<p>Abbreviations in general.</p>
<p>Thanks all…I love this thread. You are all saying what I have been thinking!!! Co worker" I dont’ want my son going to a SUNY ( NY state schools) because the kids there probably party more then those at private school" Really, are you kidding???</p>
<p>Acronyms drive me crazy.</p>
<p>@cama: it seems some of the discussion on this thread has co-mingled with the subject of another long-running thread.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/926354-just-smile-nod-smile-nod.html?highlight=smile+nod[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/926354-just-smile-nod-smile-nod.html?highlight=smile+nod</a></p>
<p>You should check it out – lotsa laughs there.</p>
<p>My child has a 6.8 GPA.</p>
<p>I am another one who doesn’t get “DH”, “DS” etc for family members. Most people don’t use “dear son” in everyday conversation so why here? It doesn’t seem to save much on keystrokes, considering the shift key and all.</p>
<p>How do we know the “D” always stands for Dear?</p>
<p>Admission Probabilities 101 broken down into micro-tiers is so confusing!</p>
<p>high match
low match
match
high reach
low reach
reach
safety</p>
<p>So, let’s see if I got this right. </p>
<p>High match is almost like a reach but closer to a low reach, a safety is highly needed similar to a low match, and when there is an outcome that a low match is accepted into a high reach, it’s a crab shoot?</p>
<p>I hate chance me threads that read like this - I have a 4.0, number 1 in class of 750, 2350 SAT, president of every club I’m in, hundreds of hours of community service, started a nonprofit and won state and national awards, do I have a chance at x school?</p>
<p>But I love the answers - you have a 10% chance.</p>
<p>Cama we must know the same people! I was told that my daughter attends a SUNY party school that is so boring that everyone drinks. I was told that there are no hotels within one hour. Really? We stay at a nice hotel within walking distance from the school. My daughter plays several sports as part of her social life and I am quite sure that there is no alcohol involved. I was also told that the school is " too easy." I just can’t believe that people say this to me!!</p>
<p>Guess what? When my younger one applies she will put all of her offers on the table. If SUNY is the best ( she already likes the schools) then that is where she is going!! The local snobs will once again look at me with pity, but my kids will have an outstanding education at a price that I can afford.</p>
<p>Speaking to emphasis on top/selective college: I applied to top schools mainly for the financial aid. Coming from CA, all of my options, even with financial aid and scholarships from my high GPA and test scores, were more expensive than the private school I now attend. I applied to 15 schools, 8 were reaches, 2 were matches, and 5 were safeties. I didn’t get enough aid at my safeties or matches to make them affordable. The only schools I could afford were 3 reach schools and UC Davis, though Davis had more loans. It was nice selecting a more well ranked school, but it wasn’t really a factor in my decision. </p>
<p>I hate the abundance of Tufts Syndrome threats to schools who accept less than 30% of students.</p>
<p>Sometimes I think there are more students applying to hyps on the chances forum than in real life</p>
<p>Sue22: too funny!!</p>
<p>On the origins of prestige (from the Oxford dictionary)</p>
<p>" Origin:
mid 17th century (in the sense ‘illusion, conjuring trick’): from French, literally ‘illusion, glamour’, from late Latin praestigium ‘illusion’, from Latin praestigiae (plural) ‘conjuring tricks’. The transference of meaning occurred by way of the sense ‘dazzling influence, glamour’, at first depreciatory"</p>
<p>That is why the French call pur “magician” a prestidigitateur. A synonym of escamoteur · acrobate · illusionniste · jongleur · magicien · manipulateur · truqueur</p>
<p>[prestidigitateur</a> - English translation - bab.la French-English dictionary](<a href=“http://en.bab.la/dictionary/french-english/prestidigitateur]prestidigitateur”>http://en.bab.la/dictionary/french-english/prestidigitateur)</p>
<p>But words do lose their literal meaning over time. Just think of our use of celibacy that has become a synonym for abstinence when it means a simpler “being unwed” and the erroneous uses of words such as comprise that has become comprised of in today’s colloquial English. </p>
<p>In the end, prestige is well-understood term.</p>
<p>What I absolutely HATE are posts like:</p>
<p>" I want to know what my changes are of getting into ( name of school). I have an 800 in everything or close to it, I am head debater, 4.0, published a book, won the Nobel Prize etc. and yet they are still asking this type of question. " Obviously, I am exaggerating a bit, but many kids with fabulous stats are asking these dumb questions. My second least favorite question is "which is the best school, " when we know nothing about them. Even questions asking us to compare schools are idiotic since I would bet that no one attended all the schools in order to make such as comparison.</p>
<p>So pleased to see this erudition on ‘prestige’, and all at once too. Anyway, consider the following from Paul Fussell’s exquisite book Class - A Guide Through The American Status System at p. 154 of the paperback: </p>
<p>“The middle class is where your hear prestigious a lot, and to speculate about the reason it’s replaced distinguished or noted or respected in the past twenty years [book was written 1983] is to do a bit of national soul-searching. The implications of prestige, C Wright Mills observes, are really pejorative: ‘In its origins,’ he says, ‘it means dazzling the eye with conjuring tricks.’ And he goes on: ‘In France, ‘prestige’ carries an emotional association of fraudulence, of the art of illusion, or at least of something adventitious.’ The same in Italy and Germany. Only in the U.S.A. does the word carry any prestige, and looking back, I see that I’ve depended on prestige quite a lot when talking about high-class colleges.”</p>
<p>Ive always wondered what a person from another country would think of a university that was said to have lots of prestige…</p>
<p>“Safety.”</p>
<p>These days, the only safeties that exist are the ones that GUARANTEE acceptance as long as you have a ___ GPA and a ____ SAT/ACT score.</p>
<p>Don’t forget about Tufts Syndrome.</p>