<p>elizabethh, what a great day! My daughter is still waiting on a couple of EA decisions, and every day I go out to get the mail with my fingers crossed for her.</p>
<p>PegV, one of the surprises during the search has been the vast differences in the courtesy and competence of various admissions offices. The lack of online systems to track whether they have received the various components of an application is surprising.</p>
<p>That said, if ASU is truly the best option for your child, I am not sure a rude and incompetent admissions office should cancel that out. For example, I worked for some excellent companies whose Human Resources departments were awful.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good wishes- my son is really happy and of course I’m happy too. He wants to go look at KU, which I am really excited about - I think its a great, somewhat overlooked school, which offers everything he wants. I checked the facebook admitted 2014 group, and there are kids from all over the country in the group, which makes me feel much more comfortable, since we are from Southern California.</p>
<p>Peg, I can’t believe you still haven’t heard from ASU - there is something wrong with that! You should keep trying to contact them - sooner or later you’ll find someone who is friendly and helpful. I assume you’ve checked the Asurite website, correct?</p>
<p>elizabethh - Congrats to you and your s. It is so wonderful that the good news keeps coming. My s received a large envelope from Salve Regina today. Can’t wait for him to come home but it looks like another acceptance. If so, he is 4 for 4 (Scranton, Keene, York and Salve Regina??). Waiting for one more early action.</p>
<p>MaryAnn - Congrats again!!! I love Salve Regina. Newport is such a fun place.</p>
<p>Elizabeth, we check Asurite many times a day. Have had more correspondence with Ms. England as well. This is going on 4 months now!
is your son interested in Alabama at all? We are headed down to take a look see the very first of January. Would prefer to go for University Days but my daughters swim schedule will not allow for that.</p>
<p>Congrats MaryAnn! I think a lot of schools are sending out their acceptances before they take off for the holidays…good for us!</p>
<p>Peg, he is interested. We haven’t looked at when we will go there - my first priority is getting him to Kansas, which I think he’ll really like.</p>
<p>Good news from Seattle U tonight … 3 for 3 here. Interesting that they note she’s been accepted to her intended major, as well.</p>
<p>Has anyone read the NYT blog about admissions called The Choice? One topic was secrecy regarding your child’s college search and admissions. One family wasn’t sharing their child’s applications because they felt that information might generate more admissions competition at his school. That cracks me up.</p>
<p>I was thinking about what we’ve been doing in our family. The college list hasn’t been a secret, nor have the acceptances. We do tend to quash the question about the “favorite” school. Until all the aid letters come it seems a wee bit dangerous to have a strong favorite. On the way home today I asked if d’s classmates have been talking about any early acceptances and she said not really.</p>
<p>[Keeping</a> Secrets: Where Children Applied to College - The Choice Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/keeping-secrets/]Keeping”>Keeping Secrets: Where Children Applied to College - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Enjoyed the article. I never got the secracy but it is definitely present at my S school.</p>
<p>Dig and Maryann–congrats!</p>
<p>As for secrecy, it was certainly the case at my competitive suburban HS in 1971 and is even worse at our town’s HS, especially for kids applying to highly selective schools. They are fearful of attracting more applicants against whom they will have to compete or revealing their choices so that people will be able to guess where they did not get in if they enroll at a less selective school. In this world, people seem to assume that colleges could be numbered 1-6000 and no one would ever go to school 15 if they were accepted at 14, even if one school is 3 times larger, or much more urban, etc.</p>
<p>Frankly, I understand the attracting more competition view–at our HS, kids have flocked to certain schools (often as safeties) in particular years–for example, applications to Tulane tripled last year and St Josephs doubled the year before. This has likely meant some previously match students became reaches–and often because of kids with no intention of going there.</p>
<p>Congrats Dig and MaryAnn–what exciting news!!</p>
<p>The secrecy thing surprises me. Perhaps naively, I thought many people (students and parents) who didn’t share where the kids apply did so because if they weren’t admitted, they’d rather not be asked about it, perhaps having the option to keep rejections private. I guess similar to what yabeyabe mentions but I didn’t make the connection to competition.</p>
<p>At my twin’s school, some will talk about it if they applied ED or EA, the apps are in and it doesn’t matter. Others don’t want anyone asking them about it, so they don’t. (Scores though are NEVER discussed, except "not so great, or “okay”)
My daughter’s noticed last year, some match/safety Catholic colleges for some, were rejections and others, way over stats, got in. That happens sometimes both ways, but the students were disapointed that a “throw-away” college to one was in and to another, who really wanted to go, it wasn’t. It can go both ways.</p>
<p>People are very secretive at our ultra competitive high school. I was truly shocked at the number of kids that applied ED to elite schools (and I probably don’t know about half of them…just hearing about acceptances). I would say that a third of the kids already know where they are going, and they are places like Vanderbilt (I guess those kids found out yesterday), Johns Hopkins (four kids that I know of), Yale (two kids that I know of) , Brown (two kids that I know of), at least one going to Harvard, one to Princeton, two to Columbia. There were also quite a few kids who applied ED to Syracuse, NYU, and George Washington, and some EA to American who have already stated that they are going. Clearly money is not a problem for many of these folks! I really was amazed though, at how many locked in early. I understand the Ivys but was surprised at the non-Ivys.</p>
<p>RTR, I think the large number of non-Ivy ED and EA decisions you noticed results from some combination of families who: 1. do not worry about cost; 2. assume all aid packages will be similar; 3. assume they will not get enough aid to matter; 4. recruited athletes; 5. think ED is their best chance for admission at a nonIvy often used as an Ivy safety; or 6. are just sick of the whole process and want it over ASAP.</p>
<p>Some of them may be mistaken, but all are rational approaches.</p>
<p>Funny about the article…Caren Osten was in my third grade Hebrew School class. I remember going to her house once for a play date. (She had a real dartboard which I thought was amazing for an eight year old to have!) Never thought about her again until I saw that article and her face and immediately recognized her!</p>
<p>I can understand not wanting to have to share/explain rejections, absolutely. But the bit about generating competition because of someone hearing about someone else’s application . . . well, that just smacks of hubris to me. With all the information sources out there, what student doesn’t already know about the the most desirable, high-buzz schools? I mean, can it be statistically important within one high school? Is it an east coast thing, where schools are geographically clustered in a way that makes it likely a block of students will be applying to certain ones? My daughter’s classmates will be scattering to the four corners of the country and everything in between. Perhaps there is a different admissions impact from this remote outpost. </p>
<p>I dunno, it seems like a stress-induced panic to me.</p>
<p>This is for all of the parents of 3.0 -3.3 students:</p>
<p>Kids of this age eventually change. </p>
<p>Let me say that another way: they grow, and they grow up.</p>
<p>My oldest son was barely a 3.0 student in high school. In fact, I’m not really sure that he actually made it to 3.0. I do remember that he earned a D- in AP Biology in the 10th grade, and I thought that I was going to die. I do remember him struggling in math. I do remember him not making it into Calculus. He ended up going to a state school that probably few here have even heard of, and he floundered for a few years. However, in his last year or two at that school (it took him five years to graduate), he came around a bit and pulled it together. But after graduation, he floundered some more, bouncing around some pretty lousy jobs. </p>
<p>Fast forward four years:</p>
<p>He is working full time in a managerial position at a well-known company and is making a decent living. In the fall of 2008, he started applying to some grad schools and, miracles of miracles, he was accepted into a very well known school that is in the top 10 of his particular field. He started the program this past fall while still working full time. He took three classes, and has received semester grades in two of them so far. In each case he earned an A. One professor who is a guru in the field included a written evaluation that would make you blush and nearly made me cry. This was for a kid who went to a not-so-highly regarded school and who is competing against students from places like Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, and UCLA. </p>
<p>There is absolutely no way that I (or anyone else, for that matter), would have predicted this kind of success for my son. I think that what made the difference was:</p>
<p>1) He really did come around and earn some good grades his last two years of undergraduate work, especially in his major.
2) He developed an excellent relationship with a professor, who ended up writing a letter of recommendation that I think weighed heavily on his graduate admission.</p>
<p>So, parents of students on this thread, please remember: your child will grow, and will grow up. Give it some time, and give it some patience.</p>
<p>Westerndad, that is a great story! You must be incredibly proud of your son. Also, you must have been a terrific father for having the good sense and patience to let him find his way to where he is now. I can already see my son acting much more like a young man with each college acceptance he gets - its like he can finally see that there is a future, despite the struggles he had during high school. And where he was saying just a few months ago that he wants to go to college with people he knows, he now sees the option of a fresh start as very intriguing. Its the possibilities that are so exciting for him - and for his father and me!</p>
<p>elizabethh, I think your son will really like KU. Lawrence is the quintessential college town, probably my favorite part of Kansas.</p>