<p>Has your H been on a campus visit yet? I know once mine sat through and addmissions session his view was changed. He realized it was not a cake walk to get in to most schools these days. And how detailed applications are now. Once our D started applying and he saw all the essay questions he really got it!</p>
<p>Show your H things like…</p>
<p>The middle quartiles for targeted schools</p>
<p>The cost of these schools</p>
<p>The admit rate</p>
<p>My best friend’s H also didn’t “get it”. He had a very average GPA (sub 3.0) and AWFUL ACT scores (a 12 in a section and a sub 20 composite!!) and got into an excellent private engineering school as a white male. There’s no way on earth that he’d be admitted today. </p>
<p>Her H wasn’t supporting her efforts to get her D to practice for the ACT after a lowish score (21). However, after she showed her H the middle quartiles that his college reported which showed him that he never would be admitted today, he FINALLY realized that times have changed a LOT, and began encouraging his D to practice for the ACT. She got an ACT 28, which was high enough for a full tuition scholarship to her college. What a difference. </p>
<p>Times have changed a lot. When I was in high school in the early 70s, getting into Stanford, Berkeley, or USC was not a difficult task if you had the funds and decent stats. Frankly, i do not know ONE person who was rejected by those schools back then. A friend of mine chuckles that when she went to USC, she barely had a 2.5 GPA and her SAT didn’t break a 1000. My H was admitted to Harvard with an SAT that would not likely get him admitted today.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>lmkh70 – I feel your pain. Everytime I ask H to help D or S, he starts with “when I was at Yale”… Graduate school, fine arts, in the '70s. I just don’t understand what it was to do with AP History homework or filling out the common app.</p>
<p>I don’t understand some of the arguments in this thread.</p>
<p>Yes, college admissions today is different than 30 years ago. Yes, you need to have EC and other things. True, there is no guarantee to get in the very top flight schools no matter what …
but what is wrong with “knocking the SAT out of the park” ?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You must have run with a pretty smart crowd. Berkeley and USC had acceptance rates in the 70 and 80 percent area in the 1970s, but Stanford had around a 24% acceptance rate so somebody was getting rejected. Nothing like now of course.</p>
<p>If the kid has already taken the PSAT, then perhaps the idea that he will hit the SAT “out of the park” is unrealistic–or perhaps the dad doesn’t have a good sense of how big the park is these days.</p>
<p>^^^
From what I’ve seen with some of the acceptance/rejection threads around here, even a 2400 is more like hitting a double.</p>
<p>I have a similar problem with my DW who grew up in China. Our S, a junior in HS, has great grades and does well on standardized tests and we expect a high score on the SAT whenever he gets around to taking it. So DW thinks he should have a great chance at Harvard, Stanford, or MIT. I have told her a thousand times that no matter how well he performed on the SAT he would still face long odds and I have tried to convince her to read CC, but she refuses and is sure it would be a waste of time. In China, it is all based on a college admission test score and she is certain it cannot be that different in the US, no matter what I say. The most frustrating part is that I cannot get her to consider good but not lottery schools as appropriate alternatives. At least she does accept the state flagship as a safety, though that’s mainly because it would keep our S close by.</p>
<p>
This is a pattern that I saw at my kids’ high school, and it was observable in some Asian families–the idea that if you can’t get into Harvard, you might as well settle for the state U. That leaves out a lot of great schools. Perhaps some campus visits might help with this attitude.</p>
<p>Show her this link and search for profiles of applicants to Harvard (or others) and see who got rejected.</p>
<p>[Stats</a> Profiles](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/profiles/]Stats”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/profiles/)</p>
<p>This, and so many other college discussions, fall into the ‘why are we arguing about this?’ category. Spend the extra $ to apply, avoid the discussion, and submit the application to Dad’s alma mater or Mom’s HYP fantasy and, if and when the love arrives from that school, you can argue - if indeed there is anything to argue about. In most cases, all the arrives is a thin envelope (or these days, the ‘thanks but no thanks email’) and there is nothing at all to talk about. I don’t get all the wasted emotion and energy…just compromise and let everyone have their fantasy for a few months. Just make sure that there are some realistic matches and safeties on the table too.</p>
<p>*Quote:
Times have changed a lot. When I was in high school in the early 70s, getting into Stanford, Berkeley, or USC was not a difficult task if you had the funds and decent stats. Frankly, i do not know ONE person who was rejected by those schools back then.</p>
<hr>
<p>You must have run with a pretty smart crowd. Berkeley and USC had acceptance rates in the 70 and 80 percent area in the 1970s, but Stanford had around a 24% acceptance rate so somebody was getting rejected. Nothing like now of course.
*</p>
<p>Maybe…I went to a private high school. But, maybe also there was some self-selection going on with the Stanford apps. That said, I don’t know anyone who was rejected. Don’t know if Stanford was “need aware” back then or not. Those that I know who applied there tended to have family connections/legacies and had lots of money. </p>
<p>Anyway…times have changed and no one sweated the admissions process like they do now. Heck, people usually only applied to 1-3 schools. lol</p>
<p>
This can be the problem–convincing the unrealistic family member that these are needed–or that they are worth attending over the fall-back safety. I agree that a good approach is to let everybody pick some schools–but I also think the student has to be the primary decision-maker.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>However, the previous poster’s user name (austinareadad) does imply that the nearby state flagship is University of Texas - Austin, which is an excellent school in its own right. “Settling” for University of Texas - Austin would not be a bad thing at all.</p>
<p>^^ Yea, applying to W’s dream schools will be no problem. The problem would come in convincing W to allow S to go to a great school that is not HYPSM. There is a certain school in Houston that W refuses to visit but that S really likes.</p>
<p>I will add that, as ucbalumnus states, settling for UT would not be all that bad, but the situation is still a bit unsettling as it is.</p>
<p>
Of course not–but (assuming finances aren’t a big issue), it would be silly, in my opinion, for a person in Texas who really wanted to go to Harvard to fail to consider Rice as an option. UT is great, but the experience at Rice would be quite different.</p>
<p>cross-posted–austinareadad, if that “certain school” is Rice, you really need to persuade your wife to visit. It might open her eyes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What is her objection to Rice (or University of Houston)?</p>
<p>It sounds like the objection is that it isn’t Harvard. Sadly, that’s a pretty common reaction to excellent schools that don’t happen to be the very most famous. Some folks think that if you can’t get into Harvard, it’s not worth it to go to Rice–you might as well just go to the state U.</p>
<p>Not that there’s anything wrong with UT, I hasten to say. But Rice is more like Harvard than UT is in many (probably most) ways.</p>
<p>* There is a certain school in Houston that W refuses to visit but that S really likes.*</p>
<p>Bizarre…how/why are people this stubborn? Won’t even visit a good school? I know that kids can dig their heels in this way, but a grown adult?</p>
<p>^ Yea, it’s Rice. Apparently few people in China have heard of Rice, so it couldn’t be worth it (according to W).</p>