This was posted by @80scollegegirl in the Parents of HS Class of 2023 thread and I think it deserved it’s own thread.
If you are feeling disappointed please read this blog by the Georgia Tech admissions officer Rick Clark. It talks about institutional priorities being the most important factor in college admission.
Here’s what stood out to me:
" If you are a senior awaiting an admission decision from a more selective school, this means your test score, GPA, number of AP courses, or any other purely academic metric is not going to be the entire basis for your admission decision. Yes, holistic admission means more than the academic numbers, but it also means other numbers play in, i.e. IPs. This is what admission deans mean when they say they are looking to “select” or “shape” a class. If Admissions was a language on Google Translate, “shaping a class” would convert to “IPs drive our process.”
And:
"If you are denied from a selective college, my hope is you won’t question your academic ability or lose sleep trying to figure out what was “wrong” with you or what you “could or should have done differently.” IPs mean admission decisions do not translate to “We don’t think you are smart” or “You could not be successful here.”
So, please please don’t take it personally if you didn’t get into your dream school! It doesn’t mean your hard work was in vain or you aren’t smart enough, or good enough. Don’t internalize the decision! Go forth and do great things at the school where you were a great IP fit.
PS. Rick Clark’s blog is a gem and the information he shares can be translated to other institutions. I highly recommend it for families with your students that haven’t been through the admissions process yet.
I will copy part of a comment I made on another thread:
The students who were accepted… are fantastic and they deserve those spots. There’s just more deserving students than there are spots.
I wholly agree that it’s unpredictable, that there’s no guarantee at almost any school, that the admissions process can be opaque, that rejections hurt, that no one should take it personally, etc. I find the whole process maddening, and you have to wear a thick skin and hold things at a distance.
I celebrate all the admits and awards even when they’re not going to my loved ones. And no one should ever feel like they have to second-guess whether or not they deserve their offers. I hope everyone ends up with some offers that their kids are excited about – it sounds like there’s a lot of love shown from colleges, it’s just hard to predict which ones will give it to which kids. Congrats and condolences and best wishes to everyone!