<p>Well- intelligence is not always so black and white that outside observers can judge. I also believe that there are many areas of intelligence and each school wants some of each so just because somebody seems like a better math and english student doesn’t mean that they are more intelligent.</p>
<p>I am sure the experience will be great for the young man however he gets there. My daughter volunteered at the grade school helping as a teachers assistant, and did some other activities to put on the app…lol I agree the class rank is only a small part of the application. She also speaks fluent German without an accent from the 12 or so visits she has made there, and Summers spent. She is an accomplished downhill skier having started skiing when she was 3 or 4… I’m sure all the parents here could brag about their kids all day… and deservedly so… just a shame they all can’t get exactly what they want in life. My wife got a masters degree in social work, and now works as the head of the kids division at a mental health center… making about 35,000/year. Her dad told her she was making a mistake getting a social work degree, and could have with the same time spent gotten a degree where she could have made a heck of a lot more money. My daughter thinks the same way as my wife, and will do plenty in her life along the lines of humanity… just wish the application had reflected it a bit more…</p>
<p>just a lot of frustration at this whole process, and my failures in helping my daughter put together a more appealing application. I saw it coming on some level and refused to play along… opps.</p>
<p>dbwes, your post makes me wonder if your D is in the same program my D will probably be in…who knows? </p>
<p>Regarding the classmates – D’s school is a “magnet” school that has an entrance test, but it is also known for its “inclusion” program where kids with all sorts of learning differences who are highly intelligent are in the same classes with everyone else but with an extra teacher specializing in special ed added to the class for extra support. Those kids also attend special additional classes for extra help. </p>
<p>It is very mixed racially, ethnically and socioeconomically, also…so D has definitely had a wide range of classmates, which she appreciates. She has expressed that she has learned a lot from her brilliant classmates and wants to continue having such stimulating classmates. She has also benefited from her interactions with the “inclusion” kids, whom she has often been in a leadership/tutoring relationship with, since they often need extra help and she was asked by the teachers to, for example, do an extra group assignment with a second group of students. </p>
<p>We thought the mix of kids in the school made for a very rich and interesting environment.</p>
<p>I think the only real concern is being in a college setting where the majority of kids are not very good students and perhaps are only scraping by, partying all the time, etc. Where she might be subject to less than ideal peer influences. I don’t think it would be like that in her program at school X, though, although it might be like that in other parts of that school. </p>
<p>But that is her concern – she likes the mix of classmates and definitely doesn’t want to lose the stimulation from the brilliant ones. She also wants the diversity, and of her two choices now the expensive one actually has more diversity.</p>
<p>“I think the only real concern is being in a college setting where the majority of kids are not very good students and perhaps are only scraping by, partying all the time, etc. Where she might be subject to less than ideal peer influences.”</p>
<p>Well again, the mystery may be somewhat (not entirely) answered if she does visit a variety of classes at school X, particularly including some upper-division seminars where the student participation will be a feature. If I had a “real concern” about that I would not enroll without closing the information gap to the best of my ability.</p>
<p>What my son’s private elementary/middle school is doing is showcasing that their graduates end up at some of the most selective colleges in the country. There are always things like this that come up when you are in an area where prestige means something to a lot of people. It is a selling point for the school around here. </p>
<p>As for those who want their kids to be around top kids in college, that is a reasonable thing to want.</p>
<p>cpt – Of course it’s a reasonable thing to want, but I sometimes suspect it’s code – either for prestige or for a happier environment for a child who was miserable in high school. Not all the time, but sometimes. And while no one wants their child to go to a “party” school where no one cares about studying, methinks there is more truth in the middle at most places. I mean, does everyone at Yale always talk about philosophy while everyone at Penn State or whatever other state school always drink?</p>
<p>I realize I am re-hashing a debate that appears ad nauseum on these boards – probably not the direction the OP had in mind at all. Apologies and best to everyone’s kids.
Over and out</p>
<p>To the OP,</p>
<p>Also consider the possibility that kids lie. My older kids did a LOT of volunteer work. I mentioned to them that I don’t know how people do X, Y and Z and they both laughed and said kids at their school routinely lied about how much volunteer work they did. They just made it up and put it down. Some people lie about where they were accepted. </p>
<p>I’ve heard a lot of stupid things about colleges. I don’t think there’s a college or university that’s immune. Let me give you <em>some</em> of the colleges that my ivy-obsessed relatives/ friends insulted as “not very good:” </p>
<ul>
<li>Vassar</li>
<li>Hamilton</li>
<li>UVA</li>
<li>UMd </li>
</ul>
<p>I’m not kidding. Tell me those aren’t all WONDERFUL schools with some very successful alum. </p>
<p>OP, I have no doubt that your daughter has heard some stupid comments-- but it really has little relationship to her exact choices.</p>
<p>“Some people lie about where they were accepted.”</p>
<p>Ain’t that the truth? </p>
<p>We have often found this to be true.
People also understate and overstate scores, e.c.'s, and gpa’s relative to what is actually submitted to the colleges.</p>
<p>It’s all part of the competitive “game.” Some of it is to psych others out, some of it is in hopes of reducing competition/throwing people off.</p>
<p>That’s why this comment in the opening post,
“No way is that kid more deserving or impressive than D, save for slightly better test scores” is a supposition that has no authentication behind it. </p>
<p>Even if we believe that we know all the elements of a competing student’s application, we do not. That’s a given for the thousands of applications not in our view, but it also includes the local apps as well. We don’t know what the recommenders have noticed about a ‘competing’ student that other students and their parents have not. We don’t know what accomplishments hidden from our eyes other students have submitted within their app. materials. We don’t necessarily know which essay was ultimately submitted; it may not have been an essay peer-edited at school, but a different essay that only the college and the student have seen. I know lots of students who submit alternate essays at the last minute because they’re dissatisfied with the intended one. We don’t know what positive character traits may be revealed in such an essay, or in the application itself, that may equal or surpass what we see in our own son or daughter.</p>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>You can’t believe a lot of what people say about these things. The myths about paying for college are a big shock to many families when they are finally faced with the realities of that situation. The big scholarship legend is also a shocker. We truly believed some things we were told before our first one was of college age, and it was a rude awakening when we discovered first hand that we were told some outright lies. Parents I knew told us their kids got sports scholarships from schools that absolutely give none. Merit awards were attributed to schools that did not give a dime except for need. We heard “full ride” when it was absolutely not the case. We got exaggerated test scores. The biggest categories were the scads of kids who were supposedly waitlisted. Just accidentally I found out that some cases were out and out lies. </p>
<p>So don’t get too wound up in the stories you are hearing this time of the year. When the dust clears and the kids go off to college, you will at least know of one school where each kid was accepted. Beyond that, you really can’t rely on much else. What you read on boards like this also should be believed with a salt shaker.</p>
<p>Well, a college with a big name isn’t everything. She should be proud that she was accepted to some schools. But its true, life isn’t fair.</p>
<p>Waitlisthero, I want to say that you are correct about the male/female percentage issue and how it affects high achieving female applicants. Three or four years ago, a Kenyon admissions officer wrote an Op-Ed about all the truly wonderful girls she had to reject to make room for a competitive percentage of boys. The problem colleges face is this: if the percentages are too out of line – that is, too many girls – then both girls and boys stop applying. The college loses its selectivity and its yield. </p>
<p>I am forever grateful for my daughter’s GC, who realized this fact and who encouraged top female students to apply to all women’s colleges as well as the usual suspects. When my daughter received her Ivy rejections, she had three well-known women’s LACs to choose from as well as several respected, but non-top tier, schools. She chose a women’s college, not because she wanted a single-gender school but because the level of intelligence of the students was staggering, comparable to what she had found on Ivy campuses. Once she couldn’t go to her top choices, it was a no-brainer. I would say that at least half her current classmates had Ivy-like stats but were rejected. Twelve (out of 33) girls from her graduating (private school) class ended up at single-gender colleges.</p>
<p>Something similar played out at her first (public) high school. The female valedictorian was rejected/waitlisted by all but ONE of her colleges – and she applied to a range. Several other girls in the top ten had similar disappointing results. But a boy just outside of the top 10 got into an Ivy. Yes, he was a good student, and he deserved his acceptance. But it really hurt the girls who were much more active and engaged with the community.</p>
<p>Guess what? Despite all this, three years later, everyone is happy with their colleges. That angst is long-forgotten. So while girls may face worse odds during college admission season, they will still excel.</p>
<p>The gender issue is particularly a problem with liberal arts schools. I often refer to the role gender plays in admission when people rail against affirmative action. It’s something we all learn here on cc: that schools want diversity and their definition includes gender/ race/ income/ geography/ talents (like sci winner, musician, athlete). Only the last is under your control. While boys may have an advantage applying to liberal art schools, girls may have an advantage applying to tech schools. It sounds to me like the OP’s daughter didn’t have a gender/ race or geography (not sure about income) advantage at any of the schools where she applied. That can make for few surprises. </p>
<p>By the way, it sounds like the GC was a true gem. I would think it’s very reaffirming to tell your daughter that she was accepted everywhere she was interviewed.</p>
<p>Lisares, I don’t think you are wrong for expressing your views and feelings. I think it opened up a good discussion and helped many people. Including me. I am not one of those ambitious parents , I value education highly and have passed that value on to my children. what you bring up is that somehow the whole atmosphere of college application is flawed. Maybe the process can’t change but our attitudes about it can. What I have gleaned is how random this process is. You could be “perfect” and still not get into the school you wanted. It seems so out of control and our children are getting hurt and they don’t deserve it. I will not be so niave next time, I will understand the process and prepare my next child differently and tell her what the real story about college admissions is . It is an arbitrary game. My daughter wrote a beautiful speech about how all the experiences in HS made her the person she is and how important it is to evolve. She has done some amazing things, broken out of her comfort zone and likes who she is becoming. I’ll take that.</p>
<p>To the poster who was asking whether “being surrounded by top students” is code for “having no social life in HS,” I’d say that it’s a purely academic concern. At a large enough school, any student can find any kind of social life they want, whether or not they fit in at their HS; they can find the heavy partying crowd at any ivy, just as they could find the crowd that talks philosophy at their state u. But from an academic sense, you don’t want to attend a school that attracts students who aren’t prepped for college in the same way as you were prepped because it really slows down the classes and also doesn’t provide for the same challenging academic environment with difficult questions being asked etc. Obviously not everyone will have the same type of prep coming into college, but for example, in economics – a class of freshman that has experience with AB or BC calc will run differently than a class where only a few students have taken those classes but most didn’t take calc in high school. If you’re at the top end of the admissions range for a college that isn’t that hard to get into, you need to sit in on classes and see if this concern exists because you personally won’t gain as much if you can get by college without working very hard and still being at the very top of the class; you need to be challenged – whether it’s by the prof or by other students who are smart and are also vying for the top grades in the class. That’s the very valid concern that CC parents have with taking full rides at lower tier schools. </p>
<p>And to the OP – people always have unnecessary comments about others’ college choices, as if their choices are so perfect. You’d actually be surprised how much subs talk to seniors about college; I think it’s just an easy topic of conversation, esp. around this time of the year, though they don’t realize that they shouldn’t be making comments about schools when they hardly know the kids, the situation etc. Remind your D that she’ll likely only keep up with a handful of HS people and will never see the rest of them again, so who cares whether or not they like her college choices – she’s the one who has to be happy with the choice, the financial decisions etc.</p>
<p>WLH, my D was one of those rejected by Yale a few years back…and a year later would have rejected Yale in return, so happy was she with the college that she wound up at, one which was no compromise in terms of intellectual environment as it turns out. And as MWFN can testify. :)</p>
<p>MWFN, I wonder if our D’s were accepted at the exact same women’s LAC’s. Mine was accepted at WSB while striking out at HYS. No offense to anyone, but I never thought H or S was a good fit for her. Would have chosen Brown or Tufts over either but she didn’t apply. Followed her logic perfectly on choosing S over W and B. No complaints, down to wriggling toes in the grass with great pleasure. I admit, I never had figured her for a women’s college and was a bit dubious about LAC’s but became the skeptic who stayed to pray.</p>
<p>I completely agree with the last two posters.</p>
<p>Something to think about…many kids leave high school and never look back. Once they are in school they make wonderful friends–and since they ALL go to the same school they aren’t snobby about your child’s choices! </p>
<p>And eventually, after many years of ups and downs, failures and disappointments most adults mellow and learn to be less judgemental. This angst will pass.</p>
<p>I love that the OPs daughter was accepted where she interviewed. What a wonderful compliment, she must be a delight.</p>
<p>There is a lot of food for thought in this thread. I was interested in the comment about how high school suddenly gets hard at a certain point, and kids who may have sailed through on raw intelligence start having a hard time. And the one about subtle learning disorders that may only cause difficulty at that point. And how kids who may have had to struggle to overcome learning issues can look on the outside like they are performing well without difficulty. And all the posts about kids being happy where they wind up. I actually think that I am having a harder time dealing with the outcome of this applications ordeal than she is. I am so worried about trying to identify the best place for her, and worrying about whether we are making the right tradeoffs (close to home vs far away, a preprofessional major vs liberal arts major, budget cost vs go for broke) while I think she is more worried about leaving the comfortable world of high school and all her friends to start all over far from home. She was hurt by specific rejections in from a couple of the schools that she had really wanted to attend, and hurt by the feeling that she wasn’t looking from the outside like as big a “winner” or as “smart” as some of her friends, but I think in general she is mostly at this point scared of leaving home and growing up. She has said as much to H and me. And my obsessive worrying about making the perfect choice is about that, too. It feels like the last really critical task of parenthood. (As for the notion that she should be “driving the car” at this point – I think 17 years old is too young to be expected to do that.) Choosing the right school started with nursery school at age three, and we’ve been at it ever since – we are in a big city where you have to maneuver your way around the school system to find a place that is right for you. Elementary, middle, high school-- all have involved tests and applications and competition. So this feels like a really huge task and decision – helping her find and choose a college that will be right for her. Since I came up with the list that she visited and applied to based on her interests and my knowledge of her, I feel to a large degree responsible for whether or not we have the right choices in front of us at this point. She was both too freaked out about the whole thing and too busy getting through her classes and managing her budding social life to spend time poring over Fiske and Princeton Review, etc. I did that. She would ask me about schools her friends were talking about, but she didn’t create her list. Had I left it up to her, we might have wound up with her staying home next year by default! I have a friend who did that with that result.
I also have trouble dealing with choices and uncertainty – and no one choice offers the best of everything. And no matter what, there is a lot of uncertainty when you finally make the choice. There are tradeoffs. I think we know what we are going to do now, at least we are almost sure, and this board has been helpful. Thanks.</p>
<p>It is difficult. You often cannot tell until the student is there, whether it was a good choice or not. For certain, they have to be there to say. I know a young man who chose a school with diligence. Did everything by the book and more. Got to the school and hate, hate, hated it. Hated it so much that he refused to return after the first semester though he did fine academically. Flat refused to finish up the year there. There may have been more to the story, but for whatever reason, he did not go back, took courses at a local school the next term and transferred to a very nice college later. It happens.</p>
<p>On the other hand, a wonderful young lady I know was not accepted at any of her top choices and ended up at her safety school last year, and loves it there. Yes, she has filed transfer papers as she was on course to do so. But she loves her college, has done terrifically there and is so involved in activities there. If she gets into her transfer choices which I think she will, she says she is going to be conflicted as things have worked out so perfectly at this “safety” school.</p>
<p>TheDad, my daughter never looked at Wellesley (“Too many women’s colleges!”), but she got into Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, and, of course, Smith. As it was, we had to force her to look at those three. We still lord it over her that I had to drag her out of the car to even glance at Smith, and now she cannot imagine better opportunities anywhere on earth. Like lisares, I had to force some of the college-looking, just because my D couldn’t imagine that it made much difference where she went, thinking at first that college was “just like high school, only harder.” By the time she realized how exciting college could be, we had limited time.</p>
<p>My D still regrets now becoming involved with the college selection process earlier, although she doesn’t regret for a second where she is. </p>
<p>Lisares, it’s understandable that you are more upset by the results than your daughter is. We always want the best for our children, and we want everyone to love and want them as much as we do. Our reaction to their first choice college denial isn’t all that different from the reaction we had when our Ds came home with their first social rejection – not being invited to a second grade birthday party or being teased on the playground.</p>