What the heck is ISO in the title of this thread. I’m sorry, that acronym is unfamiliar to me.
I would smile and nod and just tell the grandparents the great school the kid will be attending once child has committed. That’s what we did back in the day. It worked fine.
@HImom - ISO stands for In Search Of…
@HImom “In Search Of”
Thanks! I’m out of the loop. I just got the hang of YMMV and IMHO! 
Another article (below) that isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, but I think it’s a good reality check on the bubble many of us live in (myself included).
Reading the threads on this site, one might think virtually everyone who goes to college is vying for a spot at a top tier university, but two thirds of people in this country age 25-29 don’t have a college degree. About half those who start college never finish, and according to the article, only one third of those going to college are “traditional students” at primarily residential 4 year colleges. If your kid happens to get accepted to (and graduate from) a college ranked in the top 100 or even 200 out of the 3000+ colleges in this country, most people would probably consider them to be part of the truly fortunate educated elite. If they get an advanced degree, they are among the elite of the educated elite. The current number of people with a master’s degree from ANY college is around 12%, while the number with doctorate degrees falls to around 2-3%.
1Dreamer, all very true, but largely irrelevant to the kind of people the OP describes. 
^^ Yes, I know. Just pointing out that most people only know of Brown as a color.
Good luck with this! My in-laws still don’t get why Stanford (their alma mater!! horrors!) rejected my daughter. We’ve explained and sent links many times. And she was just accepted to Harvard for grad school, but they’re still harping on the Stanford rejection.
@pantha33m - That Bruni piece was the article I was going to suggest. I can’t remember if we used it to help with our grandparent situation, but I’ve shared it often with anxious fellow parents.
Our shorthand for all this was pretty much that darling snowflake grandchild was almost certainly going to end up some place that grandparent had never heard of, but that it was going to be the RIGHT place for snowflake and all would be well. This was met with some resistance (grandparent was deeply disappointed that we didn’t so much as VISIT one particular Ivy), and some of the places we did visit were greeted with 50-years-out-of-date feedback, but grandparent came around nicely in the end. (We engaged a little along the way, but didn’t share the play-by-play … important to know your audience and proceed accordingly.)
We encountered variations on this theme with relatives miffed that their snowflake did not get into tippy top schools despite being a valedictorian AND captain of whatever team and relatives not quite ready to grasp that being consistently on the honor roll wasn’t a ticket in either. Personally, I find the stats links really really helpful: Seeing that only 15-20% of vals and sals get in to Brown put that whole “omg the VALEDICTORIAN was rejected” thing into perspective. Stanford publishes a similar set of stats that are likewise sobering and instructive: http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/profile.html
Snowflake grandchild is thriving, and doting grandparent has done enough asking around now to be satisfied about the quality of the education snowflake is receiving.
Oh, and congratulations on having a solid, commonsense approach. Your kid will do great!
We too have very opinionated grandparents to contend with, so I understand. The best advice we received when our son was a HS senior was to have him speak to the grandparents in person and say, “I love you and appreciate your advice. I hope you will respect that this is my decision.” Then, he gave them big hugs. This discussion immediately appeased two of them. The more stubborn grandparent took two years before she came around. She will finally be visiting his chosen school this fall. Baby steps. Best of luck to your family as you begin senior year.
Some opinionated folks NEVER come around. The ones in our family still wonder why neither of our kids applied to Ivy League schools (because they had never heard of the colleges our kids went to…).
Smile and nod.
I’m still mulling the idea that baby boomers have grandchildren old enough to go to college. They must be on the very early end of the boom … like 1946? Even then, if they’re 70, kids are 44, grandkid is 17 … I guess that just about makes it. I’m a baby boomer—on the tail end—and I have one in college and one in HS.
@college_query
Thanks for posting the link to that article. A great perspective
@brantly - my parents were born in 48 and 49 respectively (so the “heart” of the boom) they got married while IN college (1968) I was born as my dad graduated (1969) and my kid (born 1996) is a junior in college. My sister (born 1972) has a daughter entering senior year in HS…
Granted, my parents married young, and started their family right away - but that was more common in that time period. Similarly, I married young for more recent times (I was 24) and had a kid fairly young (I was 27) but it’s really not a big stretch. Many of my parents’ friends have college age grandkids too.
@toowonderful Your parents were very young when they had you. I’m exactly half way between you and your parents.
@brantly- yes they were young, but it just goes to show that the math works for boomers and college age grandkids A bonus for those grandkids is that my parents have always been able to DO lots of things with them (as opposed to my husband’s parents - born in 1928 and 29) last summer we all went white water rafting in Colorado
@toowonderful Just made it in under the wire.
I think we’re good but I saw this article posted on another thread and thought it might also be helpful if needed:
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-doing-interviews-for-yale/
LOVE that. Thank you.