<p>If I lived in Washington State or had Canadian citizenship, I don’t think I’d have applied to any “mid-elites” either.</p>
<p>When I read the original post, I did not think sour grapes at all. I am originally from the Midwest and my first job was at a SUNY school. One of my earliest impressions of the East Coast was that people seemed to think that any private school was better than any state school and my assumption was that they thought that way because private schools cost more.</p>
<p>Flash forward too many years–and guess what? It still seems that way. Graduates of the top ten schools are novelties when you get off the coasts and out of the cities. I would bet you that if you stopped someone on the street in a small town in Iowa (they would talk to you there) and got into a discussion about colleges and mentioned that you were a Princeton grad, the response would be something like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that. Out East somewhere, isn’t it?” But many of the people on CC are aiming for those top schools.</p>
<p>Our pediatrician is a Harvard grad and other than her, I don’t know a single Ivy league graduate. I am trying to think of anyone I know who went to a private college. I do know LOTS of graduates of that school on the Hudson that Forbes ranked number one this year. So, unimpressed(Dr.)dad, I think you have the right idea, and your children are lucky that they aren’t too wound up about name brands.</p>
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<p>Sorry, but this is not accurate. S went to public schools k-12; he did not participate in any kind of sports. He was admitted to H where he had plenty of hooks (including having taken lots of courses there) and S where he had none. Among his roommates, none had hooks, although one had a parent who’d gotten a MA from H (does not count for legacy status); one was a first-generation immigrant from Asia, one was a second-generation Hispanic from a tiny town with a mediocre public school.
We briefly considered Berkeley, but for OOS, it would have not been much of a bargain over H, especially after factoring in travel cost, not to mention rumors about how difficult it is to get into certain courses and graduating in 4 years. S did not care for the large size, either. UW is a great university, but there is no reason to claim that students get or do not get into top private schools because “the system is rigged.”</p>
<p>The whole first page which called the OP bitter, wow…</p>
<p>You people need some social skills, sorry his kids are not robots. As for getting into Harvard, just this year a kid I knew from a local school got in with a 2150 SAT score. How did he get in? His dad went there as well as his mom, of course he is more qualified than the OP’s daughter.</p>
<p>Also, the kid who I told you guys about. His high school does not even have a football or basketball program, the kid is a pretty good football player (ran a 4.4 fourty at the football camp), 6"3 and can throw about 74 yards. Well the local schools that DID have a football program, most are overrun with drug dealers and gang members. The kid’s parents are rich but their job is keeping them in one county, commute becomes an issue and I know if the kid had the opportunities most of the kids in the US get, the kid would have made it into a top college by now.</p>
<p>Maybe you guys should really understand someone’s situation, fact is, some people are given MORE than others, A LOT MORE than others.</p>
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<p>Ah. </p>
<p>While the tippy top schools are generally private, there are many upper-tier publics; UCLA and U of Michigan, for example. UC-Berkley is also a tip-top school. </p>
<p>The fact is, there’s NO way to be exactly clear about their criteria. Their criteria changes from year to year, and often several times during the process. This is where the “holistic” part of reviewing an application is. Sometimes they care about the high stats less if the applicant is a world reknowned oboe player, or something else needed/wanted on campus. </p>
<p>With about 90% of private/selective colleges, the admissions requirement is: “Show us why you’re the right student for us.” How any one applicant does that changes.</p>
<p>They don’t become exclusive by not admitted just qualified applicants, they become exclusive by not admitting a large number of any sort of applicant.</p>
<p>“If I lived in Washington State or had Canadian citizenship, I don’t think I’d have applied to any “mid-elites” either.”
She’s a smart one 
I do think it’s a bit amusing to have one’s alma mater referred to as a “backup” or “safety school”. Do people realise how bad that makes everyone look who says it? I chose UW becuase I had access to the best Medical, Dental and Nursing schools in the country(those darn rankings again ;p), and I was heading health sciences. The assumption that you would ALWAYS pick a “top 20” school over another is why I wrote this post. There is a built in assumption there that is to the advantage of these schools, not necessarily the kids or their parents.</p>
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<p>Of course, you’ve read his entire application folder, right? Perhaps legacy status did play a role; and perhaps, there were aspects of that kid’s profile that impressed the adcom. As other posters have said, colleges try to build a class and a community. This fact, plus the small number of available slots, means that many qualified students don’t get in.</p>
<p>One thing I forgot to mention: Of S’s roommates, not a single one attended a private school.</p>
<p>unimpresseddad: That is YOUR assumption; I don’t know where you get it. If I had been a CA resident, I probably would have felt differently about whether to have S attend Berkeley instead of Harvard or Stanford because the cost differential would have been far more significant.</p>
<p>Did your son have to go to a public school in an inner city setting?</p>
<p>Public schools in suburban settings in my opinion are pretty good options.
Come on, 2150 with a 3.7 GPA? Yaaaaa.</p>
<p>^ Your anecdotal evidence doesn’t make your conjectures any more useful.</p>
<p>“In all honesty OP, your whole post just comes off as spiteful, wrongfully indignant and childish.”</p>
<p>In no way did I find the OP’s post that childish…</p>
<p><em>edited</em></p>
<p>OP: please, message me and pick another site to state your story. This is really not the best site for it, as you can see, people here don’t take the kindly to those who are underprivileged.</p>
<p>No, it wasn’t in an inner city, nor was it suburban. It does have over 40% on F/R lunch and about 27 different languages spoken.</p>
<p>Unimpressed dad claimed that students who get into top schools attended private schools costing over 20k per year and played sports ordinarily associated with rich folks. While there are plenty of rick students to be found at top schools, there are also plenty who attend on financial aid. One of my S’s roommates was a full ride; others had partial financial aid. Harvard has one of the most generous financial aid programs available; for low income students, it can be a better financial deal than our state university. The same kind of financial aid is available at other top schools and attracts students whose parents could not possibly afford private schools costing $20k per year or let them take part in expensive sports.</p>
<p>UW is an excellent university. I think there are quite a few members of the National Academy of Sciences there, and they are also genuinely interested in undergraduate teaching. For the sciences, I don’t think that the LAC’s in the top 20 are “between” Harvard and MIT on the one hand and UW on the other. (I have heard the statistics on the fractions of the graduating classes who eventually complete Ph.D.'s in the sciences, but would still direct someone who is interested in science to UW over an LAC.) Not certain about the interests of unimpresseddad’s younger D, just guessing based on the MIT app. The same considerations hold (maybe doubly) in engineering.</p>
<p>“No, it wasn’t in an inner city, nor was it suburban. It does have over 40% on F/R lunch and about 27 different languages spoken.”</p>
<p>27 different languages? Impressive, the kids at the school I am talking about only speak English. </p>
<p>My point is this, some kids are not as privileged as others and no matter how hard they try, they cannot go to an Ivy from their current situation. I visited the high school, broken toilets and gun shots could be heard from outside, one time a Pitbull ran into the school and attacked one of the students.</p>
<p>“The game is rigged, to a certain extent.”</p>
<p>As I usually do, I agree with poetgrl. It is rigged, in so many different ways. I have no idea how some of these kids get into top private schools without major hooks. There is so much competition, it is crazy. We live in WA also, but did play the game-so my son got into a top school with less than stellar stats. He only applied to reach schools, and the UW plus some safeties—because the reality is that when you have such a great school as the UW nearby, why apply for a school that costs more but isn’t as good? </p>
<p>I’m sure your kids will be very happy at the UW, it is a great school. And I think of the money I could have in my account if my kids went there!</p>
<p>Actually, I am making a topic based on the environmental factors.</p>
<p>There are two books to read, one, “The Power of Priveledge,” written by an author who also wrote another book about the end of this same practice for Oxford in England, the other “The Price of Admission,” written by a Pulitzer winning reporter. Both of these books provide irrefutable proof that the system is rigged. It’s rigged.</p>
<p>So what? </p>
<p>What, in life, is not rigged?</p>
<p>ETA: Busdriver! Hi!</p>
<p>I didn’t find OP uber-bitter. But what do I know? I also went to a juco. :)</p>
<p>“I didn’t find OP uber-bitter. But what do I know? I also went to a juco”</p>
<p>You don’t know much because you weren’t over-privileged or born with a golden spoon in your mouth.</p>
<p>Ugh, don’t tell me you are one of those people who actually worked for things in life, people like those who called the OP bitter know how tough life is, they hand things handed to them.</p>
<p>tech…this isn’t helpful. The system is rigged. I cited two well thought of and well-reviewed books. All systems are rigged…it’s why they are called systems. </p>
<p>Are you a parent or a student?</p>
<p>Hey youdon’tsay, I went to a juco for the first year too (my parents were only going to pay for he first quarter and sure as heck weren’t going to help with any applications). And it was a good choice, as I got such untypically high grades (taking easy classes like band, weight lifting and women’s studies) that I got a ROTC scholarship for the rest of college…thank God they didn’t look at the whole picture back then. I don’t think the OP sounds bitter either, just figured out that it’s a tricky game.</p>
<p>And poetgrl…:D</p>