kid is off... my thoughts about the last 2 yrs

Parents Forum
41

<p>Northstarmom,</p>

<p>I don't hear bitterness in ThinkingParent's comment, only regret at how caught up she became in wanting an elite college for her son. She is clearly happy with her son's college choice and expressed that several times.</p>

<p>As for manipulation, I believe ThinkingParent meant that it can be manipulative to apply ED or EA to maximize your chances for admission even though you aren't sure you want to attend that college. I don't necessarily agree with that but I can see how someone might feel that way, especially if they aren't aware of how much of a lottery college admissions have become. </p>

<p>Finally, it's clear that colleges give a preference to URMs over qualified white males. There are valid historical reasons for this preference, to be sure, but I'm confused why it would irk you to hear someone say it.</p>

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<p>Thinkingparent, </p>

<p>Congrats on Georgia Tech. A close friend's son just graduated from there and had a great experience and had many, many great job offers by Feb. of senior year.</p>

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<p>"thinkparent, there is a lot of elitism on this board and by parents too."</p>

<p>I think it is somewhat understandable. I'm a graduate of Harvard and we've always thought it would be less than optimum fit for my computer programmin obsessed son, but this nagging voice keeps saying, maybe he should apply there anyway after all he's a double legacy... He's got the grades and the scores, I'm less sure about the ECs or the go-getter attitude. Luckily I think he's pretty sure about what he wants. His first choice is still MIT (plenty of elitism there), but he wants to go there because it's hard, and not just because it's well known. Georgia Tech is a fine school and one we'd consider except for the location.</p>

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<p>Congrats on GT - my S's classmate is also a RW freshman and loving it! And what's not to love . . . .</p>

<p>I can understand your experience and appreciate your candor. Having not "found" CC until after S's applications were all in was prob a good thing for me. </p>

<p>When I did discover CC, I found myself identifying totally with Curmudgeon's "bottom up" approach. Amazed really at how similar our experiences were. S applied to six schools (no Ivies!) where he could be happy and had a shot at merit money -- based on research, research, research. In the process, we learned to love all those schools, and became enthusiastic about the prospect of him being at any one of them. Lots of work, but very very little anxiety and quite of bit of fun he will never forget. His biggest concern at one point was that he was going to have to choose one, bc that meant he couldn't go to the others. </p>

<p>The benefit of this approach was greater opportunities to create and communicate connections with these schools - thru visits, contacts with students, attending athletic events, reading the college websites/ publications, etc. I have no doubt that helped him "feel the fit," and that this in turn helped him in both admissions and scholarships.</p>

<p>It all starts and ends with the proposition that "it's what you make of it." My S is "livin' the dream" -- headed out on Fri for his new life and love, believing 100% that this is the best school for him and "feelin' the love" in return. </p>

<p>No doubt you and your S will make the next four years an amazing experience that he will enjoy for a lifetime!</p>

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<p>I think many of the responders to the OP are being very harsh. Thinkingparent was being brutally honest about initial pre-conceived notions of his/her child, elite schools and the college admissions process.</p>

<p>There are obsessed and neurotic parents and students posting on CC. There also are some extremely helpful and realistic parents (who have been..in my view...surprisingly defensive on this thread.)</p>

<p>It is not so uncommon for a parent to have attended an elite school, have a child with objectively good stats, and want that child to attend the same kind of school. And it is not so uncommon for that parent to be disappointed when the child isn't admitted to the elite school.</p>

<p>What is refreshing, is that OP acknowledged those sentiments, and is thrilled about where his/her son is. Thinkingparent is encouraging others, who may have similar "blinders", to approach the college admissions process much like Curmudgeon and other parents on this site. OP is absolutely right that there are SO MANY others in affluent communities with similar views....andison's initial season of college applications is another great example of what happens to these kids and their parents. Thinkingparent's post, and Andison's initial experience and subsequent year of applications, are lessons many coming to CC for advice can learn from.</p>

<p>Thinkingparent's reflection about "played the system" or athletes or URM's is also common. But, eventually, most parents and kids realize that with so many applicants, there are probably at least 100...maybe 500 qualified kids from New Trier -north of Chicago, Newton-west of Boston, Scarsdale in NY's Westchester County, Fairfax County VA...or any number of wealthy suburbs... who look exactly the same to admissions committees. The ones who got in did not necessarily play the system. They may have had a 95mph fastball, or have at least one URM parent....or there may have been a turn of a phrase in their essay, or an incredibly unique recommendation that made them stand out...at least a little...from the 500 other applicants just like them. Or...if, on March 25, they were on the remaining pile of qualified kids to be decided on for the remaining 10 slots....it may have truly been like winning the lottery.</p>

<p>Fortunately for the OP's son, there were other choices. I congratulate Thinkingparent for the post, and for finally celebrating their good fortune.</p>

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<p>This could well be the motto for the Parents' Forum! Maybe we could get it stitched on a flag and make t-shirts. </p>

<p>As an earlier poster said, you are preaching to the choir here. I rarely peruse anything other than the Parents Forum and Cafe.</p>

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<p>thinkingparent. We went through the application process last year. As it turned out, D will return to Princeton for her sophomore year this September. The interesting thing is, that although we had a different outcome, I have come to the same conclusion about college admissions as you have. I now have a rising junior son. I will build his list from the bottom up. And were he a tech type, I would be absolutely thrilled to have him at Georgia Tech in two years. </p>

<p>Let me be clear. I am not saying that HYPSM etc. are worthless, of value to only status-mongers, etc. etc. etc. I have sung the praises of my Princeton education in several threads. But that was for me. The statement I would make is that the most selective schools can provide a brilliant, wonderful education. And so can other schools. And those other schools can be better for the kids who wind up there than the most selective schools would have been. For a host of reasons.</p>

<p>Other issues. Look also at the threads of kids now at Ivies or heading to Ivies who drove themselves or were driven to depression and exhaustion. My D was an early bloomer, and ready for the whole Ivy thing, and was happy to do all it took of her own accord with almost no signs of stress. But for those kids not yet cooked - would we want to make them take on extra activities foreign to their being just for college admissions? Hell no.</p>

<p>Plus my D had the extra kick of my legacy status. Without that who knows how it would have turned out? And yet, her grades were stellar by the end of her freshman year, so she was clearly qualified. She won the lottery. But if she hadn't, she would still have been her same self. And Georgia Tech would have been a fabulous outcome.</p>

<p>The only place I disagree with you is about the culture of the Parent's Forum at cc. In my first post ever I confessed to having "decal fever" i.e. I cared a lot that my kid go to the "best" place possible. I was soundly chastised by the old-timers. When my D posted less than As her freshman year at Princeton and I dared to wonder whether to talk to her about it, again, soundly chastised:).</p>

<p>But let's put this all aside. You are right. I agree with you on the outcome 100%. And lucky for my son, too, that I have come around. Lucky for your son that he is at an incredible institution like Georgia Tech.</p>

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<p>


I'm a member of the "boxed ears" club, too. Dang that smarts. Nice post, alu.</p>

<p>p.s. And I remember your second one about the grades very well. That was like watching a train wreck but I was powerless to stop it (ouch) or like being B-B-Q'ed on a slowly turning spit or .....oh, never mind- I'm sure YOU remember wanting that "edit post" time-out to be a little longer.</p>

49

<p>
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I think many of the responders to the OP are being very harsh. Thinkingparent was being brutally honest about initial pre-conceived notions of his/her child, elite schools and the college admissions process.

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<p>I agree.</p>

<p>It sounds to me as though Thinkingparent's son is very lucky to have a thoughtful parent with such a positive perspective as he starts his college career.</p>

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What irked me was the implication that students who got into better schools either lacked integrity, were manipulative.

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<p>First of all, I don't see that the OP was saying the schools his son didn't get into were in fact "better" schools. They were perhaps statistically more selective schools, but that doesn't always make them "better." </p>

<p>And, as always, there is the issue of fit--what is "better" for one student is not better for another. (I recall reading a few years ago that the Merchant Marine Academy--or maybe it was the Coast Guard Academy, I forget--was the statistically most selective college in the country--odds of getting in were lower than any Ivy. That didn't make them better for every student!)</p>

<p>Second, the odds are that there are indeed some students who wind up in elite colleges who have done some unethical things along the way.</p>

<p>A Carnegie Foundation article states that "Research in high schools shows that two thirds of students cheat on tests, and 90 percent cheat on homework. "</p>

<p><a href="http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/sub.asp?key=245&subkey=577%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/sub.asp?key=245&subkey=577&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I find it hard to believe that admissions officers--at elite colleges or anywhere else--magically manage to screen out all of the students who have taken ethical shortcuts in their academic work.</p>

<p>My parents always made clear to us that they were far more concerned with our integrity and personal conduct than our academic performance. I have tried to pass these values along to my own children.</p>

<p>
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or got in because they were URMs or athletes

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</p>

<p>I've told my kids that admissions committees have to make some very difficult choices. (I've served on admissions committees myself in the past--I know!) </p>

<p>It is true that--ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL--the admissions committee will sometimes need to tip the balance toward a student who adds an attribute to the incoming class which is in short supply (whether it's URM, gender, academic interests and background, EC's, etc.) </p>

<p>That doesn't mean we admitted unqualified students--it simply means that because we had the luxury of selecting from an abundance of highly qualified students, we could select a balanced mixture of students to fill our class.</p>

<p>I've tried very hard to make sure that my kids don't see an admissions committee's decision as some sort of infallible judgment on their inherent worth. (Aside: they know that I'm quite human and are all too happy to remind me of the mistakes I sometimes make, so I think it helps to remind them that the people on admissions committees are highly fallible human beings too.)</p>

<p>What I've tried to tell my kids is: a positive and enthusiastic attitude towards getting the most out of whatever college you attend is far more important than the particular college you attend.</p>

<p>The OP wrote that his son loves the colleges and the parent loves the college--I think they came through the process with a terrific outcome.</p>

<p>(As did Carolyn's daughter--I love the image of her daughter dancing in the streets of her new college town.)</p>

<p>Life is a learning experience, full of mistakes and wrong turns and unexpected bends in the road.</p>

<p>The OP wrote:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Bottom-line... a high-caliber, impressive, down-to-earth institution... and how ashamed I am now that I had those "Ivy-&-its-ilk" blinders on for so long...</p>

<p>Now I feel I am a true advocate for the platform, "There are great schools out there you won't think of..."... open your hearts & minds, people!

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</p>

<p>Approaching college (and life) with such an attitude--priceless!</p>

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<p>"Second, the odds are that there are indeed some students who wind up in elite colleges who have done some unethical things along the way."</p>

<p>The same is true at any university, so why should the OP bother mentioning them?</p>

<p>I still say that when one's kid is going off to college is not the time to post bitterly about the schools that the kid didn't get in or to speculate about who may have gotten in instead, etc. It really is the time to celebrate one's kid's leaving the nest to go to college, and to feel good about whatever options s/he has.</p>

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<p>to the OP-- you've given us old-timers lots to think about. Congrats to your son on starting at Georgia Tech. I work in HR; we adore Georgia Tech students.</p>

<p>To the other old-timers.... I think we need to retire the term "lottery" when discussing competitive admissions. I've noticed that parents who don't hang out here obsessively but skim occasionally, frequently misunderstand what that phrase means. Yeah, we all concede there is a random factor to admissions. What one adcom thinks is an overblown and pretentious essay may strike someone else as sweet and profound.</p>

<p>However, in the aggregate, I am noticing that lots of the newbies assume that if it's a lottery, buying more tickets is a good strategy to beat the odds. So-- if it's tough to get into Princeton, applying to H, Y, C, etc. along with a boat-load of similarly competitive schools is a great way to boost your odds. </p>

<p>Folks-- it's not really a lottery even though there are elements to it which appear random and unpredictable from the outside. I can guarantee that the Val from my local HS who plays tennis really well, volunteers at a homeless shelter, and loves to ski, isn't getting into Harvard even though all his teachers adore him and are going to write him really good references about what a great kid he is. Why? 'cause last year's val with the same profile (substitute clarinet or soccer, home for the elderly, loves dogs or whatever) didn't get in. And so on and so forth. Folks in my town haven't a clue about how competitive these schools are, so they keep telling the parents of the top kids about how "any school would drool over your son", and "bet you'll be comparing scholarships from Dartmouth and Penn at this time next year".</p>

<p>I think we need to re-evaluate our terminology. It's misleading and leads to people wondering, "what's wrong with me that my lottery ticket didn't get picked?"</p>

<p>Back in the day (ok-- the '70's) when we didn't visit schools, when nobody had the money to even think about flying a kid cross-country to go to college, most smart HS kids went to the local U, State U, or something within a Greyhound bus drive. I knew brilliant kids from HS who went to some local teacher's college-- why? They could live at home, it was affordable, everyone knew someone with a job who had graduated from there. For first generation college kids, it was exciting to be heading off to college, even if heading off meant taking public transportation and coming home for dinner.</p>

<p>I think improved access to higher ed is a fantastic social and societal trend.... but not if it means that we automatically assume that a kid going to a superb school like Georgia Tech has lost a lottery somewhere along the line.</p>

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<p>"Back in the day (ok-- the '70's) when we didn't visit schools, when nobody had the money to even think about flying a kid cross-country to go to college, most smart HS kids went to the local U, State U, or something within a Greyhound bus drive. "</p>

<p>The same is true now. Sites like CC can make you think differently, but that's simply not the case. This site draws a skewed population. Most people aren't using search engines to get college info, so they don't end up on CC. Most students, no matter how excellent their stats are, end up going to a school that's within an easy drive of home.</p>

<p>As for the "lottery ticket" terminology, I don't have sympathy for people who skim a couple of posts here and then decide to apply to 20 top schools while assuming that means they'll definitely get an acceptance. People who are doing that kind of shallow research and who have such weak skills in logic and statistics aren't likely to get into the very top colleges, anyway. It's not us oldtimers' fault.</p>

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<p>
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"what's wrong with me that my lottery ticket didn't get picked?"

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</p>

<p>Most lottery tickets do not get picked. That's how lotteries succeed, even after paying out for jackpots. But I get your general point.</p>

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<p>
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the manipulative essay questions,

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</p>

<p>Thinkingparent, could you elaborate on what you mean by this?</p>

<p>We've had a whole thread on UofC's writing prompts, and though I was critical of some of them, I did not think of them as "manipulative," so I am curious about your reaction.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom, you have a right to withhold your sympathy, but in fact, I have great sympathy for these parents and kids. Our local HS has a handful of GC's who spend most of their time in court testifying that a pregnant 17 year old should become an emancipated minor since it's mom's boyfriend who got her pregnant; arranging for admissions to a drug treatment program for an addicted sophomore and the like. So-- hard to blame the parents of a high performing senior when the GC assures the kid, "oh you'll get in everywhere" which is GC code for, "if you haven 't been arrested and aren't in mortal danger I have no time for you right now". </p>

<p>Geez. Have a heart.</p>

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<p>"Geez. Have a heart.:"</p>

<p>I have a heart. Admissions decisions were in April. Even if the GC was weak, there was plenty of very helpful info here on CC -- a site that the OP says that s/he found during the admissions process. I don't like the way that the OP seems to be blaming lots of people -- CC posters, URMs, allegedly unethical students who somehow cheated their way into Ivies -- for the OP's student's rejections.</p>

<p>The bottom line is that there are an overabundance of highly qualfied students, a limited # of spaces at the very top schools.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, the OP's son has the good fortune of being headed for Georgia Tech, an excellent college. This isn't the time to whine and blame, but it is the time to celebrate.</p>

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<p>For some reason I remember the parent last year who was furious at a bunch of us.... daughter was interested in med school eventually, was the top math and science kid at her HS, parent came here to find out "which of these undergrad schools is a better way to get to med school". Only problem was kid's math SAT was around 500 if I recall the details.... I suggested math tutoring if the kid was serious about med school, parent was irate, since she was the top math kid in the school, never got below an A in math since 6th grade. A debate ensued about how much math you need to be a Dr. (probably not that much) which is pretty irrelvant.... the issue is how much math do you need to get an A or A- in Organic Chemistry in college, which is probably more math than this kid had..... a top math student in HS who is scoring 500 in the SAT's just hasn't had the full math curriculum.</p>

<p>I don't know what happened to the kid, but I point out this story just to note that not every parent is majoring in "child micro-managing". To me it seems clear that if your kid is interested in med school but scoring 500 on the SAT's you either get the kid a tutor (or have her self-tutor from a book) to get the score up, or if that doesn't work, realize that your kid is better suited to a different field in health care. But hey, I see where my son's friends who have applied to med schools are ending up so I have a first hand lesson in how brutally competitive the process is. B's in college science classes can be the kiss of death... no matter how much you want to be a Dr.</p>

<p>I recognize that parents who don't know kids applying to med schools now lack this perspective. At one point is was enough to be "the smartest kid in the class". Now these kids are busy doing research fellowships as undergrads. getting part-time jobs as paramedics, all in an effort to boost an already near perfect application. </p>

<p>So my point is... not every parent has enough perspective. Not every GC can sit down and make an intelligent list, or even give the kid appropriate feedback on an existing list. Not every parent wants to take on "college season" as a part time job. Will these kids do just fine-- of course. But I still feel sorry for them if they get a lesson in reality circa 2006 when the process is over.</p>

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<p>I loved the OP and think it is very true. I don't think he is slinging arrows, just recognizing mistakes s/he made and coming to a point of acceptance leading to happiness for his/her son. I also think that many do not have a realistic picture of the whole college admissions process. I admit to being one of them. Even after going through it once with my first s and now going through it again with my second, I don't really know all of the ins and outs. That is why I enjoy reading cc and trying to learn from the experience of others. I take some posts to heart and I take others with grains of salt and some I quickly scan because they are so mean spirited, that it is hard to believe that someone would take the time to write! I think some people need to take a chill pill ;) and read the OP again to see that it is really a story of happiness, not bitterness... I guess it is all in our perceptions</p>

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<p>I think the Parent's Forum and Cafe is one of the best places for a smart boomer to get their ears boxed, in the nicest cyber way. </p>

<p>Call it 'tough love', not too harsh at all. The OP posted a blend of post-partum wisdom... and pettiness. Says me. Well done to her on the wisdom, shame on her for the pettiness. </p>

<p>Fair enough that she gets her ears boxed for the pettiness. There's no reason to let that stand on the Parent's forum. (Besides, someone had to rescue cur from his puddle of guilt. He's just dropped off his beloved mudge. He's not quite right at the moment ;)). </p>

<p>I remember Alum's plaintive cries during March 2005 and I have andison's story etched on my mind. Andi surely took more heat for wearing her heart on her sleeve and she's still standing. Quite gracefully too. Heck, her thread got locked!)</p>

<p>Live and learn. That's the Parent's Forum at it's best.</p>

60

<p>" He set his sights high and we didn't think he had any reason not to... amazing stats & all that... but I see now that the common sentiment on this board & others, that he'd get in easy anywhere, it just ain't so."</p>

<p>I have never seen parents posting here say that any student no matter how remarkable would "get in easy anywhere." Please show us the posts to which you refer. </p>

<p>Some uninformed members, usually students, do react that way to threads on the Chances boards, but anyone who'd base their college dreams on the assurances of uninformed strangers on anonymous boards deserves what they get.</p>

<p>I have repeatedly seen parents here warning people that many outstanding students are rejected by the top colleges, and it's improtant to have safety schools where one's student will gain acceptance to and one can definitely afford.</p>

<p>Anyone also can dip into CC's archives and see the stats and EC of the outstanding CC members who are rejected each year by top colleges.</p>