It's not personal

Parent Cafe
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Dear Fellow Parents -

I’ve been reading a lot of angsty “why did elite school x not accept my perfect or near perfect stats kid?” posts. It’s that time of year.

Please, please, please don’t take it personally! Student19 getting a rejection from MIT or JHU or wherever, doesn’t diminish their accomplishments, nor their smarts, nor their capacity to be highly successful where ever they end up going school and beyond.

Schools are not looking for individuals. They are looking to build an entire class.

I’ve been doing alumni interviewing for over two decades now. Every single year, committee members are up in arms over how the university has turned down what we think are the superstar applicants. Here’s what the university reminds us: We are only seeing a very small snap shot of applicants, from a very small part of only one region. We also don’t see the full application, let alone the applications of all the tens of thousands of other students also applying.

As parents, we have an even narrower picture - our own child, in the context of their own, single HS. There are 37000+ high schools just in the US alone (not including the international application pool). That’s 37000 valedictorians (or more if their schools allow multiple people to be named val). Those top kids, for better or worse, are often vying for the same schools.

Parents - if you are angsty, feeling bitter, and upset over your students’ rejection, you are not helping them if the message you are sending is that they got robbed. Most kids applying to these schools have the chops to be accepted and succeed there. It’s about more than that.

Our kids need to have the resiliency to bounce back from disappointment and move on to the schools that have accepted them. Attitude is everything, and college admission is not personal!

My message is: Go forth class of '19 and be great wherever you may land!

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Celebrate your student’s successes!

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Absolutely!

As a parent of one who didn’t get in to his top choice and other top schools, I can say he is thrilled (almost done with sophomore year) with where he landed. Literally has loved it since day 1. It was painful for him to hear “no” at first, especially with all the HS accolades and wins, but it is what it is. He does go to an outstanding school and the cross application / admission cohort within his group of friends is unreal. VIrtually all of them applied to a certain circle of schools and it appears so random in terms of who got accepted where. Great group of kids. Glad they all landed where they did.

Just like breaking up with that first girlfriend / boyfriend, the pain goes away pretty quickly once they’ve decided to move on. Honestly, if he had to decide all over again, he’d choose where he is.

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Momofsenior1, thanks for taking the time today to post this message. My student just got “wait listed” at a universityy we were SURE she’d be accepted to. It was a bit of a shock, but it does offer a super useful life lesson…

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Excellent message! My graduating college senior just said last night he was so happy he made the chioice he did in attending his school. It was not his top choice initially, but his top choice was much more expensive and not worth the difference.

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Oh, it may not be personal. But, I would offer that it feels very personal, indeed.

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It may be more healthy to accept that yeah, there are smarter and more talented kids, and the schools pick them first.

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That’s my point @materof2 - It doesn’t have to feel that way if we set our kids up for knowing from the beginning that it truly isn’t personal!

@sorghum - yes, there are always smarter, more talented, richer, more attractive, etc… However, when it comes to college admission, it sometimes truly isn’t that the spot went to smarter and more talented. It could have been just as likely a spot to a student with a niche interest that filled out the school’s class better.

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At the convocation for freshman of the School of Computer Science class at Carnegie Mellon the Dean asked for a show of hands for who had applied to MIT as their first choice. It seemed like the entire audience had their hands raised. That really brought home to me that this was a class full of people who thought they were good enough for MIT and there just hadn’t been room for them all. Then the Dean gave a pep talk about what it’s like being number two - and how they try harder because they can’t rest on their laurels. All I know is four years later, our kid had his dream job, loved his college experience and made life long friends. I think that all could have happened at his first choice as well, but it’s hard to imagine him having a better experience than the one he did have.

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@sorghum There are always smarter kids, but for elite colleges, do you truly think the 1560 with a 4.0 UW GPA and a full time job running an entire business every summer, can be definitively said to be smarter/better than someone with a 1565 on their SAT, with a 4.9 weighted GPA and four summers volunteering with kids who have disabilities?

Because those are the types of kids admins at top colleges are choosing between. Truly extraordinary individuals, many of whom would likely thrive in a highly competitive environment.

If my child had all the “right” stats to match the average of an Ivy, I wouldn’t be consoling her saying “well others were smarter”.

Now if she went in unprepared, or were even slightly below average of the accepted class, yeah you didn’t make it because you weren’t as good. But I bet a lot of kids truly did not make it because, well, it’s subjective.

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@mathmom isn’t it actually harder to get into CMU CS than MIT? When D was looking, the accept rate was lower in Pittsburgh.

D attended her #2 choice, at least as she’d ranked it as a 17 year old senior. She’s graduating with a terrific job and an amazing 4 year experience. I - and I think she - wouldn’t change a thing.

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Amen!

D20 does ballet and competitive dance. While I’ve never any negative feelings toward the instruction part of this activity, I have occasionally thought that the competitive side was a waste of time and money. But after this week, I’m second guessing that thought. One thing that dance competitions and Nutcrackers and summer intensive auditions teach is resiliency. The criteria is quite subjective, and kids learn early on that not winning a competition or not getting into your dream summer program or not being cast as Clara in Nutcracker does not define you as a person nor does it take away from your abilities and accomplishments. Sometimes you don’t get to be Clara because you are just too tall. Sometimes you don’t win the competition because you fall on your backside on a slippery stage. You learn to deal with disappointments all the time.

There is a saying that your audition is one person’s opinion of one moment of your dancing. Perhaps we need to encourage more arts in our children’s educations.

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It might be harder to get into the School of Computer Science now, but I don’t think it was then. The computer departments were rated about the same even then (four way tie with Berkeley and Standford), but CMU overall is always rated lower. I think if kids were admitted to both schools, most chose MIT unless they really did their homework or had other reasons to prefer being in the Pittsburgh area.

@tutumom2001 your comment really resonated with me. I show in a lot of local art shows and I am very familiar with the subjectivity of judging. You can’t let it bother you. And don’t let me even get started on what architectural critiques are like!

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@mathmom “At the convocation for freshman of the School of Computer Science class at Carnegie Mellon the Dean asked for a show of hands for who had applied to MIT as their first choice. It seemed like the entire audience had their hands raised.”

OMG that makes me feel so depressed. Those schools are both fabulous.

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@momofsenior1. Excellent post and should be stickied. I tell the people here what I told my kids. It’s not about you. It’s about the class they are building. Don’t take it personally. My son applied to more selective schools then my daughter and he rarely checked his portals at schools. He never told us what his number 1 school was but we had a clue. His attitude was “it doesn’t make a difference”. He told us that after the rejections and wait list he will see what’s left and go from there. It was like the rejections actually helped him narrow down his list for him. He ended up at the best school for him and he is making the most of it and having a great time.

As we told them both. “You will get accepted, rejected and wait listed by some really great schools” and they did.!

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My daughter is getting a wonderful education at a school that’s not anywhere near top-ranked. She and her parents are both very happy she landed where she did.

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@tutumom2001 I know… My D1 danced ballet dreaming of becoming a professional dancer one day. When she was sixteen, she realized that it’s not all about talent or how much you practice - it’s also about lots of things that you cannot control - like your turnout, arches, the shape of your legs, etc. etc. It was so heartbreaking that no matter how hard she worked, there were some elements she couldn’t fix.

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MaineLonghorn makes a good point. These rankings are often pretty meaningless when you look at the actual education a kid is receiving. Sometimes it’s particular departments make a difference. Sometimes it’s just that what these rankings measure isn’t actually that relevant. My younger son was very amused that after having done three different study abroad programs in Arabic, the only kid who was better prepared than he was had gone to the U of Mississippi (which has fabulous language programs). Arabic at Tufts covered way more material than most other schools. It was no wonder he struggled so much. Both my kids got rejections from really great schools, but they ended up fine.

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I just wanted to add the comment that while I don’t think the admissions decisions are exactly personal, there are times/students when it is going to feel personal. I have posted fairly often about a friend of my daughter’s: 4.0 UW GPA, 8 APs, all 5’s by the time of college application, 2 languages to AP level and a third studied in college classes while in high school, 2 years of college math beyond AP calc BC, 2400 SAT I in 1 try, 2400 SAT II in one sitting, varsity athletics, state-level awards, though just one variety of national-level recognition. Then add the necessity of writing essays that are actually pretty deeply personal. In circumstances like these, the decision is likely to feel personally based. I wouldn’t blame someone with this sort of qualifications who feels that way. Subsequent achievements have been consistent with the objective profile at the point of college application.

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Actually, in the modern applicant pool, I think these are “strong standards”, not at all truly extraordinary.

Truly extraordinary could be ‘nominated for Nobel prize at age of 12’. Or true national or international standing in a substantive academic or sporting activity.