<p>ddahwan: Yes seriously. I just can not take it out of my heart and the pain he must be going through. It must be difficult for him to deal with the whole situation now. The HMFR rejected him and the next tier waitlisted him- probably tufts syndrom. What an unlucky situation.</p>
<p>DONIVRIAN, did this kid have ANY acceptances? A state flagship? Regional LAC? If he didn’t apply to safeties it’s hard to have much sympathy for him. If he is so capable he will do fine in life no matter where he finds himself for the next four years.</p>
<p>I feel bad for kids like that. I mean part of it is, if you apply to all reaches, sucks to suck. But if you happen to get in that “perfect storm” like a girl from my school: stats I guess were too suspiciously high for her safeties so she got waitlisted/rejected, and then happened to get waitlisted/rejected from her reaches. So she’s “stuck” with the state flagship. That’s fine. But what’s the worse is hearing your friends talk about college all the time, and all the places they’re going, and what they’re doing and sitting there and thinking “that could’ve been me.” I have sympathy for that feeling.</p>
<p>I want to feel sympathy for those who applied to only reaches, but if they really looked into their colleges, they should not be as surprised. It could be the pressure from parents, peers, their high school, etc. but in the end, they are the ones doing a majority of the research. I actually applied to mostly safeties because I thought it would be more realistic, and also because I thought applying to a bunch of reaches would be a waste of money.</p>
<p>Plus, I assumed any school that would be a reach wouldn’t accept me anyway… I kind of wish I tried more and went for it, but what’s done is done now. And it seems kind of arrogant for students to only apply to reaches, assuming that they’ll get into at least one. They don’t seem to understand that applying to only reaches does not maximize your chances, because they’re all really hard!</p>
<p>sucks to suck</p>
<p>Sally305: yes he has two options and has a fairly good scholarship, but the rejection seemed so random for him.
As the previous commenter said, it is so hard on him- it is a phase I know- I am sure he knows it too. But hard to watch kids getting disappointed this way.</p>
<p>He may want to work on his WL schools. See if his counselor could make few calls for him and help him put a packet to send to those schools. My kid got off 2 WLs (Cornell, Duke) and a friend’s D also got off all of her WLs (Cornell, NU, Duke) few years back. It really depends if those schools will go to their WL. Our GC called on our D’s behalf as soon as I found out the WL was open. I found out those schools were going to their WL on this forum. I told my friend and she called the adcom(s) on her D’s behalf.</p>
<p>Oldfort: I will pass this info to him. Hope he will be able to get off the wait list.</p>
<p>I don’t have sympathy, but I do have a little bit of pity. Pity because they played the game and lost because of their own cockiness. Their parents and guidance councilors? I have no sympathy or pity for them. We’re 17, 18. It’s not like we know better.</p>
<p>Princesstardis do not be too harsh. Even if you play " the game" you have to put a lot of effort and a lot of work into it. My son did not get into an Ivy League because it was not his thing, but his friends, the more than 40 that got in, deserved it. Those kids were hard workers since middle school. My kid also worked hard but he did not put nearly as many hours as they did. We never wanted him to apply to any of those schools because we wanted him closer to home, where he got in now. I think is a perfect fit for him and he is happy, however I cannot take away the merit of all those that did so well in school.</p>
<p>I got lucky because I knew to apply to a lot of safety/match schools. They made up about 2/3rds of the schools I applied to, and thank god, because I was rejected from all of my reaches.
Even better, I love the two schools I’m really deciding between (one safety and one match), so although I didn’t get into Cornell or MIT, I will still be happy with where I end up.
However, I feel like I could’ve easily been led to apply to mostly reaches, because for some reason, the idea is spread that if you do well in school, you will get a full ride to Princeton. There’s so much more to it, as everyone here knows, but unfortunately most people don’t really know how damn hard it is to get into these colleges.</p>
<p>If you’ve looked well into the whole college process and know what schools are reaches for anyone, and yet only apply to them, I don’t pity you. It makes those who truly didn’t know any better look worse. I was able to navigate college apps mainly by taking extra initiative and doing my own research, but so many kids rely on their guidance counselor to give them the (correct) information they need, often to a fault. I mean, my guidance counselor told me Harvard and other top schools don’t admit holistically but rather by test scores. Our salutatorian found all of it out the hard way by applying to schools mostly out of her reach simply because her GC didn’t dissuade her as she was a top student. So yeah, it really bothers me when people knowingly apply to only each schools and then complain about not getting in. :/</p>
<p>You always need a backup plan</p>
<p>I really can’t have any sympathy for the aforementioned students. Students who discuss the extremely low acceptance rates for Top 20 schools, and yet apply to JUST those schools. It just doesn’t make sense! Like…why? I poured my heart and soul in my UT Austin application, because I knew it was my best bet if my reach schools didn’t work out, and honestly, I wouldn’t be upset at all if I was to have no other option but to attend. And yet, there’s a girl in our school who only applied to HYP,C, and C, and got rejected from all. Now she has no clue what to do come fall. Her mistake was pure stupidity. </p>
<p>The few kids in our school who applied to selective universities all applied to safety schools that we knew we’d like to attend if other options didn’t work out. And yet for us, our options did work out. But she knew from us, that it was imperative to apply to less competitive/selective schools. She just thought she was ‘special’ enough to where it didn’t apply to her. Now she’s crying foul, saying it wasn’t fair, we took her spots to those schools, yadayadayada, and now she’ll have to attend community college. I just walk away.</p>
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<p>Then they’re stupid. What, do they think the qualifications of the applicant pool at Princeton look exactly like the totality of their own high school’s student body? Do they think that all the C and D students in their high schools are putting forth Princeton applications and that’s why the acceptance rate is so low?</p>
<p>Pizzafirl - unfortunately as smart as they (think they) are, while they don’t think the D students are part of the applicant pool, they do somehow think that being in the top 3% of their class means they’re in the top 10% of the applicant pool. They are bouyed by the fact that they’re in the top 5% of SAT and ACT takers too.</p>
<p>PG: Yes. They actually do. They are actually that dumb.</p>
<p>ddahwan–</p>
<p>40 (FORTY) kids got into Ivies from your son’s school? Truly that is amazing. What school does he go to?</p>
<p>Jamiecakes-
Ddahwan may not want to answer that question for privacy reasons, but here’s a school that would fit the description:</p>
<p>[St</a>. Paul’s School ~ Matriculation](<a href=“http://www.sps.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=6543&rc=0]St”>http://www.sps.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=6543&rc=0)</p>
<p>^ So my question is- if a kid is in the top 10% (or in fact the top of the class academilcally- val) of this school, or a similar caliber school, is it wrong to assume that they are in in most of the reaches they appy, even though they are reaches and chances are only 10% or less so for the general population?</p>