<p>Ah, so true. All the seniors figure it out anyway, but at our final orchestra concert, seniors always announce their future plans. Now, I have random sophomores asking me for advice on how to get into college. I stare vacantly and make something up. </p>
<p>Oh, but the one part I actually like is that when I do stupid stuff, people say “and she got into [insert fancy school]!” Eg: I couldn’t find the volume button a few days ago in ballet. It’s huge and says “master volume” in majuscule. But people at ballet are always chill <3.</p>
<p>My D had so many parents who were not at all shy about telling her in no uncertain way that she HAD to go to H. They would point out what they thought were big problems with one of her favorite schools (she had three) at the time. Often the negative thing was exactly why the school was high on her list. I think if they had talked to her in a less judgmental way, it wouldn’t have been so bad. My D would tell me about the conversation and joke that, “I guess there’s no question where **** thinks I should go!” There was just no other choice in their opinion. Just the fact that so many kids / parents on this site actually have “difficulty” telling people they / their child attends H, kind of dispels the myth of the braggart H kid, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>Learning to deal with those comments will make you tougher-- mentally strong. One of the most intriguing things I have noticed in my life is that age does not count when it comes to people making inappropriate comments. It probably shows their concern about themselves. With the comments directed to you they portray an insecurity of not having obtained what you did. Do you understand?</p>
<p>So things will never change…you will be in your 20, 30, 40, ….and will find people exactly like that…so it is a good experience that you learn how to keep your head up and smile or laugh at the comments.</p>
<p>Best wishes and congratulations to you and your parents…keep the good job!</p>
<p>I taught an elementary enrichment program for bright kids and often the conflict with their teachers /peers was along the same lines, "*** is so smart but she can’t get organized or won’t do the extra credit math sheets (sometimes not interesting problems or just more of the same classwork.) Or kids not in that program would say to the child, “You are in **** and you only got a 90 on your spelling test??” Now I’m not saying every enrichment student was always kind to his/her classmates and we would talk in class about ways to relate to peers and deal with what often was jealously or simply curiosity about what kids did in my class, but sometimes the unkindness went both ways. Smart kids are really just kids, too, and have the same faults /virtues that anyone might have. Smart kids were often held to a higher standard in non-academic area. Being smart doesn’t mean you are tops in everything. You can find any number of famous people in their fields with some real character flaws. It never occurs to anyone that sometimes it can sometimes be hard to be smart in ways that other kids who are tops in other areas (sports, popularity) might not have to deal with. And I say that as a parent of two kids who loved their sports.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your Harvard acceptance.</p>
<p>By telling others about it, you found out who’s really your friend and supporters and who’s not. When I told one of my teachers that I got into Harvard, she told me that in her recommendation, she had told Harvard not to accept me! THat certainly told me how I stood with her!</p>
<p>Real friends rejoice in their friends’ successes. </p>
<p>Fortunately for you, painful as this experience is, at least you know who not to bother to keep in touch with after this school year ends. Come September, you’ll be making new friends, so look forward to that.</p>
<p>I think it’s always better to just say you got into Harvard instead of using circumlocutions. It’ll make you seem like a prick even if you don’t intend to. What’s going to happen? Is the person you’re talking to suddenly going to get a heart attack? Jizz in their pants? Unnecessarily being too modesty might just be characteristic of “the braggart Harvard kid.”</p>
<p>Fauve’s post exactly describes our son’s experience his senior year. </p>
<p>I think it probably depends on the high school. I know kids from large public high schools who rarely send students to Ivies where the entire school community is joyous over an acceptance. Where it’s harder is smaller high schools with lots of very ambitious students (and parents). Several of our son’s classmates were Ivy legacies who didn’t get into their target schools. They and their parents were truly furious - and they definitely directed some of their wrath at our son, who hails from a background where it’s a big deal just to go to state U and no one had ever set foot in a private college, let alone an Ivy.</p>
<p>The main thing the OP needs to do is be fairly thick-skinned and not let the digs undermine her self-confidence. She needs to feel she is fully legitimate in her acceptance at Harvard and deserves to be there. Harvard is challenging and she will need every bit of her self-confidence.</p>
<p>Remember the analogy “crabs in a bucket” - when a crab tries to crawl out the other crabs with try to pull him back down. It’s kine of crude but apt sometimes.</p>
<p>Those “friends” are just acting like crabs . . .</p>
<p>Keep in mind that there may come a time when you’ll enjoy telling some “jerks” that you do go to Harvard and may even find that you have a hard time keeping your mouth shut. </p>
<p>My daughter’s experience.
My daughter who graduated a few years back worked as a waitress in the summers. This was when Harvard was on their old calendar and didn’t start the fall semester until mid-late September. After all the summer student employees left the restaurant in late August to return to school my daughter was the only younger person left working as a waitress. One night in September a couple came into the restaurant and were making small talk to my daughter. They were being really demanding, obnoxious, complaining about everything. They treated her like no waitress should ever have to endure. They were talking down to her and saying things like “dear, it’s too bad you’re so young and stuck working here for the rest of your life, you should think about getting an education”! </p>
<p>Well that’s all she had to hear! After a few minutes she decided that she had just about enough of those two. She looked at them and told them that she was indeed a student and hadn’t gone back yet for the fall, hoping that they would ask her what college she attended. They took the trap. She looked them both in the eye and proudly told them that she went to Harvard. My daughter said that their faces fell to the ground and they were very embarrassed. They were at a loss for words. She told me that she was never so proud to be a Harvard student as she was at that moment. </p>
<p>My daughter never told anyone that she went to Harvard unless she was outright asked “where do you go to school”. She would actually avoid the question as much as possible. She too felt awkward. However this time it was very different. She got great satisfaction about dropping the H bomb to those two ignorant people.</p>
<p>Fortunately at my high school, nobody really cares about college. The only few people who did ask where I’m going were genuinely excited for me when I told them, but besides some of my close friends, very rarely do people ask, so I never had the need to say anything. No one except my counselor and four/five other people even knew or remembers that I applied in the first place. You don’t have to tell anyone, just wait for people will find out eventually one way or the other on their own. </p>
<p>But Seeker, awww =(. Especially about the teachers. But I’m also wondering about the same thing as intenex, why everyone’s okay with other people going to Harvard but not you :(?</p>
<p>I’m not a Harvard parent, but I think it is a shame that some Harvard students hesitate to mention their college by name. Every student of every college has a right to be thrilled and proud of his or her college and proclaim to the world how much he or she enjoys it there, or how thrilled he or she is to be matriculating there. Doesn’t matter if the college is Michigan State, Notre Dame, Fordham or Harvard.</p>
<p>This “H-bomb” phenomenon probably explains why so many people think that Harvard students are not happy. If students who are happy with Harvard go around hiding their affiliation or, as someone suggested above, even misrepresenting their true feelings by talking instead of the hard work and stress, then it is no wonder that these stereotypes get perpetuated that Harvard students are not happy.</p>
<p>I wonder whether Yale students encounter similar experiences and whether they are less likely to hide their Yale affiliations. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the stereotype that every one at Yale is in bliss and everyone at Harvard is miserable.</p>
<p>All these insights and advice are extremely comforting and helpful!! So now that I truly have figured out my genuine well-wishers, all I can say is that people are overly (really overly) complicated for just the high school level. </p>
<p>As for why other admits are in less turbulent boats at my school, I am actually pretty confused myself. I really wish I knew–perhaps that would place everything in a much clearer light!</p>
I don’t know about the likelihood that a Yale student or alum would, but I was just speaking with a friend the other day about this phenomenon, and she mentioned that her husband, a Yale alum, usually just says he went to college “in New Haven.” </p>
<p>My D usually responds directly and doesn’t do the little “Oh, a school in Boston” routine, but she has had some random negative reactions to saying where she goes. On her first day of an internship after freshman year, the woman who hired her told her that she usually doesn’t like Harvard students, because they hired one once, and he was a jerk. I think the woman ended up liking my D a lot, but it was annoying to have to field a comment like that on the first day.</p>
<p>No matter how angry those students and parents felt, they were so wrong to take it out on your son. Your story makes me truly happy that these poorly behaved alums won’t be able to pass along their ungracious behavior via the admitted student gene pool!</p>