I don’t consider myself obsessed. However, I do get very involved as I assume most parents on CC are. My role is basically an advisor, a schedule/task manager, and a college tour arranger. I especially like the tour arranger role as I get to visit a lot of colleges and nearby areas that I like!
This is me exactly lol…you took the words right out of my mouth!
With S23 twins it will be a totally different ballgame for me, i’ll not only more relaxed but a lot more informed.
I wouldn’t say I was obsessed with the admissions process. I think for my family it was researching for the schools that were possible for us to afford for three children to get a college education. We are comfortable enough to not get financial aid, but have had hardships in the past that prevented us from having significant savings now. (2008 hit us and many other families pretty hard, it took many years to get out of that place).
We were looking for good opportunities for merit aid that was not dependent upon income, and where we thought our oldest would enjoy attending. We found about 15 schools that fit the criteria, and then we let him choose his favorite out of those. He is in the honors college and also a prestigious program at University of Alabama and is very happy there.
I’m assuming the same will be true for my rising HS junior and sophomore. We did the best we could for our kids. Coming here and reading so many people’s experiences helped us keep expectations closer to reality to avoid disappointments for our kids. Telling them off the bat not to reach for prestigious schools is the key. They would not be able to attend them even if they were accepted.
I don’t know why we ask and debate this question. Is the question designed to make people feel guilty about how they choose to parent? Is the question designed to bolster parental egos by distinguishing between ourselves and the others that cross that dastardly parental line? Not taking the bait.
The best way to parent is to be a good person (as parenting is like looking in the mirror), not to beat your kids (as they will think violence is an appropriate response to frustration) and to make sure they know that you love them. Other than that, it is pretty foolproof, regardless of whether you take an active or passive role in the college selection process. For those parents who love being involved, go at it. For those who have other things do do, enjoy those other things.
It wasn’t until it was time for our elder to start preparing applications that we learned that the approach we have encouraged all along is one his top choice calls applying sideways:
https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways
His younger brother won’t be doing anything differently.
That MIT blog is very good, applies to non-stem students as well. I know a few parents whose kids got into MIT and again came off as more concerned than obsessed, pretty humble people as well, thought their kids were fortunate to get in.
I have a sister who turned down MIT. And Johns Hopkins too.
Let me tell you what I believe the moral of the MIT story TheVulcan posted. It tells us that doing something incredible won’t get you accepted in and of itself. Build a nuclear reactor in your garage, as the story mentions? That won’t get you in.
So how does MIT decide?
Answer: it’s pretty darn “random” once you have the requisite high test scores and grades. When I say “random”, it’s not like they are picking out of a hat (though it might as well be, per an NPR story from 2019 entitled, “What If Elite Colleges Switched To A Lottery For Admissions?”). I mean “random” in that factors outside the control of applicants come into play. It can be how much the committee likes you. It could be any number of factors that have been mentioned ad nauseam on CC posts.
My DD had several really talented friends apply to MIT this year. None got in. One was at the tippy top of the class, 1550 SAT, and a state level recognition athlete as well. The MIT coach spoke with him and was interested. It wasn’t enough.
So yes, it doesn’t make sense to think of a gimmick or plan to get into MIT when you know this. It takes a bit of the stress away.
Or factors that are opaque to the applicant, whether or not they are under control of the applicant. For example, most applicants have no idea how their essays compare to the others in the college’s applicant pool. That is even more the case for recommendations, which inject an external factor (how well the recommender writes recommendations for a given quality recommendee) into the application.
The effects are not random from an insider’s viewpoint, but can appear random from an outsider’s viewpoint. (insider = people in the admissions office at the college; outsider = most applicants; some applicants at well connected prep schools may have partial availability of insider information)
Good points @ucbalumnus. I agree.
@ucbalumnus Agree. Most parents and students have no idea of the full extent of the pool of candidates. A kid with a great personality often gets better results that the same candidate who is arrogant or lacking personal qualities. Essays often reveal character and that’s hard to weigh. I agree that the effects aren’t totally random.
When reading some of the chance me posts, I often pause. Kids often appear to be a set of stats rather than a person with individual interests.
That is the nature of these forums. Applicants are not going to post their essays (too much personally identifying information, risk of plagiarism), and usually do not even know what is in the recommendations that others have written for them.
So “chances?” and “what colleges are realistic for me?” posts are mostly about stats, with big gaps in terms of essays and recommendations (at least for the more selective colleges where these are more important). Of course, even if these were posted, most others here are outsiders who would not know how they compare to the applicant pools or admission priorities of various colleges.
To your point, colleges have many institutional needs and I firmly believe they know pretty much the type of students they want that are within these “buckets”.
My second point is that the perceived randomness is really only reserved for the most highly selective colleges where there are 1,000s of applicants with similar high stats so all of the other ECs, essays, LORs (e.g. more subjective factors) come into play and make it hard for us outsiders to figure out why one applicant from your high school got in and the other did not. I can assure you that the adcoms know why one applicant was favored over the other.
For example, my D20 applied early action to IU-Kelly School of Business and there was little doubt based on her grades and test scores that she would get in. And her HS naviance scattergrams pretty much told her that she was 95%+ likely to be admitted. There was no mystery to the process.
Lastly, while I like the MIT blog article, I’m a firm believer that you can do things in high school to make yourself a more attractive candidate to colleges and knowing the rules of the game and “packaging” yourself can influence adcoms. I do believe the HS students that get out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves give adcoms a lot of positive information to work with. Going the extra mile can pay-off.
For example, my D applied for a “standard” student government position her junior year and made it. At the beginning of senior year, there was another more selective board member position where she was selected to be 1 of only 2 district student board reps (i.e. a more prestigious position). Also, senior year, one of her AP teachers asked her to be on his Academic Decathlon team (D accepted and also picked him to write one her LORs). These are just two small examples of what you can do to make yourself more “attractive” to colleges. My D could have sat back and continued to do the “normal” student government position and also could have decided not join Aca Deca but instead she challenged herself and tried new things, gaining additional leaderships responsibilities. I think adcoms notice these things in college applicants.
At the end of the day, your whole “body of work” matters when applying to selective colleges, I would not take any of it lightly…
I am late to this thread, as I was initially put off by the way the OP presented the issue - I felt OP was assuming that all parents who participate in CC are obsessed with getting their kids into prestigious schools, etc. There is that subset, sure, but I get really tired of CC being portrayed as being exclusively that way, as I am afraid it will keep people away, and I think it is a really terrific resource. I started reading CC because I felt ignorant, rather than obsessive. I started trying to figure out athletic recruiting, and there is a wealth of know-how here on that very arcane set of issues. And then I gained insight into the whole EA, ED thing and learned how to research schools. I had never even heard of merit scholarships, but one day, based on people here talking about the importance of using the NPC calculators, I checked, and lo and behold. There are lots of different reasons why people might not know all these things - in my case, I live overseas and I’ve been out of school myself for a while - but CC really is invaluable. I’m hopefully now in the “giving back” stage, as my S19 is well-launched, but D21 is on a totally different path - online high school, not really interested in college right now, might go to art school or a CC, etc. - and I imagine I’ll be back here in questioning mode pretty soon.
"To your point, colleges have many institutional needs and I firmly believe they know pretty much the type of students they want that are within these "'buckets'".
Correct.
Without straying off course from the original purpose of this post, I’ll share a passage that gives some insight into elite college admissions. For veterans of the process, it’s nothing new or surprising.
“At the admissions end, it’s common knowledge that Harvard [interchangeable with other top colleges] selects at most 10 percent (some say 5 percent) of its students on the basis of academic merit. At an orientation session for new faculty, we were told that Harvard “wants to train the future leaders of the world, not the future academics of the world,” and that “We want to read about our student in Newsweek 20 years hence” (prompting the woman next to me to mutter, “Like the Unabomer”). The rest are selected “holistically,” based also on participation in athletics, the arts, charity, activism, travel, and, we inferred (Not in front of the children!), race, donations, and legacy status (since anything can be hidden behind the holistic fig leaf).”
A great post, and I’m not surprised given the source.
If you ever have the chance to see a Chris Peterson give his MIT presentation - take it. He presented to the Math Prize for Girls attendees last year and it was epic.
The MIT blog encourages applicants to:
Do Well In School (and take hard courses);
Be Nice;
Pursue Your Passions.
This thread asks:
What are the reasons parents obsess over the college admissions process ?
Because we love our children & care about their future.
Again, obsess and concern are two different things, the OP mentioned specific things like rankings, car decals (basically bragging where your kids go ), pretending not to care about prestige when you do, hyperfocus et. al.
The MIT blog is not too relevant here agree, but it’s a good read for people who haven’t seen it before.
Chris Peterson played a central role in changing life for the better for one talented student in dire straits. The story is documented here in one of the best CC feel good threads of all time: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1335649-homeless-didnt-get-in-through-the-waitlist-have-no-where-else-to-go-need-advice-p1.html
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/14338950#Comment_14338950
A big part of the reason kids need to be talked off the ledge if they do not get into whatever dream school is the obsession of places like this for schools known by certain capitalized letters or who rank #1 or top 5 or 10 or 20 (though for many here only pets would go to top 20 schools). There is something of a “do or die” mentality here for many people (though no doubt not for most).
Of course parents love and care about their kids. That isn’t unique to the obsessed.
But ultimately, there are no test cases for kids. No matter how well a given taken option works out for your kid, there may well have been a better option on the table at the time that wash’t taken. And no matter how poorly a given taken option works out, each and every other option on the table at the time may well have been worse. Know that different decisions are often not better or worse but just different.
There is also a lot of confirmation bias involved. Kids who have the stats to get into any of the given college obsessed institutions in vogue here are bright, hard working, dedicated and talented in many ways. Likely going to do very well in life. No matter where they go to college.
People I know in the real world (not here) are for the most part of the “life has many possible paths towards happiness” view. There are some exceptions who are college obsessed like some people here. But interestingly enough a higher percentage of them don’t seem to be happy with their lives. To each his/her own.