ED Blues

<p>Hi: This is my first post. D was deferred from Midd and I am trying to figure out how involved to be in helping her move forward, including sending in supplemental materials. I have read all year on CC how difficult Midd has become and I had to bite my tongue when my D did not allow me to give her much advice. We really hit an impasse regarding her essay which I felt could have used editing (over 1000 words) and my efforts to have others help her backfired. She can be very stubborn aka independent unfortunately or fortunately traits I also share! Ultimately I thought the essay was subpar for Middlebury but hoped her other strengths would get her in.<br>
I was also worried that she was not given an interview as personal contact is always so important. But I literally hit the ceiling when I realized she did not send in an abstract showing she was first author on a science research paper being submitted to an international environmental science conference later this year. She worked with a Professor at Cornell University in the Deparment of Agriculture & Life Sciences doing a 6-week internship this summer which entailed original research and while she listed this in her CV she sent to Midd she did not think to send in the abstract itself.
Anyway after being deferred she has not really come around to thinking she needs to redo her essay for her other applications. She does agree she should have sent in the abstract and also agreed to ask the Professor for a supplemental letter of recommendation. How soon should such materials be sent? Has anyone ever heard of sending in a revised essay? How can she make a personal contact at Midd when there is no school representative and she was not contacted for an alum interview? Also has anyone ever heard of getting specific feedback from Midd about what was weak in an application? I will post her stats if anyone feels the need to see them but she is a top student at a competitive public school on Long Island. Thanks for you input!</p>

<p>well im a top student at a very competitive public school on long island (mom? haha just kidding!) and i was deferred from midd too. my guidance counselor said she is going to call them for a follow up and see if she can get any information as to what was weak about my app. maybe your daughter can ask hers to do the same?
and i think to try to strengthen my app for regular, i am going to send my sat 1 and 2 scores (i only sent my act) because they are consistent with my act and i think every little bit will help, and im going to send the ap scores ive gotten 4/5s on (us, stats, lang and comp) im also thinking about sending an additional recommendation letter, but not an academic one.
i also was not contacted for an interview (i guess there arent a lot of alumni on long island?)</p>

<p>1) Send everything as soon as possible.
2) to send the abstract is a MUST, also send the extra letter of recommendation and so forth
3) she should send a letter expressing her strong interest
4) Senior semester/trimester/quarter grades are very IMPORTANT. Have her counselour send them.
5) last but not least, apply to other colleges and really help her to fall in love with her second/third choices.
6) forget the past. Be her number one support. She is under A LOT of stress.
7) Be proactive but dont be annoying to the admissions, but she needs to show her interest. it is a balance act. </p>

<p>My oldest daughter was deferred EA, and then waitlisted regular decision to MIT. She end up getting off the wait list and she is now a happy freshman at MIT. But she really fell in love with Vandy, and she was happy to attend Vanderbilt engineering in case she did not get off the wait list. With the deferred is the same. it is time for your tow, to seek for second great fit/options.
Good luck!</p>

<p>I don’t know if I have heard of people sending revised essays and the essay may be water under the bridge. However, I certainly agree that the abstract is a good thing to send. It may also be helpful to wait until late February to send updates when there may be more new information (or send things again then if there is anything new to report). There’s still hope! Good luck!</p>

<p>We have the same daughter! Very difficult for her to accept advice even when you’re just trying to help her avoid a glaring mistake. Only after many suggestions did she agree to send a draft of her essay to my brother and nephew, both of whom made comments similar to mine but she was more willing to accept their remarks. My D also got deferred at Midd, but she did have an interview and the alum told her if she got deferred to call her, which I hope she did. Definitely send in the abstract. I don’t know if they will look at a new essay. Pursue Midd, but also get your Plan B going (I got a lot of great answers to my thread on the College Search forum – “Plan B for D?”) For the most part, people showed quite a bit of empathy and compassion. Good luck.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t redo the essay for Midd… that ship sailed. However, I would send the abstract and the extra letter of recommendation. I second the call from the GC to the admissions office to see if there is anything that might “shine” more so than others.</p>

<p>I think it is very important that she revise her essay(s) for other RD decisions. S was rejected ED from an Ivy and while I thought his essay was pretty good, it only became better with revision AND EDIT! Her essay should not be 1000 words. I suggest using the AutoSummarize on the word tool bar to see where she might be able to cut. With so many essays to read, no single essay is that compelling that they’ll actually read the whole thing if it’s already 1/3 longer than it’s supposed to be.</p>

<p>Hopefully her midterm report is shiny - and I also think this helped S during RD for his other schools. He was taking the hardest classes of his academic career and just blowing it out of the water, even though it was senior year. Son’s additional letter of recommendation came from a teacher (so it was academic) but his other two were not in the sciences and he had recently decided he would major in science. What I am saying, I guess, is that it wasn’t random.</p>

<p>All of this said, even though S did not get into his ED school, he did get into a lot of great schools RD and in hindsight it was nice to see what “could have been” when it came to college admissions. He had a lot of great choices and while Midd won his heart, he said he knew he could be happy at a number of his other schools.</p>

<p>And one more thing… Son was not very demonstratively disappointed about the ED rejection however, his GC sent me an email shortly after suggesting I make him his favorite dinner as he had a rough day that day. She was so awesome in so many ways, and her best advice to me was to give him a few days to mourn the disappointment. About a week later (and no, it wasn’t convenient since it fell on the week of Christmas etc), he was ready to move on.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for the helpful comments. D has recovered and added Bates and Oberlin to her list that already had Dartmouth, Colby, Amherst, Cornell (CALS), Wesleyan, Binghamton and University of Vermont. She got in to UVM early action honors college so everything is being weighed against that acceptance. She is going to major in environmental science and possibly economics and has a very strong math, science research background. I am proud of her for bouncing back so quickly but it also seemed to help that even the class Validictorian was deferred at his first choice as were many of her other friends. She is the only one to have applied to Midd as most top students (and their parents) from her school think only of the Ivies and do not even know about Midd!
I will definitely discuss with her using the autosummarize tool to see where she can cut her essay (never knew it existed)! She is waiting for her GC to tell her of any feedback from Midd and I hope it will be more than the generic “we had a strong applicant pool.”
I am coming around to thinking that going through the process now of seriously considering other options besides Midd is good as it allows her to think and weigh other schools she would never have researched like Bates and Oberlin which frankly were not on my radar either until now and sound wonderful. She was so excited by Bates that she first declared she should apply EDII. How did I forget she is only 17 and can be impressionable/impulsive?</p>

<p>I believe this website fills a need to obsess about matters that really do not matter when set in the context of one’s whole life. THE question will always be more about what kind of person we will become than what school I attended. Middlebury markets a myth of top tier language specialization. A midwest professor of a world language began her journey to a PhD with a state college undergraduate degree. She chuckles at the clever marketing of colleges that dupe many. The hard and difficult truth is that most colleges in the US, known and unknown, can move devoted students forward to their goals. We spend more money than is necessary for the comfort of a “name”. Completely unnecessary!</p>