Yes my D opted out of all the mailings through college board. She was NM Commended and had fairly high SAT scores but got very limited mail and none from Harvard, U Chicago or the like. It’s easy enough to check the box that opts you out of the mailings. She signed up directly on college websites for any she was interested in. She had no interest in receiving unsolicited mail from schools she wasn’t considering.
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I think much of this is because students are encouraged to look at the wrong set of outcomes. Where you go to school shouldn’t become more important than the education you receive and the future you make because of it. If students were able to focus on learning and using their education as a vehicle rather than getting into … selective school they’d be less stressed.
Social media and peer pressure, the media (USNews etc.), universities and parents all contribute to this. There are options. Don’t compare yourself with others. Look for an education that prepares you for the future not one that that will look the most impressive. Sometimes that may not even require college. Parents be proud of your child’s character and happy for their successes (and sad when failure happens. It will and it’s not always a bad thing). You can celebrate or commiserate without judgement because what you truly value hasn’t changed. If you don’t want a lot of junk mail don’t check that box when you take standardized tests. Parents tell your kids what you’ll contribute to their education and don’t tie it to specific schools (“you get into xxxx university and we’ll make it work”). As a rule don’t go to battle for your child. Let them handle it on their own. There are always exceptions where they may be in over their heads and the consequences are too dire but dealing with challenges is a part of life. Overcoming will give them more confidence than any number of good grades and they’ll learn sometimes things don’t go your way. Finally, you won’t be great at everything but that doesn’t make it worth not doing. A “C” at something you’ve never tried is still knowledge learned and more than you’d have known if you only stuck to what you’re good at.
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If truth be told, Harvard or U Chicago’s junk mail is handled by third party companies. Could be the same one that sent promotional mail from your local state directionals.
It is; we did not turn away clients based on USNWR rankings.
True. Both Harvard and our local directional U (that never sent out mailers as I recall) benefit from increasing application volume. Seems like overkill in Harvard’s case, but it’s their money and they appear to have a very successful business model so who am I to judge?
You are missing a very big culprit - high schools. Many high schools use the number of acceptances to “elite” colleges as an indication of the “quality” of their own high school. This is in fact a major selling point for many private high schools, and for many public high schools which serve affluent communities, who use their own acceptances to convince wealthy parents to keep their kids in the public school.
If a high school which considers itself to be “elite” is using the number of students who attend Harvard (or Yale, or whatever) each year as “proof” of their excellence, they are pushing the narrative that a student only demonstrates their “excellence” by being accepted to one of these colleges.
Worse, is that many of these high schools treat college applications as though it were a competitive sport, making a big deal about students who are accepted to “elite” colleges as “winners”, while high achieving students who are not accepted or not interested are treated as disappointments.
Kids are often competitive, and can get into this on their own. However, it is far far worse when parents and high schools are actively encouraging it, or worse, forcing it on unwilling students.
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This is not the case. Private schools are exceptionally sensitive about characterizing the schools as anything other than the best fit for the kids that are matriculating there.
I am also not sure a lot of private school parents force kids for this or that. The more wealthy the family is, often the more relaxed they are.
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My guess is that many colleges use SAT/ACT scores as a filter for who gets the mailings. My older son got more Harvard-type mailings than my younger son, and his SAT was quite a bit higher. Just a guess, and this was a few years ago.
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I don’t really agree, at least in the Bay Area the wealthier families hire whole teams to get their kids into top colleges. And I’ve known some to use their influence to get their kids in too.
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Just because they are hiring some outside person doesn’t mean they are coming down heavily on the kid. The outside person is supposed to try and paper over any deficiencies in an application.
I’ve heard of someone from Singapore who has had a whole package created out of thin air that got into Yale. Do you think the kid is stressed? 
In the north east, at a private school that I am familiar with, I think things are not that blatant. Parents don’t want the kids to learn the wrong values. At the same time, they are not too stressed if the kid doesn’t get into Harvard. They are happy with some random SLAC, which is much easier to get into if you show some love (demonstrated interest and full pay binding ED).
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Or is it the other way around in that they got the student to apply to colleges that see the student as the best fit from the college’s point of view, thus leading to greater aggregate admission success at highly selective colleges than if college application choice were just a free-for-all without much advising?
80% of the kids get in ED. People are happy. But it is not artificially managed. We were told to not EA to Stanford because the school has not had much luck with Stanford. But anything else was fair game. They were even prepared to support an app to Stanford EA if we were keen. For my other kid who is not in that bucket, we just applied wherever we wanted, they advised, but did not interfere. I think 17 of the top 30 kids EAd to Yale my older son’s batch. That is how unmanaged the process is :-). Only the top kids apply EA. Most others ED. EDs are put into Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, North Western, JHU etc – basically anything you can ED will be EDd.
Where I live… this is not the process.
The private school counselors are champions at making every kid’s list filled with “this is my top choice” colleges. Mom and Dad want Williams or Amherst but the kid is no way no how getting in to Amherst? All of a sudden it’s Denison or Lehigh or Bucknell. Kid wants Dartmouth? Counselor spends a month extolling the benefits of Colgate and Hamilton. And it’s even more intense at the parochial schools (smaller field to pick from). No way is the entire senior class applying to ND and Georgetown. Not happening. So the kids are dispersed among Holy Cross and Providence and Seton Hall and Fairfield and Villenova-- you get the picture. The parents feel that this is what they are paying for- someone to tell their kid “you aren’t getting into Penn but let’s look at this fabulous program at BU” or “if you loved your visit to Bowdoin, wait until you hear about Muhlenberg”. And for the top slice? Why should 15 kids duke it out at Yale if Yale historically takes 5 or 6? The counselors know who the legacy kids are, who the serious development cases are, who is the extraordinary scholar/artist, and spreads everyone else around.
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Yale took 7 the prior year – mostly unhooked :-). Of course the year 17 applied, they only took 3, of which one was unhooked :-).
They don’t interfere with the kids at the top of the class. And if you take responsibility for your own actions, they won’t interfere with you anyway – i.e., for my younger kid we were mostly applying to public schools which they didn’t care about / know what the odds are (because Naviance or the equivalent doesn’t adjust for major choice). And we threw in some lottery ticket privates that everyone concerned knew were lottery tickets.
I am guessing that for families that want strong guidance, they give strong guidance. But they won’t say who else is applying. That is private information.
But kids generally knew where everyone was applying. If someone asked my kids (either of them), they’d just tell. Some of the Yale kids asked one of my kids if he was EAing into Yale. Yale was not even on his full list, let alone EA. He applied without concerning himself about where other kids were going. I think most kids are that way.
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Yes, the pressure comes from other places than just parents.
My dd is premed, as well, and is really stressed about grades. She was so disappointed to get an 88 on one of her tests, and I had to convince her that it’s a good grade!
She ended up with a 4.0 first semester and is working hard to keep it 2nd semester because sophomore classes (ochem and physics) are supposed to be especially tough, and she may need wiggle room.
When kids are told they need a 3.8 plus tons of volunteering, shadowing, clinical work, etc. to maybe have a chance at one med school acceptance, they’re going to put a lot of pressure on themselves.
Personally, I’ve suggested choosing an easier path. But she really wants to be a doctor.
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From both working at a high school for over 20 years and being a parent of three boys, I know there are kids who are self-driven to be perfectionists. No parent or other factor need be present. Then there are those who have to deal with the other factors.
In a 2nd grade parent/teacher conference we were told it was ok if my perfectionist missed a word or two on a spelling test. We told her, “Of course it’s ok - we tell him that all the time!” He was the one who was upset - no one else. And he’s a doctor now, never having gotten a grade in college less than an A-. I think he had two of those, and only one stressed him out. He was also always or almost always above the curve on his med school exams and more. It’s just the way he’s self driven. From my job at school I know he’s not the only one out there.
Then I have two other, far more normal, boys, one of whom proudly told H and I that he didn’t have to do any homework for one of his college classes because that was only worth 20% of his grade. The tests were worth 80%, so if he aced those he would get a B. He got his B. I’m still not sure I like his attitude better TBH, but it’s not the B that bothers me.
Overall, kids do best when they lead. Sure, parents can push kids, but sometimes it can lead to pushing them off the ledge. Find the niche for them and it usually works well.
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OMG, that was my daughter. In elementary school she wanted to be part of the drama and even exclaimed “My Dad will (terminal treatment) me” when a test didn’t come out as a 100%.
So the teachers must have thought her home was boot-camp. In reality, we two parents were certainly prodding for the best possible effort, in line with her abilities, but the outcome was secondary!
And by high school, we were (forced 
) completely off-hands, yet if anything, she only was more determined. We parents were the ones who kept suggesting to ease up a bit.
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Yes my S18 was and still is a perfectionist. He never got even an A- in middle school, high school or college, and got more A+s than As in college. It’s just how he’s wired, not based on pressure from parents, and continues in his job, where he’s annoyed if other people make spelling (or worse, spreadsheet) errors in client presentations.
However he does sometimes say he wished he’d got an A- in Econ 1, so he wouldn’t have put so much pressure on himself to keep a perfect GPA all four years of college.
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It might not encourage perfectionism but (even though I believe it’s valuable to identify the very best students) I think it makes most people feel worse.
I’ve mentioned before our end of year math exams in the UK: four 3 hour papers in 2 days, to get a third you needed a total of 3 correct answers (in the 4 papers combined), to get a second you needed 6 and to get a first you needed 13. The top students got 30-40 questions correct. There’s no way for the majority of the class not to feel stupid when that’s the range of ability, which is pretty tough for kids who were easily the best math student in their high school.
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The kids in the Varsity Blues scandal had wealthy parents and attended private high schools. The parents’ actions are hardly those of “relaxed parents”.
Besides, who do you think have the money for taking extra AP classes, for paying for multiple ECs? Parents making less than $100,000 a year with three kids cannot afford the cost of athletic club fees for expensive sports, trips, equipment. Middle class parents aren’t able to provide their kids the resources for a $50,000 startup, or a trip to Africa to help villagers build a well.
Yes, the super wealthy, the top 0.1% or wealthier aren’t as stressed, since they can afford to pay $500,000 to one of the consulting companies that craft a kid’s application, or donate enough that the kid’s resume doesn’t need to be impressive.
However, the rest are generally in the top 20% by income, since they are the ones who can financially afford the “arms race”.
So yes, these things are happening mostly among the affluent, and “elite” high schools, both public and private, tend to be the main culprits among high schools, because these are where the affluent send their kids.
PS. A kid from a poor family who sees admissions to an “elite” college as the best way out of poverty is a different story. They’re wrong, because elite colleges are not the best at that, but one of the many disadvantages of being poor is lack of access to good sources of information.
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