<p>I won't be able to experience such a feeling for decades (if at all), so I ask all of the parents here at CC. How did you feel when your son or daughter was accepted to college?</p>
<p>It is not whether they been accepted, rather, it is about WHERE are they being accepted/rejected. After one week filing the application, the mail began to shower down upon us, all the safety schools (in our case CSU) are sending acceptance letters. We were feeling mutual. The excitement came when the key schools sending rejection, acceptance and waitlist letters.</p>
<p>Honestly, each acceptance letter was thrilling. It’s such a long process with so many unknowns, for my son to open that letter and watch the smile spread across his face was fantastic.</p>
<p>One school he was accepted at offered no merit aid, so he could not attend. That was more of a bittersweet day. My son took it in stride, his Dad and I had some feelings of being a bit sad that we could not make it work for our son but by the next day we were all back on an even keel.</p>
<p>He was rejected from his EA school and one school he applied too. Oddly, the EA rejection was not so terrible, I guess because we knew he had so many other opprotunieis. But it was a harder when the one school turned him down as it was a school he was very excited about and so, of course, we felt hurt on his behalf. But those feelings were fleeting compared to the long term pride and joy we’ve felt about the process as a whole.</p>
<p>The acceptances were all exciting. He’s actually going to be attending a school that we didn’t even visit until after he was accepted (it’s all the way on the opposite coast). The rejections were all reach schools so those weren’t too upsetting. The hardest were the wait list schools, he really thought he would be accepted to some of those. But we treated all of those as rejections since we were looking for merit aid.</p>
<p>The whole family was excited about all of the acceptances but more excited about the ones that offered scholarships. As a parent it is very satisfying to see your child reap the benefits of taking her academics seriously throughout her life.</p>
<p>I still remember coming home from a weekend away visiting a school, checking the mailbox, and seeing the big envelope with a purple border…</p>
<p>I felt relief, validation and trepidation.</p>
<p>Relief that my D got into her reach with a financial award that made it possible. Validation that all her hard work paid off and the acceptance letter was tangible evidence that she was recognized for high school career, and the trepidation because the acceptance letter was in all reality, just another step on the road for her.</p>
<p>And now I get to go through it all again for Son #2.</p>
<p>I was ecstatic when he was accepted to the school he is going to attend. </p>
<p>Like Pugmadkate, our S was accepted to a school which he would have loved to attend, but they offered only a token merit award. I had told him previously that if he wasn’t given $X, it wouldn’t be an option.</p>
<p>But he had applied to another school that he’d liked a lot. Unfortunately, he did not apply himself as he should have to his studies through most of high school, so his GPA made the program he wanted a bit of a reach.</p>
<p>When he received the acceptance letter, he called me at work. I was so happy, I did a little happy dance in the hallway. Which was probably not the best thing, because I ran into a coworker whose S had been waitlisted there. :eek:</p>
<p>Even though I was quite happy at that point, it wasn’t until I got home that I was truly ‘over the moon’ happy. I had to see the letter for myself; I had a niggling feeling that maybe S was just accepted as a general admit, and not to the more difficult to get into program he applied to.</p>
<p>My son applied RD to six schools, all of which said that he would hear by april 1. Nearly all of his friends had applied either ED or rolling admission, so he was the last to hear. His safety school was the first response with a nice offer of merit aid and really made him feel wanted. Once that first acceptance came, the rest, even the rejection, were easy to deal with.</p>
<p>My latest one who applied to college did not start out well in the process. He was flat out rejected from one school with rolling admissions early in the process and it was for a program that had accepted a number of kids from his school with stats similar to his but with much lower test scores. His counselors were surprised that he was not at least held for another cycle of apps, thereby delaying the decision. He was flushed out very quickly. Probably the first rejection at his high school. There was no response from the scholarship committee of another school that he had done a very early app for consideration for an award, which meant he was eliminated from consideration. He was then rejected from a program that seemed to fit him well in the preliminary round of apps–it was a two tiered process.</p>
<p>So it was with much joy that he got some EA acceptances. And a lot of relief. I know he felt a lot better when he got that first acceptance even though it was his safety. That it also had a reception for those accepted in the early round made things sweet as well, along with the scholarship he got. I love EA for this reason. A student can apply to several schools early and get some good news before Christmas. To get rejected by the one ED filed would really ruin the holidays. I know each rejection stung those early months, far harder than my other boys’ rejections later in the year when they were mitigated with some acceptances.</p>
<p>I was relieved. Both kids applied to only one college – my son applied ED, my daughter was a transfer student (acceptance to her first college was automatic based on scores, so that one didn’t count) and just applied to the one transfer school.</p>
<p>When they were accepted, we were done.</p>
<p>I was very happy for them. </p>
<p>S1’s first choice was a safety so it was not a surprise but still nice for it to be official.</p>
<p>S2 acceptance was not a sure thing. When he got the big envelope, I was so excited.
I ran in the house with it and called him to come downstairs and open it. He was more excited than I anticipated.</p>
<p>D had some unexpected rejections, but she got megabucks at a good match school, which was thrilling, but we were head over heels excited (and still are) about her acceptance at the Eastman School of Music, with an excellent scholarship. But it was a bumpy ride, with rejections from expected safeties. I advise casting a wide, well-chosen net for best results.</p>
<p>With S, I was happy about all of them. The ones with merit aid just seemed like a confirmation that his hard work had paid off, and that others recognized him as a student they’d like to have on their campus.</p>
<p>With D, the feelings were mixed. She had applied ED to a school that is a great fit for her, but it is a long distance from home (700+ miles). She and I are very close. I’m thrilled for her, but sad for me. On the one hand, I hope she fits into this college as well as I think she will. On the other, I’m afraid she won’t come home. She has gone thru some drama that has left her distanced from most of her girlfriends from hs, so she’d only be coming home to see the family and her boyfriend (we’ll see how long that lasts…). I truly feel this is the right college for her, but a big part of me would love for her to be going to school 1 - 2 hours away so I could see her more often. :(</p>
<p>Of course I was thrilled when the acceptance letter came, but since her attendance was contingent on financial aid, the real moment of truth came a month later, when the grant/scholarship letter arrived. D called me at work and read me the good news and I literally busted out crying, right there at my desk. I’m glad D is an only child; I’m not sure I’d survive another college application/decision season!</p>
<p>Reminds of a TV commericial that was running a couple of months back. Fatrher is sitting at kitchen table eating, Daughter comes in jumping up & down to mother saying “I got into one of the best colleges in the country” both daughter and mother jump up & down. Must have been a commericial about finances, etc. The father rteplays the scene from his viewpoint with the daughter saying “I got into one of the most expensive colleges in the country”…loved that commercial!!</p>
<p>csdad, lol, I think that is actually a commercial for some type of antacid! The father is eating and having indigestion/hearburn when he listens to his daughter and his wife talk about getting into one of the best and most expensive schools in the country. That commercial hit home here, but nobody jumped up and down with such excitement here because we knew it was NOT about “getting in”, but about “paying for it”. Just want to add, that it does not mean that we were not thrilled, but our son knew that we needed to compare all packages.</p>
<p>For one school, both D and I were confused, since all signs had pointed to rejection up until the letter came…but happy.</p>
<p>The safety acceptance came first, so that was a relief! Then the dream/reach school acceptance where S had been previously deferred and we just cried and cheered for days and I know how that guy in the antacid commercial felt! But the best day was when the financial aid came back with a very generous package…phew! It felt like a giant weight had been lifted.</p>
<p>The first acceptance was an EA (not ED). It came as an e-mail late on a Friday night in December. It was a very classy PDF. My daughter and I both were jumping and screaming with excitement. The school wasn’t her first choice, but getting accepted addressed the great fear that she would not be accepted anywhere. And the lovely PDf made her feel special. Then, we settled in for the long haul on her first choice school. That was actually when I discovered College Confidential because the longer we didn’t hear, the more I thought she actually would be accepted. I started looking on the web for clues. From reading CC for two weeks in the spring, I pretty much figured out what day she should get the letter. My husband, who comes home for lunch, was put on the lookout for the thick envelope. The day I predicted it would come, he called and said that not only was it a thick envelope, but also the back of the envelope had a message: “yes, this is the thick one.” But I wanted my daughter to have the experience herself of seeing the acceptance letter. So when I picked her up from school and she asked if her dad had called, I said that she had gotten a letter but that her dad couldn’t tell if it was thick enough. So the whole way home she went through the rationalizations of why it would not be the end of the world if she was not accepted. When we walked in the door and she picked it up off the counter, she turned it over and read the message. She looked at me and said, “Didn’t dad turn it over?” I said, “Well, you know your dad.” (Not the most reliable person with instructions to do things). She tore it open and it was wonderful to see her face light up. I still remember opening the acceptance letter from my first-choice college and now she has a memory of her own.</p>
<p>He phoned me with the news because he saw it on-line. The excitement in his voice is etched in my brain.</p>