<p>Agree Consolation, I almost said sports or the arts - should have.</p>
<p>Also a rejection IS a rejection. I’m not so sure why it needs to be sugar coated. You can be empathetic or whatever, but to try and twist it into something else is really not doing any favors. Everyone gets rejected in life from time to time - from a job one wanted, from a mortgage, from a credit card, from a club, from a team, from someone one has a crush on… whatever…it doesn’t “harm” kids to learn how to get over life’s little unfortunately episodes.</p>
<p>I know some of you may disagree with me but I think kids do need some rejection in their lives. They need to learn how to deal with it because there will be many other rejections as they apply for jobs, date, play the lottery LOL, etc. </p>
<p>My oldest only applied to one, non-selective state university so she didn’t deal with college application rejection but my youngest applied to six universities (including one Ivy) and she was rejected by the Ivy. She was disappointed but knew her chances were slim to none considering their acceptace rate. I know she still thinks about “what if” because she told me over the Christmas break that one of the friends she has in college was also rejected by the same Ivy and the friend was upset because a neighbor with lower stats was accepted by the Ivy.</p>
<p>My youngest daughter loves where she’s at and gushed about how happy she is with her college and major over the Christmas break. </p>
<p>I tell both my kids that things happen for a reason and not getting what you want doesn’t mean that your life will fall apart. The path you were forced down because of the rejection will most likely lead to something just as good or better–it will just be different than you imagined.</p>
<p>Having gone through the totally opaque, arcane, byzantine, arbitrary, queen-of-hearts experience known as NYC High School Choice, I think NYC public school kids may take this all a little better!</p>
<p>At least that’s how my daughter feels right now, having submitted her 7 applications. She may not feel that way by the end of March!</p>
<p>@Mom2 I applied to the reachy Chicago (to be honest I don’t even want to go here anymore. It seems more faux-intellectual than anything), MIT, and Caltech. My stats, awards, and essays were all fine and I assume my recs were as well. My test scores are above the 75%ile at all of these schools, yadda yadda yadda. Of course they are reaches for everyone but geographic diversity does not seem to be a huge hook, at least from where I’m from.</p>
<p>I also know people who have profiles similar to mine who have been rejected from Stanford, deferred from Harvard, etc this year. I know one girl who got in to Stanford, but to be frank she got in because of her life circumstances and geographic diversity was probably just a bonus or a non-factor. For some data from my particular school, from 2008 to 2013, from naviance (admitted/applied):</p>
<p>Harvard: is the only school where we have a good track record at 4/23
Princeton: 0/23
Yale: 3/40
Stanford: 1/23
Caltech: 0/2
UChicago: 3/26 (though in recent years, not so much. Their admission rates have gone way down in that time).
Duke: 5/37 (same as above).
Columbia: 0/9
Dartmouth: 2/13
Brown: 0/12
UPenn: 2/26
MIT: 0/13
If these schools are looking for geographic diversity, they are definitely not turning to this school in Kentucky. Perhaps geography is a factor in less selective schools, but not at the most selective ones (from this data). </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m looking at my deferrals and future rejections as motivation to work super hard in undergrad so that I can get a nice job or go to the grad school of my choice. It’s not the end of the world to be rejected from a selective school.</p>
<p>Can’t help how you feel even if it’s unreasonable, and in this case I do think it’s personal too. One has to learn how to deal with things that hurt like this, and as parents we try to help reduce the pain.</p>
<p>Or maybe they are, but the schools in question are so competitive that once you factor out the people who are admitted on other non-academic grounds (faculty brats, sports, legacies, ‘development admits’ like the son of a Congressman), there just isn’t much to go around. When you think that the class includes all of these peole, maybe 75th percentile isn’t as impressive as you seem to think.</p>
<p>It is very wise and kind to make our children aware of their statistical liklihoods. In general and also as it pertains to their particular demographics.
That is certainly a responsibility we have as parents. Applying to the right mix of schools and having realistic conversations with our kids is imperative.</p>
<p>I think that it would be really useful if, in addition to information on the overall admit rates, the colleges published the number of students admitted from each state. Generally, this is difficult to obtain, for students who have not been admitted. When one sees the relatively small numbers of students admitted to each school from (say) Kentucky, it’s possible to gain a different perspective on the process.</p>
<p>Based on just the sheer application numbers you posted, your HS appears to be one of the better suburban college preps in either Louisville or greater Cincinnati, neither of which, frankly, is particularly “diverse” from most of the rest of the applicant pool. You’d probably find that “geographic diversity” meant more if you were at one of the county-wide HSs that only have a Duke applicant once every five or six years.</p>
<p>I definitely gravitate more toward the Sorting Hat metaphor rather than the God’s Plan notion, which really gets my hackles up. That said, I believe more than either perspective that we choose the paths we wish in life. Rejection, failure, and disappointment help each of us to develop the resilience and persistence necessary to live life. Will this particular event–rejection from some or even all of the colleges to which a young person applies–serve as the defining moment that results in permanent damage? Not likely, but for some, a closed door becomes a dead end. For others, it spells opportunities–either to find another one to walk through or to figure out how to pry that one open. This moment of college decisions is but one of countless our children will face that will help them chart the path further down the road. I happen to think it is an important test of endurance, but not, by far, the last one.</p>
<p>For some students, college rejection can be a reasonably benign and welcome demonstration of the consequences of previous choices.</p>
<p>Didn’t study as well as you perhaps ought to have? Weren’t as diligent with the homework? Didn’t work with a proofreader on that last essay draft? Well, you may still go to college and be able to pursue a good education, but perhaps not at the college of your choice.</p>
<p>We all experience failures in our lives, but that doesn’t mean WE are failures. My more resilient child experienced far more failure growing up than my less resilient one, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.</p>
<p>“Didn’t study as well as you perhaps ought to have? Weren’t as diligent with the homework? Didn’t work with a proofreader on that last essay draft?” </p>
<p>Those are probably reasonable points for many college students rejected. But here on CC it’s often the very top students lamenting rejection from tippy top schools. In that case, even the rejected students have stellar qualifications. </p>
<p>The take away her for younger families … hs seniors should apply to a variety of schools. Treat schools with less than 10% acceptance rate as “bonus”, if it happens.</p>
<p>I’m curious as to what classifies a development admit. My father has a somewhat high-profile job (presidential appointee to an important position in the IC), but I don’t think that would even come into consideration for undergrad admittance… I know for grad school (law school in particular), it matters a bit–my cousin interviewed at UMich Law (T14), and they asked if her uncle would be interested in accompanying her in a visit–but I didn’t think it would matter at all for undergrad…</p>
<p>(And sorry for crashing the Parents Forum! I’m a hs senior.)</p>
<p>Who knows, that was just an example. The question is whether your father has enough clout to help or harm the university, and whether that will get you in even if you’re not qualified on academic grounds.</p>
<p>Money (e.g. - the family can buy the school a building), political prominence/connections, & fame (e.g. - celebrity - sports / music / acting … ) come to mind.</p>
<p>
Seems low. Wouldn’t acceptance at a school with even, say, a 25% or 30% acceptance rate be a bonus (assuming high standards and a surfeit of qualified applicants)?</p>
<p>I think for so many kids, it’s really hard to fathom that even though they’re at the top of their class or accomplished in some way, there are many kids just as accomplished because there are sooo many kids and so many schools (each with kids at the top) and so many different ways for students to distinguish themselves.</p>
<p>My kid is an olympiad qualifier (in this case USAJMO). So, that might be a smaller universe than high school valedictorian, say. But when you start to look at that within a different context – and see all the different olympiads, science and history fairs, debate, fine arts, dance, piano competitions, athletic achievements, spelling bees and so on…you realize that there are a lot of wonderful kids doing a lot of amazing things.</p>
<p>He’s still only a sophomore so hasn’t really solidified his list yet but I hope that we’ve instilled in him the understanding that he’ll probably go somewhere that will be a great fit and where he’ll be happy, but there’s no guarantees for any single college, even with his accomplishments. His peer group is other math-y kids (not from his school) and some will get into those high reach schools and it will be super hard for those who don’t. If his friends got into those colleges and he didn’t, I think he would have a hard time (at least for a while) shaking that off. He’s quiet but intense. </p>
<p>I think it’s ok to be disappointed but life is really about picking yourself up and moving on.</p>
<p>piesquared, if your S is talented in one academic respect like math, he might want to look into foreign universities. Colleges in England and Scotland will typically admit on the basis of pure academic ability in the subject in question. So even if he can’t make it to MIT, he might well get into the original Cambridge.</p>
I would modify this to “there were other people who fit the college’s needs better than you.” It’s not a judgment on your personal worth, but on whether you are one of the pieces of the puzzle they are trying to put together. This explains why many people are rejected by one school, but admitted by another similar, or even more selective school.</p>
<p>But my general advice for somebody who has been rejected is to “shake the dust off your feet.”</p>