What should Daughter Say?

Parents Forum
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<p>Best thing to do - especially if D is not naturally on the cagey side - is to do what post #8 said: practice her responses beforehand and then say them over and over again until the questioner stops. </p>

<p>It DOES take practice to do that, because many of us are well trained to be polite and answer people’s questions, so play acting around your house to get her used to that answer might be helpful . . . and to the extent your D is uncomfortable with all this unwanted attention she might see the practce as cathartic relife (how many different ways can you say that answer in one day?)</p>

<p>You might want to practice your responses, too :-)</p>

<p>Remember that Ann Landers line: nobody can take advantage of you without your permission?</p>

<p>Good Luck!!!</p>

<p>Kei</p>

22

<p>“All that said, I do think it sounds a bit paranoid to interpret these questions as meaning that your d ‘has now been seen as a target.’”</p>

<p>I agree with frazzled1’s comment. Sometimes my house is teen-central on the weekends, and I grope for conversation topics as I move amongst them. Is the question “so what colleges are you applying to?” really so out of line? </p>

<p>I promise I am not conspiring against any of them.</p>

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<p>Givings, I’m sure that if my daughter were in your house, I’d be glad for you to sit down with her and have a good college chat! Unfortunately, our environment feels not so friendly. Thanks for the advice everyone.</p>

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<p>I guess I don’t understand the situation. My D&S knew, more or less, the top 10 kids in school and for the most part knew where they were applying to. I don’t think they were evasive with their good friends, and quite frankly, it didn’t matter. He ended up in comp Sci at CMU and she’s in Bio at Northwestern, both being their first choices, and I don’t know what risk they were in by divulging their interests or scores.</p>

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<p>Just say upper quartile for the class rank question.</p>

<p>As to the applying where, try Bob Jones, BYU, Yeshiva, and maybe the Citadel, Weslyan, and Grambling. Practice saying them fast. Say that since you’re somewhat worried about Tufts syndrome, your thinking about throwing in Harvard and Yale. </p>

<p>Seriously, given what you’ve said about parents helping the guidance department, I’d steer a wide berth of that friend and her mother. God knows our guidance department could use some help, but I suspect in about 3/4 of such instances, most of the help will be directed towards specific students, and possibly to the detriment of others.</p>

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<p>dadx, LOL.</p>

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<p>OTOH, I would recommend that you say “oh, she’s only applying to Harvard.” Then smile.</p>

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<p>Rank -‘no idea’ (or if it is your daughter ’ I dunno’ which seemed the response I seemed to get from teenagers that age.) For college ‘oh (I) we don’t want to jinx it by talking about it’ then change the subject.</p>

<p>Or she could always burst into hysterical tears “why do people people keep asking me this - I’m so stressed out - wah wah wah”:rolleyes:</p>

<p>or tell them NU (Nunya University).</p>

<p>Or get out a notebook with list of about 30 and start going through it with lengthy detail about each one - leaving the ones she is really interested in till last by which time the inquisitor will have remembered an urgent errand elsewhere.</p>

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<p>If someone asks for stats, she can say she doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it. They may not understand (I don’t know many people that guard their grades/scores tightly) but they will respect the decision. If you say something like “Top 25%” that is obviously just intended to be evasive, it would come off (to me at least) as distrusting and somewhat hostile.</p>

<p>As for the places you’re applying to, I would suggest just saying you don’t know. A lot of people are in that same situation and wouldn’t think much of it.</p>

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<p>OP-I feel for your daughter. I’m 3rd in my class as well, and the top 20 all seem to want to know.</p>

<p>When they ask my rank, i normally just tell them. However, when they ask the colleges, i just say “oh, my list is a bit all over the place, but i’ll let you know”
seems to keep them happy</p>

31

<p>OP-- now is the time to take a step back from the insanity. I would disappear till after ED comes out. The tension will escalate even more through Christmas, and people you thought were friends will seem like the nastier type of competitor on Survivor. Take a big breath, have faith in yourself and your daughter and have a list of prepared answers. I would meet the GC though, since they do write your D’s references and are a direct link to colleges, and let them know your first choice, etc.
Naturally – what can the other parents do, add Dont accept Jane Doe in their Harvard essay? – you have no idea – people have been known to contact the readers for the school to let them know about some minor infraction that their child’s “competitor” did, or to tell some juicy tid bit about the parent, etc.</p>

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<p>“What’s your D’s class rank?”
“It’s fine, thanks.”</p>

<p>“What colleges is your D applying to?”
“She’s still working on her list. Probably some schools out east and some schools out west.”</p>

<p>What more can the questioner then say? You have to learn the art of giving small-talk answers that shut conversation down! These people can only badger you if you let them.</p>

33

<p>This all seems so paranoid to me. I went to a small private school - we didn’t rank - but we all knew where everyone was applying and what our SAT scores were. There were lots of girls applying to the same colleges and some of us didn’t get in to the ones we wanted. But I can’t imagine not having conversations about the relative merits of the colleges you visited, why you like x best but your best friend likes y best etc. This is the top interest of kids this year. It will determine the course of the next four (at least) years of their life.</p>

<p>And really rank isn’t everything. From our school a few years ago, Harvard accepted #1 and #8 and waitlisted #3. Brown accepted kids down to #25 (which is all that gets announced - they may have accepted more for all I know.)</p>

34

<p>Rank doesn’t mean that much, except when certain schools only give merit scholarships to #1 or #2, for instance.</p>

<p>Our solution was that our daughter did not actually KNOW her rank or her GPA, and neither did we, her parents.</p>

<p>Another solution was that she drew up an agreement that was humorous, for one of her fellow students to sign, that said “I, Joe Schmoe, agree not to mention grades, GPA, rank or SAT’s again this year.” </p>

<p>The other student did, in fact, sign and keep the agreement. I think that if one student can work on projecting some detachment about all this, it can be contagious. It is much “cooler” to be detached, and other students will pick up on this and be embarrassed about so much competitiveness.</p>

<p>I will say that when our daughter heard that two fellow classmates really wanted to go to a certain Ivy, and she felt that her own desire to apply was much more half-hearted,. she decided not to apply so as to avoid affecting their applications, if that could even possibly be the case. The school environment at our school is more cooperative in many ways than at high quality, high-pressure schools like the one described in the original post.</p>

<p>p.s. I was briefly exposed to this type of thing when another parent called me to complain that my daughter, who had been out of school for several classes a day for a few months, due to very painful health problem, had an “advantage” because she got a slip of paper with assignments on it, each day. Her son’s rank was apparently being overtaken by my daughter, and she felt the teachers were too vague about assignments, and perhaps that my daughter was doing better because she got the assignments in writing. I listened sympathetically, but responded that it was not an advantage to miss all her classes, or to be sick! My daughter then told the other student that she would try to do less well on things, so he could get his scholarship, and the boy answered “Gee, would you really do that for me?”</p>

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<p>I thought sure that by now someone would have brought up the thread from last year where a wise CC family had a great response to where high ranking D was going to go to school - I’m sure I don’t have the name exactly right, but it was something like Miss Trixie’s School of Cosmetology.</p>

<p>It’s funny - my kids go to one of those competitive suburban HS and yes, they all seem to “know” who’s at the top of the class…most tell each other willingly. However, there are always a few sleepers…you know, the kids you don’t pay attention to, and then they’re in the group of NMSFs, and then they’re getting some award or another and then they’re number 7 in the class …as senior year wears on, it’s really hard for the top kids to retain their obscurity, even if they want to.</p>

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<p>mhmm, i have a rising senior and your post is depressing - because I am sure it is right on.</p>

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<p>This post makes me glad, once again, that D’s competitive HS did not issue class rank.</p>

<p>D found the question “where are you applying?” stressful – perhaps unreasonably so – because she didn’t have an answer. So I told her to say Wabash, Hampden-Sydney, and Deep Springs.</p>

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<p>I have been made a bit uneasy by this post and realized it’s because of the OP’s assumption that discussion about colleges and rank is all about competition. Sometimes it’s just about needing to talk to someone else who’s going through the same process. You can talk about the process and how it works without revealing information you don’t want to.</p>

<p>(For example, I’ve never revealed my kids’ GPAs or SAT scores on this site.)</p>

<p>You can easily change the discussion so that it’s not so personal. “Oh, Suzy’s class rank is just fine, so of course, we’re trying to narrow down the college list. It’s so hard! Suzy can’t decide if she wants a big school or a small school, what is Jessica thinking?”</p>

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<p>High schools have different cultures. At some, everybody’s scores, grades, and college plans are common knowledge, and all the kids talk about it. At others, nobody talks. I guess if everybody else is talking about it, it might be better to talk about it too (within reason).</p>

40

<p>As I implied, I think every individual has the power to at least begin to change the culture, by example at least, or maybe even explicitly. Policies can also be changed, if parents demand it.</p>

<p>But otherwise, there are a lot of wise suggestions here about answering without answering.</p>