<p>Yup, not into one school. </p>
<p>He brought home his folder dating back to kindergarten the other day and these comments can be seen even from his first school report.</p>
<p>All I could think of was maybe they didn't like the "attention to detail":) in the same way that they don't like diligence. But it's more likely that this was one of those things where everything that could go wrong does go wrong all at once. The Perfect Admissions Storm, if you will.</p>
<p>When our kids get into their dream schools, many of us think that now we understand the "admissions game", and that the process, although complicated, is not "random". After reading through Andi's son ordeal, I think we all just lucked out somehow...</p>
<p>yeah, the Perfect Storm is right. How 'bout a "Nor'easter"</p>
<p>thinking of you a lot...as we go through this month, Andi! Your son's well-being matters a lot to us! I just attended a little recital of decidedly "not" the standards that are the likely norm where you are, and I can only scratch my head and wonder why your son is not enjoying an outcome at this moment that parallels his years of work and study. Please Universe, right thyself and soon!</p>
<p>Andi - you've probably answered this question before ... but did your son's guidance counselor talk to any of the colleges to try to get some insight? </p>
<p>Reading those recs - it is just mind boggling.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. Tomorrow is his graduation and despite the fact that he has "undecided" next to his name on the list of future plans, we'll celebrate his many wonderful years of school and let him know how proud of him we are. </p>
<p>Alu- what is this about 'diligence?' Haven't heard that one before.</p>
<p>jrpar yes, she did talk to one but they wouldn't tell her a thing.</p>
<p>Andi, we send you and your son our best thoughts. Just wanted to say that after reading the above posts about 'diligence,' that two of d's recs used that very word and it didn't seem to hurt her. It is easy in your very frustrating situation to look for that specific 'thing' that caused this calamity to occur, but most likely, it is just very bad luck. Our d's guidence councelor said, jokingly, that they take the apps of all the qualified students and toss them up to the ceiling. The ones that stick, they accept. No joke intended in your situation, but the process is capricious. Your son sounds fabulous and you may never know why this happened, indeed, there is probably no explanation beyond bad luck. You are in our thoughts constantly.</p>
<p>Andi, heres a link to one of the discussions about the way that words like 'diligent' and 'hard-working' can be seen as damning an applicant with faint praise: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=457845&highlight=diligent#post457845%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=457845&highlight=diligent#post457845</a>. For example:
But the references you quoted sound genuinely terrific, which makes the admissions outcome harder to rationalize than ever. </p>
<p>Congratulations on your sons graduation tomorrow: May it be only the first of many long-delayed celebrations of his accomplishments in high school. As difficult as it must be to hold on to this thought, I continue to believe that all his talent and intellectual zeal and, yes, hard work will pay off in the end.</p>
<p>Andi, I don't think there is anything that is less than stellar in those two recs. Clearly, any parent reading them would be tremendously proud. So, if there is an answer to what happened, its certainly not there.</p>
<p>It was a lot of little things, much the way Tiger Woods makes a double bogey. Gets a little greedy off the tee and hits driver instead of putting a 3-wood in the fairway. Fades it just a little to much and ends up in the rough, three yards off the fairway with a bad angle to the green. </p>
<p>Instead of playing safe for the middle of the green, he takes a line at the pin, tucked away on an inaccessible mound. Hits it dead stiff, but the green is hard as a rock, the ball doesn't check up, and trickles over the back edge. </p>
<p>Faced with a delicate downhill chip and fearful of running the ball past the hole, he leaves the third shot on the ledge above the hole. </p>
<p>Goes for broke on the 20 foot par put and runs it 10 feet past. Misses the putt coming back. Double-bogey.</p>
<p>Not a big mistake in the bunch. On another day, the same strategy could have produced a birdie.</p>
<p>That's pretty much the way it went for Andi, Jr. Just a lot of little things adding up to a bad number on the scorecard. A little bit of miscalibration on the initial list. Mentally thinking about schools low on his list as safeties, when they weren't. Applying to the same schools as every other great student from hot-stuff suburban high schools; got caught in a traffic jam. Some really, really bad advice from GCs in a couple of key areas. (They told him not to send a music tape; nobody noticed that Swarthmore requires it.) And, perhaps the unfortunate reality that schools can get kids with Andi, Jr.'s stats from the same kind of high schools and the same zip codes and the same nationally recognized music programs who don't check the financial aid box.</p>
<p>The thing that really makes it difficult is that, had he taken a different club off the tee, I think Andi, Jr. could have gotten in Swarthmore and probably could have gotten a merit aid package at WU-Stl.</p>
<p>It'll all work out in the end, if not this year, then next and someday it'll just be a great story to tell the grandkids.</p>
<p>I agree. The recommendations were terrific. However, I think they also highlight the problem with applying to elite colleges from schools that send a lot of kids to elite schools.</p>
<p>As much as the teachers wanted these recs to be special, the language is that of teachers who have recommended a lot of kids. Lots of boilerplate. Refering to him as "young man", etc.</p>
<p>On the other extreme, is a school like my daughter's that doesn't send a lot of kids to fancy-pants colleges -- maybe a handful every other year. To the school, it's a big deal. The kids applying are their "babies" and I think that probably shows in the recommendations. For example, my daughter's principal insisted on writing one of her recommendations for a merit scholars program. </p>
<p>Daughter ended up with a third teacher rec because the poor guy wrote it on his own, totally unsolicited, and handed it to the GC. It was really kind of awkward because daughter had already asked two other teachers to write her recommendations. After much discussion, I think the GC ended up enclosing it with a Post-It saying, "Sorry for the extra. He wrote it without being asked and was so excited, I couldn't tell him no...."</p>
<p>I think it also helped that we never had any expectation whatsoever of the guidance counselors actually giving useful guidance to my daughter -- either for the list or the application. Knowing that it was on the family's shoulders, we made sure to do the requisite homework. At a more hoity-toit high school, there might be false sense of security about the guidance office. No false sense here. My daughter is pretty much positive that her GC had never heard of Swarthmore (her teachers had).</p>
<p>When I talked to the GC after D had decided to add Dickinson as an early-notification stone-cold safety, the GC told me that she didn't know anything about Davidson, but she had looked it up and wasn't sure that it was really a safety! No kidding... She had confused the two schools.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think we all just lucked out somehow...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yep. No question about it. The problem is that there is an almost sixth-sense quality to evaluating an app. Does the app create an easily-recognized identity? Is the identity one that will be embraced by a particular college?</p>
<p>My biggest fear in the process was the situation that Andi is in because I knew that my D had not "worked" the application process at schools lower on her list as hard as the schools at the top of the list. It's just not in the cards to work 'em all the same, I'm afraid. So, there was the potential for things to snowball. Fortuntately, most of those schools were "reverse commute" schools, driving against the flow of traffic geographically, which made me a little more comfortable. I pushed for a stone-cold safety on the list, even UMass-Amherst if necessary, just to have a bird in hand. You just don't know if you've got things calibrated properly until its all over.</p>
<p>I'm going to say this again - even though I have said it elsewhere - no matter how parents/GCs/students analyze every single piece of admission material minutia, the process is a just a crapshoot...</p>
<p>my D submitted IDENTICAL application packets to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn and Georgetown. 4 rejections, but Yale saw SOMETHING in there that they liked. She also applied to an additional 9 schools "just in case".</p>
<p>The best advice for any of us is to insulate with safeties.</p>
<p>Wishingandhoping: For the four schools you mention--some of the very most elite, there is no surprise that you could get very divergent outcomes, because we all know how low the odds are to begin with. But that doesn't mean they just threw the apps in the air, and the ones that landed right got in. Its just how each school constructs a class, what they perceive they need, and the subjective perceptions of different adcoms. However, as one proceeds to schools slightly less selective==eg those with 20-30% acceptance rates, the outcomes as far as I've seen, typically become somewhat more predictable. And while I agree that Andi's son's list did lack those rock solid safeties, I frankly do not believe that Oberlin and Wash U. would not grab someone with his outstanding profile as we understand it right now (remember, Andi said one of those schools had average scores/stats substantially below his.) So, for me, the crapshoot explanation doesn't cut it.
I'm sure this doesn't apply to Andi's son, but I know of one student who mistakenly kept the name of the first college he applied to in all his other essays; needless to say, he was rejected from every school but that first one. I bring this up only to suggest that Andi's son situation, for me, still remains a mystery...</p>
<p>My son's school college counselors really stress treating your safety well: spend as much time on this school's app as your first choice school app, and, you must visit and interview to count a school as a safety. </p>
<p>For Wash U: his college counselor advised that he had to visit Wash U if he was going to apply there - and showed us prior years' admissions results there: those who did not visit were rejected or waitlisted, even with the highest stats. I wonder if Andi's son was able to visit...</p>
<p>The problem arises when schools such as Wash U and Oberlin are treated as safety schools. They are not, as their admission stats prove.</p>
<p>Andi,</p>
<p>Those are beautiful recommendations. This whole thing is unfathomable to me. Blessings as you wait for the 15th!</p>
<p>A friend of my D's just got off the Columbia waitlist a couple of days ago, so it looks like there's a bit of summer melt starting already. She was going to go to Georgetown, so there'll be a slot open there, and so on down the line....</p>
<p>janesmith that's good to hear. Maybe there'll be a nice chain reaction...</p>