<p>Maybe shoe threw away other kids’ letters that were headed to HYP thus leaving the door open to hers? Maybe she used white out to change her kids’ GPAs? Who knows…</p>
<p>I don’t know, they sound like good kids: good grades, participate in school and community activities without having to be the boss, work at jobs, from a good family that volunteers in the community… The top schools are looking for character. Maybe that’s what they had and showed in their essays.</p>
<p>You may be interested to know that many schools, including ours, won’t ever allow parents to volunteer in the guidance office. Even if there’s nothing unethical going on, and the parent is limited to duties that do not allow them access to other student info, perceptions like the ones on this thread would always exist. I agree that knowing which schools are and are not feeders to specific schools is invaluable, key info that might have been available to anyone who made the effort to come in (not just this mom). Our school finally got online Naviance, but back when my kids applied it wasn’t available in convenient form. You had to ask for the info (which they did not publicize they had)and sit in the the office for hours going through it all. Few people took advantage of the info or even knew it existed for the asking. IMO it may have accounted for some of the more “shocking” outcomes in my kids’ years. </p>
<p>The answer could be anything - non-obvious URM status, excellent essays - perhaps a compelling family story or obstacles overcome. For that matter, maybe she really DID figure out where to best position her kids by knowing who else was applying where and when. The possibilities are so endless that it’s not worth dwelling on, and not a good idea to even attempt the comparison if you are not the one looking at the application. Nevertheless, if enough people are concerned about the school’s practice of using parents in the guidance department, they could bring it up to the administration as a concern. Maybe they would be reassured that absolutely no inside info is accessible. Or perhaps they would consider revisiting the policy of parents working in guidance.</p>
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<p>My wife became a volunteer in our HS’s college information center when D1 entered high school. Like perhaps the parent in the OP’s story, she wanted to be plugged into the college process. But unlike the parent in this story she worked there for years prior to D1 applying, kept at it for the 5 years between D1 and D2, and is <em>still</em> doing her volunteer work there even though all our kids are now beyond high school. One year she was honored with the highest recognition award the school gives out in honor of her many years of tireless work. And BTW, both our daughters got into and attended Ivy League schools. But unlike the kids in the OPs story, D1 was sal and D2 was val in their respective years and both had excellent SATs plus regional and state level award winning ECs.</p>
<p>So did she learn any secret inside information in her long years at the college center? I’m sure she must have gained a few insights along the way, but I can tell you one thing for sure, she (and I) learned a lot more by reading CC. There is no information about the college process in that office that is not here as well.</p>
<p>As others have said, the parent volunteers in the office do mostly administrative work. They have very limited, if any, access to inside info about the other students. They may pass out some brochures or forms to the students, but they are not advisors. So I suppose it helped a little with the GCs to know that our girls had a visibly-involved parent behind them and that we were serious about college education. But in the end the girls themselves still had to deliver the goods. They had to get the grades. They had to prep and do well on the SATs. They had to work long hours on their ECs. There is nothing about having a parent working in that office that can magically get a kid with mid-tier UC stats into HYPSM. It’s not going to happen.</p>
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<p>This is off topic, but how the heck is a high school student able to do cancer research at medical schools?</p>
<p>^My husband works at a medical school and he had a high school student in his lab last summer. He didn’t have his own research project, but he helped one of the grad students. It’s actually kind of funny because my husband hates having summer students - they are a lot of work to train, but in this case he felt less obliged to be a real mentor to this kid - the grad student is doing the heavy lifting there. But everyone seemed to be happy. There’s plenty of stuff a high school student can do once you show them the procedures.</p>
<p>My older son wrote several computer programs that med school professors found useful. One had something to do with helping find patterns for sequencing proteins the other was for modeling diffusion from a pipette.</p>
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<p>I can understand if parents of the kids who did not get in might wonder this but are other adults gossiping about this?</p>
<p>Please be assured that if I were saying this out loud, it would be in a very puzzled and gentle voice, not in an accusatory tone, but the words that come to mind are: why is this any of OP’s business? I think at every school some students snag college acceptances that surprise us, but most of us shrug, wish them good luck and move on. My best guess about the mother’s on again off again involvement with the school is that she wanted to befriend the staff enough to permit acceptance of a little helicoptering over the handling of her kids’ paperwork. But I say bravo and thank you to any parent willing to do that kind of volunteer work, whatever the ultimate motivation.</p>
<p>R2R: this sounds *exactly *like someone at our school, except she has three kids. And, in response to this query,
…Yes, everyone knows this mother is a wacko about getting her kids into a top, top college. her husband is much, much worse. It used to bother me too: the lying, the “I won’t tell you anything personal, but go ahead and you can tell me” attitude, and the discussion about anything except what she was really focused about: college.</p>
<p>But, what do I really care, so long as it doesn’t affect me directly? She (and they) have got to get a life, but I’ve got mine.</p>
<p>One thing I noticed in my kid’s high school was that parents who volunteered a lot at school got payback in terms of extra recognition for their kids. Usually this was simply a matter of the high school awards night, sometimes small scholarships awarded by the PTA or a school committee. But basically if everyone could always count on Jane Workerbee to show up & help out, then the year that Jane’s kid graduated, the kid would be honored in some way. </p>
<p>I never got the idea that it was any sort of secret understanding or deal – just that the parents or teachers on committees who voted for such things would feel that they wanted to so something nice for the always-volunteering parent… and they would. </p>
<p>So I’m thinking that maybe a kid whose mom helps out in the info office is highly likely to have a strong recommendation written by the high school guidance counselor. If nothing else, that’s a guarantee that the g.c. knows who that kid is. Such a rec wouldn’t be enough by itself to get a kid admitted to an Ivy league college, but it sure wouldn’t hurt.</p>
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<p>That and a lot of money would work, but alone, there’s no such thing.</p>
<p>My best guess is she went out of her way to learn how to position her kids and her volunteer effort at the school was just part of her education.</p>
<p>I’ve volunteered in our local high school’s college center for 10 years now. (Yup, I’m coureur’s W.) So I know all the ingredients to the “secret sauce” that all of us who volunteer in the college center are privy to.</p>
<p>Guess what–there is no secret sauce! I can’t think of anything that I do or specific information that I’m privy to that would ensure that my kids got into an Ivy while others did not! </p>
<p>You can drive yourself crazy wondering why Student A got into Harvard and Student B did not. Heck, you can drive yourself crazy wondering why the exact same student with the same application got into Harvard but was rejected by Yale. Even if you think you know, it probably isn’t the real reason.</p>
<p>Listen, I don’t even think most GCs know why one kid gets admitted over another kid. If they had that big of influence they would be paid a lot more. If this woman’s kids didn’t have the credential to get into those schools, it wouldn’t matter how many hours she volunteered. Some people have to donate millions in order to get their kids into schools, what make you think she could do anything to influence the adcom, unless she is able to manipulate school record. Lets assume she’s able to change school record, I don’t think she would be able to hack into Collegeboard’s computer to change SAT scores.</p>
<p>Of course, there was that one parent who hacked into the computer system and changed other kids’ grades to make her child look better. But except for that…</p>
<p>Maybe it was as simple as knowing where the other ED apps were going and picking other schools and seeing good and average apps and knowing the difference. I know i did far better with advising D2 & D3 than D1, because I learned so much on CC. As a matter of fact our HS always gets some kids into Ivies etc and I learned more about how to find the best fit for my kids on CC than from the GC.</p>
<p>On another thread we were complaining about all those parents who brag about their kids and how it drives us nuts. </p>
<p>Maybe this is a parent who did just the opposite…kept all the boastworthy facts about her kids to herself…and it drives us nuts. :)</p>
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<p>Actually, this mother constantly boasts about everything. She claims that both kids got scholarships to their ivies (from some kind of outside foundation) and implied that they were full. In fact, she has been caught in a couple of untruths about other things not related to college (minor things, so you have to wonder what the point is), and for some reason she also told everyone that one of her kids was majoring in biotechnology when he is actually majoring in French. (Kid was supposedly headed for med school but is now out of college and not in med school, although mother tells people that it’s common not to go to med school right away and better to get work experience.) I don’t have much contact with her so I admit that I hear this all second hand. Another example: She recently called up a friend of mine to ask how much she was paying for her heating oil because she had locked in her contract several months ago and wanted to talk about what a good price she had gotten relative to people who hadn’t. (Friend found this amusing since she had no idea how much she was paying for heating oil.)</p>
<p>She does like to call people up and ask a lot of questions without revealing anything important, unless what she is revealing has to do with being better at something. So again, I admit that part of the reason her situation bothers so many people in town is because of the way the mother handles herself.</p>
<p>In the small towns there are many city transplants who never really assimilate into the small town circle. From my own experience, I could tell you that no one knew what my kids were doing other than the fact that they disapeared after middle school and were not attending the town school. People knew they were attending a magnet school and most people could not understand why we would not keep our kids in the “great town school”. When people heard where my kids matriculated they started sending their kids to the magnet highschool, but prior to that there was only one other kid from our town who had gone there, and he attended MIT after Highschool.</p>
<p>Small towns can be suffocating in that everyone has their eyes and ears open for everyone’s business. No one knew where my kids were applying, until after they gained admission, and I never got involved with discussing their accomplishments.</p>
<p>I agree with Calmom. My first thought is that the advantage this mom received, if any, was that her kids would be better known by the GC and s/he would feel favorably inclined toward them when it came time to fill out the counselor recommendation. To me, the most unfair parts of the college appl. are the counselor rec. questions about personal qualities like maturity, integrity, leadership, etc. For the most part, GC’s at our very large high school don’t deal with students in situations where those traits would be made evident or not, unless of course the kid gets caught in an academic dishonesty violation. A coach, EC advisor, or teacher would be better suited to assess personal characteristics, yet do it the GC must. I saw firsthand at our school how S’s GC raved about how nice the children were of school employees. They were really nice kids, but no nicer than others. He just got to know them better and no doubt could therefore feel comfortable checking off the higher rating boxes.</p>
<p>I HATE when parents work or volunteer in the high school. I’ve seen the same phenomena calmom writes about.</p>
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Although, as described, the mom is braggy, pushy, nosy, and not above exaggerating - so maybe the GC would feel unfavorably disposed toward the kids and write a less-than-glowing letter because the woman is so unlikeable! 
We’ll never really know. Ivy admissions are inherently unfathomable, aren’t they? Lots of really smart people on CC, and we’ve never figured 'em out.</p>
<p>I think there is a valuable place for parent volunteers in high schools. I’ve done very little because I was never comfortable with the inner circle of volunteers in our hs - but I won’t deny that they do a wonderful job. I do think it’s asking for trouble to have parent volunteers anywhere near confidential info. It’s to the advantage of every school to create procedures that would make volunteer access to college app info difficult if not impossible. And then make sure everyone knows it!</p>