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

Parents Forum
81

Thank you @MotherOfDragons. This is the point I was trying to make earlier, but as always, my poor writing skills get in the way.

We don’t hide in a cave with our college list as some think I am suggesting. At my son’s school EVERYONE applies to Georgetown, BC, Villanova, Holy Cross, Fordham, Loyola, etc…everyone. No harm in mentioning those. But what good would it serve him to share the hidden gem that he has been thinking about and could possibly be a great fit?

People keep throwing out the “do you really think if your kid applies to MIT or Harvard, others will too?” Of course not! These are really simple and condescending examples, frankly. But if my son decides to apply to Rose-Hulman and starts telling his friends in his robotics group or his math class, then maybe it will plant the seed with others to think about it. Now, possibly, 3 or 4 kids are applying from his high school. And as I’ve said, my son is not at the top of his class. Will Rose-Hulman accept 4 perfectly qualified kids from the same high school? Maybe, maybe not. But if my perfectly qualified son has the weakest stats of the 4, he has certainly hurt his chances by “sharing” with his community.

He’ll happily share his hidden gems after deadline day.

82

The only school my D did not willingly share amongst friends and family was her ED crapshoot, from which she was rejected outright. I do wish now that she had kept her top choices to herself. She got into a handful of them but the merit wasn’t enough to warrant the choices when she had other options that were a better financial fit. The biggest issue we had was her father and his side of the family insisting that she HAD to attend the one school they loved, regardless that I couldn’t afford to pay the share her father expected me to pay. He is still not speaking to me more than a year later (after 18 years of co-parenting) and in retaliation pushes back every time D needs $$ for anything college-related. In my defense, he didn’t offer to pony up either so she could attend HIS first choice of schools.

83

I guess the thing is that here in my area there really are no " hidden gems" that are selective. It’s a college obsessed town. Everyone on the Robotics team was well aware of Rose-Hulman and schools like it (Olin etc…) and anyone who thought they might be Intersted likely applied. The vast majority of those interested in a selective enrollment use a private college counselor and have a large collection of those fat book( and small…college that change lives etc) which they probably start looking at their kids sophmore year.

When we had a program from an outside college consultant ( one of several per year the school runs). His topic was " hidden gems". “Who hear has heard of Deep Springs” he asked as his opening gambit. 3/4 of the parents raised their hands. He did a double take " I have never in all my years had that happen!!" Has any student from here gone there? He asked. Nope. This town is just College Ob-sessed!!

Very few people are secretive about what schools they are looking at. If you are you’re definitely out of the norm. And whatever the motive protecting the hidden gem isn’t it.

84

"This town is just College Ob-sessed!!

Very few people are secretive about what schools they are looking at. If you are you’re definitely out of the norm. And whatever the motive protecting the hidden gem isn’t it."

For me personally, its not about secrecy for not wanting others to apply to my kid’s “hidden gem”. I agree that it probably makes little difference. To me, the point is to stop focusing on the college obsession and feeding that beast. Not making every discussion about college in a community that is already obsessed and stressed about it. In my high school circles, the focus is measurable and its better to just leave those discussions alone, at least for my family and my own kids’ focus and well being.

Plus, it just isn’t really my story to tell. It’s not my college search. Just because they are my kids, I don’t get to share their business with every acquaintance I meet. Not posting it on facebook either. Obviously, a lot of this comes down to personal style.

I guess I just don’t see the need to share. If its just idle chit chat, there are other things to discuss.

85

I am not sure there is a cut and dry answer to this that fits all questioners, parents or kids. I would not ever give the same answer to EVERYONE who asks me the question.

There are family members who I talk to who give advice while there are others I am weary of disclosing much info other than say applied many schools, not sure which one is even possible to get into based on the competition. There are friends I give very clear answers to when they ask while there are others I don’t want to provide a lot of info to. I am also not sure what would be the point of listing 20 schools to everyone who asks…

86

I would suggest that there’s a whiff of really incredibly unhealthy paranoia in this and similar sentiments being posted to this thread.

87

I have noticed a range of responses when the college topic comes up socially. If somebody deflects or seems uninterested in discussing the matter, I back off. If an inquiry is met with enthusiasm and a spread sheet, I proceed. I never ask about or reveal stats and if I have never heard of a student’s college preferences, I say, “I don’t know anything about that school, tell me about it.”

I think the problems arise when people push too hard or judge too quickly.

As for my kid, she’s an outstanding student by the standards of her school and probably just an “excellent average” student by CC standards. All of her classmates expect her to apply to and get into Ivy League schools, which is not her intention. She finds the inquiries intrusive and embarrassing. She now responds, “I’m looking at LACs and small to medium-sized universities where I hope to qualify for merit aid,” and leaves it at that. If they push, she says, “right now I’m really liking the look of ____.” As they’ve usually never heard of today’s “fill in the blank”, that tends to end the discussion.

88

As often happens after reading one of these threads, I find myself thinking about it. This topic of not sharing your “list” is so interesting. DS attends a school that has a very strong, supportive community, and their advice is NOT to talk about your college process with other families. Part of this, I suppose, is to allow kids to be present for the home stretch of high school, rather than obsessing about the future. Our college counseling team doesn’t believe that kids are competing with each other for that “one spot from our school” (because every year, at least one school that “only ever takes one kid from here” ends up taking 3 or 4), they DO know that when another kid gets into a school that your child did not, it will stir up a pot of emotions that most of us would prefer not to admit we own. So if you clue someone in to a school that your child is interested in, and for whatever reason, that kid gets in while yours doesn’t, it’s hard NOT to feel a little responsibility for that. And bitterness. And maybe a little anger. And regret. And sadness. And envy. And just yuck!

The reality, though, is that if your child was not admitted at XYZ College, the decision would almost certainly have been the same whether he was the only one applying from your school or one of ten applying. And if two or three amazing kids apply from your school and meet institutional needs, they’ll probably all get in. But it’s impossible to know that with certainty – especially because so many parts of the process – on the applicant’s side and the school’s side – are unknowns to us. (Face it, you haven’t read other applicants’ essays and recs, so you don’t know how they come across to adcoms in a 5 minute read. You know them from real life, often since they were 5! And you don’t know if XYZ College needed a bassoonist, which the other kid is, when yours in an cellist.)

So the advice of sharing judiciously, for the sake of your sanity and maybe for harmony in your community, is probably good. But if you do talk about it with others, you’re also unlikely to be doing your child’s chances any harm.

89

I hear that on this thread mostly from parents who haven’t been through the whole cycle yet… We’ve done it twice, and have seen some of the consequences first hand.

90

@intparent - consequences of sharing? Or not sharing?

91

@dfbdfb

“there’s a whiff of really incredibly unhealthy paranoia”

That’s a bit of a stretch, but we’ll agree to disagree. Good luck.

92

@intparent , I guess my question is how do you know that they would have admitted your child if theirs hadn’t applied? I don’t think you CAN know. But you most certainly can believe it to be so, and that in and of itself argues for keeping your plans private.

We’ve been through this full cycle as well, and I recall one weekend – when DS had just been WL at his #1 and #2 choices – when a very dear friend (not in our town or school) was celebrating an acceptance to one of those less than 5% schools. DS hadn’t applied there, so it wasn’t like her DC had gotten something we’d wanted, but I just felt miserable, miserable, miserable that we weren’t having our happiness too. It was totally irrational. And if I take that awful feeling and imagine that her DC had gotten into one of the schools where DS had been WL and if I believed that I had “introduced” them to it, ugh! The power of these emotions, especially when it comes to our kids, is fierce. And through silence, at least partially avoidable.

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@intparent - I have been through the whole cycle twice. What consequences have you seen? I am open to the idea that I could be wrong about this. I have been wrong before and I will be wrong again.

94

A kid not wanting casual acquaintances to know where they apply in case they don’t get in is NOT the same thing as a kid being ashamed of not getting in. There are lots of disappointments in life that I don’t necessarily want to discuss with everyone.

BTW, neither of my kids applied anywhere terribly selective so this hasn’t come up for me. But if they had I might not have shared that information too widely. Not because I’d be ashamed of my kid not getting into Yale or whatever, but because people can have odd and awkward reactions to stuff like that and I’d rather avoid that.

95

One reason for the varied responses is because whether one can feel comfortable/it’s a good idea to share one’s college application choices or not is YMMV depending on the high school campus culture of students and parents.

For instance, my public magnet student had an extremely competitive student culture in many areas including college applications. And those who did even a smidgen of research on my public magnet and its counterparts would have been well enough aware and allow for that. If one didn’t have somewhat of a thick skin and the ability to roll with that atmosphere, it wouldn’t be the right school for him/her.

Due to long commuting distance and the time I attended as a tail-end member of Gen X, this was overwhelmingly student-driven with little/no parental involvement.

Despite the competitiveness of a critical mass of classmates, there was a culture of openly discussing one’s academic stats and college applications among many classmates and failing to do so/attempting to deflect tended to prompt others to assume you had something to hide(a.k.a. Your stats/college choices weren’t optimal because your GPA/SATs/ECs weren’t up to snuff).

On the flipside, those among us who were cynical about this culture or felt it was too over-the-top decided to have some fun with twisting around such questions by stating things like:

“My #1 choice is the nearby [x] Community College!!” or “We’re all planning to attend Beachbum U out in California where we can major in being beachbums!!” The amusement value of watching the jerky portion of the top 25% classmates who were around sputtering or getting frustrated with such responses was well-worth it. And that amusement was furthered when they found several of us “Beachbum U” aspirants were actually admitted to some respectable/elite colleges…including the Ivies/peer elites.

96

As Johnny Fever so adroitly observed; “it’s only paranoia if you’re wrong.”

97

I don’t actually totally agree with the sentiment on this thread that more than one kid applying hurts your kid. Our D1’s small HS class (60 kids) had two admissions to Dartmouth (fairly similar students), and two as well to the USC School of Cinematic Arts (although they had a different focus – one on more traditional film, one on animation). I am talking more about the hurt feelings/nasty behavior that can go on.

One example would be that D2 applied EA to UChicago, as did one of her classmates (a classmate who happen to have won the captaincy of an academic team that D2 had hoped to captain senior year). My kid got in, her classmate did not (deferred to RD, eventually rejected). While I hadn’t told other parents about where D2 was applying, D2 had told a few people This other girl was openly nasty to D2 about this – said that she was more qualified that D2, and UC had made a mistake. Now… this student had a slightly better GPA, but D2 had much higher test scores (which she had NOT shared). D2 also had some interesting out of school ECs and accomplishments that this other kid wasn’t aware of. She gave D2 a hard time throughout the spring. I think she was under a lot of pressure – did not have any early acceptances, so no confirmation that she was “going to college” until acceptances started coming in March. D2 said afterwards that if she were doing it again, she would not tell anybody outside me, her dad, her sister (who works in higher ed consulting), and the GC. D2 got in everyplace she applied – after the UChicago situation, she didn’t tell anybody that when it happened. Oh, and she didn’t post a peep on Facebook about it (neither did I) until May 1, when I did put up a picture of her wearing the shirt of her school of choice. But rubbing in her success prior to that did not seem like a classy thing to do.

Another kid in D2’s class who was STEM oriented applied to a lot of top STEM schools - MIT, Caltech, Mudd, CMU – and I knew when his mom was telling me that there was no way this kid was going to get into any of those (poor GPA, okay but not great ECs, probably lukewarm recommendations). Turned out he didn’t even get into the state flagship, ended up at a lower tier tech school that the GC had talked him into applying to. The mom was pretty mortified – she had really talked up his chances.

There was ANOTHER kid in D2’s grade who applied only to very tippy top schools and one local 2nd tier LAC as a safety (after the GC begged him to). He was a solid but not spectacular candidate, and got skunked at the top colleges – he is at the LAC. He was pretty embarrassed, too.

My parents were the worst. They were CONVINCED that D2 should go to Stanford. Now… D2 has strong stats, and MIGHT have gotten in (probably a better than 5% chance, but less than 10% in my estimation – because I honestly think that is the best anyone who is unhooked could assume their chances are). But D2 didn’t even like it when we visited. They nagged and nagged about why she wasn’t applying there. This started pretty early in the process before her final list was formed. But every time we mentioned schools she did like (UChicago, Swarthmore, etc) they poo-pooed them and said we were ‘selling her short’. I finally told them that we wouldn’t be discussing the college search any more, and we would let them know in May where she would be attending. So for almost a year it wasn’t discussed. They still don’t know everywhere she was accepted, although they came around to thinking her current school is pretty cool and a good fit for her. But it was a lot of unnecessary noise and pressure during the search – so we shut it down.

98

INparent, the attitude of your parents is so sad.

My parents both died before son applied to college. I’m sure they would never have heard of SCS, Caltech, Mudd, RIT, etc, but I expect they would have praised his choices to the hilt.

99

I think it’s natural for people to ask a few questions, but I agree that you do not have to share your list with anyone. Having gone through the process, I’m careful to ask more general questions (like, does he have a preference in terms of location, does she prefer smaller LACs or larger Us, etc).

100

My own D dealt with a round of bitterness from a peer- actually some one she had considered one of her closest a friends until they showed their true colors in the college process. Interestingly, they were not in “competition” at all- mostly different schools - though all very high reach. D ended up with more acceptances, and it got ugly- really ugly, because the other family had assumed they would fair better. (D’s stats were higher, but they had a hook). Again, my D did NOT take a spot from this kid, but there are lots of people who have trouble handling disappointment. But it wasn’t that the other people knew the list- it was the results that were the problem