<p>I agree, then vicariousparent, that probably a large proportion of kids on CC and the kids of CC parents have the ability to graduate from Harvard. As you and many realize, however, these students are a very small proportion of high school seniors. CC offers a very distorted view of what typical h.s. students are like.</p>
<p>Time to throw in another tangent completely off track from the original post, but which sort of crawled out of my memory banks while reading this thread. I still like the original post by the way.</p>
<p>When I applied and was summarily rejected by Harvard back in the 70s they used to send out a letter or card stating whether you were likely, possible, or unlikely to be admitted. I was always under the impression that the likely were in that rarefied air and fairly few in number. I also assumed that the unlikely were also few in number and basically represented the Ive got some extra money for an ap so why not wing it crowd.</p>
<p>Most of us were thrown into the great unwashed of possible, which I assumed meant you might be able to hack it, but your chances of getting in are still pretty slim. Of course, nowhere near as slim as nowadays.</p>
<p>Forgive me for my trip down memory lane.</p>
<p>newmassdad: I love that story. I love it. I love it.</p>
<p>“The conversation has been about how certain cultures “push” the Ivies as the be-all-end-all and how that contributes to or heightens disappointment – because it’s one thing to be disappointed in failing to achieve something you set out to, it’s another altogether to then feel “ashamed” or “unworthy” because you’re “only” going to some other perfectly excellent choice because OMG-what-will-the-neighbors-think-that’s-not-how-it’s-done-here.”</p>
<p>Agreed, Pizzagirl. I know many of the posters here are east coast, but I just don’t understand a mindset that so strongly influences beliefs that are so unfounded as to presume that one region of the country or group of schools will prevent one from being successful. And success as measured how by who? There are wealthy, educated, interesting people all over this country.</p>
<p>I’ve raised my daughter with the belief that the world is a more interesting place to be surrounded by people of different types and backgrounds from different places; how boring would this world be if we were all the same, so why would we want the exact same education, life experience, job as the peers who think that you have to go to a select few schools to see success. </p>
<p>I know some posters think this is not relevant to the op but it <em>is</em> about disappointment. You experience disappointment if you have certain expectations or desires that aren’t met. I think the issue that’s been raised validly by Pizzagirl and others is how those expectations or desires are formed or came to be in the first place.</p>
<p>I am honestly glad for NMD’s D. He has a perfect right to be proud of her. But…when he says things like this:</p>
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<p>(emphasis added)</p>
<p>…and this…</p>
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<p>(In the context of saying that the Ivies claim to pick future leaders and this is supposedly proof that they blew it.)</p>
<p>And, when such comments are made each and every time he posts this story…well, I think sour grapes are involved. </p>
<p>If others don’t; that’s fine. I won’t post again in this thread.</p>
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<p>I think there are quite a few people in the Northeast who really don’t believe that there are well-to-do, successful, educated, interesting people all over this country. They themselves are the ignorant ones, of course.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure where are you coming from but when children or parent who are interesting in academics and wants to look at the best available option then why it becomes ‘unsophisticated mentality’.</p>
<p>All the children at DD school aspired to go to HMSPY. Does that mean they all have '‘unsophisticated mentality’? That is why all these children work hard. Every human being in this world work hard for some goal. So when students work hard for a goal and it doesn’t materialize then you are saying they should not feel disappointed otherwise it becomes an ‘’'unsophisticated mentality".</p>
<p>I think NMD’s DD did the best from the disappointment and that is what all children need to learn from. That is make best of your oppertunities.</p>
<p>We don’t want to teach children to not have goals or to not aspire to work hard for HMSPY or other lower Ivies.</p>
<p>There are other good universities but if a student have the heart set on HMSPY or lower Ivies then that doesn’t make it '‘unsophisticated mentality’.</p>
<p>I think we Northeasterners, and NYers in particular, are conditioned from an early age to a certain pace and lifestyle. Of course, this is a generalization since I have fabulous friends who have happily settled outside of the NY Metro area and don’t yearn to return. </p>
<p>I’m not better just different. For myself, after having lived and worked in several major cities from coast to coast–NY, Boston, SF and LA–I found that I couldn’t happily settle anywhere but NY–I felt out of place everywhere else. The slow decision making pace at my place of business in LA, in particular, drove me to distraction. Leaving the office at 5 and going to play tennis and for a swim after work did nothing to improve my state. When you’re in a NY state of mind nothing will. I guess I’m just a rat stuck on the rat race who lives for all the noise, noise, noise. </p>
<p>Lots of us think other places are nice places to visit but we wouldn’t want to live there–and that goes both ways. At first, my D thought she couldn’t leave NY for college but ended up in Boston which she enjoys but doesn’t love as much as she loves NY. No matter where she travels in life, I am quite certain that she will always want to come home to NY.</p>
<p>For some of us, it’s just in our blood and I don’t think we purposely set out to present ourselves as superior. When I lived in LA, there were lots of those I hate NY bumper stickers in response to the I love NY tourism campaign. I wasn’t offended; I laughed it off. There are just as many people who shun NY across the country as there are NYers who can’t see themselves anywhere else. </p>
<p>If people think “Ivy” is a dirty word and synonymous with an ignorant form of elitism, so be it–it’s a choice. All I can say is "bygones. "Live and let live.</p>
<p>^ Agreed, Pizzagirl (post #166). I see lots of posts on CC that just blithely assume all the smartest kids and all the competitive schools are in the Northeast, and that Midwesterners in particular are all slightly dimwitted, undereducated, unsophisticated, small-town hicks “from the middle of nowhere,” a few of whom manage to be admitted to the Ivies strictly on the basis of affirmative action for hickdom. Lots of the people writing this stuff are HS kids, of course, but it’s so pervasive that I have to believe that view is shared by some of the adults who influence them. I’ve lived in many different parts of the country, including many years in the Northeast. I loved living there, but there are ways in which I find the Northeast the most parochial part of the country—the most self-absorbed, the least interested in and appreciative of what’s going on elsewhere, the least welcoming of outsiders. That’s a gross overgeneralization, of course; there are also many wonderful, kind-hearted, open, welcoming, and intellectually curious people in the Northeast, and some places like Manhattan and many college and university communities that are completely open and welcoming of talent from anywhere in the world. But for the sheer prevalence of parochialism (and apart from these familiar pockets of openness), it’s hard to beat the Northeast.</p>
<p>The desire to stay close to your own region is not unique to the Northeast. Lots of Californians want to stay in California (and if they can’t then they’ll head up to the Pacific Northwest). Texans want to stay in Texas. Many Southerners want to go no further North than UVA.</p>
<p>The Ivies are undisputably the best universities in the Northeast (not including the LACs here). Well perhaps you could add in Georgetown, Hopkins, and a few others (please don’t flame me if I’m leaving something out :)). So if you want to be within a day’s drive from your parent’s home in the Northeast or from NYC or Boston and you want a good university, then you pretty much apply to the Ivies.</p>
<p>Assuming “newmass” in OP’s username stands for Newton MA, then it would be only logical for his D to want to get into Harvard or Yale and to consider UChicago to be less desirable (purely from the transportation considerations).</p>
<p>ETA: I just saw bclintonk’s post. It may be the case that the midwesterners are less likely to confine their college searches to the midwest. But the other regions that I mentioned are definitely ‘parochial’ in this sense.</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>Or maybe it just shows that this student was better served at Univ. of Chicago than at the schools that rejected her. My kids are both at Ivies, and I have friends with children at a wide variety of schools, and in almost every case, kids thrive at the school that is the best fit. The comfort of that fit allows them to maximize their potential. School admit committees, for the most part, know who fits at their school. And no school has a corner on “future leaders.” Take a look at where the admitted classes at Harvard and Yale Med and Law schools did their undergraduate work. You will find many, many different schools.</p>
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<p>Sigh. Aspiring to go to HYPSM is not an unsophisticated mentality. Believing that everything else besides HYPSM is appreciably lower and a “step down” is an unsophisticated mentality. Believing that a smart student can’t equally thrive at a college outside the top 10 is an unsophisticated mentality. Believing that the only good professors and world-changing opportunities are found at HYPSM is an unsophisticated mentality. And finally, following the crowd like a bunch of lemmings is an unsophisticated mentality. Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air at your D’s high school, POIH, if some of the students were interested in Amherst or Swarthmore or Smith or Carnegie-Mellon or Reed or some other place that provides quality education but is out of the boring box? Or is that just too “radical” for the lemming crowd?</p>
<p>Well, 17 year olds are pretty unsophisticated, no matter where they live.</p>
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I believe that to be an unfair characterization. I believe NMD is simply pointing out that some who rationalize H admits do so simply by repeating the leaders mantra. Further, as he pointed out, his D could have likely been selected off of the H wait list, but chose not to be. If the grapes were that important, that would have been the time to …I don’t think I can continue with this metaphor.</p>
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<p>I don’t think students believe that everything else is appreciably lower but they do believe that these are the best option.</p>
<p>Both are two different things, you are trying to infer a wrong sense from the posts. If you fail to achieve the best, you do get disappointment. There should not be anything wrong with that. </p>
<p>What you learn from your failure is what we are trying to debate. NMD’s DD learned a good lesson and made most of the oppertunities she had.</p>
<p>Post 172: “Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air …if some… students were interested in Amherst or Swarthmore or Smith …”</p>
<p>Originally my D thought she wanted to go to Amherst until she visited. If it had been in Boston or NY, it would’ve probably beaten out Harvard. I think many kids who apply Ivy include Amherst/Williams/Swat type schools, too. They are not a step down, but not widely known outside of a certain universe. Though the differences are quite radical in terms of offerings and locale.</p>
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<p>Depends on where one lives. In the PNW the Ivy’s carry a little less cachet. Many kids here choose other schools over Ivy acceptances. Part of it is weather, part culture, part fit. Of the 5 accepted to H in S1’s year, only 2 went. Others stayed west, 1 Stanford, 1 USC, 1 Pomona. But I thought the point of the OP was how disappointment and certain schools are not a form of pre-destiny. The disappointment thing is interesting. S1 was turned down by a (lower ranked, for what it is worth) school he had no intention of attending, having been accepted at his dream school, but was quite disappointed. He wondered allowed why they didn’t like him? I told him it was because they figured out he couldn’t handle rejection.</p>
<p>Seventeen year olds are unsophisticated and somewhat lacking in judgment. It seems to me that is where the parents come in–to make sure that their S/D understands that no matter how many kids from a particular high school go to HYP or how extraordinary they are, or how much the guidance counselor loves them, that the REJECTION rates hover around 90% (maybe a bit lower when NMD’s D applied). How could you let your kid fall in love with these schools? How could you not be vigilant that they are grounded in reality and therefore shielded from such disappointment? Surely if this were a job situation, a parent would understand that when ninety out of one hundred applicants are turned down, chances are slim that one will get the job. But I think the status/prestige involved in ivy admissions makes many parents lose all sense of proportion. Regarding the ivies and other elite schools, I think the OP is more of a cautionary tale for parents than for students.</p>
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<p>Well, it’s a mixed bag on that score. Many Midwesterners prefer to stay in the Midwest, too. We’re still quite new to Minnesota. I was shocked to learn how few Minnesotans apply to top schools in the Northeast or California. (Of those that do, though, Stanford is the clear top choice, well ahead of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell in that order, at least as determined by where they send SAT II scores, while UC Berkeley is the most popular OOS flagship after Wisconsin-Madison which gives Minnesota kids in-state tuition rates). </p>
<p>And some Midwestern schools attract a lot of Northeasterners. My undergrad alma mater, Michigan, has a very large OOS student body for a public university (35%), with New York supplying the most students of any state after Michigan. In general, though, I think relatively few Northeast kids ever look beyond the Northeast, while far larger numbers of Californians head East. Nearly 6,000 Californians sent SAT II scores to Harvard in 2009, which means if they all actually applied, nearly one in 5 Harvard applicants was from California. </p>
<p>But where kids apply to schools wasn’t really my point. I was talking about a more pervasive kind of tunnel vision that just sees nothing much of value in other parts of the country, with the possible exception of California. Ever heard the term “fly-over land”? It’s actually quite widely used in some circles in the Northeast to refer to everything between, roughly, the Allegheny Front and the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. It suggests this whole area in the nation’s midsection is a vast wasteland of uninteresting places and backward people—not even worth visiting, much less staying for as long as it takes to get a college degree or (horrors!) a job, which might require one actually to live there. It’s said with a smirk, and although it’s meant in jest I think it is nonetheless revealing of a fairly widespread attitude of disdain. </p>
<p>Frankly, I’ve encountered it quite a lot even when serving on faculty hiring committees at universities both in the Northeast and Midwest. Candidates coming out of the top Midwestern schools are usually very open to locating in the Midwest, and a few may even have a slight preference for the Midwest but they’re usually open to all locations. Candidates coming out of top West Coast schools often would prefer to stay in California but barring that are typically equally open to the Midwest or Northeast; as far as they’re concerned the weather sucks everywhere but California, and once you’re making that sacrifice, it’s all pretty much the same. Candidates coming out of the top schools in the Northeast often strongly prefer to stay in the Northeast but would consider California; it’s a real uphill struggle to get them to take the Midwest seriously. Or perhaps given the vagaries of the academic job market I should more accurately say they are interested, or at least feign interest in Midwestern schools until they get an offer on either coast in which case it’s probably the last you’ll ever hear from them—even if the offer is from a less prestigious coastal institution. </p>
<p>Again, these are all overly broad generalizations; stereotypes, I guess you might fairly say. There are always some who break the mold. But there is also some truth embedded in them, to the extent recurring-but-imperfect patterns can be captured in words.</p>
<p>I think regional preference is clearly a factor: a very important one. From S1’s top public magnet school where 30-40 % end up at top 20 schools, I can think of only a few who ventured out of the eastern seaboard (we are in NJ). And, I don’t think it should be all attributed to NE elitism and such: that’s, in my mind, a gross exaggeration. If it were elitism per se, we would have seen kids from this school applying to CalTech and Stanford. Hardly anybody does. My personal opinion is, most NE’ers stay in NE not necessarily because of NE elitism, but because most don’t have the compelling need to look elsewhere given how much is available right in our backyard.</p>
<p>Most parents would rather see their kids close by: within a drivable distance, rather than flying distance. For kids with outstanding qualifications, there is not that much need to explore options outside NE area given there are so many outstanding choices right here nearby. For kids with stats below that, venturing far away for a school that has a plenty of similar peer schools in most of the regions, again, does not make sense. If you have a comparable school nearby, why would you encourage your kid to go to a school thousands miles away? </p>
<p>If S1 had been accepted into HYP, he would be there now because of the better networking they supposedly have in the IB world. I would have been happy, because they are so close by: U Chicago is not within a “let’s go home this weekend for father’s day” distance. </p>
<p>S1 says, if he had known that Dartmouth had such a good Wall Street networking access, he would have applied to it, and may have chosen it over Chicago had he been accepted (he would have had a good chance: kids from the same school with lower stats and even more modest ECs got into it). </p>
<p>Me? I am REALLY glad that he did not apply to Dartmouth and hence no temptation for it. I really really value the kind of education Chicago is allegedly providing and has already proven during last few month to us. This trumps the allegedly better career networking opportunities in his chosen field: he can “over compensate” for the lack of Chicago connection, but it would be harder to simulate on his own the Chicago vibes. </p>
<p>So, yes, even the distance issue can be trumped over in favor of the school fit consideration. See, I overcame my “regional preference” and “NE elitism” So, now I really feel superior to all the rest of you 
(please, I am joking!)</p>