@Ruby789 , sorry to say that while she has very much liked the sound of Whitman, I think its location is just too “far away” for her. Not that she needs to be close to home at all. It is also the smallest of any she applied to. I can’t get her excited about it.
@Lindagaf, If you guys haven’t done so already, at least have a look at the princeton review website entry for Whitman. Man, does that little school rock every single positive metric they have.
I know, I know. I would go, for sure.
Great post. Going through this with a senior right now as well. We did not visit his two reaches and I felt a bit bad about that. Figured we would visit the schools if he somehow got in. Well that was smart - he did not get accepted into the two reaches. We focused on visiting the match schools and the safeties. I think it helped lessen the pain of the rejections. Did it have an effect on him not getting into the reaches? I don’t think so.
Oh, one more thing, then I promise to stop flogging the Whitman horse. When my D visited Carleton, she asked a bunch of kids what other colleges they had considered and was struck by how many mentioned Whitman. I think those two schools attract a very similar kind of kid.
@rayrick, that is interesting. Will pass that on.
Like @Lindagaf’s D, my D and I fell in love with Brown. I always knew her chances were very very slim though. @CT1417, I did use Naviance and it looked like kids with my D’s stats from her school were getting into the Ivies and other reaches. I guess they had dazzling ECs, weren’t white girls etc.
I was an Ivy student protesting everything 40 years ago, BTW. Don’t regret it. I also went to class and got a great education.(Being a legacy wasn’t enough of a hook for my D to be admitted.)
@Lindagaf: I hear you. Neither of mine even applied to Whitman due to it being to close to us. Well, maybe someone reading will check it out.
I’ve gone through college admissions twice now, and I thought the first time three years ago was bad enough. This was worse. It seems even more competitive. I thought it would be better, because my oldest was at the tail end of the “baby boom echo”, and this time there are less graduating seniors nationally than in recent years. But my youngest didn’t get quite the “love” from schools as the oldest did, and they have very similar grades, scores, rigor.
I really feel that top schools require elements of preparation that most kids who want a life wouldn’t want to undergo. I’m not complaining because D2 had excellent results, this is just an observation. But she’s wondered what is different between her sister and herself. I asked her if she would want to change any of her life choices to fit what it took to get the better results that admissions at top schools now required and she didn’t want to change anything.
I was recently remembering a conversation I had with another parent when my kids were little. We were talking about what our ultimate goals were as parents. We didn’t even think about top college admissions, or college at all really. The discussion was that we hoped we raised kids that could have a family, people that loved them, good friends, interests in life, and a career that they were happy with. College is a stop on the way to that, and not the end result.
I’m just glad to be finishing up with all the stress of college admissions, and on to the next part.
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Awesome write-up, @Lindagaf! Nothing to add at this time apart from an “amen.”
@delurk1 , clearly you should have built the Delurk Hall of Science. That should have done the trick;-)
@Lindagaf Thank you for sharing your experience. Your post is full of great, practical advice. Best wishes to your daughter!
@Lindagaf, thank you for posting this and congratulations on such a successful application experience. It should be required reading for every student and every parent as they go into the college admissions frenzy. I think you nailed it that what’s really hard and maybe impossible is evaluating your own child vis-a-vis their peers. It’s easy to overstate the strength of their application and certainly I’ve seen too many kids who somehow think the daunting odds don’t apply to them. It’s also easy to understate the strength of the application given those same daunting odds. (My daughter still thinks I didn’t believe in her when actually I was just trying to protect her.) I am really impressed at how you were able to strike such a good balance. Well done!
I wish this had been posted back in 2015. My daughter chose a major (BME - PreMed) and then put together a list of good schools. Harvard, Hopkins, Penn, Tufts, etc. However, she is a white female from the Houston suburbs (though a small public high school where she is a minority) where there are some extremely competitive high schools. #6 in her class even though she has been an officer in Band AND Dance Team (two huge time sinks), other ECs, started a Medical Club, wrote some heartfelt essays …and nothing. She has been accepted to Texas A&M and Minnesota and WL to Case. She still wants Case, and is less than excited about the others so far. I would have suggest she visit and apply to ‘lesser desirable’ schools if I knew that she had NO chance. Not sure what she is going to do. She was hoping to have more choices.
@Hollysmom83 , I feel for you. You are exactly the kind of person I hope reads this, and I wish I had read a thread like this too. I think one thing that forced my D to find a good range of schools is that she will be undeclared. So we tried to stick to colleges that had good offerings in her areas of interest. Your D might have a good chance of getting off the waitlist at Case if she puts some effort into it. I have read lots of good advice on how to approach waitlists. Best of luck to her.
@Hollysmom83, no UT-Austin?
The good news with Case is that they seem to WL a bunch of applicants for yield protection reasons and tend to take a large number off their WL, so if you say they are your top choice, will go right now if accepted, and follow all the WL strategies, you may have a decent chance. Work with the guidance counselor.
She really didn’t want to stay in Texas. She applied to TAMU to have a safety (I’m class of '83). She also wanted a smaller school where she’d be more likely to get to know her professors. The BME class of 2019 at Tufts is <35 kids. THat kind of small. But the time-sink ECs have caused her to not have the best scores. Also she has been fighting migraines for most of high school. She has been getting Botox treatments every 3 months for this school year. Not seeing any scholarship offers from any schools either.
Excellent post, OP.
It seems to me that the better the student the more stressful the process. An excellent student has more chances for elite schools, more chances for merit to other schools, more chances for the flagships and scholarships, more chances for honors colleges and the most important, more chances to do well while in college. In general more of everything. However, the minute the “chances for elite schools appears” it seems to become the focus and the ONLY thing that is important. I guess it is easy to lose perspective.
@Lindagaf , I’m sitting in the student center at Whitman right now, waiting for D to finish lunch with a student. I second the comments above: Lovely campus (cute town), nice, unpretentious, smart students, facilities seem top notch. It is hard to get to and not close to anything else, but if you like the package they offered, it’s worth a look.
@Hollysmom83-She might really like Case. It has that small school feel. My son graduated in Dec. You should consider trying to get off the waitlist there.