<p>I’ve seen the OP’s posts over the years, and while my decision-making is a bit different in my family, I give the OP credit for asking a lot of questions and thinking out loud with other parents here over the years. Different families set different priorities, but as a parent knowing how hard parenting is for everyone, I try not to criticize other people’s decisions.</p>
<p>I’ve been following POIH’s posts here ever since he asked that provocative question along the lines of “What major should my daughter put in order to maximize chances of getting in to Ivies?”. IMO his posts are marked by a mixture of pride (perhaps justified) and an unabashed frankness and a willingness to be ridiculed, as long as they generate spirited responses and yield some valuable information. I am sure there are others here who think the way he does, but most of us apply various filters for appropriateness and censor ourselves. POIH seems to have few filters, and he adds to the diversity of our community. I think of him as our own Borat. </p>
<p>I wish his kid and his family well. I really do.</p>
<p>crossposted with tokenadult!!! and in total agreement.</p>
<p>I believe I read somewhere that UCLA had over 55,000 applications and Cal over 50,000. I’m not sure about USC but last year, their acceptances were within 1-2% of UCLA.</p>
<p>All of these places are currently on my S’s first draft list. No, we are not considering any of these safeties even though he sits rank #3/520 in his class and will finish out with a total of 9 AP classes and 2 college level math classes. UCSD will probably be considered a match.</p>
<p>When S1 was accepted at both MIT and Chicago EA and deferred at Caltech, he considered it the honorable thing to withdraw/not to complete applications at schools he knew would not beat the stellar hand he had already been dealt. (“Not beat” in terms of the programs and things he wanted at college, not in terms of prestige.) BTW, he was not top 10%. </p>
<p>He knew too many friends who were vying for some of those same schools and he wanted them to have the best shot possible. He was not trophy-hunting (and yes, that’s the phrase he used). In retrospect, he could have dropped a couple more. We also had the good fortune of a state flagship which he liked and was a financial safety, with or without merit.</p>
<p>S1 had ten on the list, and adjusted accordingly. Applied to seven, could have gotten away with five, but only after EA results. No way would we have gone with his top five as the sole strategy. Expect S2 will have 10-13 schools, reflecting different interests, GPA/scores and general admissions insanity, but don’t expect EA results to result in much clarity. At least we are down from 17!</p>
<p>I admired DD strategy for the applications.
- She applied to MIT/Caltech in early October.
- She applied to Harvard/Princeton/Stanford in early November.
- She applied to Olin, USC, Rice, and UCs in late November as the deadline was Dec. 1st.
- She applied to Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, JHU, and CMU in early December.</p>
<p>She wanted to Matriculate to either 1 or 2. If she didn’t have made it to either college in 1, she would have applied to
3. Yale, Columbia, U Penn, Brown
also, Which would have taken more time than 5 so she submitted those before the EA.</p>
<p>POIH,
so WHY did she not withdraw her applications to Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, JHU, CMU, Olin, USC, Rice, and the UCs AFTER she got into 1 & 2? What was the point of keeping all those application open when she KNEW she would not attend any of those colleges? ESPECIALLY given this statement:“She wanted to Matriculate to either 1 or 2.”
There are other students who would have given anything to have been accepted at the colleges she had no intention of going to.</p>
<p>POIH, you are unfamiliar with American cultural norms so I will clue you in. The honorable and classy thing to do would have been to withdraw other apps once she got into her first choice schools. It’s far classier to gracefully withdraw and let others be accepted regular decision vs waiting to be pulled off a waitlist. What she did is called trophy hunting and it’s not nice. All the smarts in the world don’t mean anything if you don’t do the right thing. If financial aid were a consideration that would be one thing but it isn’t the case in this situation.</p>
<p>I think the OP and his D had a PLAN and a GOAL and they were aggressive in their pursuit. This how successful people operate. They are different than you and I. Yes, she kept her applications in, so she could have a list of fine schools to which she was accepted. Because they wanted to; they planned for college glory; they are relentless and driven; and I sense this D will accomplish whatever she sets her mind on.</p>
<p>"so she could have a list of fine schools to which she was accepted. "That is the essence of trophy hunting! OP and D don’t seem to get that for every acceptance his D collects but has no use for, another deserving student received a rejection letter. If that isn’t selfish, what is?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We were not aware that you can withdraw completed applications. She did withdraw incomplete applications to Yale and Columbia. School GC also not indicated it to DD otherwise she would have withdrawn her applications as she didn’t not pursue Olin Interview, Caltech UCSD Interview, USC or UCs scholarship Interviews.</p>
<p>Oh please!!! All she had to do was send an email/ letter to the admissions dept saying- “I have been accepted at … and am planning on matriculating there. Please close the file on my application. Do not consider me for acceptance at your fine college. Thank you.”</p>
<p>One withdraws the same way a student who was accepted at an ED school does: a nice letter/email thanking them and requesting that the school remove the student from consideration.</p>
<p>And all eight Ivies?! Puhleese.</p>
<p>Makes me long for Dad II’s posts. He has a sense of humor these days.</p>
<p>MODERATOR’S NOTE: </p>
<p>Personal insults are not permitted by the College Confidential Terms of Service. I especially want to point out to several participants here that you have SEEN threads before where a person who violates the Terms of Service </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/faq.php?faq=vb_faq#faq_new_faq_item[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/faq.php?faq=vb_faq#faq_new_faq_item</a> </p>
<p>has to be timed out or have posts edited to enforce those rules. Control your own behavior, and make the forum welcoming for everyone asking questions and sharing information according to the rules. The rules aren’t just enforced against people whom YOU find insulting; they’re enforced on everyone. </p>
<p>Best wishes to you and yours for much success in higher education studies.</p>
<p>To be fair to the OP, I didn’t know about the etiquette of withdrawing one’s application until my daughter’s (privately hired) college counselor suggested that she do so. When I applied to college I only applied to 3 schools and they all only had regular admission.</p>
<p>I’m just in awe at the amount of time and energy that it must have taken to apply to all those extra schools. I can’t imagine either of my kids making that kind of effort before hearing from the early admit. UC, CSU, and Olin all had deadlines of Dec. 1 or before, so of course those went in, but my son only sent in one additional app, and that was only because I had a hissy fit about how he would have soooooo much work over the break if he didn’t get at least one more app done… and he had to write another essay for his English class anyway, so he was kind enough to oblige me.</p>
<p>S1 also had two apps that were due between 12/1 and 12/15, so those went out before we knew about EA decisions – but those two were his #2 choice and the flagship, so he would have been applying to those two no matter what (both were merit $$ possibilities).</p>
<p>If one needs to wait for FA/merit, if a student has an uneven profile, or one is looking at schools that don’t offer EA/rolling, I can absolutely see putting many lines in the water (assuming the <em>student</em> is willing to load the hook and cast the line! ;)). However, I am also sympathetic to the many kids who would have loved to get an acceptance from their dream school.</p>
<p>While POIH posting may appear to be boastful, you need to look at his previous postings from a year ago or even before to get the full context. You will see postings in which he questioned his strategy of taking the hardest course and affecting the GPA/rank. He believed the advice he has gotten from CC and others on taking the hardest available courses may have hurt chances for her DD irreversibly. For example, she took xyz AP vs xyz hons, and got dinged. So his advice to CC community was: don’t do it if your rank is going to go below 10% because IVY league care about that too much. (He had statistical data to back it up). </p>
<p>After getting his DD’s admission results back, he is reporting back to the CC community (sort of giving back). In that he is reporting, for his DD, the strategy of taking the hardest courses worked better than those of other kids in her school who followed the ranking/GPA apporoach. </p>
<p>I think this data point is useful for a certain class of highly competitive people targeting top schools. And we should thank POIH for sharing it, rather than attack him for bragging, second guessing him. For slightly different class of people, this strategy may hurt them. (I know my own D took a few AP’s too many and it absolutely hurt her admission chances in a few top public schools especially the ones known to be numbers driven. She would have been better off getting a better gpa in regular courses in lieu of these specific ap’s).</p>
<p>As I said, you must look at his postings in context to come to this conclusion. Looking at one or two postings may give you the wrong impression.</p>
<p>POIH thanks for posting your D’s experiences.</p>
<p>Thanks Decisiontime09 for explaining it nicely. DD was really stressed out after missing the induction into the cum laude society last year as that coincide with the admission results for the class of 2008. That was the first time we realized that DD is way off the top 10%, so panic was natural.
Hence DD became so aggressive with the college applications. I really admire DD and consider myself very blessed to have a daughter like that. She executed the application process perfectly.
In the hindsight it might be easy to ‘criticize’ or ‘blame’ the teenage but think about the stress she was going thru when she found out that she is not even close to top 10% GPA wise and CC is full of posts how it is next to impossible to get into top schools if you are not in top 10%.</p>
<p>Last year we saw Josh’s parent was criticized because of his sincerity. I hope that we don’t this again with POIH this year.</p>
<p>POIH, I can feel from your post how stressed your D must have been last fall, and I’m so glad that it came out well for her in the end. I am wishing her a wonderful four years full of fun and learning. Actually, I wish that for all our kids!</p>
<p>I’ve made this point in other posts, but based on my experience with my D, girls who have good test scores, a strong academic record, and a demonstrated interest in engineering/physics put themselves in a whole different category of desirability. There seem to be way too few of them out there! I hope for the sake of our society that is changing, and that in 10 years it will confer no advantage at all, but as I have said, during my D’s senior year you would have thought that we had a recruited athlete living with us instead of a girl who liked to mess around with electronics and build stuff. While I don’t know the whole story of POIH’s achievements, I’ve gotten the impression that she has demonstrated an interest in engineering and cs, thus making her a very desirable applicant.</p>
<p>thank you POIH for your status and Decisiontime for the context. We have not as elite a situation but my D wants to take as many classes as she can, always the top level, and I think an easier load would definitely give her better grades. It is good to see examples from both sides.</p>