In regards to “only” having a month to make a decision, wouldn’t students and their parents already have a list in order of preference of all potential admittances? Of course, FA packages may need to be take into consideration, but comparing them shouldn’t take that long.
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Has anyone read the article in today’s NYTimes about a woman in Texas working hard to keep homeless teens in school? One of the kids mentioned was homeless but with straight As etc. Guess where she’s going? Harvard.
THAT’S what Harvard is looking for. Kids that have overcome tremendous adversity and also have a stellar record.
I remember reading a Harvard alumni magazine about 10 years ago, which profiled several incoming freshmen. Every single one was orphaned, or had lost a parent (and then gone on to do amazing things). I turned to my husband and said “Well, one of us has to go – will it be you, or me?”
On the one hand overcoming this kind of adversity is not something in a kid’s control. So some people think that their kid, with 2 parents, who went to a good school, etc, is at a disadvantage. They may be, for Harvard admissions, but they so HUGELY advantaged in life that I think Harvard’s approach makes sense.
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This post is only in regard to the comments that parents don’t have much power over their kids’ college expectations in light of the institutions, marketing campaigns, guidance counselors and friends.
I hardly consider myself a prize-winning parent, but found this completely manageable. In case it’s helpful to other parents, here is what we did.
First some context: My kid has 2 Ivy League grads as parents, and several other family members who have also attended ivies. We had great experiences, and would have loved for our kid to have attended either of our alma maters, but were very aware of how things have changed since we applied and attended. Kid goes to high school that does send some kids to ivies every year. Kid’s test scores and grades and rigor would not have disqualified kid from ivies.
Here is what we did:
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Talked to kid several times about how things are different now and not to expect to get in to the schools we attended. Because no one should expect that.
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Did not send kid to school with clothing from our alma maters when the school had “college days’
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When kid was stressed about the number of APs, assured kid that kid was allowed to “get off the high achievement train”
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When one very selective college (Univ of Chicago) repeatedly sent promotional materials, we researched and saw that this was not a sign that the school wanted kid specifically. Discussed with kid.
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Ignored grandparents pleas for kid to apply to parents’ alma maters. Tried to educate grandparents.
What happened? Kid decided not to apply to any ivies. Had a wide range of schools on list in terms of selectivity. Applied ED to the reach (T20), and got in. Had prepared kid for the more likely possibility of rejection. Did not feel at all like the admittance meant kid should have applied to schools even more difficult to get into.
Fwiw, kid never received marketing from the ivies. Did get such materials from many other schools, but no ivies.
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One of the absolutely best thing that happened to my high flyer was a student a couple years earlier that was shut out. They had never imagined the valedictorian with a 36 ACT and amazing EC could be denied by Harvard, MIT and yes UT Austin which they thought was their safety. It upended any idea that this process was straightforward. She had great results, but applied to not a single Ivy as at that point realized none of them were an actual fit. Figuring out where they REALLY want to go is such a different experience as early on when they listened to all their fellow classmates and random people tell them how they are a shoo into XYZ. I still remember the neighbor who was shocked that my kid didn’t apply to an Ivy - THAT is what kids are dealing with - and THAT is what is the real problem.
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The topic is fascinating because every day there are multiple schools that give decisions - but we’re focused on these 8.
Your thought is something I thought about - meaning, having only a month to make a decision. You would think this would hurt those late announcers because someone who was accepted elsewhere sooner might have pictured themselves at that school and fell in love.
That said, the Ivies have high yields - so at least for them, this doesn’t work.
But in my mind, it does 
Even my kids started learning more about their earlier acceptances and then everything was compared vs. that school…
In the end, people vote with their wallet. If a late acceptance wasn’t good, they wouldn’t go and the date would change.
As long as the school is getting enough customers, they have no reason to change what they are doing.
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tl;dr
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I would!?
Beats having to decide for/against the first offer without the benefit of having ALL offers on the table.
Just because others assess a same situation differently, some seeing a problem, others not - is NOT absolution. It’s called opinion - you stated yours, others stated theirs.
And not agreeing on one particular problem does not mean that we don’t see problems elsewhere with the process or any Ivy. Please quote the message that implies “perfection”?
Understood.
For the same reason that there are overbooked flights and wait lists.
Even if everyone were to qualify for a seat based on ability to pay (even for first class), whenever there are 4,000 people willing to pay to get onto a 200 seat Airbus, no one should safely “feel that they are in the single-digit % admit rate”.
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Thank you - interesting thought!
My instinct is, that I like that idea of “rolling REJECTIONS”, even if final admission is on Ivy Day. It will still sting for 3/4 of those who were in the final 20% - just as it stings for students who are never taken off the waitlist. But at least 80% of them won’t be strung out for months.
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Sadly, the OP post is really about mental health and the importance of being resilient. These skills seem to be lacking in many young adults. . Perhaps they always were, but it does seem like there is more talk of stress than ever before and it’s resounding implications for a person’s life. In the worst cases, outcome can be tragic.
Yes, the college system is extremely broken and we are asking young adults to fathom this and still participate. Then we ask them to run the gauntlet for 4 years in high school without any expectation that they will get results. Do you best. Work hard. And we can’t be sure you’ll get paid. We’re not sure if you’ll find a school you can afford, or a place that offers you a space in a major you like. But do it anyway. And we’ll use holistic admissions to keep it obtuse and unexplainable.
Is is any wonder that Ivy Day is disappointing? We’re focused on the wrong thing. Kids shouldn’t be happy or disappointed in their college acceptances. They should be asking, why isn’t this a more transparent process? How can we make accomplishments count during high school so kids can build on their education and have more opportunities? How can we take away the idea that only a small number of schools can give them a lottery ticket? So many things to consider here. But Ivy Day is a small part of the disappointment, IMO>
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That’s where assymetrical info comes in. The folks here know that, but does everyone?
Even with research, I wouldn’t have understood a fundamental point about the stated accepted GPAs and test scores as it relates to hooked vs. unhooked. Indeed, I never had really grasped what “hooked” meant until CC!
This seems to be a MUCH better way to do it.
Hopefully there was a guidance counsellor, who sat down at least once with parents, and possibly repeatedly with students, who had multi-year experiences with college admissions, even specific to individual schools, and was ready to add realism into the equation.
And hopefully, that guidance counsellor was not treated dismissively, but intently listened to.
I had a feeling of “oh no, don’t jinx it” when my sister-in-law gifted D22 with a UIUC fleece (SiL’s alma mater). UIUC might as well have been an “Ivy” on D’s list because as a CS applicant it was just as much of a reach. She did not get in, and now I wonder what she’ll do with that fleece. Every time we’re at O’Hare and she’s faced with the giant orange “I” UIUC signage she does a good-natured-but-still-disappointed fake cry. I feel like that $60 fleece will end up in a donation bin, unfortunately!
I think the biggest reason that there’s all this angst about Ivy Day in particular (and college admissions in general) is that it’s become this giant endeavor with all sort of publicity and social media attention. If you’re a high-achieving student, the pressure to not feel like you’re left behind your peers if you don’t get into an “elite” school is way more overwhelming than it was a generation ago, because it’s way more public.
So while I think there are certainly structural changes that could be made to make things like “Ivy Day” a little less traumatic, it’s way more important for adults in these kids’ lives to put it in perspective:
Not getting into the college of your dreams does not ruin you.
You may need to lower your expectations and be prepared to accept the worst case scenario.
Ask if you’re applying to these schools because you really want to go there, or because you think you’re supposed to go there. (or worse, because you don’t want to look like you’re underachieving in relation to your peers)
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These are anecdotes and of course are meant to tug at the heart strings, but they are not the norm and there is thus a danger in making decisions based upon potential anecdotal bias. The income distribution at the top schools demonstrates that the majority are not “homeless” or “orphans”, or anywhere close to that…
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When did “do your best and work hard” become a gauntlet? THIS is the problem- assuming that every kid in America is being prepped for a gauntlet, when MOST parents are just thrilled if their kid is kinda sorta getting through adolescence with some semblance of a work ethic, direction, no felony convictions, etc.
And I don’t live in a rural area… I live in a city in the allegedly “prestige obsessed” Northeast, and even I don’t see this stress factory y’all are referring to. I know teenagers who are heading off to college to get their ticket punched- on their way to getting a job at a bank, at an insurance company, doing social media for an apparel company, becoming an occupational therapist. They didn’t slave away getting perfect grades in HS, did their EC’s or just hung out with friends, and they could care less that they aren’t going to a prestigious university. Sometimes it’s because they don’t love school, academics, reading, expanding their horizons, so the idea of knocking themselves out in HS to do MORE of that- ugh. Not their thing.
They would laugh hysterically at the notion that the college admissions system is “broken”. The more ambitious among them want to attend our state’s flagship (or an adjoining state) and the admissions are both transparent and early-ish. No waiting until April on that count. The less ambitious are eyeing one of the regional branches of the state system. Again, nobody cares if you were president or just first VP of the honor society there.
The more ambitious/intellectual seem to understand the odds of admissions pretty well. That HS stats course really pays off since you understand that a 7% admission rate means a 93% rejection rate.
And as I’ve posted before, there are micro-cultures in my area which again, do not correlate with the “broken” system and heartbreak you guys are writing about. The kids at the local Catholic HS’s have their lists- which do not match what y’all would consider “prestigious” unless someone here is dying to go to Seton Hall or Providence. The top kids apply to Georgetown and BC (which the parents don’t think are religious enough) but Holy Cross, Notre Dame are considered a big win.
Etc. I won’t go group by group (did you know that Touro is a prized admission among Orthodox Jewish families? Bet some of you have never heard of it…) because I’ve made my point. IT"S A CHOICE folks. Nobody kidnaps your kid in the 8th grade and makes them sell their soul to the devil in order to get into Yale. If your kid is in a HS which is putting kids through a pressure cooker, you are still the parent. If YOU are putting your kids into the pressure cooker, then again- why does that mean that the system is broken?
I think you need to know your child. There are kids who can apply to three reaches, three matches and then happily go off to their safety school- and to me, that kid has won the lottery. Whether the reaches were unaffordable or said “no” in an “excessively disappointing way”, a kid who moves on in a healthy way is a successful kid.
And I think parents need to work hard to make sure that their kid is applying to college in a way that guarantees a successful outcome, i.e. a kid going off to get an education.
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The GC at my kid’s school, which places many students at ivies and T20s, contextualized it well. A student who has done the hard work to be a serious candidate for the top schools (or any school for that matter) should be extremely proud. They worked hard enough to earn a ticket to the lottery. Beyond grades, scores, and ECs, there is nothing more the student can do to influence the outcome. At that point, once you achieve the profile or better of the average admitted student, it is no longer about merit but about balancing a class. And since students can’t anticipate what schools will need in any given year, it is more or less a game of chance at that point.
So, we celebrated my student’s applications to top schools, because he has worked hard to get to that point. Then, we acknowledged the next step was essentially up to chance, and let go of the outcomes. His ticket came up at some schools and not at others. As predicted, there is no discernible pattern. So, he doesn’t feel bad about the “no” and at the same time, doesn’t feel any additional validation from the “yes”. The students in his school can see the randomness in the final outcomes - a kid admitted to Harvard but rejected from Bowdoin; a kid accepted to Williams but not Amherst; etc.
We can help our kids deal with this reality, but it means giving up any deeply held beliefs we have that admissions to top collleges, beyond the hard work to qualify, is about merit rather than chance.
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I suppose that may make some feel better, but that’s not accurate either.
At any school with selective admissions, including many state flagships, applicants are rated into categories ranging from absolutely admit right away to reject right away.
Colleges at the same level often have similar criteria, which is why a student rated “absolutely admit” may well get admitted to all of the peer colleges as well, and a student rated as “absolutely reject” could get completely shut out at a college and all of its peers.
But you are right there is an element of chance for the “marginal applicants” (put in quotes to indicate they are marginal only in terms of admissions). I think there is a good argument that the bottom half of the admitted class could be replaced with those who barely didn’t make the cut, with no difference in quality.
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NVM. It’s all been said.
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Hear hear.
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But the criteria for “absolute admit” varies between peers. An absolute admit to Yale is not the same for Harvard or Princeton - which is why you rarely see a student get into the full suite of peer institutions. Does it ever happen for exceptional students? Yes - but what makes that student exceptional and a “must admit” across the board is usually something beyond grades, scores, ECs. It’s often a student with exceptional grades, scores, ECs, etc. and they happen to have something very unique in their profile that makes them a “must have” for all top schools. I’m not saying holistic criteria shouldn’t be used. I think schools should balance classes for many different variables. But the point of this thread was helping students cope with the disappointment of rejections from top schools. I’m arguing that students can be disappointed, but they should not interpret rejection as an indicator that they weren’t good enough. The validation for their efforts should come from the fact that they worked hard enough on the variables they can control to be in serious contention.
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