<p>I think that kids from these hyper-competitive schools feel that their entire self-worth is being judged by everyone they know based upon their college acceptances and attendance. And it may seem that way. But why would anyone base their opinion of someone they’ve known for years on the opinion of a stranger who has never met them? That’s actually an incredibly shallow thing to do, I liked the analogy to the designer bag or fancy car, and if that’s what is going on with her friends, then perhaps it would be best for her to go to a school off their beaten track. I know what my daughter’s friends’ talents are. I don’t need some admissions officer to judge them for me. And why should I care if a stranger finds more worth in the activities of someone we’ve never met than in what’s important to my friend?</p>
<p>Well they are 17 or 18 and hardly rational. And really a kid who is in the top 5% of the class at a competitive high school normally would not have this issue. The good news is that while she may never come to terms with the situation while she’s in high school, she will probably discover that even the less prestigious colleges will have a critical mass of bright kids. The poster mini’s daughter was referenced in an earlier post. She ended up at American - got invited to the honors program after she proved she could do the work. If I remember correctly her thesis won all sorts of awards, but she bombed the GREs and it looked like it was going to be a problem until the (tops in the field) grad school said they were just going to pretend they had never been submitted. </p>
<p>Yes we know that the differences between colleges are somewhat exaggerated, but you want what you want. I owned a Mercedes for a little while when we lived in Germany. It was a really nice car. If I had the money, I’d get one again.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Bingo. The status symbol is more important than the “fit” or the potential for a happy experience. How unfortunate.</p>
<p>People- yes, prestige, status etc- not an optimal way to pick a college. But get a grip- people make decisions about where to live when they have kids based on the quality of the school system. If you can afford Short Hills, NJ, I can’t see moving to Camden because there is less competition there for brand name colleges. (One of the worst school systems in the state). If you move to New Canaan, CT for the school system, it’s kind of hard once your kid is a junior to decide that you’d have been better off in Bridgeport.</p>
<p>So these fantastic schools have a downside. Yup, we get it.</p>
<p>OP- let us know what your D’s potential interests are (extra curric, academic, etc) and perhaps we can put together a list that doesn’t feel like Slacker Central to her.</p>
<p>It’s not just the schools, but when kids are among kids who are all applying to top schools. They talk. They find out. It’s a concern to them even if it’s not something brought up at home a lot of times. </p>
<p>In my area, I can tell you that a lot of the kids going to the same sort of school that the OP’s DD is attending, many of the kids did NOT get into their top choices even with their stats up there. Alot of GW, American, BU, Fordham,OOS flagships, SUNY, Syracuse bound kids whose lists were very top heavy at the onset with schools that are so competitive for admissions. She’ll be in good company with her acceptance list.</p>
<p>Well you know you can have status and a good fit, sally. :)</p>
<p>But I think cptofthehouse is also right, come spring, there will be plenty of kids of her caliber who will be attending their safeties, or whose parents will have belatedly realized that NYU with no money doesn’t make sense. It all sorts itself out in the end.</p>
<p>We were quite lucky. My older son was pretty oblivious - though his list contained the usual suspects. And truly the only reason MIT was his first choice was word of mouth. Younger son was very clear-eyed about the whole process. He knew his application had some major weaknesses and that it would be difficult to predict if he could make up for them in other ways. As it worked out, he did much better than expected, but he had a safety he really liked from the get-go.</p>
<p>blossom, comparing K-12 school systems in Short Hills vs. Camden is far different from comparing Cornell to University of Wisconsin or University of Richmond. No one is saying the OP’s daughter should settle for North Podunk State or Flyover College of the Liberal Arts because she can’t get into an Ivy League school. All some of us are saying is that prestige, while nice if it is one of the attributes of a school and it is seen as a benefit to the student, shouldn’t be the primary driver of the college application process.</p>
<p>Sally, that wasn’t my point. My point was that yes, the D’s HS is competitive and kids talk about college all the time and nothing less than the elites will do for the top kids. We all understand that this is problematic.</p>
<p>But my point was that this late in the game… not like the kid can start attending a more chill, holistic kind of HS with less academic stress. This was the decision made when the family moved to this community in order to attend these great and competitive schools. Nobody looks at the first grade classroom and says, “but oh my, the environment will be competitive by 11th grade”. They see the top academics and think, “wow, my kid will flourish here”.</p>
<p>And so the OP’s has flourished. Which is great. The underside is that level of competition is fierce, and the kids don’t give appropriate kudo’s to the kinds of colleges where many kids can flourish.</p>
<p>Yes, of course- the prestige driven college hunt doesn’t always lead to the right fit. agree with you 100% there.</p>
<p>But nobody wants their kid in the Camden public school system if they can afford better-- but better comes with this intense college competition as well.</p>
<p>I agree. And it is likely too late to change the mindset of someone who has grown up with it and is surrounded by similar peers. I think cptofthehouse is right, though–the OP’s girl will see many great students end up at schools that were never on the dream list but that turn out to be wonderful nonetheless.</p>
<p>Tunnel vision. </p>
<p>
You can have the student visit them to verify the preference. My daughter was not interested in LACs or women’s colleges … and applied ED to Barnard … (and did not like any other LAC we saw).</p>
<p>I’m curious whether the top 5% in the OP’s school are in fact all getting acceptances at very high prestige colleges. It seems to me there are a few too many of them to all be accommodated.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s very possible depending on the particular high school and its reputation among elite adcoms. </p>
<p>Some academically competitive high schools have top 25-50% of their graduates end up attending prestigious colleges. This is especially the case with public magnets and academically rigorous private day/boarding schools. </p>
<p>@mathyone - It is certainly possible. In 2006 Stuyvesant send 9.9% of its 674 seniors to Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, U Chicago and Johns Hopkins. In 2002 3.67% went to HYP.</p>
<p>
It’s unlikely that all of the top 5% would all be focused on high prestige colleges, and it’s even more unlikely that the acceptances among students who applied to those colleges would follow their class rank. You could easily have cases where the 20th ranked kid gets in, and the 3rd rank kid gets rejected.</p>
<p>The high schools the OP mentioned as comparable to her daughter’s, while elite, are not comparable to Stuyvesant. For one thing, Stuyvesant is a magnet; average SAT scores are more than 150 points higher, and the top students there are drawn from a large population. They are going to have a much higher group on the high end of the achievement curve. I would think that even 90th percentile at a school like that is comparable to 99th percentile at a school drawing from a single town. This is quite evident if you look say at the math league competition results. Stuyvesant scored 180, a perfect score. Best schools in Westchester county: Horace Greely, 157, Scarsdale 148, Edgemont 141. None of those schools have enough elite students to come close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a “B team” from Stuyvesant would still outscore them handily.</p>
<p>True, but it is at least a data point to work from.</p>
<p>I agree with those who have said that it may be just as well that OP’s daughter gets her reality check now, rather than when rejections start rolling in next year. I really hope that she can visit some of these schools she despises now, though I suppose if she’s made up her mind against them it might not make a difference.</p>
<p>Once again, I am overwhelmed at the thought going into these responses. i hesitated about starting this thread, but now, 100+ posts in, I am so glad I did and am so grateful for all of your responses.</p>
<p>Several posters have asked for a little more information about my D. I hesitate to be too specific about her ECs and activities, as I would like to maintain her privacy. However, in all truth, there really isn’t very much more pointed information to reveal. She truly has no idea what she wants to study. The most she will say is that she is not interested in anything off-the-beaten path, like Latin American Studies or Biology and Society, or anything that trains students for a specific profession, like architecture, supply-chain management (this is an actual major at some schools!), or speech pathology. She has said that there is no particular academic department she wants to look into. What this all adds up to is that it’s important that wherever she ends up has a wide range of offerings.</p>
<p>She is more of a humanities/social science student than a mathematics/hard science student (although she has always been in honors math and science and gets As). If I were to guess, I’d say she might major in economics, history, or psychology, and perhaps minor in business. But again, just a guess. I suspect she will change drastically in college, so who knows? Maybe she WILL end up majoring in supply chain management! </p>
<p>On a personal level, she likes to be social and is a big participator. She is a doer more than a thinker. She manages her own life very well, has a nice social life and great friends. She likes to keep busy and likes to make things happen for herself.</p>
<p>Not sure if that helps.</p>
<p>What do you all think of University of Rochester for her? I just read that it is “test-score flexible,” meaning that applicants have to submit a score from ANY national exam – it can be SAT, ACT, SATII, IB, or AP. </p>
<p>Other schools that have come to mind: Northeastern, Middlebury (test optional) (and if I can get her to look at an LAC), University of Miami.</p>
<p>Thank you!! Loving this community :-)</p>
<p>Brantly, as you know, I am one of the posters who is skeptical about the impact of “middling” scores on college admissions for a high academic achiever. At the same time, it’s hard for me seeing your d. getting into those top end, prestige (lottery) schools… but not because of the test scores. To me, the part that’s missing is the lack of a sense of who she is-- what makes her stand out among all the rest? What will she bring to a college (any college) that other students won’t?</p>
<p>I didn’t post a comment along these lines before because you are entitled to your privacy, and certainly it makes sense to withhold personally identifying information on a public forum like this. </p>
<p>But now that you have answered the questions posed by other CCers - well, you’ve pretty much framed the answer as a negative. You’ve told us basically what your daughter is not interested in. Colleges certainly appreciate students with open minds, but they want to see intellectual curiosity and passion too. Imagine an interview setting --where the interviewer sees two youngsters, both undecided about major. One responds to the question, “what would you like to study?” by saying “I don’t really know” … whereas the other says, “I wish I could study everything! It’s so hard for me to decide because I am intrigued by so many things!” A college wants to see an applicant who projects enthusiasm, not ennui. (This is just an illustration: in-person interviews don’t seem to be very important to the admissions process these days). </p>
<p>Here’s how I think you can help your daughter: help her develop a better sense of her self – who she is, what she wants, what she stands for, how she envisions her future. This will benefit her in two ways: to start with, she’ll be better able to figure out what she wants in a college and start focusing on colleges that will serve those goals – instead of simply focusing on the colleges that her peer group all aspire to. </p>
<p>But a secondary benefit is that it will help your daughter structure a stronger application for college. She needs to develop an elevator pitch. Her application is going to be reviewed by overworked admissions officers who are sorting through thousands of applications, almost all from students with great grades who have all completed challenging but near-identical sets of high school coursework. Never mind the test scores – their eyes are probably glazing over with 90% of the apps that cross their desks. The goal is to give them something that will wake them up.</p>
<p>The one part of your post that came alive - and gave me a sense of your daughter is - is this statement:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That sounds to me like someone who has plenty to say for herself and can really shine! So maybe for her, the question isn’t what she wants to study in college – but what she wants to do.</p>
<p>So start looking for colleges that (a) offer plenty of outlets and opportunities for doers, and (b) will really welcome whatever it is that she does. (Community service? arts? politics? social leadership? )</p>
<p>For example, if “doing” means she’s the type who would relish internships, she might look at Northeastern.</p>
<p>I’d suggest that you steer your daughter now to exploring colleges that offer plenty of opportunities for engagement – in whatever her area of focus is likely to be. You might want to download that new report from Gallup - <a href=“http://products.gallup.com/168857/gallup-purdue-index-inaugural-national-report.aspx”>http://products.gallup.com/168857/gallup-purdue-index-inaugural-national-report.aspx</a> – and use that as a starting point for a conversation. It pretty much highlights the importance a set of college qualities that have absolutely nothing to do with US News rankings or prestige. </p>
<p>Perhaps if she starts thinking about what she would like to do in college – she’ll also start to take a greater interest in a wider range of colleges. </p>