"So, is your daughter thinking about where she wants to apply to college?"

Most of the scenarios that make you regret it come later – once admissions are known. So it seems innocuous now. But there are pitfalls later on. I have also personally known kids who got skunked on more selective schools after they or their parents trumpeted their list to everyone. Pretty embarrassing for the kid. And we have posters out here where it happens, too – this year a valedictorian who missed on all Ivies, she ended up at her state flagship. She did not want to go to school the day after Ivy acceptances.

@luckymama64 “Oh, those are really hard to get into”

That is actually good. At least they have heard of it. Usually I just get “I never heard of it.”

Interesting community. I barely know any parents at my kids’ school although I know many of the classmates because they drop by at our home.

@texaspg - as a teacher, I have a different role in the school community than that of a parent. I have no doubt that many are in blissful ignorance of all other student’s plans but their own

I live in Louisiana as well, and I’d expect to get “Where’s that?” or “Why would you want to go all the way to there?” rather than a comment about a school being hard to get into. IME, most people don’t even pay that much attention to very selective schools, to the point of not knowing they are selective. When I mentioned to someone that my son had been interested in Rice but ended up not applying, and he wouldn’t have gotten in anyway, they said “Rice is hard to get into?” Um, yes.

" It’s like people who lie about their age- while it’s certainly their prerogative, what do they gain? Sorry that doesn’t fit into your world view. " I don’t see the corollary here to the admissions process. I, for one, am not suggesting lying. And if folks want to share their own info, more power to them. I just find it interesting that you can’t grasp reasons why some people don’t want to share, @toowonderful. It’s not in everyone’s personality to be an open book about everything. Perhaps I am biased by my own family’s high school situation which is different than yours. My children’s teachers very much did NOT talk about the college process in the classroom. The emphasis was on downplaying the process and focusing on all the other things kids should be focusing on in their life besides the college process - learning, extracurriculars, athletics, community events, world events, etc. The faculty saw it as their role to remind the kids that the next 12 months was not just about college and that whatever happened and wherever they landed, all would be just fine. The role was to help the kids find that balance when so much else in their life at that point in time is screaming “college process!”. Again, my kids’ school was different from yours. Very rigorous academics in a boarding atmosphere. It was imperative that the college process did not consume these young people’s lives living in community 24/7. These are kids who feel plenty of college pressure of their own making and sometimes of their parents’ making. If they had questions and needed advice, they had plenty of knowledgeable and helpful college counselors, advisors, coaches and teachers to talk to. This was done one on one, not as a classroom activity.

Are there not some kids in your classroom that might be more introverted and reticent to share or stressed about the process?? Is that not a possibility?

@doschicos - of course there are introverts at my school, and of course not everyone shares everything. Everyone has the right to their own journey- best of luck with yours

Are you saying there are a whole bunch of parents talking to you and each other about their kids choices? I don’t believe that is true of any school except yours. I can see that the kids might talk to you although that is not true at most large schools either.

I know that every kid my kid competes with had applied to every school she had applied to. It is not a big secret to assume that all the top kids are applying to a large list of overlapping schools.

@texaspg- I speak with my students. I do end up,chatting with parents at conferences, concerts etc, but that is casual conversation.

@Proudpatriot There are many students at my children’s school that apply to top schools, but there are plenty top colleges that are 100% overlooked. There’s nothing I can learn from a local parent that I can’t learn here. I just don’t see any benefit to tipping your hand, so to speak. It can also stoke:

  • students poking around that college and also applying
  • jealousy / teasing / backlash
  • community whispers about wealth
  • neg. reaction from teachers/counselor
  • embarrassment if the child is "skunked"

Last year when people asked where my daughter thought she’d attend school, it was mostly small talk. We mentioned a few schools and that was is. No one every questioned us on it. We visited one more selective school that she got into, but when she didn’t attend there we didn’t feel like we needed to explain to people that we couldn’t afford it. We don’t live in a competitive area. The general feeling is if your kid attends any college, good for them. If your kid chooses a school that most kids around here don’t attend, they might find it interesting and ask why they chose it. It was all small talk.

@toowonderful , my D goes to a school that seems similar to yours (and has been instrumental in her deciding to go into teaching). Like you, many of the teachers attended “good” schools rather than the state U. Nobody panders to anybody. The school, from the principal on down to the middle schoolers, celebrates ALL the seniors college choices, whether it’s a community college up the road or on the other coast. And not only do they talk about it, the seniors actively work on applications in school, during class, so that yes, it’s talked about.

But I’m sure some here wouldn’t “count” this school as relevant since many of the kids DO attend one of our state’s excellent flagships. Nor are we super competitive. But I have been thrilled with the way the “process” is treated at the school and among parents there. D has nothing but good memories of her school’s support as she applied to colleges and heard from them-and that includes other kids and their parents.

Re: the valedictorian who got “skunked”
She didn’t even want to go to any of those Ivies that didn’t admit her and ended up choosing a state flagship over Rice. Why be embarrassed about the four you didn’t get into when you DID get into Rice???

And maybe her lack of “interest” contributed to her rejections. It means her applications were all about status and perceived expectations of where a valedictorian “should” apply (and get accepted). More of the Ivy frenzy.

But if she were my kid, I’d be saying “Wow! Rice accepted you and look at all this money they offered! If you want to go to UT, that’s great too as long as it’s affordable. I just want you to be happy and get your education. You’ll do great wherever.” And I would have discouraged her in the first place, from applying to all those Ivies that she didn’t even want to attend.

I’m so sorry how many students and schools seem to be caught up in this feeling of competitiveness. I’m very thankful that my D attends a HS with an emphasis on community. Apparently the kids don’t discuss their college applications much with each other, because D had very little inkling where anyone was applying. However, we parents, at Parent Weekends, had discussions that I found very helpful. This is not an “elite” school but turns out lots of fabulous caring citizens of the world, and does send some off to Ivies.

I don’t buy into the “if another student applies, it impacts my chances” point of view. Technically a possibility, but if my D had an interest in Stanford I would try to talk her out of not applying because of it being the dream school of her best friend. Should she not apply to an art competition or a competitive scholarship because of friends also applying?

Not so much Stanford, but elite LAS, lower Ivies, Northwestern and other household names on CC can be pretty overlooked in most flyover country.

Why in the world would this be a Bad Thing? Serious question.

Taking the conversation in a slightly different direction, I tend to ask the OP’s question in a slightly different way.

“Does your daughter know what kinds of schools she might be interested in?”

This allows the parent to answer with as much or as little specificity as they choose, anything from “She’s applying to Georgia Tech, MIT and UMass Amherst” to “She’s mostly looking at Midwestern LACs” to “She’s still figuring out what she may want to major in.”

Note: This is only for families where I know the child is applying to college. Otherwise my go-to question is “Does your daughter know what she wants to do next year?”

If I were to say, “wow, those are hard to get into!” it would be to set the stage for the later conversation in which a rejection might be mentioned, to let the parent know that I wouldn’t think less of their kid if s/he didn’t get in. Or, to show just how impressed I was by an acceptance.

This comes from our experience, where DS didn’t get into his first choice, and we were met with surprise from a few people whose relatives had gone there when it was MUCH less selective. I tried to explain the new situation, and that we hadn’t thought it was a sure thing, but a couple of people clearly thought something along the lines of, “wow, he must not be as smart and talented as I thought” and it came through in their facial expressions at least. One coworker even said outright that she was surprised because her cousin had gone to that school, and it was clear she didn’t think much of his intellectual prowess.

We were open about where he applied, and where he was accepted/rejected. The toughest conversation I had was when a good friend asked where he was going, and I had to tell her that he would be attending the school that had been her daughter’s first choice, but which they ultimately couldn’t afford. Which (I didn’t say this) had been his safety, and gave him a fantastic aid package because of our relative poverty and his choice of major. I’m sure she thought the whole thing was terribly unfair, and it kind of was.

The whole area is such a minefield, when you consider the potential for hurt and embarrassment over stats, opportunities, and money.

I think the hardest thing for DS was when his friend asked if he’d gotten into his first choice (most of the other kids had already made up their minds, he was one of the latest to hear at the very end of March, so most of them knew he was waiting); DS replied (without embarrassment) that he hadn’t, and his friend responded, “aw, shucks, I’d hoped at least one of us would get in somewhere good, we thought it’d be you!” (apparently the boys were hoping he would bring their very small class something close to the honor the previous class had felt when one of them got into Stanford, and he felt he’d let them down).

I like talking to locals in case there are universities that might not be on the radar yet (DD is a rising junior).

But man, people can be rude. The only response I give when I hear about another’s college application journey is “wow, that’s exciting - good luck!”

I am totally ok with some people thinking I’m silly. I don’t mind sharing my thought processes about how or why I make choices with regards to colleges (which are sometimes very, um, ignorant), even if I’m not comfortable with discussing which colleges D17 and (eventually) D18 will apply to. This is not an ego-driven thing, it’s being pragmatic.

I know all the information for every school is “out there”, but it takes work, thought, and effort to find some schools and their merit aid and put it together in a meaningful way for my daughter, and that school and its aid are a finite resource. It’s like me telling you where the treasure map is, and “you” means the entire CC community.

However, there are some schools that are well-known and/or fairly easy to get into, and those I don’t mind sharing info when we do tours or if they’re known for something that I know about specifically.

For example, Rice (mentioned above) is no secret. I LOVE Rice-I wish my kid would apply to Rice. I talk about what a good school Rice is, there are lots of threads on here about Rice. Kid has NO interest in Rice (or Texas). But there are other schools that I rarely (if ever) hear mentioned on here, and I found them through a lot of googling and paging through fat books and taking the time and effort to match her with those schools.

I don’t want to talk about those schools right now, and I don’t think that’s silly. But I don’t mind if you do.

It depends. If her quality of work is competitive with theirs (or better) then yeah, certainly apply. I’ve applied to dozens of art competitions over the years, and I pick and choose carefully. I don’t just willy-nilly apply to any that look good but that I am overmatched in the competition.

From what I’ve seen looking at scholarships, the best ones seem to be associated with a particular school, like the, um, Robertson at Duke? It makes sense that if your kid is applying to a certain school, they’d apply for those scholarships as well.

One of D’s friends is a remarkable software programmer-she’s done apps that are commercially available and is going to MIT in the fall. In their group of friends they talked about which scholarships they were going to shoot for, and any that Jane went for, they didn’t bother because Jane was pretty much a slam-dunk to get them, and did.

There is a difference between being an introvert and being purposefully secretive. I get that some kids are quieter and less likely to share information than other kids. That’s just a function of their basic personality. Is there anyone here who really thinks that their own child’s chances of getting into (insert school here) is significantly impacted by one more application? There aren’t any schools that only admit one student per year are there?

As far as kids who are ashamed to say they didn’t get in somewhere that’s a parenting failure. Parents need to be the ones who temper expectations. My son will apply to Yale. I don’t think he has a great chance of getting in. He’s just another smart white kid and Yale has thousands like him that will apply. He shouldn’t feel ashamed if he doesn’t get in. It’s my job to make sure that happens. His acceptance will not be impacted if someone else knows he’s applying. I’m not going to instill paranoia in him regarding telling or not telling his friends where he is applying. In fact we have never discussed the subject. He is in charge of his own social life.

Additionally, why are parents allowing their kids to apply to all if the Ivys and the state flagship? Their list should be better than that. I am very grateful for GCs who hammer that into kids heads starting freshman year.