Stanford Rejection: A mother's support

<p>My kid was rejected on Friday and has spent the entire weekend in tears. Any advice on helping her to get past this. We are Christian I am trying to convince her that this was God's will. We prayed and fasted but this was not what God wanted for her. Although she has a great stats, GPA and EC's, test scores and is Valedic...Any advice is appreciated, especially for anyone who has experienced the same. FYI... she has never been an emotional person but this is something that she dreamed of and worked towards for years.</p>

<p>Suspecting a ■■■■■, but in case it’s not:</p>

<p>Well, it may or may not have been God’s will, but it was the will of the Admissions Committee, which is all that matters. Time will take care of your daughter’s unhappiness. Come May 1 she’ll be she’ll focusing on the school or schools where she’s been accepted and this experience will fade into the past. Meanwhile, has she completed her remaining applications? That’s where her focus needs to be now. </p>

<p>It’s too late for this child, but if you have other kids, please learn from this experience and don’t allow them to focus on a single a highly selective institution that turns down incredibly well-credentialed students all the time. Keeping a grip in the reality of college admissions, crafting a reasonable list of colleges, and managing expectations in light of acceptance rates will be a lot more helpful than praying and fasting.</p>

<p>Although I don’t have any experience yet with my oldest a hs junior I am relying because I feel yr pain and the first reply seems very harsh. With time and patience she will get thru this. Getting back into the routine of school today will probably help.<br>
Just focus your message that there is more than one path to lifetime success and other schools will be thrilled to have someone with her accomplishments and skills. Focus on her other choices. People have posted before about “falling in love with your 2nd choice”. Recently someone posted a link to a blog post on the Yale website written for kids who were rejected by Yale. It had good words of advice.
My kids former youth director told all the kids that she prayed that each of her students would be accepted at the right place for them not necessarily their first choice.</p>

<p>OP - I am very sorry about your daughter. This happened to my older daughter, except it happened for her both ED and RD. She was deferred from her ED then shut out all of her top choices, except for 2 which was wait listed at. There was a happy ending. She did get off both of her WL schools, matriculated at one and LOVED her college experience. She even said that someone up there must have been watching over her to make sure she ended up at the right school.</p>

<p>I would give your kid some TLC and then move on, don’t dwell on it too much. If she doesn’t have all of her RD apps ready, she needs to focus on them now. I would go over the list again to make sure she has a balanced list with high reaches, reaches and matches. This may not be what people on this forum may suggest, but in your kid’s case I would be top heavy with high reaches. She has the stats, so it is a matter of playing the probability game. Make sure she has one or two matches that she would be happy to go to. I think this will be the toughest thing for her to do because she’ll feel she is settling.</p>

<p>One thing we didn’t right with our older daughter was we were too naive and too optimistic. We should have encouraged her to apply to more EAs and rolling admissions. When she was rejected by so many schools, she felt like a failure and felt bad for having disappointed us. </p>

<p>We completely changed our attitude and strategy with our younger daughter. She applied to ED and few EAs. Prior to the result coming out, we prepared her for possible rejections and let her know that it would be ok. We also told her not to fall in love with any school until acceptance. After what she witnessed with her older sister, she also tried not to get her hope up.</p>

<p>One thing we also learned from D1’s experience is to make sure your D keeps up her grades. We believe D1 was able to get off her WL schools because of her senior grades.</p>

<p>I think if you try not to make the rejection into too big of a deal (let her cry for few days, but move on) she’ll be able to to move on faster. Let her know she’ll have a lot more options come spring.</p>

<p>Has she read the decisions threads? Not just Stanford, but Harvard, Dartmouth, ect? It may help to see how many others with equally impressive stats are in the same boat. It must be so difficult to do everything right and still not realize the pay off, but often kids and parents have no concept of how many equally qualified students there are competing for the same slots. I am so sorry for what you are going through.</p>

<p>That’s very good advice from old fort and MommaJ. To multiplemom - you haven’t been there yet. I don’t think MommaJ’s post was particularly harsh. For those with Ivy type ambitions, please make sure to look beyond the “2nd choice” too. The acceptance rates are so small that if your first choice is Stanford and your second choice Yale, the odds are that even a wonderful student will be rejected by all the super-selective institutions to which they apply. As oldfort suggested, make sure to have applications in to some good schools with high likelihood of acceptance, and avoid loving any school until the results are in.</p>

<p>I agree with Oldfort, and Momma J (who was not harsh…just stating the realities). At the end, your child WILL be at a good college.</p>

<p>The odds of getting into Stanford were low regardless of the student academic stats. But the good news…if this daughter was a competitive applicant for Stanford, there are plenty of other colleges out there that will welcome her.</p>

<p>Hope her other applications were already sent…or are ready to be sent.</p>

<p>I agree with MommaJ. </p>

<p>Assuming that this is a real situation, I think that praying and fasting (!) and talking about “God’s will” is excessive dramatization that will lead nowhere positive. I would try to dial back the drama, not amp it up.</p>

<p>Also, not a parent who has been through this yet, but I think you have to allow your daughter to acknowledge her emotions. Everyone says not to focus on one school too much, and that is of course true. But human nature is human nature, and you can tell yourself not to want something too much and other parts of your brain and your heart don’t quite listen.</p>

<p>A quick story about my sister…when she didn’t get into her dream school (an OOS public) she took to bed for a weekend, crying and just generally heart-sore, etc. Come Monday morning she got up and said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to go to choice two.” Which was an Ivy and one that a lot of people dream to get into. It just wasn’t my sister’s first-choice dream. </p>

<p>Life is crooked and paths are unpredictable. Your daughter can go on to wonderful places and do amazing things. But I think you have to acknowledge the heartbreak and allow the sadness a bit first too. Then you help her move on by helping her focus on what’s right about some of her other choices. </p>

<p>And finally, I think it’s important to make sure that she is going to have a choice come April. There’s something that gives you a great sense of control when you get to make a choice…so I would make sure that there are matches (low and high) so that she has that opportunity.</p>

<p>Stanford admitted 748, waitlisted 593 and rejected 5607. They are quite harsh in terms of rejecting 80% during the REA round unlike other top schools which move more than 50% to the RD round.</p>

<p>This is in no way an indictment of your daughter’s qualifications. She should concentrate on her applications to other schools rather than waste her time and not put in the required effort on the remaining apps.</p>

<p>I think there should be a couple of SAFETIES, not just matches. Schools where this student is assured acceptance AND are affordable AND where she would be happy to be a student. With 3000 colleges out there, find at least two. It’s nice to have choices.</p>

<p>It’s ok for her to cry, and maybe even a good thing. It won’t change the facts, but it is a way for her to let her emotions out. As a Mom to a great D, my heart breaks for her many times over as she moves through life. Yet, as the song goes we were never promised a rose garden. My D is a better person having a life with twists and turns both good and not so good. She is resilient, reflective, and determined. She may not be this way if she got everything she wanted. So model behavior for your daughter. Sympathize and pray with her, and then move forward. Help her find her path, maybe not the one she envisioned, but the one God has for her. Get applications in and then start visiting those she applied to (even if you have already been there). Look forward, not back. All will be well, it just may not seem like it in the short run.</p>

<p>Not sure that saying something isn’t God’s will is all that comforting, even for Christians, because we have no way to distinguish God’s will and stuff that just happens (He did give us all “free will” after all.) I, too, think that might just dial up the drama and set up unrealistic expectations for the next school. Send a kid into a place thinking it’s God’s will that she be there, and what happens if she’s like the thousands of students who transfer at the end of freshman year? </p>

<p>So, sure, pray for a good outcomes, but try pulling this process back into the secular. Take a realistic look at her other choices, and make sure there are a couple of safeties she’s applied to. None? Get moving on those apps.</p>

<p>What’s Stanford’s acceptance rate? 5%? 10%? Whatever. I understand the disappointment but really now - chances were overwhelming she was going to get rejected. You don’t feel upset when you buy a lottery ticket and lose, do you?</p>

<p>*We are Christian I am trying to convince her that this was God’s will. We prayed and fasted but this was not what God wanted for her. *</p>

<p>I would not say that to my kids (even though I am a Christian as well). I don’t think God cares either way about Stanford or Duke or whatever! lol God wasn’t looking over the shoulders of the Adcoms and whispering into their ears, “don’t choose her, it’s not my will.” </p>

<p>More to the point, i think stating it the way you did sounds counter-productive. </p>

<p>you’re praying for your kids’ success and happiness and that’s fine.</p>

<p>right now, you can let her grieve and help her find other schools that will work. Stanford isn’t the end all be all.</p>

<p>(and this won’t be the end if your D will be going to grad, law, or med school…lots of rejections there, too).</p>

<p>It’s too late now, but for other families with kids applying to Stanford or other extremely selective colleges, it’s a good idea to promote the idea that the application is something like a lottery ticket. The chances of success are low for everyone because the vast majority of applicants are rejected.</p>

<p>That’s why many parents on this board refer to Stanford – and similarly selective colleges such as Harvard, MIT, and Columbia – as “lottery schools.”</p>

<p>For the OP, the important thing now is to get past this disappointment and move on. She has had a weekend to process her feelings, and that’s good. But now she needs to make sure that all of her other applications will be ready on time. </p>

<p>If she wants to add some additional schools to her list, she should talk to her guidance counselor right away. She may already have missed the deadline for submitting requests for transcripts and recommendations, but sometimes a high school will bend the rules a bit for students who are rejected from their ED/SCEA school.</p>

<p>I probably should not post here but I do feel compelled to. God’s will is that we love Him with all our heart, strength, mind and soul and love others as ourselves. I am not aware that where we attend college has any bearing on that. It is what we do when we get to where we go that is important. Let her greave, but also let her understand that she has an opportunity as a person to use her blessings to their fullest whereever she attends and that you love her for the remarkable creation God made her to be.</p>

<p>I think it helps if kids understand that colleges don’t even purport to choose the most outstanding or most deserving students.</p>

<p>Many times on this board I’ve said that college admissions is like casting a high school musical. Say the show is “Guys & Dolls.” The director isn’t going to pick the 30 most talented singers and actors who try out and make them the cast. If (s)he did so, (s)he might end up with 23 females and 7 males. (S)he might not choose a single bass. </p>

<p>Someone has to play the role of Nicely Nicely, who sings “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat.” There may only be one guy with a voice deep enough to sing the song who tries out. If so, he’ll get the part–while a soprano with more talent doesn’t get any role. Anna may have the best voice of anyone in the entire school, but if she’s 6 feet and the guy the director chooses to play Sky Masterson is 5’6", the director may choose another Sarah. Stacy may be more talented than Sue, but the director knows that if Sue’s in the show her mom will help with costumes. So, Sue gets a part and Stacy doesn’t. It has nothing to do with talent. </p>

<p>In college admissions, you’re trying for a particular role. If you are a white or Asian student, particularly a female, with two college educated parents who wants to major in a standard subject, well, you’re the soprano of college admissions. Some of the other sopranos have advantages because they can play additional roles. They are legacies. They are recruited athletes. They come from a state like Wyoming or Mississippi. None of these have anything to do with academic merit. </p>

<p>If you look at the class as a whole, the results are misleading. You might think you have a 7% chance of getting in. You don’t. As a “soprano” your odds are probably about half of the published admit rate. A lot of the kids who got into Stanford weren’t really competing with your D at all. They are recruited athletes, underrepresented minorities, legacies, and others who can play roles that your D can’t play. They aren’t better students, they aren’t more deserving, they simply had less competition for the roles they can play in the class. </p>

<p>I too suggest that your D review her list of colleges and makes sure that she has some safeties. In choosing safeties, your D should keep in mind that a lot of schools fill a lot of their class early. So, she should focus on the admit rate for the regular round, not overall, in determining whether a school is a safety.</p>

<p>The Biblical answer I would give to this is “shake the dust off your feet.”</p>

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<p>More like the alto. :D</p>

<p>But I know what you mean and I agree.</p>