New 3.0 to 3.3 (GPA) Parents Thread

<p>This Is really funny I wrote you the response to warriorboy648 thinking they were bragging about the wonderful and unique schools that their GC was smart enough to desire. I like your child’s choices…</p>

<p>warrior, ready…this is the reason I originally found CC; I stopped talking to people around here and that was for my over-achiever first child…with my second, I have accepted my hermit status until it’s over; I have ONE friend whose daughter is at the same level (different grade) and I spend most of my free time with her; sometimes we talk about this stuff, but most of the time we try to stay away from it, although she is the best person to commiserate with…</p>

<p>a bit of advice: it’s best not to be close friends with your children’s classmates parents…for this and many, many other reasons that are not appropriate to this wonderful thread…most of my other close friends have kids of different ages than mine…</p>

<p>Oh, yes, there is always much bragging and snobbery going on! Unfortunately, people tend to focus on the top 50 schools in the country, which is really a shame because there are so many wonderful colleges & universities in America! Why focus on those few? What a gimmick, how much do they make on the application fees, anyway when they accept about what between 10-20% of applicants? </p>

<p>My H has his own hangup: “Princeton Review’s Best 368” “Is it in THIS BOOK?” So far we are all in there! Boston College (H) Syracuse University (me) UCONN, St. Lawrence & Alfred for the kids… I think that is all he cares about! Sometimes I would like to throw that book at him, but it is very heavy. Only Son better get into a school in THAT BOOK. </p>

<p>We never discuss SAT scores, class rank or college visits with anyone, not even relatives!
There is always so much bragging & gloating etc. If I discuss it with anyone it is with the people on this forum!</p>

<p>I never engage in those conversations. I am looking for a school that is a great fit for my son. I could care less if nobody from our community never heard of it. I did get a couple of puzzled looks when my older son applied. One parent asked me if he had been accepted anywhere early in the process. My older one had applied to Towson and was accepted less than 10 days after he turned in his application. I told this parent that he was accepted at Towson (it was the only school that he heard from since he was accepted in early October). I got the most puzzled look from her. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but I told myself that I am just going to pay attention to people’s opinions any more and from that day forward I just haven’t. My younger one is applying to mostly small LACs so the puzzled looks should pick up in number next year!</p>

<p>I posted earlier in this thread, but as Goucher has recently come up again, I thought I should reiterate that it should NOT be considered a safety for 3.0 students. We visited from the west coast and it was S’s favorite. His ACT score of 31 should have put him easily in the merit aid column according to stats, plus he’s an out-of-area male, so to my mind, even with his UW 3.0, it was a slam dunk. And then he was deferred for 7th semester grades. He was ultimately admitted, but by then it was off the table since there was no money attached, and even if we could afford it, I don’t thing Goucher is worth $200,000. Ursinus, on the other hand, seemed more selective. He was admitted there with a pretty generous grant. Ultimately, S decided on Marquette U which offered him merit $$ and is more reasonable to start than the east coast schools.</p>

<p>While S’s list of 15 schools (most common app or UC’s that are only one application) seemed large, at the end of the day, he only had a few that made it to the final decision round. Cast a wide net!</p>

<p>If it hasn’t yet been explored on this excellent thread, I’d like to offer 3 points for consideration, or further consideration. Had I known these things sooner, I’d have bought fewer bottles of Pepto Bismol. </p>

<p>Sorry, my post got long, so I’ve bolded main points below:</p>

<ol>
<li>Large numbers of Performing Arts majors can skew schoolwide academic statistics, providing either false encouragement or discouragement to B students. </li>
</ol>

<p>Examples: at Chapman University, it’s believed (by students, anyway) that the film students at Dodge College bring in slightly higher GPA’s and SAT scores than the rest of the undergraduates. While this raises the profile of the university, it could mean that an individual student, not planning to major in film, could look at the university’s published GPA/scores and have better hope.</p>

<p>At Chapman, unlike UCLA, film students must declare that major before they enter freshman year, so it’s not left up for some later decision point/audition who’ll be a film major. This should encourage non-film majors to consider Chapman, as an earlier poster said, even if their stats don’t line up exactly with the published schoolwide stats for an admitted class.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Performing arts can skew in the opposite way, too. At Oberlin College and Conservatory, it has been conjectured that College applicants bring higher SAT scores than the musicians auditioning for the Conservatory. Individually there are some wildly brilliant musicians who excel in both areas, but it’s credible that, in general, the college SAT range is higher than the conservatory’s. This could give false hope to college applicants. Sometimes I read on CC that a GC told them, based on scores, that Oberlin is their match while Swarthmore isn’t, which might be very poor guidance. Take note of whether you’re reading combined statistics from College and Con, or if they’ve been broken out. This might apply anywhere there’s a combination of an academic college and arts program on the same campus. </p></li>
<li><p>If you have interest in a particular school, do some research into whether they have a newly created, or less popular major. We had one experience where our kid had checked off the school’s most popular and very competitive major. He didn’t gain entry the college on that basis.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Amazingly, rather than reject him outright, the school wrote out 2 weeks before deadline to invite him to reapply quickly to a choice from a menu of newly formed Interdepartmental majors, where they had just hired a new dean. </p>

<p>He found the one closest to his original first-choice major and reapplied; was accepted, and that became his safety until he did land something geographically preferable elsewhere. The school was extremely gracious at every turn. They even promised to keep him on waitlist for his original first-choice major, although we surmised that wasn’t likely.</p>

<p>Had we known in advance, we’d have researched more about any new majors, or less popular majors, at more colleges. Students can be encouraged to look at such opportunities with an open mind and flexibility, to see if they can take some, if not all, the original hoped-for classes. Anyway, I’m just passing this idea on if it helps someone.</p>

<p>P.S., regarding Attitude at these parent encounters, I do recall a set of parents who had the answer. Both were music teachers at the high school. Their kid had something like a 2.0 average but played a mean trumpet and was kinda handsome, too. They embraced it. I wasn’t standing right there, but heard them shout, “He has a 2.0 and WE DON"T CARE. IT WON’T MATTER!” That shut up a whole crowd of parents. Perhaps they knew his talents would get him through life, somehow, someway.</p>

<p>In the specific case of Oberlin, the SAT scores for college vs conservatory can be found at <a href=“http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/www/sche25/[/url]”>http://oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/www/sche25/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Note that the college has about four times the enrollment of the conservatory and that the average SAT scores for the con tend to be not terribly far below that of the college. Also, about a quarter of the students who apply to the conservatory also apply to the college. Therefore, the effect that the con has on the overall average is going to be rather small, not likely more than 30 or 40 points out of 2400.</p>

<p>Would you be kind enough to share the positives and negatives the SU professors mentioned about the school?
thanks</p>

<p>I don’t know of negatives about the professors. I’m going to send a PM to you. I’m not exactly sure that I understand your question, but I will tell you what I do know about SU.</p>

<p>In most competitive high schools, the atmosphere among parents who have been friedns since the kids were infants suddenly becomes like Lord of the Flies. To B students’ parents, they are snobby; to the direct competition, they are cutthroat. </p>

<p>And we could have a whole separate thread about the sadness of parents who went to top schools, but whose kids are poor students and beat themselves up for having somehow messed up as parents.</p>

<p>Remember, though, that parents of learning disabled kids have faced these attitudes since kindergarten.</p>

<p>Life is a marathon, not a sprint. The winners are not determined at 18</p>

<p>I misread your post. I thought the professors had discussed pros and cons of the school, rather than the students (whose thoughts also interest me). I am sorry for my error.</p>

<p>That’s okay. I sent a PM to you anyway.</p>

<p>Regarding other parents and the “snob factor:”</p>

<p>Today’s Boston Globe Magazine has a big section on colleges. In one very well-written article, a sophomore from UMass quotes a Time Magazine article from 2006, in which they point out that Univ of Texas and Harvard have the same number of Top-50 Fortune 500 CEO’s - three. “An elite career doesn’t always stem from an elite eduation.” He points out that “Ambitious students can get a good education at any number of colleges, and a lousy student can get a lousy education at even the best colleges… Just as driving a Mercedes won’t make you rich, attending an expensive school won’t make you smart.”</p>

<p>(not that Univ of Texas hasn’t become fairly elite lately, but 30 years ago when these CEOs were in school it wasn’t mentioned in the same breath with Harvard!)</p>

<p>It’s not where the kid goes to school, its what he/she does when they get there. Remind the snobby parents about that…</p>

<p>Yes, I think I read something somewhere about a private counselor pulling out “Who’s Who in America” and asking client (the applicant) to name somebody famous or who they admired & usually that person HAD NOT attended an Ivy League school. And many times had graduated from a college the client had never heard of!</p>

<p>With the exception of legacies for several decades now you don’t necessarily find the kids of the truly wealthy clustered in just a few schools. In my opinion it’s not snobby people who want their kids at this handful of schools it is more often less educated and immigrant parents who believe that only a certain cluster of schools will propel their children to certain career paths. It has been more than several decades since American leadership came solely from the select colleges and universities. While true that the select have their pick of the academically talented high school students they no longer have the only pick of the academically talented high school students. Futhermore, some of the most academicaly talented often take a path into education which often does not correlate to corporate or political “power.”</p>

<p>:::Basking in the warmth of this thread:::</p>

<p>I think it’s kind of good to have a child NOT at the tippity top of his class. I think there is more pressure on the kids and more competitiveness from the kids and the parents too. I’m friends with several of my son’s parents and am still friends with my older kids friends parents as well. It’s not as if the kids are really competing with each other for certain colleges. With my youngest son’s friends parents I’m one the only ones that have done this before so I’m always giving advice.</p>

<p>Thanks for everyone’s support… It helps to vent sometimes when it seems as if every kid I know is getting straight A’s and curing cancer!!</p>

<p>Now I can return to our college road trip. My son has decided that he wants to visit a couple large public, research type universities. Any suggestions for which ones on the east coast that a B student could get into, that would still be challenging.</p>

<p>warriorboy…all my son will look at are large public universities. On the east coast we looked at UConn (a bit of a stretch for a B student OOS I think…but look at your Naviance if you have one), Penn State, and Maryland. I guess maybe they are all stretches. One that may not be a stretch is UMass, at least according to my Naviance. U Vermont also looks doable for the B student. We didn’t look at U New Hampshire (not even sure how big or research oriented it is) but it is definitely a B student school.</p>

<p>Actually, I would love it if everyone can look at their Naviance for the large public Us and tell me if it looks like B students are getting in!</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Take a look at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. </p>

<p>[University</a> of Central Florida](<a href=“http://www.ucf.edu/]University”>http://www.ucf.edu/)</p>

<p>They list the average HS GPA to be 3.76 but that is weighted. B Students who meet the minimum requirements usually get in (provided they apply early). When applying to any public university in Florida, B students should ALWAYS apply before September 1st (and preferably in the month of July). When you apply makes a HUGE difference in admissions outcomes in the state of Florida.</p>

<p>Here is a link to UCF’s common data set:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.iroffice.ucf.edu/commondataset/commondataset08/commondataset08.html#admission[/url]”>http://www.iroffice.ucf.edu/commondataset/commondataset08/commondataset08.html#admission&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;