Gotcha. No disagreements from me there. The hard work and accomplishments and sacrifices of these kids blow me away - whether they get into “their dream school” or not.
I celebrate each and every acceptance. The trick is convincing those who are disappointed with their results that a rejection is not a measure of their worth or a prediction of their future.
You and I know the future holds great things for these impressive young people. We know that a disappointment now can be the beginning of a phenomenal success story. They are all - no matter where they are going to college - at their bright beginning, not the end.
It just takes some perspective and (unfortunately) grey hairs.
I speak a little from experience- back in the days of big envelopes and small envelopes announcing your fate, I was met with a stack of small envelopes from my favorite elites all on the same day when I came home from school. It was brutal and crushing. But I was lucky to attend a great public school, thrived there, met lifelong friends, and went on to law school (another state school). Now I own my own law practice and have carved out my own life path. No regrets. Sometimes it takes a door to close for you to see all the open ones.
You’re assuming schools are using high school profiles to identify kids who’ve had a quality education, there’s some evidence that it’s actually the opposite. I can’t speak to Penn, but UCLA pretty well laid out what they’re doing in an L.A. times article last year. They’re using zip code and school profile to identify students who’ve excelled despite poor opportunities. Test optional only makes this easier to do.
Definitely true. It’s just an alternate path for the kids who don’t get into their choice of schools.
@Catcherinthetoast No one is diminishing anyone else’s accomplishments. IF someone wants to read that into my posts that’s on them. Luck doesn’t mean that someone who got in wasn’t worthy. It just means that there are lots of worthy kids who all met the bar and there were not enough spots. Happens in many aspects of life, people still find their way. I like the way CateCAParent looks at it. Alternate course.
Never heard anyone congratulate a lottery winner (your words) on their hard work, intellect and abilities. The inference is that it was luck not personal achievement. I do read that as diminishing the accomplishment.
If an athlete responding to a disappointing loss commented I was just unlucky, it was random, the outcome is like a lottery they would be labeled as a sore loser and diminishing their competition. That’s at least what I infer.
In case of an athlete it is pretty clear whether you won or not, as there are quantitative characteristics and clear “selection” process. With the case of accomplishments for top kiddos, the process of admission is not clear cut and based on “behind the closed doors” selection. So when we, from outside, looking and comparing same stats kids, it might looks like “luck” who gets in and who doesn’t for kids with the same quantitative characteristics.
Once this (awful) application season is over, I’d love to see a graph of acceptance rates for ED, ED2, EA and RD including this year, somehow overlaid with yield rates. It seems like more schools are aggressively yield protecting. I think this would be interesting for research, and it would likely show at least a few schools that are messing with their numbers, maybe trying to game the ratings game.
Like several others posting, I have kids who went through this just a couple years ago, and this year has been utterly different in outcomes for similar students. There is very little comparison and it’s been very discouraging.
With the test optional/blind policies coupled with a surge in applications, colleges can freely accept more students who are ‘institutionally beneficial’ without a hit to published stats. Merit is secondary.
S is a senior at an elite NE Boarding School where roughly a quarter of each graduating class will end up at one of the eight Ivies in a normal year (not even counting similarly prestigious colleges like Stanford, UChicago, or the top liberal arts colleges) and roughly 75% of students end up attending a prestigious college in a normal year. S luckily managed to obtain an elite college acceptance in this tremendously difficult year. However, many of his classmates were not as lucky. The school has a process designed to ensure every kid has some good college options: colleges are designated as “likely” (historical acceptance rate for students at schools designated as “likely” is 82%), “possible” (historical acceptance rate of 45%), “reach” (historical acceptance rate of 22%) and “unlikely” (historical acceptance rate of 1%). Rather than applying to a safety that students would rather attend, the school has them apply to 3 or 4 “likely” schools. S applied to 4 likely schools, 5 possible schools, and 8 reaches. At the likelies, he received one acceptance and three waitlists. At the possibles, he received one acceptance, three waitlists, and one rejection. At the reaches, he received one acceptance (which he will enroll at) and seven rejections. This boarding school has never had a year where a student did not get into a college; until now. Multiple students were waitlisted at all their likelies and do not have a single acceptance, and counselors are scrambling to try to get those students accepted off of college waitlists. S’s counselor says the school has never seen anything like this before, and are absolutely shocked at this year’s admissions results. Have to agree with a prior user’s statement that schools seem to be practicing yield protection at a much higher rate than before, considering the difficulties the school’s students had at “likelies” this year. S was on the fence about staying on one of his waitlists (since he likes the reach he got into just as much and he likes the town of the reach better) so he spoke to his counselor about it, and his counselor strongly encouraged him to remove himself from the waitlist since he really likes the school he was admitted at as well (just as much as the school he was waitlisted at) and the school is scrambling to get waitlisted students who weren’t accepted anywhere off the waitlists.
This is so strange. My eldest left one very academic private day school after junior year to attend a private arts boarding school for senior year.
The private day school seniors (she would have graduated with) sent students this year to Yale, Brown, Johns Hopkins and many other top tier schools just as they always do.
The private arts boarding school out of 10 seniors in the film department sent 3 to NYU Tisch the no. 1 film program in US (Although USC and Chapman coveted of course as well for film).
My own student who had both school profiles attached to her applications also got into Northwestern and other great schools despite private school background. My student is a white upper income non-athlete non-legacy.
It is hard perhaps to look at things anecdotally. It would be interesting to see if there are studies/reports analyzing this year as we move forward. I have a younger child who will need to navigate this in three years.
So if your kid was just accepted to Yale (having spent years of hard work and effort), would you be comfortable with some stranger whose kid just got rejected walking up to them and saying you got lucky?
I don’t think so.
Its a post Ivy Day CC phenomenon that all those that cry lottery, luck and randomness do so after being disappointed at outcomes without regard for what it implies for those admitted.
I think the kids that didn’t get in were certainly worthy but don’t accept the premise that their parents have a right to feel better at the expense of others by trying to invalidate the result. They certainly wouldn’t be so vocal or outspoken if it had gone the other way.
Words justifiably never heard “my Harvard kid just got lucky” (as the parents have seen the hard work) but a CC mantra “it is just luck”.
Agree. Seeing this playing out (maybe to DD22’s advantage). Taking out the legacies, nyc public school has done almost as well as some storied privates.
