<p>It is one of reasons why GCs try to keep relationship with many college reps. Those GCs make sure students do not violate the ED agreement, be truthful with reps, and gently make sure students do not always use a school as the backup.</p>
<p>Back in 2006, D2’s school had 7 kids apply to Cornell, 4 were admitted, 0 matriculated. Ever since then, 0 has been admitted, even students who were admitted to HYPS (could tell on the Naviance) were rejected. Last year 11 applied, 0 admitted. It is a school of 200 seniors. The school is in an urban setting with warm weather, most kids do not want to go to a school with cold weather and in the middle of no where. HYPS, Duke, Penn, and many other schools travel down to visit the school, but not Cornell. I don’t really blame Cornell, why go after students who do not want to be there.</p>
<p>College mailings are pretty sporadic, and the promotional mailings are all contracted out to just a few companies–we’ve gotten virtually identical mailers from 2 schools with only the school name, stock photos, and color scheme changed. I very much doubt anyone in the admissions office would be so vindictive as to go into the data base and cut out your son’s name based on the HS he attends.</p>
<p>But there may be a bigger issue with your son’s HS. If several years running they’ve made multiple offers to graduates of your son’s HS and their yield is consistently 0%, it seems perfectly rational for them to just give up on the school. They have limited recruitment resources; why spend them where they’re just banging their head against a wall? And it’s quite reasonable for them to start to assume that, whether under the influence of GCs or just as part of the student culture, word has gone around your son’s HS that this college should be regarded as a “safety,” an acceptable place to go if you don’t get better offers. Some schools don’t mind being used that way; in particular, it seems to me that schools doing a second round of ED are basically asking to be used in something like that way. Other schools resent it; if they’re consistently striking out, it drives down their yield, drives up their admit rate, and makes them look weak and unappealing.</p>
<p>You seem to be saying your son wants to use this school as a safety. Nothing wrong with that; everyone should have a safety. But if the school doesn’t want to be his safety, it has that right, too. And if it so decides, then it’s not a safety for your S. Unfortunate, perhaps, but they’re under no legal, contractual, or moral obligation to admit him.</p>
<p>If it’s not just a safety or backup–if it’s truly his top choice, or among his top choices—there should be ways to signal that. For starters, to a college, nothing says “I love you” quite like that ED app. If he’s not there—if it truly is just a college he’d settle for if his preferred options don’t work out—then frankly, I’d just write it off based on what you know (or think you know), and move on with the search for a genuine safety.</p>
<p>tk21769, thanks for the link to the Neurotic Parent blog. Hilarious! I read a lot of it and did some snooping… according to Amazon, a book based on the site is coming out early next year. Looks very funny, at least from the cover.</p>
<p>I take it you graduated sometime in the late '80s or on the cusp of the '90s. I graduated sometime in the mid’90s. </p>
<p>Incidentally…regarding P…several older high school classmates who were students there recounted the high levels of snobbery based on one’s socio-economic status, public/private school, geographic region, and whether they were urban/rural or preferably…suburban from an upper/upper-middle class suburb. One older post-college friend who was a P grad had such bad reactions to the above that he ended up being totally 200% gung-ho about MIT…his grad school. The way he acted, everyone thought he was dyed in the wool MIT from college through grad school until his sister slipped up and revealed his P past. </p>
<p>Granted, Princeton has undergone great changes in the last 2+ decades so today’s P is far more open-minded and down-to-earth. </p>
<p>However, it seems our HS still has plenty of jokes about P having to hold its nose in utter revulsion each spring when it finds it failed again to hold back the tide of grubby riffraffs from our school.</p>