@NUwildcat92 I’m not venting, I’m enthusiastically educating teens on the bottom-line process so they don’t over-estimate their chances of getting in.
On the internet, there’s way too much “hey, your grades/scores are good so go for it 'cause you’ve got a chance!”
and not enough “many thousands of kids have great grades/scores and they got denied and you probably will too.”
Help kids manage their own expectations up-front and you’ll have healthier kids who navigate life better because they’re not despondent.
What “crushes teens’ mental and physical health” is more likely to be the warped perspective of ambitious parents who fail to provide students with realistic advice about reach, match and safety schools, and who make their children feel like failures at life if they don’t get into a very narrow band of schools. I sincerely doubt that Harvard etc, with its 36B endowment is basing its financial planning strategy on piddly $75 application fees.
I understand being temporarily sad and disappointed at not being accepted to a dream school. But “crushing” one’s mental and physical health? That’s a sign that the kid has way bigger problems than being rejected by an Ivy.
Re Oberlin: It’s not obscure at all; it has a long, proud history in American higher ed. Plus my grandmother went there.
^^. This. I know lots of kids who got rejected from the Ivies this year. They were really depressed. For a coup,e days, maybe a week in some cases. None are now hollowed out shells.
Having worked for a couple years in admissions at an Ivy League university, students who are “crushed” by rejection are often those being pressured by their parents to apply or who have lived lives where they have never encountered rejection. While it may sound harsh, rejection is part of life. They will face it frequently in life. Saying you are crushed after being rejected by an Ivy is like saying that life isn’t worth living if you don’t work for JPMorgan or McKinsey. I say, “get real”.