<p>This is a great thread. Thanks to NMD for starting it. Great lessons for parents as our HS seniors are awaiting college decisions. I talk to my daughter extensively about all her schools (9) and how she will have a great experience and a different experience at any one she attends (not to mention a good education and a good time). I don’t want her to put all her eggs in one basket - as a result, she has 3-4 schools that are her top choice, as well as 3 other in-state schools that are complete financial safeties (and she can see herself at the two we have visited). Now none of these are Ivy’s but I think it’s the same lesson – not to judge a school by the NAME and not to determine your self-worth by the school you attend. Funny, but I just read a thread about over-rated (and under-rated) schools, by state, and most of the over-rated colleges have prestigious football teams! What does that say?</p>
<p>My experience with Ivy rejection: A good friend’s D (co-valedictorian of her HS) got rejected by the four Ivy’s she applied to – all letters arrived on the same day. Difficult day. She already had acceptances from a top SUNY and RPI. Of course, she was disappointed. Can’t avoid that; it’s normal. But they looked at the bright side, thanks to great attitude by the parents and, really, their great kid. RPI is an excellent school and a really good fit for her (plus some merit aid, I believe). She is now a freshman there and loves it.</p>
<p>How can one group of schools (Ivy’s) be the right fit for so many kids??? </p>
<p>I always like to remember that my brother went to Penn, but didn’t get into my non-Ivy (Northwestern). Plus, don’t we all know a zillion super-successful people who didn’t go to Ivy’s? They even went to - gasp! - state schools! We just have to use our best parenting skills to help our teenagers through this stressful time in which they are feeling tons of peer pressure and figuring out their self-worth.</p>
<p>I don’t care whether NMD is bragging or not or “over it” or not. I don’t even care about the “rejected from all Ivys” back story. I just think it’s pretty cool that a kid we knew about and whose plight we followed on CC back when she was in high school has gone on to earn a Rhodes Scholarship.</p>
<p>After seven plus years of being here on CC and witnessing the incredible meltdown that takes place every year on or about December 15th, we all should be grateful to NMD for sharing his/their very personal tale.</p>
<p>Sadly,the anticipation and angst that we witness daily on the HPYMS boards prior to Dec 15th quickly turns to anger, entitlement, and bitter resentment. The number of posts that will in one way or another describe how their “lives are over” due to rejection or, God forbid, being wait listed at their dream schools will astound those who are newcomers to CC.</p>
<p>NMD is simply trying to give us real world proof that life and more importantly, fabulous success in life does not end with a rejection letter from HPYMS.</p>
<p>NMD I for one am very happy to read of your D’s success and the wonderful recognition of her accomplishments in life. </p>
<p>NMD, congratulations on your daughter’s wonderful accomplishments. After I read your original post, I felt vaguely troubled by it, but couldn’t exactly say why, and the many responses didn’t hit the nail on the head, either. But now my thoughts have gelled, and I realize that what bothers me is that even if your daughter had been merely an average student at UC and had won no special awards, but had simply prized and enjoyed her education, that would have been an equally happy ending. The truly meaningful message for CC’ers awaiting Ivy ED responses is not that Ivy rejects can go to “okay” schools and still blaze incredible trails of glory (with the implication that the Ivy adcoms were terribly mistaken), but that students can find meaning and happiness at many schools and that rejection by a particular institution or class of institutions is no tragedy, but just a minor blip in the context of a lifetime that will contain many joys and sorrows. I think it’s just poor parenting to allow a child to enter the college application process with such a large sense of entitlement and such a poor grasp of the realities of Ivy admissions that he or she would be crushed by a series of rejections. And any high school that is so elitest that Ivy rejection is a badge of shame sounds like a horrible choice for anyone’s child.</p>
<p>One is tempted to suggest that NMD’s D supports Krueger & Dales research that where one attends is less important than to where one applies. And that for some of the elite schools studied the rejected students did better as a group than those who attended. Tempted that is, until one finds that Chicago was one of those elite schools.</p>
<p>To the guy that said Michael Jordan deserved to get cut from the varsity in high school, MJ’s own high school coach admitted that MJ deserved to be on the varsity skill-wise. He said that MJ was cut in favor of a guy that was too tall to match up with people in the JV. In other words, MJ was cut for because another guy “fit” better.</p>
<p>So don’t use that as an example of why peole who are extremely successful later in life may have deserved rejection early on.</p>
<p>I can think of a better example, Stephen Chu, a physics Nobel Laureate who is now in Obama’s Cabinet. He blew off high school and got rejected at every ivy he applied. In college he buckled down and realized his potential. However, people who are talented but lazy aren’t likely to be crushed by rejection so these cases are not relevant to this thread.</p>
<p>Congratulations again to NMD’s daughter…but I fail to understand why you characterized your daughter as just having “some OK college choices.”</p>
<p>Chicago is far more than just an “OK college choice.” Indeed, it’s a dream school for many students. I know several students who were quite torn between Chicago and Harvard.</p>
<p>Growing up in Illinois, I frequently heard Northwestern referred to as “the Ivy of the midwest”.
I would have been very proud to have gone to NU (or Chicago).</p>
<p>To the OP: Thanks for an interesting and thought provoking post. And congrats to your D.</p>
<p>Congratulations to the OP and his daughter. I taste no sour grapes here and agree this is a valuable reminder to those going through the process this year. In the spirit of parsing to the ultimate degree everything that’s been said or unsaid, here’s my contribution: it doesn’t matter how well prepared for rejection a kid is when those rejection letters pile up. Just because you’re disappointed doesn’t mean you had a sense of entitlement. As Marite pointed out, these are young people (with dreams). It’s unnatural to expect it won’t hurt. The fact that NMD D thrived proves she recovered. I think the language “okay choices” or whatever was used has been over analyzed. No one thinks of U Chicago as a consolation prize, except, maybe, a 17 year old girl who had her heart broken. It’s an emotional response. </p>
<p>We have our own tale of disappointment and ultimate happiness, but I wouldn’t dare share it. Just to remind seniors that they can be disappointed in the outcome this spring but ultimately find things that work for them.</p>
<p>lefthandofdog, thanks for saying it so well! Especially this:
To all the hopeful applicants and their parents - take heart! This story and many others on CC show us that you can make even disappointment work out for the best. Congrats to nmd and his talented daughter.</p>
<p>What percentage of the kids who apply to these particular schools are accepted? </p>
<p>Won’t there be something like 92% of the apps to some of them disappointed? </p>
<p>I wonder what percentage are rejected from ALL of these schools…</p>
<p>I wonder how many baseball and football players who come to the end of the line in highschool started out believing they would be d1 recruits?</p>
<p>I wonder when they began to understand they would not be?</p>
<p>How many musicians start out to be players and end up teaching band in Jr. High?</p>
<p>How many actors fly out to NYC and LA each year and end up _______________?</p>
<p>I wonder the percentage of people who will be severely disappointed in thier life? (100%)</p>
<p>As Winston Churchill said, “Adversity introduces us to ourselves.”</p>
<p>What this story says about the Ivy league, to me, is very little. It says a lot, however, about this particular young woman’s response, as well as the responses of some others…</p>
<p>I would like to point out that this high school happens to be the ONE PUBLIC high school in the community where NMD and his family happened to live. To avoid sending his child there, NMD would have had to choose living in a community with more mediocre public schools. All the good suburban public schools in this area are fixated on HYM. That comes from being in such close proximity with these schools. </p>
<p>Wisteria: I totally agree with you about U of Chicago. I’ve heard it described as well as the school of choice for parents in academia (though not necessarily their offspring!). But the peer culture in the schools around here seems to focus on HYM and other East Coast schools.</p>
<p>“But now my thoughts have gelled, and I realize that what bothers me is that even if your daughter had been merely an average student at UC and had won no special awards, but had simply prized and enjoyed her education, that would have been an equally happy ending.”</p>
<p>NSM, Agreed. And it was because she did prize and enjoy here education, and took advantage of the opportunities that UofC offered, that she did well.</p>
<p>For the word police here, by referring to UofC (and her other choices) as “OK”, I did not mean to play down their merit. It was not OK as in not great. Personnally, I was very happy with her choice. It was actually the one place she was most excited about when we did college visits. So for her, aside from the obvious disappointment which she shrugged off quickly, things worked out well. </p>
<p>And for those of you who think her attitude was Ivy or bust, I can assure you that was not true. She could have gotten off the H waitlist (won’t bore you with how), but said “no” to an offer of help because she was happy with UofC. </p>
<p>A funny side note was her prospie visit to UofC that April. She came down with severe gastroenteritis her first night there, threw up in her sleeping bag, and was abandoned by her host (the smell?). I got a text message at 7 AM. After frantically trying to reach someone at the U, I connected with someone at 8 AM. A “rescue” effort was put into place, and she was finally hosted by one of the admissions heads, whose wife washed her things, put her to bed in their apartment and took care of her for two days until she was well enough to go home. Although she did not see many of the prospie events she had set out to see, their care “sealed the deal” so to speak.</p>
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