<p>Directing anger towards the admissions office for not loving your kid enough is just a back door way of saying that the kids who did get a spot weren’t really deserving.</p>
<p>Be mad at yourself for being bad a process that is arbitrary and for which you have no control once your application leaves your possesion.</p>
<p>If the results are disappointing, be mad at yourself for not having a realistic application list including at least one affordable safety that the student would like the attend. If the application list includes such a school, then there will be no huge let-down or dilemma of every school being too expensive.</p>
<p>Be mad at yourself for assuming you would get into one of these schools with minuscule acceptance rates. Everyone should go into the application process knowing that there is no such thing as a shoo in. </p>
<p>Thank you for starting this thread. Some of the posts from parents on the decision threads have been mean spirited and shameful. </p>
<p>There are a number of students at my high school who didn’t get into where they thought they deserved. A lot of them have haughty attitudes because they’re all AP and subtly put “dumber” kids down. Most times their parents are just as bad, so it’s no wonder. There was an incident at school when we were all applying where the teacher mistakenly sent the rec letter to the student instead of one of his schools. He read it and then got upset because it wasn’t stellar. The teacher said he was smart and got A’s and great test scores, but his snobbery made him hard to teach. He talked about it and it got around the school. The teacher had sent some of those letters out to his other school already. He didn’t get into any of them. It taught me that those recommendation letters matter a lot. </p>
<p>These parents leaving all this vitriol on the decisions boards should think about that. Maybe they passed their bad attitude down to their straight A student, and a teacher mentioned it in a recommendation letter. Why would a college accept a student whose current teachers find him difficult to instruct? </p>
<p>And, as someone who experienced disappointment (not anger) in the past, I can’t even remember what for, as all three kids and friends ended up happy where they landed. Their memories are short–let ours be too!</p>
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<p>For some students, there is no such thing. There may be an affordable safety that meets the student’s needs, sure, but some students can’t find one that they truly would like to attend – only one that they could tolerate. And such students tend to be disappointed if they end up there. </p>
<p>Agree with SJTH. A couple of years later:</p>
<p>nobody remembers who went where.</p>
<p>Many of the “lucky” kids that got into the elite schools have transferred to the state flagship or dropped out.</p>
<p>Others have learned that the school they ended up at becomes their first choice by November.</p>
<p>True, some 4.0 students will be disappointed if they do not attend a super-selective college and think that every other college is “beneath” them, and some 2.0 students do not want to hear that starting at community college may be their best way to “upgrade” their four year college choices at transfer time compared to what they may be able to choose from as frosh. But it is their own fault if they get shut out due to not having any safeties.</p>
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<p>Of course. Just let’s not use the definition of safety that includes “you must be happy to go there.” </p>
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<p>If the student does not want to attend the school, how can it possibly be a safety?</p>
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<p>Because the student has a reasonable grip on reality. The safety school may be less appealing than the schools the student wanted to attend, but it’s a lot more appealing than not going to college at all.</p>
<p>Be mad at yourself, if you’re the kind of loser who has pre-defined acceptance to Ivies / top 10 / top 20 as the meaning of life, or the kind of idiot who thinks that not getting into these schools means that you / your kid will wind up asking “do you want fries with that.” </p>
<p>Being “mad” at the admissions office implies that they owed you something and they didn’t deliver, which says that you have a tenuous grasp of reality. </p>
<p>And I’m sorry, ANYONE applying to schools at this level who doesn’t realize the odds are overwhelmingly against them – who think of the situation as anything other than “I’ll roll the dice / enter the lottery and see what happens, and chances are I won’t win but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I do” - is an arrogant idiot. I cannot stand the arrogance on CC of people who somehow think that the 5% or 10% or 15% acceptance rates at these schools don’t apply to them. Especially when it comes from upper-middle-class kids / parents at schools where “several kids a year get into Ivies” - do these people not realize they are already on third base?</p>
<p>No kid who has been told his whole life that he is Ivy/Stanford material will suddenly be happy with Southwest Flyover State the day all the other rejections come in. Parents should be mad at themselves if they haven’t taught their kids resilience and adaptability by the time they graduate from high school, and if they have set unrealistic goals for them (or allowed them to have completely unrealistic expectations). They should also have regrets for being horrible snobs, in some cases. These attitudes DO rub off on kids. Just read some of the posts on the high school threads right now. There are some very spoiled kids out there who are experiencing rejection for the first time in their lives and not handling it especially well.</p>
<p>It’s ok to be disappointed, hurt, upset, all of those things. It’s NOT ok to think that 8 or 10 or 20 schools are the only ones worth going to, and it’s NOT ok to think the admission rates at those schools don’t apply to you. Sorry, I had 2 kids applying to top 20 schools, and they had to (metaphorically) stare those admission rates in the face and not think that they were special snowflakes for whom those admission rates didn’t apply. </p>
<p>You also won the lottery twice, so it’s a lot easier for you to say that in hindsight. </p>
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<p>Good point. Someone who had great outcomes him/herself or whose children did who criticizes others for being disappointed or angry aren’t likely to have a receptive audience from such folks…even if his/her point is 100% correct.</p>
<p>It’s a mix of a credibility issue (“Of course he/she says that, he/she’s won. What does he/she know/care? And if he/she doesn’t care about my hurt feelings*, why should I listen to him/her”) along with this criticism being viewed during the midst of great disappointment as exhibiting behavior of a “sore winner” gloating about his/her wonderful outcomes in a roundabout manner…however untrue it may be. </p>
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<li>It’s actually something I’ve had a hard time relating to at times because I am an NTJ and a male who was raised to minimize/never factor in feelings when looking at situations/problems. However, doing so is necessary not only to facilitate better relationships, but also to ensure others are more receptive to listening to one’s advice if helping them is your goal. On the other hand, if you enjoy playing the Bugs Bunny figure to the other person’s Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, etc as I’d freely admit to doing at times…feel free to ignore the above.<br></li>
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<p>My behavior has always been impeccable with regard to challenges I haven’t had to face. :)</p>
<p>Speaking as a student who just went through this, I’m only mad at myself for the rejections that I did receive. A combination of the fact that I could have been more involved in high school, and that I could have worked harder on my essays makes me realize that any fault rests solely on my own shoulders. </p>
<p>I’m a bit pissed at one of my two reach schools that rejected me for deferring me, only to deny me later. This isn’t at all because they rejected me (which I expected, and was prepared for), but rather, because they made me wait three months only to eventually give me a negative decision. I much rather would have been rejected early and gotten over it more quickly. </p>
<p>I take full responsibility for my rejections, and I will learn from the mistakes I made now, when I am applying to law school four years from now. I don’t think there is any better motivator than rejection; instead of taking defeat from it, take it is a challenge to be so successful that the school that rejected you will regret it. </p>
<p>I don’t know what planet some people live on, but on my world, parents are upset–even angry–when their kids are rejected by anybody, whether it is a friend, a college, a love interest, or anything else–especially when they invested a lot of hope into it, and even more especially if they had some reasonable likelihood of getting it. So I still think it’s most healthy to think that the one rejecting my kid doesn’t know what he’s missing. The last thing I’m going to do is “console” my kid by telling him or her that he’s not that special, etc. What I’m going to say is, “forget those losers, shake the dust off your feet, and don’t look back.” Obviously, we all have to get over being mad, or even upset, in a sensible amount of time.</p>