<p>[also posted on a Yale thread] My son was devastated when he was rejected by his first choice school (Yale) this year. He was pretty confident after sending in his RD application: ranked 1 in his class of 425, perfect gpa, great test scores, 10 APs, great recs and ECs (mostly music, though, and not much leadership). Of course, it's never a sure thing (only about 8% accepted this year??), and in retrospect, he made some mistakes: should have sought professional help with essays, should have applied ED, should have done an interview (BIG mistake there). Anyway, he's really feeling like he's settling for an inferior school. I know there are lots of kids who would love to go to Berkeley, but most people know what it's like to have a dream school - and many know what it's like not to get in. Should he take a year off and reapply? Try to transfer? Or just get over it? Oh, and one more thing - money is an issue. We'll be spending 1/3 to 1/2 of our annual income to send him to Berkeley (out of state). Are transfer students at Ivies eligible for aid?</p>
<p>If what he wants is to go to a school that's more like Yale than Berkeley is, IMO, he'd be better off taking productive gap year and then applying only to colleges where he'd like to go.</p>
<p>Since Berkeley and Yale are so different in size, location, personality and personalness, it is hard for me to imagine that a student who loved Yale would also love Berkeley.</p>
<p>However, if your son takes a gap year, he needs to go into it realizing that the odds are very slim that he'll get into Yale. Sounds like he went into the process overly confident. Many students with the kind of stellar credentials that your son has are rejected by places like Yale because they have an overabundance of outstanding applicants that other colleges would love to have.</p>
<p>If your son feels he would be happy at a place like Oberlin, , Wesleyan, Macalester or Grinnell, he would probably have decent chances of acceptance. However, if he only feels that he'd be happy at a place like HPY, he's likely to continue to be disappointed because the odds are long for everyone, including the stars like your son.</p>
<p>The Ivies that accept transfers to give need-based aid, but I think that at least one Ivy, possibly Yale, does not accept transfers. In general, it's harder transferring into an Ivy than it is being accepted as a freshman. That's because very few people at Ivies drop out or flunk out.</p>
<p>One last thing: Because of the size of the h.s. class of 2007, college admissions next year are expected to be even more competitive than it was this year.</p>
<p>He only applied to Yale and Berkeley? Any other choices available?</p>
<p>What does he want to study?</p>
<p>Take a gap year. Don't go to a school that you don't like, even more so if you're paying out of state tuition. You should only go to Berkeley as an OOS if its absolutely your first choice.</p>
<p>I believe the poster's son has chosen Berkely over UCLA, UCSD, Chicago, Oberlin, and USC (accoding to an earlier post) and is on the Brown waitlist (which is unlikely to move). Given this range of schools that he preferred not to attend, I would not go for a gap year. I sounds as if the gap year would be for the sole purpose of getting into Yale, which I feel would be a mistake. (Please correct me if I've misread this.)</p>
<p>3incollege - Your son is in a similar situation to my son. It's not easy, and I sympathize. He dreamed, eat, and slept Brown. His stats were definitely competitive, and he was a legacy. He was very disappointed when a waitlist came through. Now we know that waitlist is going nowhere. Like you, he had a list of alternative schools. He picked the "best" match-- not perfect, but the best. I think this is a better alternative than a gap year. I don't think it's true that a kid who loves Yale will hate Berkeley. Kids love and hate schools for the strangest reasons. </p>
<p>If your son has a long list of schools he'd like to try for, a gap year may have some merit. But if it's just to get into Yale, I believe that's a bad idea. Have him give Berkeley a try.</p>
<p>As a graduating senior, I understand how disappointing the college process can be, and it seems like almost everyone I know received some form of disappointment when the decisions were sent out.</p>
<p>Taking a year off might be a good idea if it's absolutely necessary--but remember doing so will put him a year behind his college-bound friends, among other things. I think not being in school at all would be more detrimental to his state of mind than going to a second or third choice school. </p>
<p>Hopefully he can set his sights beyond Yale-- there are plenty of fabulous schools in the country, as I've learned over the past year. He'll most likely be happy wherever he ends up, as long as he realizes there are other schools that are a suitable fit for him.</p>
<p>agree wholeheartedly with earlier poster about Cal as an out-of-state student. Frankly I am always scratching my head when I hear of someone applying there OOS without compelling reasons. For the OOS cost of around $40K/year you could afford virtually any college in the country. </p>
<p>For CA kids the UC system is a great deal, but they accept in return large classes (often in the hundreds), a weak advising system, and all the other issues of being a face in the crowd at a large state school. See, for example, an article in the SF paper at <a href="http://tinyurl.com/5jzkz%5B/url%5D">http://tinyurl.com/5jzkz</a> A quote from the top of the article
[quote]
Stanford University freshmen are assigned personal counselors - faculty, staff or graduate students who watch over them, approve class schedules and even occasionally serve as dining partners in the residence halls. Yale freshmen are paired with peer counselors who live in the dorm and faculty members who mentor and help choose classes.</p>
<p>At UC Berkeley, most incoming students have orientation with several hundred others, a quick chat with an adviser, then get a phone number and Web address to use if they need more help.</p>
<p>"There is not a whole lot of coddling. Nothing is really easy here in terms of getting help," said sophomore Jonathan Hastanan, 19. "A couple of (my high school teachers) had warned me of being a little fish in a big pond. I didn't really understand what that meant. But now I do."
[/quote]
Now an assertive and self-directed student can make it work, and a lot of people love their time at Cal. But if you're spending a fortune on college as the OP says in the 1st post, why not go someplace that provides a supportive atmosphere as a matter of design and intent?</p>
<p>Well, what is the gain from taking a gap year in terms of attractiveness as an applicant? Would his transcript will not improve, he will be competing with the same types of kids once again, and he does have choices...if those schools were not one he wanted to attend, why in the world did he apply to them? This is a serious question.</p>
<p>And, while Yale was a dream school, I say he needs to get over it. Its not like he doesn't/didn't have options. Options HE chose. HE picked out that he thought would be good schools to attend.</p>
<p>Unless something spectacular happens in the next 8 months, what would the gap year serve?</p>
<p>When andison took a gap year, he had no options, and did some great stuff in that year.</p>
<p>this thread goes to show that when picking back-up schools, be sure you like them, and to not put ones heart and soul into a place that HAS to reject wonderful, perfect students all the time, to do so is asking for heartache</p>
<p>My daughter did apply EA to Yale and was deferred, rejected in the end (her only rejection, waitlisted at 4 including Brown her second choice) She had all the "right stuff" as they say, Val, GPA, SAT's etc. She did get into Berkeley and went to an alumni scholor scholar overnight, she knew that evening in the dorms that she would not attend. Berkeley was not at all like Yale, not a residential college, too large. She will be going to a LAC and she is still sad about Yale but she will be in a residential college and I think in time she will be happy in the end. I think getting beyond the waitlist portion of this whole process will be a major step in the healing process.</p>
<p>I just don't get applying to a school you would not attend...I mean, Berkeley is big and not a match for many</p>
<p>Are kids applying because of what they really want out of a school, or for the name, because that is how it appears</p>
<p>My D is looking at large and small schools, willing to go to either, but it is the programs, the courses, the "feel" she is looking at, not jsut the name</p>
<p>It is hard to feel bad for kids who don't get into a dream school and then reject some great schools, because the appearance is that they applied to schools for prestige alone, and not for better reasons, schools that match the personallity of the student</p>
<p>If a student didn't want a big school, why apply in the first place</p>
<p>If a student didn't want a jock school, don't apply there</p>
<p>If a student doesn't want an all girls school, don't apply</p>
<p>Some soul searching needs to be done BEFORE applications are mailed it, as it can stop alot of the issues we are seeing now, with better planning, research, realistic goals, and knowing what you want</p>
<p>I am not judging anyone, everyone has dreams, its jsut please explain why a student would apply to a school they have no real interest in going to</p>
<p>Berkeley is a large school, and if you are in California and in the top 4% you are guaranteed a spot in the UC system, (they are all large schools and in her case it would be foolish not to apply) my daughter was admitted to UCLA & UCSB as well. UCSB was her safety school. She has always been fond of Berkeley & almost decided to attend. She wanted to go back east, she was waitlisted at 4 schools and admitted to one LAC on the east coast. I think it's a good list. These kids are just turning 17 when they fill out the applications, I think they should have a range of schools that they would like to attend. You can't count on getting into a school no matter what so you must apply to your second, third and perhaps your ninth choice or you may be forced to take that gap year!</p>
<p>I am sorry your son is so disappointed, but honestly keep this in perspective. If not getting into Yale is the worst, most devastating thing that happens to him in his life, then he will have a pretty fabulous life.
As my mom would say, bloom where you are planted</p>
<p>Mikemac, alot of what you said in your post is false. Look at the average class size for all largish research schools, public and private. Berkeley is not much different. And I didn't say OOS students shouldn't come to Cal, I said they should only come if its their first choice and they really want to be here. As an OOS student, you'll basically be paying what you would at a private. Well, in my opinion, Cal is better than all but a handfull of privates, so why go to a lesser school just because you can eat cookies with some advisor. If you're an idiot, sure, you might not be able to figure out how to pick classes and such, but I'm pretty sure that if you can get into Cal as an OOS, you'll do fine once you get here.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your input. It seems like a few folks can't quite get their heads around the problem, so let me tell you some more. </p>
<p>It's hard to know what you want out of a school when you're 17, and probably harder for some kids than others. We live in a small city in Oregon. Virtually all the students here go to state schools, a few to private religious schools, and advising - such as it is in our underfunded public school district - is focused on the state system. My son grew up pretty familiar with CA and OR schools; he was born in LA and all our our family on both sides still lives in CA. I did my undergrad at Berkeley (never applied anywhere else) and a doctoral program at UCLA. We took a trip to the east coast a couple of years ago (my son's first experience east of Los Angeles), and since this kid was turning out to be an academic star in high school, we visited some of the top-rated, high-profile schools. He loved Yale and Brown, but didn't like Harvard, Columbia or Georgetown. Why? I think he perceived the ones he liked as more liberal; he didn't like New York City; our tour guide at Harvard was really into the old-school tradition thing and he thought she needed to get over herself... but really, I don't know. It's like falling in love, a chemistry thing, and I learned right away I couldn't predict what he would like. School size didn't seem to figure into the equation. He doesn't know what he wants to major in: he's highly talented in math, but doesn't like it (was happy to have finished advanced calc as a sophomore so he didn't have to take math anymore) and also music, which he loves but can't see as a career. Fortunately he's also good at writing and is interested in philosophy, history, literature, and poli sci. </p>
<p>He didn't do ED because the only schools he knew he liked at that point were Yale and Brown, and he thought there might be others he didn't know about. We also didn't know what we could afford. So we got him a book of colleges. He thought Oberlin looked good, because he could take courses at the conservatory while majoring in something else. Chicago also looked good because of the core curriculum and because of the serious academics, which appealed to him. On my recommendation, he also applied to Berkeley (I loved my time there) - expensive for out of state, but no more than the other schools he was applying to, and maybe he would qualify for scholarships. He applied to UCLA, UCSD, and USC as safeties, because his other choices were all so competitive.</p>
<p>Here's what happened: rejected at Yale, waitlisted at Brown, accepted with full-ride scholarships at Chicago and Oberlin (which added a school-sponsored National Merit scholarship), accepted at Berkeley and UCLA with $4,000 scholarship (out of $42,000 estimated expenses), and accepted at USC but he never looked at the aid package, as he only intended to go there if he didn't get in anywhere else.</p>
<p>So last month we went to visit Oberlin, Chicago, and Berkeley. He did overnight stays, visiting classes and meeting kids and staying in dorms. He felt that Oberlin was too homogenously crunchy-granola, too druggie (not in the official handbook) generally not his style at all and he was (very) concerned that he wouldn't fit in. The actual feel of the school didn't match his expectations based on the reading he had done. While Chicago would be a great education, he thought that it's unofficial slogan "where fun comes to die" probably had more than a kernel of truth in it, and after spending all of high school with virtually no free time he thought he might like to get a little bit of a life outside the library. While we were in Chicago, Berkeley's aid letter arrived back at home, and my husband called us to say "don't visit Berkeley! he might like it". We went anyway, and he liked it better than the the other two. At least it was big and (truly) diverse enough that he would likely find his niche.</p>
<p>He filled out his on-line SIR at Berkeley at 11:00 pm on the deadline day - not excited about Berkeley, but unwilling to accept Oberlin or Chicago despite the excellent offers because they were not good fits. A tough decision for everyone. Could I really insist that he matriculate at a school where he was convinced he'd be unhappy? His counselor at school advised us to forget the sentimentality, look at it as a financial investment... but I couldn't do it. My son feels now that his hard work in high school was wasted because it didn't lead to a college that he really wanted to attend, just an OK school with no aid. I guess what we're hoping for now is that he'll like Berkeley better once he gets there, gets in classes, and meets some students. Bloom where he's planted, in the words of MofaK's mom. Also hoping to win the lottery because honestly I don't know how we will finance this - with second and third jobs, probably.</p>
<p>The lessons learned? I don't know. Visit colleges ahead of applying if you can (we couldn't for various reasons). We had no intention of applying to schools he wouldn't attend - we just didn't know that's what they were at the time. His choices changed as the process evolved. Anyway, maybe our story will help somebody else.</p>
<p>A gap year seems like the right thing given he's not excited and the financial picture isn't good. Why are so many people afraid of a gap year? it's a good break for those of us who have really busted butt during high school. I'm really looking forward to mine. The only caution is that he shouldn't be doing it to get into Yale. He is not going to be a very different applicant in a few months. Coming from a small town where you are a star gives many kids false hope. The reality of what it takes comes much more easily when you're at a school where almost everyone has 2300s and is a star at something. So if he's able to focus on on the qualities he liked at Yale and choose new schools that can meet his needs, the gap year will be worth it. Sounds like he might like some of the NE LACs like Colby, Trinity, Colgate. Dartmouth might be of interest, too.</p>
<p>I am asking the question about where kids apply if they don't like the school for a reason,
Not to judge or berate or anything, but to help others</p>
<p>I think if kids do a much deeper search into schools they are applying to, and knowing in themselves what wouldn't work</p>
<p>Many kids have very strong and solid ideas, many do not, but they need to really look at the schools they are applying to, so they are not suprised but what they end up with</p>
<p>As for Yale, well, your son needs to realize he is one of thousands and thousands and thousands who did not get in and needs to set realistic goals, as everyone here has stated</p>
<p>It like trying out for a broadway show, you can sing, dance, act, are fantastic, but so are the other hundreds of kids, and its for 3 parts</p>
<p>its not a personal thing, its all kinds of stuff</p>
<p>Having been in a similar position a number of years back, I would probably say get over it. However, I was on the W/L at Dartmouth with a backup of Colgate. So, while the academic rep difference between these two may be similar to the spread between Yale and Berkeley, the size, environment, undergrad focus, social structure & geography between Colgate and Dartmouth are all very similar in comparison to the differences beteen Yale and Berkeley. To the extent you do consider the gap year, I would agree with Suze. Don't necessarily do it just to get into Yale. In retrospect, I wish I had applied ED to Dartmouth too, but you can't live like that (take it from someone who somewhat has). Only do the gap year, if in addition to applying ED to Yale, you would also much prefer Dartmouth, Colgate, Middlebury, Colby, Trinity etc. to Berkeley (i.e. good schools that are much more similar to Yale, but have significantly higher than 8% acceptance rates). </p>
<p>Do you not think that Oberlin would be more suitable than Berkeley? I would think for a relatively similar academic rep that Oberlin would be more like Yale than Berkeley.</p>
<p>3inCollege - As his parent (you might already be doing this) I suggest you encourage your son in various ways to "move on" (don't say these words literally but through your own interaction and advice to your son) from his disappointment from being rejected by Yale and adopt - as much as possible - the attitude of "they missed a catch in me" which Chicago, Oberlin, etc. recognized. As part of a "move on" campaign, you might do some more research and point out some of the stellar positives Berkeley possesses (such as the numerous graduate programs they excel in) and other unique qualities (the Bay area beats the pants off New Haven) in support of his making a wise choice for him. Do not verbally or otherwise as a parent show active support for any extended "woe is me" behavior. Let him stew some more but don't add fuel to any low-burning flame. </p>
<p>Like other posters, I recommend strongly against a gap year. Encourage him to have a wonderful freshman year academically and in extra-curriculars which will build his options for transfer if that is his desire down the road. But for sure give "Eli" a rest.</p>
<p>best thing you can do for your son is help him to get over this.
if he can't handle getting rejected from one of the most selective schools in the country, it doesn't bode well for how he is going to face other disappointments he faces in life.</p>
<p>more than anything, i would hope other people will learn from posts like this. our generation of parents was so trained to encourage our children to aim high and believe that nothing was unreachable, that we sometimes forget to teach them that they in fact just one very small piece of this world.</p>
<p>He does need to move on, and the gap year should not be a plan to get into Yale...so again, what is the purpose of the gap year</p>
<p>A gap year may be good for certain people, but with all the choices the son had and rejecting them ALL, what is going to be accomplished> If he gets rejected once again from Yale (because what would change THAT much from his already steeler stats) what would the plan be then?</p>