<p>thanks again for your help.
part of the issue is that my parents know a lot of other parents whose children got into harvard, yale, princeton (none of which i got into) and in all honesty, their “stats” were pretty much equal to mine. this makes my parents feel like either the other kids (my PEERS from a similar background) did something else that made them more “amazing” to the schools, or that my essays were severely lacking. i know it’s human nature… but when those OTHER parents call and want to talk and analyze (and gloat… they KNOW i didn’t get in!) how their amazing kid got into HYPSM and the rest of the ivy league plus several med programs with scholarship, it’s natural that both me and my parents feel bad…</p>
<p>Those people don’t sound very nice. Maybe your family can avoid them for now. I’m sure there are other parents around you who are unhappy with their children’s acceptances but they probably just aren’t being as loud and boastful about it. </p>
<p>In our case my D was also rejected at HYPSM but she was accepted to several very good schools. We are really busy right now trying to arrange visits to the places she was accepted to and trying to research them to figure out which one to select. Unless you have already made up your mind I would think you would also be very busy doing this. So I would try to get your parents involved in looking toward the future and researching your options and visiting schools. Then they won’t have as much time to worry about what might have been. </p>
<p>Congratulations on your achievements. It sounds like you have a lot of great options.</p>
<p>Your parents are prestige whores (as are some other immigrant parents). Tell them to deal with the fact that you didn’t get into HYPSM but some other great schools. (the Clintons didn’t go HYPSM undergrad, Obama didn’t, Martin Luther King didn’t, Thurgood Marshall didn’t, etc., yet they were all successful). Your parents don’t realize that statistics aren’t everything (yours are great).
First off, you got into two Ivies and other top schools (I don’t recommend applying to all the top schools just because they are prestigious, but whatever). Great job. I would have been happy with an acceptance from Wharton or Cornell AEM (rejected and guaranteed transfer, respectively). Getting rejected from a school doesn’t mean you aren’t good enough, it just means you aren’t right for the schools. For example, I got into NYU Stern’s BPE program but got waitlisted at Lehigh, which had a weaker and less selective business program. Does it mean I’m not qualified to be accepted at Lehigh? Not necessarily. Would I not be the best fit for Lehigh? Probably not. And undergrad at Yale is highly overrated (I live 30 min from it, so my parents made me take tours and student shadows and stuff). The student body is smart (understatement), but the academic system leaves much to be desired. New Haven is not the best of places, either.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sounds to me like your parents should be saying, “congratulations.” I’ll say that here. In defense of any parent, I would say that it’s easy to feel disappointed when Junior doesn’t get [insert name of desired outcome here], but that happens in life. Part of being a parent, and part of being a child, is learning to deal with disappointment.</p>
<p>Hey OP- I understand what’s happening. I have a good friend that attends an elite prep school with a large highly accomplished Asian group of students. This is exactly what’s happening to them. There is a lot of pressure on you guys and the parental social circle is very competitive. I think you will just have to sit it out and wait for all the “excitement” to subside. Eventually all of you will go your seperate ways and this will stop. The parents will then get to share with each other all their different college stories. There really isn’t much else you can do as they are just dealing with disappointment. Too bad cause you should be celebrating. It’s Ok to just accept that you feel bad but do try to move forward. Glad you had this thread to allow you vent a bit and hear how excited for you we are.</p>
<p>
Your parents are nuts. Hand them the essays. Hand them the resume. And ask them – what is going to change about your college admission results by critiquing them?</p>
<p>Attenuation,</p>
<p>Congratulations on your accomplishments. The only thing I’d add to the many good comments above is to ask how accomplished your folks are. In my experience, the parents that push the hardest for a specific school are either alums or, more often, those trying to force all their unfulfilled dreams on their kids. This last point is a heavy cross to bear. Just because your parents want this does not make it your responsibility to deliver. Wrapping all of one’s dreams into three schools is quite narrow minded. Sorry, but they should only want the BEST for you, and not define that as something with a 10% likelihood.</p>
<p>Live your life and be happy always, and be proud of your success. If your parents love you, they will get with it over time.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>OP: hang in there, this will quickly pass. Whenever they bring up a criticism, turn the question around and simply say, “Hmmm, I’m not sure, what do YOU think?” Then let them blow off steam and ignore everything they say that is negative. You are obviously very accomplished and successful and in a few months your parents will be fully involved with how you are doing at your new university instead of wondering about things that happened in high school. I would go with a school that gives you a bit of breathing room from your parent’s criticism. Choose somewhere they have to fly to if they want to visit. I’m sure they love you very much and think you are the greatest kid ever, which is why they cannot understand why the admissions people at certain schools did not agree. Good luck.</p>
<p>Blame your parents for settling in NJ, which probably exports more college students than anywhere in the US. If your file landed at Yale from, say, Wyoming, you’d be an auto-admit.</p>
<p>Maybe you could show them the decision threads on CC of people that applied to some of the schools that you got rejected from, and maybe even some of the colleges you got into. You’ll probably find at least some people with higher or lower stats that got rejected/waitlisted or accepted respectively, which might help. And you’ll probably even be able to find people that got into Harvard or Yale but not into Columbia and stuff.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh my god they sound like typical Asian parents. <em>headdesk</em> My parents are exactly the same. Get out while you can, then they’ll start missing you and act like parents should.</p>
<p>Haha, yeah, going to a competitive nj school might not have helped, although i’m glad i did because i know that my curriculum was more rigorous than it might have been and i feel prepared for my college courseload. </p>
<p>part of the reason why my parents want to analyze where i “went wrong” is because i’m on five or six waitlists, and they’re focusing on those waitlists MUCH more than they are on where i actually got in. i was actually only straight-out rejected from one school.</p>
<p>thanks for all your supportive replies again!</p>
<p>Here is a thought - instead of guessing, why not have your GC call up those schools to find out why. They are getting paid to do that, especially if you got to a competitive school.</p>
<p>^oldfort: </p>
<p>NO – Colleges tell you specifically that they will not tell you the reason why you are rejected, because (1) college admissions is very complicated so it’s hard to explain; (2) admissions does not record why they rejected you, and (3) they would get too many phone calls from rejectees about why they were rejected (ever imagined why Stanford put up an FAQ for rejectees? :D) </p>
<p>Anyways, attenuation, you should be happy about your admits … it was a very tough year, and you and your parents should be proud. The only reason why I can think that you were waitlisted at those schools is simply that they did not have enough room this year … remember that many schools had record numbers of applicants this year, so your parents should understand that. If they admitted everyone who was a perfect fit, they would have to end up doing what Brown did last year — make freshmen sleep in the basement! Most schools don’t want a housing crisis. </p>
<p>You don’t seem like a very “deficient” or “flawed” student — many people would like to have your profile, but they don’t. You should be happy with what you’ve done and what you’ve gotten out of it. (Heck, I got rejected from Stanford, Brown, and MIT and WLed at Chicago and I applied to 6 schools … the other two were instate publics!)</p>
<p>Look at it this way: At least you have luxury of choosing which school you want to go to. Remember that there are people in this world who don’t have the opportunity of going to college, and they can only dream of what you have right now.</p>
<p>That’s what colleges tell YOU. Our GCs know before decisions come out. They have conference calls with adcoms on applicants. Good GCs should be able to find out. Our GC did for my daughter. They won’t tell you, but they most likely will speak with your GC, especially if it’s a competitive school.</p>
<p>My school is competitive enough to send about the top 10% of its class to ivies/other top schools (duke, chicago, northwestern, mit, stanford, williams, caltech, etc) but i don’t think it’s a “feeder” school. should i still ask?</p>
<p>Can’t hurt, might help, right?</p>
<p>Yes, ask. What’s more important, have your GC find out what else they would like to see from you to get you off their WL. Maybe you didn’t demonstrate enough leadership, maybe it’s…In my daughter’s case, it wasn’t enough interest. You should then write a letter of interest to those schools. My daughter’s GC faxed her midterm teachers’ writeup about her, and they were glowing. Those writeup came from 6-8 teachers, whereas her recommendations were from 2 teachers. Our kids school send over 35% of students to top 20 schools. GCs are paid to maintain that record.</p>
<p>Attenuation, I only ready the first half of the responses you received and feel compelled to reinforce your notion that your parents just don’t seem to understand. (Except, frankly, there’s no equivocal “seem” about it.) They don’t understand now; they didn’t understand when you began the process. They didn’t obsess for hours researching on the internet, they didn’t haunt College Confidential, they didn’t read books put out by Kaplan, The College Board or Loren Pope.</p>
<p>You are right. They don’t get it. It’s not about where you’re deficient. It’s that they simply haven’t acquired the knowledge necessary to understand. They are college application neophytes jumping in at the culmination of the process. Try not to take it personally and let them play catch up while you rest secure in the knowledge that you did what it took to get yourself accepted at some of the best schools in the world and seriously considered by most of the others. Enjoy the rest of your time in high school and relish the opportunities the future holds for a self-motivated, high-achieving superstar. Congratulations!</p>
<p>And the remark about “other parents calling to gloat” is very troubling. There are other parents who actually think it’s their business to discuss where you got in with your parents?? And brag and gloat about their own kids and make your parents feel “bad” about your “suboptimal performance”?? And these are people we are all supposed to “impress” and convince them that really it’s ok to attend a lower ivy and convince them you won’t be flipping burgers for a career? Please. These people have no manners, no class and no clue about America. What they consider “prestigious enough” is irrelevant since they are the farthest thing from being prestigious themselves. </p>
<p>The American equivalent would be going to Appalachia and asking an unknowledgeable person what is the best handbag to carry, having them say Gucci because they’ve heard of it once or twice and then spending the rest of your life acquiring Gucci bags to impress them. Asian immigrants who are obsessed to the point of ridiculousness about a handful of schools aren’t the arbiters of prestige in this country. </p>
<p>You rocked. You went to the olympics, you win the silver medal and your parents are disappointed you didn’t get the gold. That says far more about your parents’ values than it does about you.</p>