Some of this is regional too. We’re near Portland, OR and no one talks all that much about college choices outside of recruited athletes and the tippy-top students who go to ivy leagues. D23 is at a small private school and even there it isn’t the center of their world at all. Now when we used to live in New England, college admissions were brought up in the 7th grade parent meeting 
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That is too funny. And here in our household, because I’m always researching, I’m the one usually telling my daughter that she should let any friends she knows who applied early to XYZ school know that they hardly accepted anyone in EA and shouldn’t feel bad haha. I don’t think she would even check her email or portals without me reminding her 
.
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Speaking of Portland, OR – for anyone who saw my question 2 days ago (way up the thread) about whether or not their child had gotten a kind of cryptic admissions email from Lewis & Clark about having been accepted, and that they should click to enroll, but there was no update in the portal…I did finally call the admissions office today, and those emails were sent out in error! Decisions not until March or April.
So D23 ended up getting two “you are accepted” emails in the same day, but she is not in fact yet accepted. Apparently they are working with a third-party vendor who screwed up. That’s a pretty big OOPS. I told the person who answered the phone that they might want to consider sending an email correction! Surprised they haven’t done so already.
Not worried about it, and L & C is one of the schools where I’m almost positive she will get in, but I just find it funny. How do you screw something like that up??
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Yes I feel like it’s almost a constant ticker across the bottom of these kids’ mental screen. “Friend X admitted to MIT … Friend Y reports Northeastern portal isn’t updated yet … Friend Z muses on crazy admissions season because everyone was deferred from USC, even the ones that got into Stanford …” I have to pay attention to CC just to keep up with the kids
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At my son’s school last year they set up an Insta account for the Class of 22 and posted pix of the kids with the college logo where they’re going. I believe it was not an official school account. I was happy because otherwise I wouldn’t know where any of the kids were going. I believe “they’re” doing it again this year, my son tells me, though I don’t know who “they” are. I think it’s like crowd-sourced from the kids.
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I think the conversation about the cost of attending college is becoming more open. I know for 2 of my kids, they had classes which helped students make steps for after graduation. They had assignments to research colleges, needed test scores, GPA, cost of attendance, and scholarship sources. Both my kids came home and asked what our plan was for paying for college. What was our budget. It was a class assignment.
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Our school has this, an instagram college decisions page, and I believe it is run by a student. I also enjoy looking at it, but this is another brutal year for admissions so I am guessing it doesn’t make all those deferred kids feel great.
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It definitely happens, even for grad school! My older DD received a denial for a law school and 2 weeks later she received an email about accepted student events across the country 
This was a ‘safety’ law school so she was distraught for quite awhile. Thankfully, she received offers for T14 schools but that first denial and then mistake email inviting her to accepted events was disheartening for sure!
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Yeesh! Seems like a thing you would check and check and check before sending. Glad your daughter ended up with better options!
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My Dad back in the early 70s went to an Ivy League MBA program. On the first day, a guy showed up who apparently was supposed to have been rejected. He had his acceptance letter and follow-up information packet though, all legit, so they let him complete the program.
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This! There’s a reason that CC participants seem to skew east coast, you know?
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My kid goes to a small private high school I also teach at. During electives kids walk from room to room letting people know which decisions came out and seeing who got in where. We had an ED acceptance to NYU, a bunch of deferrals from USC, a bunch of kids accepted so far to Baylor, TCU, etc… Everyone knows real time who’s accepted, denied, and deferred.
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My D18 with a mere 1250 4.0 W 3.7 UW had over 800K in merit scholarship offers due to applying to a bunch of private schools. She went to a very small H.S. and at their awards ceremony they announced that the graduating class had 2 million is scholarship offers. I was in shock that it was so low considering my daughter’s amount.
I would guess most top schools should be in the billions!
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Maybe they were adding up the merit offers at the schools where each student actually decided to attend, rather than all the offers every student received.
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Yep. It can be a bit much.
By late December, S23 knew all the kids who were admitted ED/REA to top schools. We’re in a public suburban HS (total school enrollment 1200) that tends to do well with admissions to elite schools. This ED/REA round we’ve already had 1 Princeton, 1 Dartmouth, 1 Yale, 1 Brown, 1 Duke, 1 Stanford, and 4 Cornell. The interesting thing is that S knew about those decisions from many kids in his AP classes discussing their results. He even knows where students were deferred or rejected and where several submitted EDII and EA applications. The kids are very open with discussing ED/REA/EA applications once the deadlines pass. Before that, no one says much about their school lists. I think they’re all too stressed and don’t like to think about how they are directly competing with each other in many cases.
The one thing that is nice about his high school is people also celebrate admissions to schools with higher acceptance rates. While there is certainly a bit of a “wow factor” for admissions to T20 schools, there are also enthusiastic reactions for other universities too. One of S23’s friends was admitted to UVM (his first choice) and the group took him out to a celebratory dinner. (Of course, celebratory dinners for high school boys = Chickfila 
)
As @mountainsoul mentioned though, no discussion about the ins and outs of financing it.
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That’s funny they add up the amount of the merit scholarships. That number means zilch.
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Hopefully no one is hurt during this process of having to share the decision results.
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That would make sense- the other merit offers won’t help once a school is selected.
After watching the ceremony and talking to my daughter, sadly I do not believe it was the case. The guidance department was terrible and most kids only applied to one or two schools. Her guidance counselor was annoyed that she applied to 15. Most attended our state schools that give very little in scholarships if any.
Yeah. My kid was a bit embarrassed to be deferred by USC, then he figured out everyone else was deferred too. He also felt bad when he got accepted to Purdue with scholarship, which was a back up to him, while some of his friends were denied and it was their first choice.
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