MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Can we hold off on discussing the validity of 13 y/o’s chancing other 13 y/o’s with their “slim chances?” M10 was only yesterday; wounds are raw, and kids do read this board.
@jmtabb I am sorry for that outcome and know it hurts. So much has already been written on CC about how students should understand that these decisions are not valid assessments of their “worth”.
Also said, but easily lost in the hubbub, are the actual numbers. Just as the elite colleges could fill the entering class several times over with an equally good one, so can the top boarding schools. Maybe 50,000 top-scoring, top 5% high school seniors are trying squeeze into 15,000 elite U admission letters. London’s formula above is a rational response to this crush of numbers that the Common App has exacerbated. There is a parallel to the BS situation here, I believe. Thousands of kids are scoring 80% plus on their SSATs and lots of those are vying for hundreds of seats.
Over-qualified kids are routinely getting turned away by the elite schools that they love. (I’ll assume that when I see a kid who has scored 3-5 acceptances at top ten BS, they have some compelling hook in addition to other strong credentials or positive inputs – and that they are over-represented here on CC). These great kids would probably find a great experience at schools #11-50, and weather the putative “inferiority complex” some would perversely fix on them.
Every season, these realities need to be re-broadcasted to enable appropriate decisions for individual circumstances.
I have no cards on the table this year regarding admissions and I have been glued to this board… and I’m ‘freaked out’ 8-X I have the utmost respect for everyone’s efforts.
I have found @sevendad uncharitable for using terms like hubris to discuss dreaming 13 yo hoping for admission. While I don’t criticize them for the dream, I also feel for them in their disappointment and I was sorry to read of disappointing results yesterday. I believe trying, failing, and learning from the experience is a major part of growing up and not something to avoid at all costs. The cafe was full of posts demonstrating a lot of growth in a lot of kids yesterday. I was impressed with their support of one another and their situations – both positive and negative. I favor support over chastisement. One reason I wouldn’t use terms like hubris is that the back story of any individual child isn’t known on a public chat board. As above with difference in parental opinions altering schools applied to . . . there are so many things unknown that I tend to give the benefit of the doubt. Many kids do not want to go to boarding school generically but rather to specific schools or to specific programs. If you just want the boarding school experience generally, then sure – cast a wide net as suggested above. I certainly would. For my child, we were looking at very specific needs and we visited many wonderful, lovely schools who simply did not meet those needs and so applications were not completed. Often, we were told that directly by the AO or in one case, by the admissions director. So while my kid’s final list would be met with scorn by many of those reading, it seemed quite the waste of time to apply to schools who told us they would be a poor fit. Did that mean that a pile of rejections were possible – absolutely! My child understood that and was comfortable with the choice and would have no regrets even if facing a pile of rejections. I think that I have a lot more faith in posters to know themselves and their own circumstances. Perhaps I run in different circles, but my kids and their friends are not status-obsessed automatons who seek name brand clothing or name brand schools simply to have name brands. They are kids with specific needs trying to find schools to meet those needs. Most of the posters on the board seem the same to me and I am impressed with their efforts, their determination, their aspirations, and their kindness to one another.
Chronic lurker here, stepping in in defense of SevenDad, whom I have found to be one of the most helpful, realistic voices on the board. I fear that the all-too-prevalent phenomenon of kids reassuring other kids (“they’ll look past your Cs,” “of course, you can get into Exover with an SSAT in the 70s”) may lead, and this year perhaps did lead, to some applicants applying to a poorly selected or overly narrow group of schools. Perhaps if this type of admittedly well-intentioned advice were less common, some of these kids would have found their way to more objective sources of advice. As others have noted, “casting a wide net” means vertically and not horizontally, so that applying to the “top ten” schools really doesn’t give many applicants a much better chance at an acceptance than buying ten lottery tickets instead of two for Powerball. If you read the Freaking Out thread, a number of these applicants came to this realization too late, and the single biggest expressed regret is not applying to more schools. Based on the responses of most applicants (shock, surprise, dismay, despair) at receiving a pile of waitlists and rejections, most of them had goals different than @kaibab3’s child, and would now be thrilled to have an acceptance or two at a Gem.
Keep up the good work, @SevenDad. Some of these kids who have always been the smartest or the fastest need to learn that not everyone gets a cupcake.
All that said, unsuccessful applicants should remember that there are many ways to be successful, and lots of them don’t lead through HADES or the Ivy League. My kids are always impressed when they accompany me to meetings of a very selective professional group whose members are fabulously successful by any and many measures–and none of them except me went to schools they’ve heard of. In that respect, your determination and, yes, hubris, will serve you well in the future.
“the backstory of any individual child isn’t known on a public chat board”
“favor support over chastisement”
Some important points made in both of the above posts, which come with the sound and the fury of M10 still rattling around on M11.
Hopefully, we’ll return to these insights come August, including GMT’s wonderful analysis showing the skewed posting sample that makes it look easier to get into top ten schools than it really is. Can anybody be truly “confident” when applying against the longest odds? Maybe the confidence that’s required is the type that says you can’t “win” unless you play – all the while resisting the Lake Wobegon effect for more realism about the circumstances at hand.
Just putting my 2 cents in.
Up until March 5th, I hadn’t given a single thought or nervous feeling to my boarding school results, then I got on CC and saw a few kids who were extremely nervous and talking about themselves and each other and reassuring each other everything would turn out fine. Then I realized, if these kids with great scores need to be reassured, Do I? So I became very nervous and started to post a lot. I never once posted on the chances forum. I wasn’t going to give anyone false hope. I was hoping for the best but expecting the worst. At the time of my first acceptance, my first thought was “Is this fake?”. I hated seeing fellow CCers crushed, but I also saw plenty of statements saying something along the lines of, “I didn’t expect this to happen.” I don’t get how you can set any expectations with something as wishy-washy as BS acceptances. I was hoping to be accepted everywhere I applied. I knew that wouldn’t happen in any dimension or alternate universe. I expected nothing though. How could I? Yes, my interviews went well, yes I had great scores, and yes, I had great grades. I wasn’t the perfect applicant (who is?) but I knew that I had done enough to get into BS. That doesn’t mean I would get into BS. I could control my grades, scores, and my interviews. That was up to me. Getting accepted wasn’t up to me, and I had no control over it, so I could not expect a certain outcome.
My advice, “Hope for the best and expect the worst.”
I need to echo @GovsParent – @SevenDad is the voice of reason on this board and kids would do well by heeding his advice. He has a great deal of experience reading through these message boards and seeing results trickle in as overconfident kids appear disappointed and dumbfounded by their unexpected rejections. I would not use the word “uncharitable” for his sage advice. In fact, I think that the time spent giving his advice is actually the opposite" extremely charitable.
In one post when discussing college admissions, a parent shared one BS strategy of realistic goals with applications going to 3 “reach” schools, 3 “target” schools, and 3 “safety” schools. Sevendad has advocated this same advice - casting a wide net and considering schools that may be less competitive/famous, but nonetheless offer a great education. Other parents have posted “hidden gem” threads. The kids ignore this and apply to 2 schools with impossible admissions standards and complain about it later.
Keep up the good fight Sevendad. There will be kids that thank you later.
@jmtabb – I think that you have been the victim of “yield protection” gone awry. My guess is that the legacy schools are less competitive than the others and they felt that your kid was “over qualified” and would end up going to either the other legacy school or the more competitive school. Meanwhile the non-legacy schools felt that there was no way that your kids would choose them and they did not want to give up a spot for them.
I would think rationally about the situation and remember that you set out to find the right learning environment for your child. Getting off the waitlist is in no way “begging.” Think of it like this - get the spot and then you have the chance to turn it down. Call one of the AOs at the legacy schools and let them know how disappointed you are and how you would send your kid there in a heartbeat. Put aside any injured pride and get the spot. It is important to have options.
@heartburner - sent you a PM. I don’t think hashing out the details here is appropriate, but felt that others needed to hear that even families that seem to tick all of the boxes don’t always get a “golden ticket”.
Got the PM - Yield protection and gaming by schools led to your dilemma.
I have to defend @SevenDad. He’s been contributing & following the Prep School Admissions board for 3 years now, and he has had 2 horses in the race. He has been giving astute, well-seasoned advice in urging applicants to cast a wide net. That doesn’t mean applying to an even greater number of low admit rate acronym schools.
Trying, failing, and learning from failure is indeed an important part of growing up. But let’s be honest; there is such a thing as over-reach. As was pointed out earlier, “charitable” encouragement on the Chances board does no favors to the kids w clearly middling profiles who are dreaming of Exeter.
Hubris is the right word, but it’s hubris on the part of the parents, not the 13 yo. Parents have a responsibility to temper clearly unrealistic goals. I don’t let my middling athlete kid entertain a fantasy he is going to play for Manchester United to the detriment of passing up other realistic opportunities. Parents have ultimate say in which schools to pursue, because a 13 yo cannot write a check.
And for the “go big or go home” crowd, I hope that that doesn’t translate to “Go harvard [or specific school], or Go community college” 4 years from now.
Exactly @GMTplus7 and @GovsParent
@kaibab3 I don’t really see these kids who didn’t get in wishing anything other than that they had applied to more schools. Most of the ones who are applying to this super short list seem to be not well advised by parents and to come from schools where there is no one to advise them. To the extent that they are getting their information here, and lurking in 7th grade before making the list of schools to apply to I think @sevendad and others could actually be genuinely helping kids.
OTOH continuing to give false hope to kids with relatively low scores and grades who are applying to Exeter and Andover helps no one and in my opinion creates false hope setting them up for an bigger disappointment on March 10
@jmrtabb I am really sorry about how it went for you and your kid. Forgive me if I am confusing a conversation that we were having with someone else, but I do think that this is the kind of situation where kids applying from schools with relationships with BS have an advantage. You would have gotten the feedback from the schools through your current school and someone would have been advocating for your kid assuring them about whatever the issue was. Usually I think it works out because the BS know where kids are coming from and don’t expect every kid to have a placement office, but if they have a question about an applicant they don’t really have anyone to call. In the case of my kid the school had a question, they asked his current school the school gave the answer-cleared it up. It wasn’t a big thing but I have no idea if they would have been comfortable accepting him without the answer. I would echo the advice from others, call the AOs advocate for your kid, don’t toss out the baby with the bathwater. Wishing you the best of luck.
@SevenDad, how did you know it was about swimming!? Yes. Peddie has a much better swimming program. We can’t decide between any of the THREE options (incl public).
We didn’t really think Andover would be yes until march 10. Until that time it was Peddie or public. Then it was Andover or public. Now it is any one of the 3.
@jmrtabb, we had similarly disappointing results. DS has 93 percentile SSATs, nearly straight As (2 B+s) and hails from a western state that boarding schools rarely see on their roster. We do need 30-50% FA but I was hoping that the substantial amount we could pay would mean it was less of a barrier. Yes we applied to a couple of the top schools and understood they were a reach but thought he had a chance. But we also took the advice of @SevenDad and broadened our search to include a slightly less competitive option and two schools with SSAT’s 10 and 20 percentile points below my son’s, respectively. I thought he was a slam dunk at these schools, and he walked away with waitlists from the supposedly safe schools and rejects everywhere else.
Another topic, and one which I considered posting about in a separate thread, is whether schools really want kids that are passionate and ready to take advantage of all they have to offer and contribute to the community as they grow, or if they are really looking for fully formed and accomplished applicants. My son has developed an amazing level of focus, dedication, and discipline to a EC in the last year or so, and he is so poised to do great things. But he didn’t discover his “thing” until recently, so he isn’t a world-class virtuoso at this point. I can’t help that reflect that the kids with the “hooks” that get them into the top schools have to have discovered their thing by the time they are about 10 and bring adult discipline to that to be accomplished enough by 13 to catch a boarding school’s eye. Kids are developing so quickly at this age and should still be trying new things and discovering themselves. Do we allow that when they have to be groomed from a young age to be viable candidates?
The main thing I am feeling is a huge sense of responsibility since I provided the initial list of schools for him to consider and advised him through the process while requiring him to own it. I thought I knew what I was doing–I did this myself 30 years ago and consulted with east coast friends who had been through it more recently with their kids–yet I set him up for failure. My takeaway is that it is more of a crap shoot than it was for me and the number of schools applied to is as important as the mix. I guess if there is one silver lining here it is that I have a better handle on the application landscape for college and I won’t leave anything to chance (and if he keeps going at the speed his is at now he is going to be an amazing college candidate). An oh, @charger78, the other lesson is that I just don’t think geo diversity means as much as I thought it did.
The -10 percentile in SSAT does NOT mean that a school is “safe”. A -10 from a 93 would equate to an 83, which is higher than the average SSAT in Loomis Chaffee and the same as Taft’s. Not a slam dunk by any means. Even a -20 isn’t exactly a safe zone, considering the fact that each school looks at such a wide variety of things to determine admission.
I shouldn’t have used the word slam dunk. Nothing is a slam dunk. But I thought that overall DS would be very attractive to those schools.
These schools have to turn away attractive candidates all the time, unfortunately. Apparently there are enough good candidates to fill a class three times over in some schools.
Thanks for the comments @LifeLongNYer and @wayoutwest18 . M10+2 is feeling better than M10 did. There are tons of variables here, not all of which I really want to get into.
I’m feeling a little betrayed by the system (and yes, responsible for putting my13 year old through this), but I’m also coming to terms with the idea that these schools are looking for a certain type of kid and that maybe we got the results we did because they found her less of a fit for type. All along we’ve been saying that none of these schools was a perfect fit for our kid, each had their pluses and minuses. Maybe they saw that too. In any case, I’m not pinning any hopes on the waitlists and instead planning class schedules and getting excited about our kid joining the swim team that won the state championship last year. It will still be a great year!