My daughter’s high school college counselor showed her rankings and which schools were in what tiers when they were reviewing her list. So many nuances though because it only went by overall school rankings where engineering rankings can be vastly different. The school my daughter chose was considered a Tier 2 by her counselor’s list but is ranked in the top 10 for engineering.
@momofsenior1 Tiers based on what definition?
@BearHouse I don’t even know how to answer your question. We live in a highly competitive high school district. 90 percent of the 700 graduating senior schools go to four year colleges. Every mom and dad I know here went to school you would know. Just on our one block, we’ve got parents that went to Michigan, Northwestern, Harvard, Dartmouth, Illinois, Carleton, and Princeton. These kids have grown up knowing schools.
@homerdog Sounds like you did answer it. People are proud of their schools and talk about it with their young children. So your school community it reaping what it sowed. Tough to swim upstream against that. My family is full of Ph.D’s, teachers, musicians and physicians but no top schools. I think people can choose to value the name of the college or value purpose/significance of life. It is a parents job to make sure their children understand the priorities in life. Where you go to college? Not so important. What you do with your life? Very important. You are in a much more difficult situation than I, so no judgment here. Good luck helping you son!
You might want to talk to some university language departments before limiting your options like this. These are both very difficult languages—rated among the most difficult by the Defense Language Institute. Just reaching a Low Advanced level in even one of these languages would be much better than what most who major in these languages manage to accomplish while in college. For example, the Japanese major at Pomona College—the most selective LAC in the country, with a language program on par with Middlebury’s—targets a proficiency level of JLPT 2 (Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 2) for its Japanese majors at graduation—basically High Intermediate or Low Advanced. This is after four years of study and a year abroad in Japan. Again, at one of the best colleges in the country. In one language.
PM me if you want more info.
Sources:
http://aboutworldlanguages.com/language-difficulty
https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/asian-languages-literatures/japanese/courses-requirements
@momofmusician17, my son did an immersion program in Jordan his junior year. He said the best prepared student there was from Ole Miss. He was the second best prepared, having studied at Tufts. He was kind of surprised because he was not a natural linguist at all, but they just teach more at Tufts than they do at other schools. He thought the immersion program made a real difference - he got in first A’s in Arabic senior year. I can’t speak for Japanese, but I’m sure they offer it. Tufts doesn’t have merit aid though.
My son was rejected by all the ivies he applied to as well as some of his reach schools. He was waitlisted by some and was accepted by some of his safeties. The challenge now is financing. The most favorable amongst them gave him some modest scholarship based on need and merit, but the difference between the FA and what we have to pay is above what we proposed to pay. We are still finding it difficult to mobilise money to pay the fees. We have been assured of other donor-funded scholarships he can apply to when he enters. My question is : can he take a gap year and use the same materials on the commonapp to apply next year? At the time he was selecting the schools i had then not done a lot of reading or research to guide him, so he did his own thing thinking that he was smart enough to get into any of his dream schools. We asked for a very substantial FA, and being an international applicant i think that might have worked against him since most of the school were need aware.
This really can’t be repeated often enough. I think students just refuse to look at the admit rate of schools, preferring to look at the info that shows that their GPAs and test scores put them in the top half of admitted students.
I’m sure some students refuse to look at the admit rate at schools and instead only pay attention to how their GPA and SAT compares to the average. However, I’d expect this is a small minority at the discussed college and not a primary reason why students overreach and are disappointed.
I’d expect one of the more common reasons for disappointment relates to putting an unnecessarily strong importance on attending particular, highly selective colleges. This can include pressure from parents/family, pressure/competition from classmates, pressure/competition from this forum, as well as internal pressures. If you’ve spent tens of thousands of hours working hard in school because you believe it is important for getting in to a good college, then being rejected to a desired college is likely to be disappointing. Yes, some students can prepare for it by thinking they didn’t have much of a shot anyway with the low acceptance rate. However, rejections still can hurt – not just college acceptances – almost any type of rejection. For example, personal rejections can be extremely devastating to some teens, even things as simple as a text not being returned, if it’s from a person they value. If a college rejects the vast majority of applicants, a large portion of applicants are bound to be disappointed.
However, most students do not apply to 4% acceptance rate colleges or any extremely selective college. This is particularly true outside of high SES areas. For example, the study at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf found “the vast majority of low-income high achievers
do not apply to any selective college.” National surveys, such as the annual Freshman Norms survey at https://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2016.pdf present a different view of the process than we typical hear about on CC. In the survey linked above, 75% of freshman at 4 year colleges mentioned being accepted by their first choice college. It’s only a small minority of students that are extremely focused on attending HYPSM… and disappointed when acceptance decisions occur.
I agree disappointment is an emotional reaction, not a rational one. But you can’t ignore that any college that isn’t a guaranteed safety can disappoint. If one doesn’t realize this, they cant be prepared for it.
The “overreach” problem is when applicants have unreasonable expectations and either have no safety, or are only admitted to a safety college they are unwilling to attend. So disappointment by itself isn’t the problem. It’s when the student or parents are unprepared or react with anger or resentment.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek No idea what resource the college counselor was using to determine “tiers”. We didn’t find it particularly useful especially when looking at engineering rankings so paid little attention.
I actually do think the rejection can feel personal when the student knows the local AO. Our S19 has already met with some AOs and some of them more than once. He has a relationship with these adults. If he is rejected from those schools, then it will indeed feel like those adults did not like him enough to help him get admitted.
I worry less about the actual rejection than about the stress on these kids during the years of preparation. Some of it starting in young childhood. Rejection is a one time event. Its part of life and something all humans need to learn. On the other hand, years of crushing pressure put on some kids by their families and culture can be extremely damaging. These are kids who live in terror of getting an A-, who can’t engage in enjoyable activities and who take on academic challenges they are not ready for in a never ending quest to build a better resume. I am not talking about the kids that @lookingforward keeps bringing up. I know there are kids who are naturals at this and thrive in that competitive environment. I understand the difference. I’m talking about the kids who are just normal, bright, excellent kids but are being molded into something else. And I’m not talking about the fact that all of us, parents, need to push our kids sometimes. I’m talking about the angst I see on these boards and in my home town that is years in the making and sometimes results in tragedy.
Gallent- I have no doubt that what you observe is real.
But keep in mind- this is a big country. Statistically, the rate of teen and young adult suicide is just as high for kids who DON’T go to college and who face zero academic pressure (let alone pressure for fancy EC’s). Our military has very high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among kids who go directly from HS to the armed services (and access to weapons accelerates suicidal ideation according to many experts). Anxiety, depression, addiction, etc. are very high in parts of the country where it is not the norm for a kid to go to college. These areas are often economically disadvantaged and the work that’s available is usually low wage, dangerous, or both.
It is a mistake to look at the anxiety in teens in a middle class/upper middle class area and assume it derives from college pressure, parental pressure, and that it is unique to the “Harvard or bust” crowd. Read the studies on depression in rural Oklahoma/Arkansas/Maine; anxiety in West Virginia; etc. Many mental health issues manifest themselves in the late teen/early 20’s, and sadly, these issues are equal opportunity diseases impacting the “I need to be a National Merit Finalist” and the non-college bound across the board.
“like those adults did not like him enough to help him get admitted”
It’s a business decision, based on institutional needs and wants, not a personal diss. We need to recognize that and have that talk early.
He has a personal relationship or they’ve met a few times? My kid didn’t get into the school I work for.
Yes, for some kids, the sting can last. But I think a few of us feel that’s an emotional reaction. If you wanted to talk about tiger parents, I missed that. That’s not the college’s fault.
@blossom I have no arguments with any of your points. I’m talking about the small sliver of the population that I have contact with.
There are some areas of the country where the pressure is killer. There are occasionally parents on CC who mercilessly want to push their 8th graders. But the solution isn’t to level all college admissions, reveal the formula for the secret sauce in 4 easy steps, make admissions truly random, cut back EC opps, or all the rest.
The problem lies with those parents/kids who lack some honest, rational, (and perhaps, mature,) perspective.
I can’t change them.
@lookingforward Having read more of these boards, I believe part of the problem is economic. If you are a poor family who really can’t contribute anything to college, then your best hope for your child is a full ride somewhere. Those are hard to find outside of the top schools. In that case, it isn’t about coming to terms with the idea that your in state option is fine, its about desperately wondering how you are going to send your child to school at all. There are many parts of the country where the in-state options are really not affordable to low SES families. The solution for this is better funding for affordable education.
For the families who can afford alternatives and push their kids anyway, there is nothing the colleges can do to alleviate that. Its sad, but its on them.
The local Harvard interviewer for my niece (who by the way is a double legacy) thought she was the best candidate he’d seen in years and really tried to go to bat for her. She didn’t even get waitlisted. Sometimes there just isn’t enough room.