relatives.

My FB group folllows ^Hanna’s 2 cents. Most of my friends post where their kids will be going to college since that is “news”. It’s tradition at my kids’ school for kids to start wearing a sweatshirt from the school they will attend. Note very few get into or aim for the Ivy sort of schools. Various LACs (of all levels) are a more typical destination.

Noone posts where kids got in or even where they applied. I know those details only for my closest friends’ kids since we talked about that in person. We also talked about/shared acceptances, rejections and waitlists in person. But in the context of deciding where to go (and commiserating with the kids about the sting of rejections or with the parents about the pain of watching your kids be distraught about rejection).

I didn’t post acceptances because I didn’t want anyone trying to weigh in on the final decision. I love my friends and family but they could be a pushy, opinionated bunch. If not for that I would have. Is it bragging maybe. Do I care if it is? No I don’t
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As for not posting so you won’t hurt someone feeling who don’t get in I don’t get it. Are there really that many parents friends on social media with their kid classmates. I’m not friends with any of my kids classmates. I don’t even have friends under the age of 30.

AT my kid’s school, it’s posted in the Graduation program handed out to every parent. And its not just where they accepted but where they got in (and they have to give the counselor the paperwork to prove it). In addition, on Senior Day, every kid wears the T-shirt of the college they accepted and it’s placed on Facebook. in addition, our neighborhood newsletter lists every high school senior and where they decided to accept. So, yeah, it hardly matters if I also put it on my personal twitter account.

How many people only have close friends and family on Facebook? I tend to view a Facebook post as more like taking an ad out in the town paper than making an announcement at a dinner party.

Current senior applying to college here to offer another perspective… maybe. Adults always ask about where I’m applying, so when they hear some on my list that have low acceptance rates, they get really interested and want to know if I ever got in, especially if they have kids my age. Same was for my brother, so when he got accepted to a school with a low acceptance %, my parents did a quick status update so that some of their curious friends would stop asking. Obnoxious? Perhaps. But they didn’t post every acceptance and only his final decision (which was not even the school they posted about). Their friends are all spread out in neighboring states so it makes sense to me.
And college admissions are all competition, some wins some losses, so I’ll of course be hurt and upset but understand if my friends get into my dream school and I don’t (my matches and safeties are really awesome anyways). If someone’s kid gets mad that someone got in and they didn’t, I don’t think it’s the poster’s problem.

Grace and humility are qualities that I believe get a person far in life. And “tone” matters. A first gen or other student who achieved their goals against the odds – who doesn’t love a feel good story like that? But the relentless, one-upsmanship of competitive social media is really grating. When our kids were in high school, we talked about how people curate their social media lives to appear flawless – if I had girls, it would be like comparing yourself to the cover models on Vogue or Cosmo. One is real life, the other is airbrushed, retouched etc. And so it is with the appearance of people’s lives on social media.

My kids’ high school has about 10% of the class applying to schools other than the flagship and regional public schools. And the top of that group would post on every social media platform their latest acceptance (they actually started with posting pics of the visits to Stanford, Ivies etc), with the humble brag, “so honored to be chosen . . .” Their classmates and peers were rolling their eyes every time they spoke by spring, and could barely restrain themselves from laughing at their Val speeches at graduation.

As a parent, my advice would be use FB option of creating a small group to share college updates with – family and close friends. There are people who care about our kids, and know them, in real life, and want to celebrate the ups. But the other 450 of our FB friends are not really interested.

I hate when people refer to younger people as “snowflakes.” If they have had an easier life than those who have gone before them, then great for them. Some of that is circumstance, and some of that is because parents have actively sought to make their children’s lives easier if they can.

And there’s nothing wrong with that—up to a point.

But I think that at some point we have to acknowledge that we can’t protect them from everything and that an attempt to do so is only detrimental to their coping skills. Because as good as their lives may be, somewhere down the road, they will have to confront challenges and adversity.

Any child who has applied for college and is awaiting their results has won already. They are ahead of many of their peers throughout the world and throughout history.

So for parents to not be able to prepare their children to overcome the disappointment and jealously involved in seeing what schools others have been accepted to is an example of parents not preparing their kids for the real world.

Because the road ahead is not going to be perfect and we cannot smooth it down for them. No matter how much we’d like to take control!

“And college admissions are all competition, some wins some losses, so I’ll of course be hurt and upset but understand if my friends get into my dream school and I don’t (my matches and safeties are really awesome anyways). If someone’s kid gets mad that someone got in and they didn’t, I don’t think it’s the poster’s problem.”

Anxious – why don’t you post every school you applied to and how you did. Then we can all post back the results of all of our kids. Which will be better than your results are. Then you can tell us how you feel about all that.

We only shared acceptances (and also rejects) with a very small number of people who were really involved with our kids and who inquired. For the broader public, the only notice was the invite to the HS grad party which had a picture of the host kids wearing the shirt of the school they were attending.

Ouch. That will teach you not to have an opinion, or at least not to share it here @anxiouswreck.

Also nice to know that all the other kids will be “better than your results are.”