<p>You're an excellent student, ranking as one of the highest in your class. Your test scores are great - around 1500. You lead a few extracurricular activities and have won numerous awards both within the school and from outside organizations. You're even co-captain of the cross-country team. While not wealthy, your family has saved for college and might be able to afford the best. </p>
<p>Everyone around you - teachers, parents, relatives, peers - has high expectations for your future. "If ever there was anyone poised for success," they say, "it's you." And your confidence is high. After all, you've succeeded in most things you've done in your life. You've never had any major disappointments.</p>
<p>When it's time to decide on which colleges to apply to, you get input from EVERYONE, and they're all telling you the same thing, that you're Harvard material or Yale material or Princeton or ... And of course you are. You can compete with any of those other kids there.</p>
<p>So, throwing in the other Ivies and very high ranking schools like Stanford, you come up with your list. And you tell the world where you'll be applying because it's such a rush. Just mentioning your name with those kinds of schools lends you to almost believe that it's a done deal. You've hedged your bets because you know that the acceptance rates are low, so you apply to enough so that at least one of them will come through. Your relatives are excited, you're excited, your teachers are excited, and your parents are telling everyone they know where your applications are going.</p>
<p>You work your butt off with the apps, making sure that you're seen in the best light, especially the essays. You want to show that you are an intellectual, yet have so much more to bring to campus. You develop a strategy: Early Decision. You've heard that you've got a better chance of getting in ED, so you choose your favorite of your favorites and send off the application. Your parents are now telling the world where you applied ED.</p>
<p>When the deferral comes from that choice, you're crushed, but not so much as if they had rejected you outright. What the letter is saying is that you are qualified for admission (which you knew), but that many are qualified and they are reserving the right to decide later. Your parents story becomes that you're "on the waiting list" for the name school, as if it were only a matter of a short time.</p>
<p>On April 1st, you're surrounded by a pile of rejections and wait-list options. You wonder if the fact that it's April Fool's Day has anything to so with this. Much of the overwhelming disappointment is the fact that you may never be attending the schools you and your parents bragged to the world about just a few short months earlier. But the overwhelming feeling will be embarassment about telling the outside world of this fact. Your parents are feeling your disappointment, but their emotions are turning to anger - not at you, but at the sheer stupidity of the admissions committees of the schools. Did they not LOOK at the applications???? But deep down (they may not even know this), they also are feeling some embarassment at having to tell everyone to whom they bragged about you the truth.</p>
<p>Maybe the teachers and friends and relatives won't ask, you think, but they always do. Again and again and again. Being on a wait-list or two gives a slight out. Perhaps those that you talk to don't know that the odds of getting in off the wait-list are slim.</p>
<p>Suddenly, your confidence is shaken to its core. You begin to doubt your own worth. Your safety - probably the state flagship - seems like a prison sentence, not because you can't get a good education there, but because when you answer the question, "Where are you going to college?" you will invariably get a look or a grunt or even a question that implies "Why there? Why not someplace better?"</p>
<p>The world (and what you think will be your future) seems like a dark place at that point.</p>
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<p>So how to avoid that scenario? Lots of advice on CC is floating around and should be listened to. One shouldn't stop applying for the most selective schools. After all, SOMEONE'S got to be admitted, and it might be you. But you should have very realistic expectations of how the current process works are a realistic assessment of your odds. But one of the biggest mistakes to make is for you (and especially your parents) to tell the world where you've applied and talk as if it's a sure thing.</p>