The experience of an Ivy reject

Parent Cafe
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<p>I remember what was perhaps the worst day in my daughter’s High School career – the day after the Ivies announced their admissions decisions. While each of her friends celebrated their Ivy acceptances (thirteen classmates were Harvard bound, and another 20 or so accepted to other Ivies), she was rejected or waitlisted by 5 Ivies and Stanford. There was no good news the night before. Her dream school, Yale, had deferred and then rejected her, even after a call to Yale from the head of guidance at her high school. Since Ivies claim to admit “future leaders” you can imagine that these results could be viewed as a collective vote against her “leadership” potential. </p>

<p>All her acceptances had come from colleges that announced before the Ivy date, so she at least knew she had some decent choices, so all was not lost. She had some OK choices, and chose University of Chicago. Flash forward a few years. What happened after the rejection decisions of these schools? </p>

<p>Her sophomore year she won a Goldwater Scholarship</p>

<p>Her senior year she won a Rhodes Scholarship (and won over 2 Harvard finalists in her district!)</p>

<p>Her second year at Oxford, she was the runner up for the Oxford Leadership Prize, winning a £ 1250 (about $2,000) prize. </p>

<p>So much for selecting “future leaders”. </p>

<p>One can draw many conclusions from this (other than that parents brag… :) ). Perhaps the most important is to recognize that those rejections are not a comment on our kids’ abilities. Life will go on. Good things happen in many places. </p>

<p>Starting soon, for many of you, the admissions news will start to come in. Not all will be good news. Not all will be what you hoped for or expected. Hang in there. Support your kids and celebrate the good news, whatever it might be. In the long run, these things sort themselves out. In the long run, folks will care about what your kids did far more than where they did it!</p>

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<p>I also have a friend who was turned down by all the Ivies (years ago at this point) and “only went to GW” (her friends interpretation) – she also ended up nominated for a Rhodes scholarship (didn’t win) and is now a doctor. Life works out. </p>

<p>Newmassdad – cream rises to the top. congrats to your daughter.</p>

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<p>Congratulation on your D’s success. It would be great if in April, you post it on the Ivy and Stanford boards so rejected students and their parents realize that being rejected from an Ivy doesn’t mean that they are worthless beings with no future…</p>

<p>" Since Ivies claim to admit “future leaders” you can imagine that these results could be viewed as a collective vote against her “leadership” potential. "</p>

<p>Meanwhile, the broader and truer perspective is that since the majority of people who are rejected from Harvard are stellar individuals (as is the case of the majority of admittees), it’s a good bet that virtually anyone who applies to Harvard is a present and future leader. </p>

<p>What rejectees forget is that it would be laughable for most high school seniors to apply to Harvard. Applying indicates that one already is in a very select pool. Has anyone ever heard of anyone who had nothing going for them who applied? Even if “all” a person has is a sky high gpa or exceptional ECs or SAT scores, they still have something remarkable going for them.</p>

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<p>Her senior year she won a Rhodes Scholarship (and won over 2 Harvard finalists in her district!)</p>

<p>This just goes to show that the Ivy Adcoms are not the oh-so-wise, foretelling geniuses that everyone makes them out to be. They are very capable of rejecting outstanding talent that is better than what they accept. LOL</p>

<p>Super congrats to your D.</p>

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<p>I think this is the single best post I’ve read since I started visiting this website. Congrats on your daughter’s success.</p>

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<p>Newmassdad – any helpful advice on how you helped your daughter get past the initial shock of all those rejections – just in case anyone finds themself in that situation this year?</p>

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<p>“This just goes to show that the Ivy Adcoms are not the oh-so-wise, foretelling geniuses that everyone makes them out to be”</p>

<p>It’s a myth that the Ivy adcoms are as you suggest. Even the head of Harvard’s admission says that they could amass a class from their rejected students that would be just as good as the class they accepted.</p>

<p>Bottom line is that the pool of Ivy applicants is deep and outstanding. Even most of the rejects are stellar and will do as well in the future as do many of the people who are accepted.</p>

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<p>This is a great story and should be shared early and often. The path to happiness and success never goes though a single gate. I also think our culture undervalues the growth that comes through disappointment. Yes, it is excruciating and miserable and no one wisely goes looking for it. But sooner or later it is inevitable and the sooner children learn to move through it and see that alternatives always emerge, the sturdier their mental health and more flexible their problem-solving skills become. </p>

<p>I imagine that some of the 13 that sailed off to Harvard found it was not the golden path as well. It is never the institution that makes the difference, I believe; it is always the individual and then the mystery of circumstance and the capacity for hard work and imagination.</p>

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<p>Even the adcoms from the Ivies will admit that they could fill thier classes several times over with qualified students. I think what is challenging for the kids who aspire to these academic situations is that they grow up as the superstars in thier particular environment and America and the rest of the world are big places full of lots of superstars. Some kids are disappointed and it is too bad for them, heartbreaking to see as a parent. But with UChicago as a “safety” nobody would have been overly concerned about OP’s daughter, anyway. :)<br>
Congrats on your D’s success. It is good of you to post here for the sake of all the stressed parents who have had kids in the top top position for years and are now facing the realities that the world is full of top top kids and luck will always play some part.</p>

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<p>Hopefully she realizes what a little “bubble” she was fortunate enough to live in, with 13 classmates Harvard-bound and 20+ going to other Ivies. She was already in a very privileged situation to begin with, which has a great impact on her ability to go far in life!</p>

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<p>This is not surprising. U of C is one of the most rigorous and intellectually demanding schools in the nation. </p>

<p>Succeed there, and you can succeed anywhere, as your daughter is demonstrating. Reasons not to attend U of C typically relate to its culture, which is not for everyone. </p>

<p>The problem with credentialism (and it is easy to succumb to) is that it distracts from the principle that what one makes of an opportunity is far more important than the credentials of the institution at hand. </p>

<p>Those of us in high performance institutions have seem quite a few Ivy Leauge types rest on their laurels. But then again, there are some that don’t do so and are fantastic and productive. What matters is always what you do. Hard to get across to teens caught up in the peer pressure of school acceptances.</p>

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<p>I find this a very odd, puzzling comment. No one has ever suggested (nor have the Ivy adcoms ever positioned themselves as) oh-so-wise, foretelling geniuses. They are just people who are charged with the non-enviable task of selecting 2,000 people out of 20,000 applicants, the vast majority of whom are eminently qualified and would have succeeded just fine. An adcom giving a thumbs-up to Joey and a thumbs-down to Mary isn’t making any statement whatsoever about Mary being “not as good” – it’s just that they only have so many spots. </p>

<p>Where IS this mentality that Ivy adcoms think that they are wise sages? Very, very odd.</p>

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<p>sour grapes.</p>

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to their credit, they usually readily admit this.</p>

<p>Congrats to your daughter, newmassdad!</p>

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<p>Congrats to your daughter for her success!</p>

<p>Like other posters, I am a firm believer that what you do with the opportunity is more important than the credentials of the institution name. And obviously University of Chicago commands much respect.</p>

<p>But, I totally agree with this statement by Pizzagirl:
“Hopefully she realizes what a little “bubble” she was fortunate enough to live in, with 13 classmates Harvard-bound and 20+ going to other Ivies. She was already in a very privileged situation to begin with, which has a great impact on her ability to go far in life!” </p>

<p>Not to take anything away from your daughter at all because her accomplishments are significant, but there are state flagships who don’t get respect for institutional name who produce Goldwaters, Moreheads, Trumans, and Rhodes scholars as well. Take a bright, motivated kid and they <em>can</em> succeed no matter the institution.</p>

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<p>That’s AWESOME, nmd.</p>

<p>btw: No “brag”, just fact! :)</p>

<p>More importantly, come next May/June, there will be LOT of Ivy liberal arts graduates who would be lucky to get a job as a barista. (My S will be one of them.)</p>

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<p>respectfully, poetgrl, I don’t think he is ‘sour grapes.’ At the time of his D’s high school career, they lived in an atmosphere where the Ivies, & particularly H, was considered the sine qua non of success. Students’ personal worth (and possibly – relating to another thread here – parents’ worth) was being judged by their ‘name-brand’ college admission. Undoubtedly NMD was also surrounded by the ‘braggers’ featured on the “honesty” thread.</p>

<p>The only teeny tiny part I think he hasn’t gotten over ( :wink: ) is that somehow that sense of “proving” his D to others is still a part of his consciousness. As some of us noted on another thread: it needn’t be! Let people believe that H accepts the sum total of future leaders. That’s their misconception, not H’s btw (duly noted by another poster, nsm) nor necessarily the world at large, or even the U.S. at large. The world at large will look at the kinds of accomplishments he has enumerated, some of which he has left off – such as being an accomplished artist - & I won’t give that one away. </p>

<p>Yes, this validates the perception that H & all the Ivies put together do not admit the sum total of leaders, geniuses, future scientific discoverers, & concert artists. Of course the Ivies – and U of C - also admit plenty of that group as well. Not an either/or.
:)</p>

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<p>Yes, the adcoms say they could “fill their classes several times over with qualified students”. They also say they select the best and all too many think the the best of the best get into the ivies and the ones that don’t are not the best of the best. </p>

<p>To me, the real lesson is about disappointment, and about how your dreams may be dashed, but good things will happen anyway. 1 down, the only advice I can offer regarding handling the disappointment is to listen and support. She had a sense of loss, and it was very tough seeing all her friends the next day. But she survived, and as others have suggested, it made her a better person. </p>

<p>Pizzagirl, bubble or not, the the pain was there. Keep in mind that bubble environments raise the bar for many kids. You should also know that her HS was very diverse, included a number of kids on welfare (about 10% qualified for reduced price lunches) and about 15% did not attend any college after HS graduation (in contrast to upscale suburban districts that send 95%+ on to college).</p>

<p>MagnoliaMom, you are so right. Look at UNC in recent years, for example.</p>

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<p>geez - THAT many into Ivy league schools? How many in graduating class?</p>

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<p>My D was rejected by Yale, H, & S in the same year as NMD’s D. Yale was her one EA application…rejected, not even deferred. She was pretty quiet for a couple of days after she got the news. (And parental protectiveness aside, I sympathize with these students, most of whom are legitimate applicants and accustomed to being highly successful.)</p>

<p>A year later, she said that Yale could come calling and now she’d tell them “no, thanks” because of how happy she was. Five years after that, she has no Rhodes lurking about but she had a terrific four years, graduated summa cum laude, and was asked to apply for a job, did so, and got it…applying for only one job in this job market and is absolutely loving it. Now has the GRE’s out of the way and anticipating grad school apps next year.</p>

<p>Her LAC isn’t chopped liver and the younger staff where she works have their degrees mostly from places like Swat, Yale, Wellesley, Tufts…along with a couple from highly regarded public U’s like U/Texas-Austin and U/Wisconsin-Madison.</p>

<p>It may help the parents, if not the students themselves, of those who are rejected by their Ivy choices to thoughtfully read the profiles of those who suffer a similar fate when decisions are announced. The range is generally from “strong” to “incredible” and at times can leave you scratching your head until you read the profiles of the accepted, many of whom have extremely similar profiles and then you realize it’s a case of X applicants for Y spots.</p>

<p>I have no doubt D would have done very well at Yale but I wonder if her record would have been quite as flashy being lost in the crowd…by various metrics, she was among the top 2-3 percent of applicants at her LAC and it showed but she never felt that she was in an environment that was in any way inferior.</p>

<p>Final note: by luck of the draw, we visited her ultimate LAC destination and Yale on back-to-back days. On my scorecard, they were the top two schools of all the schools we visited over a three-year period. It was unnerving enough that on my scorecard, looking for “fit,” the LAC beat both Harvard and Stanford easily; it also edged Yale, which had me muttering to myself, “how could you turn down Yale for an LAC?” Fortunately, in retrospect, Yale admissions let that dilemma pass her by.</p>