<p>“Competitive summer programs, music auditions, and debate tournaments have given her many opportunities to learn how to deal, and move on”
Has she won every tournament or gotten every singing spot she has ever tried out for? If not, then she knows what being “rejected” feels like, even though she gave it her all and is very talented and deserving.
Relax. She will be fine. If necessary, make sure she really understands what the “odds” are of acceptance at her reach colleges if she is NOT a DA, URM, recruited athlete, or legacy. The real odds for “all others” is about half of the overall reported acceptance rate at the most competitive colleges, and there is nothing that she can do about that. It is what it is.</p>
<p>This is the second Admissions season for our family, but last year I wasn’t too worried about the rejections. D1 did not apply to any true reach schools–she preferred to go someplace where she would be overqualified & get good merit aid. So her biggest disappointment was one waitlisting. </p>
<p>D2 is a smart & well-rounded student with a solid GPA, but her class rank is only so-so, and she is also reaching higher than her sister. So I know there will be some outright rejections this year. Which will be tough because rejection just <em>is</em> tough, and also because her sister didn’t experience any. I try to discourage the comparisons, but she makes them anyway.</p>
<p>What I’ve tried to do so far is A) to applaud her early acceptance by her two safety schools & review the many positives that put them on her list in the first place; and B) talk in general about the competitiveness of college admissions & how a person can be a terrific applicant but still not get admitted due to the sheer number of applicants. </p>
<p>It helps that she’s seen a couple of her smartest & most overachieving friends (including one with a perfect SAT) get a Deferred response from Ivies. These are the people she would’ve considered a shoo-in anyplace they applied. It’s an education in the realities at highly selective colleges. </p>
<p>I’ve also made a point of applauding the merit aid/scholarship offers from her safeties. The nice thing about safeties is that they make it obvious they <em>really</em> want you, and that’s so good for the self-esteem (and the family budget). And whether her friends have heard of these schools or not, it feels good to say you’ve been awarded a big scholarship.</p>
<p>I have my fingers & toes crossed for a Yes from her first-choice school, which is a good match but still competitive. Other than that, I’m just standing by to cheer or hand her Kleenex, as the situation warrants!</p>
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<p>Ha! This year has been very hard in that respect. Despite working very hard and performing very well, she has had to deal with a lot of losses and rejections. So far she has been able to keep her spirits up and soldier on. But I am apprehensive about how well her spirits will hold up if April 1st brings mostly bad news. </p>
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<p>My D is one of those kids that many of the other students and parents said should be considered a “shoo-in anyplace she applied”. We knew better than to believe them. It was not a surprise to us that she was deferred from Yale, but yes, it did ease the pain to see that many of her overachieving peers were also deferred. </p>
<p>I disagree with the comment about kids today feeling “entitled”. I don’t see that in my kid or in her peers. These kids are acutely aware of how competitive everything is these days. Our generation did not have it so hard.</p>
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Lovely suggestion Oly, and not just for this situation.</p>
<p>I agree with the posters who said that it’s important for us, as parents, to not convey our disappointment. Throughout this process, I have tried to convey that this process is a crapshoot, and that he did his part in working hard and now it’s in the hands of other people. I also point out that I did not end up at one of my dream schools, but loved the school I did attend so much that it was a blessing in disguise.</p>
<p>I think it’s all about managing expectations.
I only applied to one reach and will be shocked if I get in, and will not be upset if it doesn’t happen</p>
<p>I did 3 matches, and am only really attached to one
and one safety that I already got into</p>
<p>So, in a month and a half, I can only expect good surprises</p>
<p>For those who are lurking…a reminder here that it’s important to have a list of schools your student likes and would be happy to attend – and that means schools across the admissions spectrum. (VP, I know your D did this.) We also like rolling/EA admissions.</p>
<p>At our house, we’ve been talking about <em>all</em> the schools on S2’s list all year; the pros, the cons, what he liked about them, and surreptitiously uncovered tidbits I found about schools from CC and the schools’ websites. We’ve talked about each school as if that’s the one he’ll attend. We’ve talked about the care with which he assembled his list and the effort he put into his essays. He is a bit lopsided in terms of SAT/GPA and we have not been sure how that would play out. So far, so good, but we know there likely will be some “thanks, but no thanks” letters come late March. I think there is only one school where he’d be really disappointed about not being accepted, but he is pragmatic enough about how these decisions play out, having seen this with his brother two years ago, to know it’s not a personal rejection.</p>
<p>Getting rejected from summer schools or other competitions doesn’t really come close to college rejections. I think it is good to acknowledge that because some how it would validate their feelings.</p>
<p>Our mistake with D1 was before April 1 we talked as if she had good chance in getting into all the schools she applied to, because we were trying to calm her nerves. In doing so, I think she felt she would really disappoint us if she didn’t get in to those top tier schools. I think with D2 I would try very hard to not show any preference, but to let her know she could get a good education at any of the schools she’s applied, and she would only need ONE acceptance, not 10 or 20.</p>
<p>In D1’s case, as disappointed as she was with her result with the college process, it was just as valuable of a learning experience. She went to her college with a determination of not taking anything for granted. She prepared herself in essence for 2.5 years for her ultimate job search, which she did well. As much as we want to shield our kids from disappointments, especially big one like this, sometimes it’s good for them to experience it early on. I think what’s important is for us to help them get pass it, to be able to dust it off and move on. It would be a valuable tool for them to have when we are no longer around.</p>
<p>Looking back at whole process and the fact that D. did not get into her #1 program (although she was accepted at school that had the program with huge scholarship), it has worked out well for her at her #2. Keeping that prospective in mind is helping her with Graduate School application process. She has learned from experience that individual achievments at any place is much more important than place itself. It works out for the best, if kid has positive attitude, works hard and opened to opportunities at ANY school. It is winning strategy.</p>
<p>I agree with many of the posts: Be enthusiastic about all the school, supposedly your child appied to all because they are willing to go to any of them. Manage expectations, make sure if your S or D applied to a variety of schools reach/match/safety that they “get” that a reach is a long shot. Celebrate and acceptance and be supportive if there are rejections. For many of these kids academic achievement comes easily and they simply aren’t used to not attaining certain goals, help them put things in perspective. And finally, remember we are the parents, it is not our acceptance or rejection and getting too emotionally invested is not healthy as a parent or for the kids. The acceptance into this college or that college is really only the tiniest of steps…there are four or more years before success is measured.</p>
<p>We had this same concern last year for our S. He had been outright rejected by his ED school and I admit I was deeply afraid that he was going to be limited in his choice for school, even though, really - that’s all you can truly hope for, a choice. I bought a card that I came upon that was all about hard work and disappointment and that I knew he was disappointed and there was nothing I could do about it, but tell him I loved him. I still have that card because even though he didn’t get into ALL of the 8 schools, getting into a alot and wailisted into another was great for him. So really… all you can do is say… some of this is a crap shoot, lots of kids apply to so many schools and we’ll cross the bridge when we get to it. As it was… once S was rejected from his ED school, we had to wait until the very end of March because he hadn’t applied to one rolling admissions or EA school. I don’t think we’ll be doing that with younger D as it was just too too long a wait.</p>
<p>One warning, “academic achievement comes easily” - not at all, not at HS, not at ANY college. It is better to dissapoint kids now in this incorrect assessment than later to have them being shocked by this true fact. The only way to academically succed is to work hard, it is not going to be easy. This is my D’s (in senior standing at college) assessment, who witnessed many HS valedictorians changed their professional goals becuase they did not expect as high difficulty level of college courses as they encounter. Very hard even after the best private college prep. HS even for the very top caliber students.</p>
<p>You and your daughter have done a good job so far. You stated that she is already in at her safety college, and that she applied to a fairly well-balanced list of colleges. The problem is that she does not seem to love all her colleges – only the top 4 that are the most competitive reach colleges. </p>
<p>If she attends a high school with a good number going to top colleges, then her classmates will help console her because many of them will also get rejection letters. </p>
<p>You could start sending her articles and new information about the other colleges that she applied to, so that she becomes more interested in them. You can start to do this now, or wait until she experiences the rejections. In this case, you would only build up the colleges in which she has acceptances. There must have been good reasons for her to put in applications.</p>
<p>You won’t be able to shield her from the rejections, but they will be less painful if she loves the colleges from which she receives acceptances.</p>
<p>I, too, really like Olymom’s approach. Including having you, the parent, take responsibility for worrying too much about how the kid will react to disappointment, so that the kid can prove you wrong. But, ultimately, the way my kids dealt with this issue was through portfolio theory – they made certain that among their highest choices (if not necessarily THE highest choice) was a college that did, in fact, accept them. There were no guarantees of that in advance, just intelligent intuition on their part.</p>
<p>My son was very much in the position of someone other people thought could not fail. His own self-assessment was much more realistic, but he did worry a lot about losing status. And that did happen, to some extent, although it wasn’t nearly as awful as he imagined.</p>
<p>I’m glad my kids were at really tough HS programs because they know what it’s like to bust their tails and get Bs. Between the two of them, there was ONE 4.0 semester in HS. </p>
<p>S2 felt pretty validated in his decision not to apply to mega-reaches and SCEA schools when the Stanford and Yale EA bloodbath took place in December. A lot of folks were reeling. S2, like S1, was happy that he had applied to an EA he liked a lot and who offered an acceptance. It has made the wait easier.</p>
<p>A lot of S1’s classmates thought he would be golden in admissions because of various awards, etc. S1 and we knew better and were not surprised when the schools that accepted him were exactly the four we predicted (and that he liked the most). There are no guaranteed acceptances at the crapshoot schools.</p>
<p>Our kids are resilient – if we give them the chance to be.</p>
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<p>She does have a college like that. It is the 20% acceptance rate college- Northwestern. She would be as happy there as she would be at Yale. Perhaps even happier. But 20% is still a pretty low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>^ Right. You can only tell if that approach worked in retrospect. But it did work for my kids. And there’s a good chance it will work for yours, too. I know lots of kids who were legitimate Yale applicants who didn’t get into Yale, but I don’t know any who were horribly disappointed with their admissions results except for a handful who took an all-or-nothing approach (like applying to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Temple).</p>
<p>S1 had his share of admissions disappointment already. We wanted him to aim high, and he also set a high expectation for himself. I think it is harder to detect heart wrenching disappointment in boys. The boys-don’t-cry teenage mantra pressures them to keep to themselves. We did our best to execute a strategy that lessens the blow by maximizing on EA’s. He has two acceptances in hand by December, but was rejected by Oxford, a college that was really my idea. </p>
<p>We didn’t know how much he was disappointed until he told us that he had asked his interviewer and was told he came within a hair of being accepted. I didn’t realize it bothered him enough that he actually contacted admissions to find closure. Perhaps his classmate’s Cambridge acceptance made it harder for him. He said, “I’m just not good enough.” I did my best to tell him that he is good enough for what he wants to do in any college, and tried my best to “sell” the two EA colleges that accepted him. </p>
<p>I think the most important thing we can do for kids in this situation is to confirm their immeasurable worth to us and to give them some space to find closure.</p>
<p>"I’m glad my kids were at really tough HS programs because they know what it’s like to bust their tails and get Bs. Between the two of them, there was ONE 4.0 semester in HS. "</p>
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<li>This will work well for them at college. My D. was also prepared to work hard because of her HS. HS grades become irrelavant in college, work ethic is what is needed more than anything else everywhere, state, elite, Ivy.</li>
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<p>I like that JHS’s S discovered that the loss in status was not as awful as he thought. Such a wonderful life lesson.</p>
<p>Human nature to want status; human society creates elites.</p>
<p>It’s great to see we can survive when we “lose face.”</p>
<p>And we are lucky to have enough wonderful colleges that most everyone can find a place to learn.</p>
<p>PS: JHS: I didn’t mean that I was pleased that something negative happened to your S or that he was arrogant and needed to lose something. I just meant that it is just a good thing to share – that social shame and social loss aren’t as bad as what we fear they are. But I hope you know I don’t wish your son anything but good.</p>
<p>Both my kids went through severe embarrassment when all their friends were accepted at their ED schools and they were deferred. D was ultimately accepted (some kind of social recovery, maybe) but S was ultimately rejected. He recovered too. I don’t think he thinks about it at all.</p>