<p>I read this comment on another thread:</p>
<p>"I'm just REALLY happy that DS was rejected from Harvard and MIT. Saved me about $100K because I admit it would have been hard to turn down."</p>
<p>I had the same thought when my own child was rejected from Stanford, and for the same reason, because Stanford would have been very hard to turn down... but the cost...yikes. </p>
<p>Anyone else feel the same way?</p>
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<p>Well, I am sure this is shared among some of the families that don’t qualify for finaid. The price tag is more like $220K for full-pay. The difference between those 2 elite schools and others (whether they are public or private+merit) could be around ~100K or as much as $220K.</p>
<p>Was not too sad when DS was rejected by Caltech/MIT. Coming poorly prepared from a not-great HS, I was rather nervous about the intensity he would be running into, and starting behind most of the kids in terms of prep. Even at his current non-tech school, he’s the only kid in his Physics for physics majors who hasn’t had AP physics in HS. I think he was nervous too, and not completely heart broken about the rejections.</p>
<p>I think my mom was relieved by my Rice rejection since she does not like Houston weather (it’s hazardous to the volume of her hair).</p>
<p>DH & I were relieved when S was rejected by Princeton. I don’t think he could’ve turned it down, but we didn’t feel it was the best match for him. Fortunately, we didn’t have to have that discussion/argument.</p>
<p>There are schools that I know parents were very relieved did not send an acceptance letter. I know parents who absolutely wanted their kids relatively nearby and were uneasy about them applying far away and upset when it became obvious that those schools were becoming first choices.</p>
<p>Happened to me a few years ago. He’s at that school.</p>
<p>I’m just glad that my D was either accepted or rejected everywhere that she applied. No waiting lists to contend with. (Of course her acceptances were to several pretty phenomenal schools that she was thrilled about, so maybe that is why I’m happy with no waiting lists.) Still, having only acceptances/denials cut off all the angst as of May 1st!</p>
<p>Looking back (D1 is a college junior now), I am glad she was rejected at her biggest reach and never got off the waitlist at her other reach. She wouldn’t have been happy at the big reach (she admits this now, too), and either would have been such a financial stretch. As it was, she happily attends a match with good merit aid, and is on track to graduate near the top of her class with a post-graduation job offer in hand. 
No complaints at all.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is hoping that her son doesn’t get off the waitlist from his first choice school. They’ve already sent a second deposit and turned about face when he cleared one waitlist after celebrating his choice and going whole hog in the commitment mode. She doesn’t think she can go through another change in plan. She is so over all of this and just want to go full force ahead.</p>
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<p>Yes, yes, yes to this. I truly feel for families that have to deal with the additional stress of the waiting list.</p>
<p>DS’s only rejection was Stanford. He applied on a lark. If he’d gotten in we would have felt compelled to visit and give it some consideration. Glad we didn’t have to.</p>
<p>Like intparent, I too was relieved when my DD was rejected from a reach school to which she had applied ED. I was surprised that she would be attracted to the school in the first place. As the time for the decision approached, I found myself more and more concerned that she would be in over her head. As it was ED, we would have had no choice but to send her. She was not rejected in the ED round, but her application was returned to the pile for the general admission decision. Sigh of relief. By then, she was more fixated on another school which was a much better match. A little off topic, but this has made me really think about the practice of applying to the reach school in general. Seems like it may just set the kid up for four (or more) years of struggle. Unless there is some problem in the application (like poor SAT scores that don’t reflect the student’s true ability) such that you believe your child truly can handle the extra challenge, why would you want him/her to apply to the reach school? We will definitely keep this in mind for our second child when it is his turn.</p>
<p>mommeleh, you are so right! For D2, we are more focused on match schools. I doubt she will apply anywhere where she is not in the top 50% of their test score ranges.</p>
<p>But for some students, especially top students, academic “matches” are admissions “reaches”.</p>
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<p>Yes, the summer for these students can be pure purgatory. Our D was WL at 8 schools last year!!! Granted, they were all highly, highly selective (most ivys + WUST and Vandy); nevertheless, the prospect of getting that call caused nothing but anxiety. On the other hand, had she received 11/18 rejections rather than 3 rejections/8 WL/ 7 acceptances, her ego and confidence probably would have been severely shaken. The good news is that she’s just completed a phenomenal first year, though, and is quite happy!</p>
<p>I am thankful that my S decided to take his one waitlist result as a “no” and just move on.</p>
<p>three years ago we took all waitlists as rejections from top 20 schools; my daughter took them all as "no"s (thank goodness) and we were VERY happy she did…</p>
<p>none of the waitlists were good academic fits for her aspirations (although they were good social fits that we really didn’t want to spend full pay for)…</p>
<p>Our relief at a rejection was for high school, not college. </p>
<p>S applied to three competitive admittance (free) public high school programs, and also to one expensive private school. He was accepted to two of the public school programs, rejected from another public school, and waitlisted (ultimately rejected) at the expensive private school.</p>
<p>I was so glad that he wasn’t accepted at the expensive private school, since I preferred the public school program, and didn’t want him to blame me later for not wanting to spend the money to send him to the private school.</p>
<p>I also was glad that he was rejected at one of the public schools that he applied to, as I didn’t think it was a good fit for him, and was a lot further away from our house.</p>
<p>S got to choose between the two public school programs he was accepted to, and was quite happy at the one he chose. And he did very well in his college admissions, getting in to his ED school, so I have no regrets. </p>
<p>I think most students will bloom where they are planted. And there can be huge differences in cost. So, I imagine a lot of parents prefer to let the college be the bad guy (with the rejection), rather than the parents being the bad guy (since they can’t or won’t pay the expense of the expensive school.)</p>
<p>Exactly the same reaction as you, eastcoastcrazy, over exactly the same school. This was a few years ago now, as DS has since graduated. But his rejection from Stanford (I’m a legacy) was a disappointment to him (and me) briefly, but a relief as well as he loved the school with the merit $$ and we didn’t have to weigh that issue. Don’t know what we would have decided.</p>
<p>I’m definitely in this camp! My computer-science-happy son would have LOVED to attend MIT, but was rejected. We did not qualify for financial aid, though we could probably have managed to send him there if he had taken out some loans and the whole family lived a very constrained life otherwise. His next-highest-ranked choice was our state flagship, UVA, where he already knew some faculty in computer science, and which was willing to give him serious advanced standing in his major. We can easily pay for UVA out of the money we had already earmarked for college in S’s 529 plan. S has had a wonderful first year, will be able to finish his computer science major in his second year and thereafter either double major or just spend some time exploring new subjects. He has a lot of quirky interests, and I suspect at a school like MIT, he would gotten a terrific, rigorous engineering education but had less time to “play” intellectually in fields that have nothing to do with his major.</p>