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<p>Sure, but we should remember that there are some exceptional people who get accepted with full rides pretty much everywhere.</p>
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Not really. There are a few people who get accepted everywhere, but many of the most selective schools don’t give “full rides” based on merit. There are certainly people who can be pretty sure of getting full rides at some pretty good places. But all you have to do is look at the results threads for Harvard, Yale, etc., here on CC to see that many, many exceptional people are rejected by those schools every single year.</p>
<p>I’m talking about the <em>really</em> exceptional people. People like Terence Tao:</p>
<p>[Terence</a> Tao - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao]Terence”>Terence Tao - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>They don’t post on CC.</p>
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<p>Even more rare and exceptional would be those who get accepted everywhere, while coming from a poor enough background to get near-full rides of need-based financial aid at the super-selective schools (and meanwhile picking up outside scholarships to cover the rest). Such a thing happening may be [url=<a href=“http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/30/5457373/elk-grove-teen-goes-9-for-9-in.html]newsworthy[/url”>http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/30/5457373/elk-grove-teen-goes-9-for-9-in.html]newsworthy[/url</a>].</p>
<p>Terrence Tao is obviously exceptional, but he still wouldn’t have gotten a “full ride” to Harvard as an undergrad–unless he was poor.</p>
<p>Seems to me it’s a teachable moment for a parent. Your kid won’t be living under your roof for the next 200 or so disappointments of his or her life, and learning to manage your disappointment is a very useful and sometimes rare skill in life.</p>
<p>Your kid may not make it onto a very competitive EC at college (my kid didn’t make Debate first time out, which was a shocker… but at college nobody cared about your string of regional debate trophies in HS. It all boils down to a one hour tryout where you are competing against some of the best debaters in the country.) Your kid may not get the summer internship/job/research opportunity for which he or she is supremely qualified. Your kid may not get into the first choice grad school; may make Law Review but STILL not get the federal clerkship for which he or she was completely suited for, etc.</p>
<p>*Your kid may not get into the first choice grad school; may make Law Review but STILL not get the federal clerkship *</p>
<p>To borrow a plot device from cobrat,
a friend who knows a federal judge says that she only hires clerks from a very short list of schools. (5 to be exact if I remember right) None of those schools she attended, BTW, but she won’t hire outside the list anyway.</p>
<p>I can imagine that a rejection will feel more personal if someone you know well from your same high school is accepted by the school that rejected you. It’s hard not to feel the school “liked” the other student more than you.</p>
<p>Funny, but this happened for S with Georgetown. It really rankled because the other student was regarded by S and his classmates as extremely awkward with minimal social skills, yet was selected for the School of Foreign Service. S kept saying there was no way anyone would ever send her on any sort of diplomatic mission, even in an administrative capacity. She never got a job in any related field, by the way, and after a few years went back to grad school. I must admit it still bothers me a little because I suspect the teachers felt a little sorry for her and overdid her rec letters.</p>
<p>I often say to my kids and students: success is rare while failure is quite common. Be proud and be grateful when you succeed.</p>
<p>GFG- trust me, once you’re in grad school or out in the professional world, you will frequently know the person who got the job/role/post/speaking gig that you did not. That’s how small some professional circles turn out. And having to attend a conference where someone you know (and who you think is nowhere near as qualified as you are) is the keynote speaker while you are sitting in the audience, supposedly taking notes and being impressed by his or her brilliance REALLY taxes the acting skills!</p>
<p>This is life. Someone who worked for you- who was a low performer- ends up getting a job you get rejected for. A peer at your company gets a major award from a professional organization where- at least on paper- you are definitely more qualified AND there are more folks out there who will vouch for you.</p>
<p>The ability to “not take it personally” is the difference between someone who can move on, get passed it, even laugh about it, vs. someone who can’t. You can do your child a huge favor by helping them learn this skill as a teenager.</p>
<p>blossom’s comment fits reality, as I see it. Sometimes I have been in the audience and sometimes I am sure I have been the “underqualified” speaker on the stage.</p>
<p>The difference I see is that when you have an established career, then you can <em>know</em> that the people doing the selection are under-informed–although you have to make a substantial correction for your own ego to be sure.</p>
<p>When a student is applying to college, he/she is likely to buy into the “knows all, sees all” propaganda that some admissions offices put out . . . even if they frame it in terms of assembling a class.</p>
<p>It is easier for an unrelated person who knows the student to spot true errors, or to simply offer commiseration, when a rejection is understandable–even if the decision might have gone the other way.</p>
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<p>Could we please stop with the “our” track record? When there are 30,000 high schools in the country, don’t you think it’s arrogant to think that Harvard “owes” your high school any acceptances?</p>
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<p>Only relevant in the context of how many kids APPLIED from each state. Anyway, I doubt the colleges really want to reveal that, because it will show how incredibly regional ALL of their applicant pools are. bclintonk and I created spreadsheets offline showing the student body distribution at the top 20 colleges and universities. Virtually every single one overindexes to its home region. The one exception I remember was Duke, which overindexes more to the Northeast than the South, but generally speaking that pattern held overall.</p>
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<p>This is waaaaaaay too much mental energy expended on someone who should mean nothing more to you than “someone who attended the same high school as my kid.” TheGFG, I like you, I really do, but there’s such a pattern in your posts of overfocus on what your kids’ high school classmates and / or their parents think, do, feel and achieve. It’s just not very healthy to let these random people take up so much space in your head.</p>
<p>My offspring attended a NYC public magnet. Lots of kids go on to highly selective colleges and over time, the kids see just how odd the results can be. While they are still upset when they don’t get in–and still resentful when those seemingly less qualified do–I think they see enough examples of inexplicable results that they do know it’s not a judgment on them.</p>
<p>If I had a dollar for every meeting or conference I’ve ever sat through where the “presenter” or “content expert” or “thought leader” was someone who I trained, or fired, or declined to hire, etc. I’d be able to retire.</p>
<p>This is life. Sometimes your “less” qualified colleagues or classmates or peers or frenemies end up doing better than you- or at least end up with better PR, or have more aggressive spin machines. Someone in my field has a blog, and tweets incessantly, and is a talking head on the business news programs every time a reporter needs a quote on employment trends and where the economy is going, or the War for Talent, or whatnot.</p>
<p>An empty suit, trust me.</p>
<p>But I can’t get aggravated over someone I worked with- who I know to be lazy and full of hot air- and who never pulled his own weight when staffed on a project. He’s got a fantastic publicist who keeps his name in the news, and I’ve chosen to spend my energy doing my job and making my employer happy vs. being a “presence” in the blogosphere.</p>
<p>No skin off my back. Like I said- it’s not personal. Namaste.</p>
<p>Well, I am certainly not the only one on this board with a pattern to my posts, PG, as you and certain other posters love to tout your nonchalance in the face of what bothers us less-evolved mortals. You really shouldn’t assume you are capable of making psychological judgments about posters based on what they say on a forum. For one thing, you know zilch about anyone’s life experiences, their IRL personalities, or the personalities of their children. Funny, those that know me think I’m no-nonsense parent who is the last one to tolerate whining or engage in coddling or self-esteem boosting. My kids were never told they were great when they weren’t, and always had an accurate view of where they stood relative to the rest of the world in their accomplishments. The fact is life is not always fair and certainly not always a meritocracy–especially high school life. To pretend otherwise is stupid. Understanding and acknowledging that is beneficial in keeping perspective and not getting hung up, as blossom points out.</p>
<p>It’s about your application, not your ultimate worth as a person. They don’t get to know you as a neighbor or classmate, for heaven’s sake. Tao may have knocked his app out of the park, so to say. </p>
<p>And if we think the kids are going to crumble because there aren’t enough open seats at Harvard for every good-shot kid, we need to rethink the skills we ingrained in them. Like, perspective.</p>
<p>Btw, nothing says a school that has 20+ apply to some top schools is owed x number of admits. Adcoms will want kids from other hs or parts of the state. Why not? Plus, to some extent, “Kentucky” is competing with neighboring/regional states.</p>
<p>Sorry for taking you all off topic. I only mentioned my school’s admissions record because I wanted to challenge the notion that there is somehow a geographic diversity factor that means that the poor New England kids are getting unfairly beat out by those of us in flyover country. I don’t feel entitled to get a spot, by any means.</p>
<p>@PizzaGirl It’s a figure of speech. Perhaps it is probability, or perhaps it is something else. I don’t understand why you are so against the idea that some schools tend to send more people to certain schools.</p>
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Good grief! Maybe she wrote wonderful essays. (As I recall at least when my son applied you had to write about a pressing world problem - nothing like any of the other applications.) In any even there’s certainly no expectation that everyone is going to be a foreign service officers. There are plenty of ways to do important work internationally that don’t involve people skills. </p>
<p>I often wonder what people thought about my younger son, who probably set some low points on the school’s Naviance at a few schools he got into. I have a pretty good idea how he got in, having heard what the teachers had to say about him, having read his essays, and knowing what a thoughtful kid he is. I believe the schools who took a chance on him did the right thing. He was a bit of a diamond in the rough in high school.</p>