“DD tells me that almost all of the “why him/her and not me” reactions were directed at the wealthy URM students, children of top execs, artists, and surgeons. There’s an African-American girl who has blond hair and green eyes, in addition to being wealthy, who got the “diversity letter” from Cornell (no legacy). Another boy who everyone thought was just a white boy, turned out to be both African-American and Native-American and got into one of the top LAC (also no legacy). His father and grandfather are both famous people in the Arts. A couple of very wealthy Hispanic students who look nothing like the immigrants we envision being helped by the diversity program. It’s hard for them see why these classmates should get the URM advantage.”
@bestmom, thank you for having the courage to share this on the board. I had the same experience at high school all those years ago. Now, just this cycle, I could relay the same stories from my kids’ high school.
I agree with the above poster who noted, correctly, that hard work, good (as in 4+ GPA) grades, and high test scores do not guarantee admission into an elite college. That said, what, as parents, should we tell our kids then, who are busting their butts with school, EC’s, sports, and test prep? If, in the end, the hard work won’t pay off (at least not in terms of gaining admission into a selective college), I’m not sure what else to say to them…
Also agree with @PurpleTitan. My alumni club is filled with stories of even multigenerational legacy students rejected but accepted at other Ivies. Anecdotally I’m hearing it’s more of a hook for schools down south but I have no idea if that statistically plays out.
@USCWolverine - I think working hard in HS sets our kids up for better success in life in general. They will have the work ethic to succeed wherever they land for college (and they will land somewhere) and in their career. I don’t believe the end result of HS should be getting into the most elite school possible. It should be about developing good habits, fostering a curiosity for knowledge, and finding one’s passion. Looking for the right fit is more important than “prestige”.
“That said, what, as parents, should we tell our kids then, who are busting their butts with school, EC’s, sports, and test prep? If, in the end, the hard work won’t pay, I’m not sure what else to say to them…”
Kids with high stats who research their college choices well, and include genuine matches and safeties, will end up somewhere they can get a great education. If the only reason a student is working hard in school, playing a sport (or instrument or whatever), and engaging in outside activities is to get into a top 20 (or whatever) school, and they consider it wasted effort if they have to “settle” for anything less, then I would say they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. And maybe that’s actually something adcoms can tell, and something they factor into the choices they make.
@momofsenior, thank you for that terrific post and excellent parenting tips.
@Corraleno, also good input there.
My only possible counter (and I think both of you effectively already dealt with this), is that schools the kids we know ended up at accept much less accomplished applicants. Hence something of the, “this isn’t fair; I could have gotten into XYZ school with 1/2 the effort” lament. Again, momofsenior’s response already answers this reaction well.
I couldn’t be sure of that at all. My kids had a wide range of teachers, some I thought were talented educators, not all were good at communications. One I thought was an absolute idiot and I wouldn’t have been sure his letter was grammatically correct. He liked one of my kids, didn’t like the other because she wrote in cursive and he thought it was some kind of witchcraft. Idiot. Based on the correspondence I had with teachers and guidance counselors over the years, I wouldn’t think one letter would be better than another.
@austinmshauri --I don’t know anyone is telling kids that they should expect to get in if they have higher scores than the person next to them. What they are hearing is that you need near perfect scores and grades to be in the running, which is somewhat true for a lot of them. And, being young humans, they can’t help but wonder why someone got in and they didn’t. We all wonder that. You don’t get comments back like you would at a lot of competitions. And then some of them feel badly for wondering why they didn’t get in and someone else did. It doesn’t mean they’re snotty, and entitled or that someone told them they deserve anything they want if they pull out a perfect GPA. It’s just human nature to wonder. I was merely saying it’s ok for them to have that internal struggle. And then tried to provide a number of reasons why one person gets chosen over another. Someone brought up essays and rec letters which certainly is important for many Ivy’s—but at UC they don’t really look at essays. And a lot of UCs just take the top 9% of each high school and choose among that group. So if you’re at a competitive high school, you’ll have no chance, if you got a B, of getting into Cal but from a less competitive high school, you do have a chance. There are exceptions to that top 9% rule, but usually not with the somewhat standard “exceptional student” I described.
@USCWolverine, well, in terms of motivation, I would say that doing well on AP tests would earn credit at those schools much less accomplished kids got in to, thus potentially saving money and/or providing for flexibility (and also are very important for admissions to top UK unis).
As for ECs, maybe that would allow ECs to be what they were before: extracurricular activities; hobbies where you can indulge in your passions without caring about walhat effect they would have on your life.
And finally, pushing yourself early on would help you later on in life. If a kid aspires to be a doctor, for instance (or get in to any prestigious field, for that matter), they’ll have to put in the effort eventually. Nobody coasts their way to an MD (or in to IB/PE/VC/MC).
I know that with something like math (which builds block by block), often times, when you are studying something you may wonder “why the heck do I have to learn this?”, but years or sometimes even decades later, you come to a situation where it would be useful to understand the math, and either you can or you can’t. At that point, it sure would be nice to have those math skills.
To me, this is the issue that supersedes all the others. I don’t care whether high stat kids have to get their education at state schools or at no name LACs. I care that for many kids, college is barely in reach at all. I just ran the NPC for Rutgers for a NJ family making 60K. Cost of attendance after various grants 21530K. (According to the website this includes books, and miscellaneous expenses like travel. Add another 2k for work study and you are down to 19.530K. Student should be able to contribute something from work over the summer - conservatively another 2k, now we are down to 17.530k. Thats a four year cost of 70k. How is that reasonable? Of course, if the student can commute that makes a difference but not as much as you’d think. According to the calculator, after grants the cost is 15.602K, same 2k of work study and another 2k of summer earnings and you are down to 11.6K per year or 46K total. However, that is misleading becuase the student still has to eat. Maybe the family was able to put something away for college, but 60k in many parts of NJ doesn’t go far, so it wouldn’t be much. Maybe they can contribute something out of current income, but possibly very litte. In any case, thats a lot of debt for a family making 60k per year to be stuck with, assuming the parents are willing or even able to get a loan.
Maybe I ran the numbers incorrectly, but I believe that there are college able kids who simply cannot go becuase the cost is too exorbitant.
@bestmom888, I don’t understand what the high stats students and their families are complaining about. There are thousands more high stats students than there are spots at elite schools. And I’m not the one saying students felt they were entitled to one of them, they are. They’re “enraged” (and a whole host of other words) that they didn’t get one. Are you saying these families and their schools’ guidance counselors don’t understand what an acceptance rate of < 20% means? They missed the articles that report on the tens of thousands of apps these schools are getting and the limited number of seats they have to offer?
Complaining that a lower stats kid from your school got accepted shows a lack of understanding about the process. If that kid wasn’t accepted, it doesn’t mean the higher stats kid would be. I wouldn’t assume they had some kind of hook either. There aren’t that many real hooks. There are just too many qualified kids vying for a finite number of spots. So the answer to “Why him, not me?” can come down to sheer numbers. Harvard got more than 39,000 apps for the 2,000 seats available for the class of 2021. If you throw away 90% of those apps, the 10% left are still almost double what they need to fill the class.
The disappointment I can understand. But the snide assumptions about why other kids were admitted (if you’re accepted it’s based solely on merit but they got in it’s because they’re an athlete – URM – rich…), the anger at rejection, and the attitude that working hard somehow makes them more deserving of a spot than someone whose app they haven’t seen is troubling. There’s a difference between what @profmom0814 is describing and what’s happening on several of this season’s threads. I don’t remember results being this contentious before.
The UCs do in fact look at essays, having changed them recently. It’s not all about grades and scores as cut-offs to get into a top UC. Rec letters are inreasingly important as UCB has now asked students for letters in some cases since 2014.
@austinmshauri: “There aren’t that many real hooks.”
Eh. I suppose that is a matter of opinion to an extent, but there are a lot.
Roughly half the class or more at Ivies/equivalents, by my reckoning.
Recruited Athletes make up 17% at Princeton due to it’s smaller class sizes. First gen has made up about 17% the last 2 cycles. I believe legacy makes up about 12% though there is probably some cross with Recruited Athletes. URM makes up about 20% with some cross of all 3 listed above.
@austinmshauri This: “The disappointment I can understand. But the snide assumptions about why other kids were admitted[…]is troubling.”
I could not agree more with your whole paragraph. This bothers me, too, and I agree that things seem especially harsh this year. I totally understand the pain of rejection. It’s awful–I know first hand. But, none of us know the full story behind any other person’s life or application (or even the whole story behind our own or our kid’s application–because of recommendation letters) so we can’t fully understand the acceptances or rejections. All I know is that I have seen the college cycle work out well (“as expected”) more often than I have seen it work out badly.
I think there’s a bit of a disconnect between the way kids measure themselves against other kids, and the way adcoms compare kids to each other. It’s easy for a student to assume they were a better candidate than someone else because their GPA and test scores were higher, but they don’t see the other kids’ essays (and often overestimate the value of their own) and they don’t see the LORs (including their own), and those two things are really critical in converting a 2-dimensional application into a 3-dimensional applicant that adcoms want to admit.
If a student is offering pretty much the same things everyone else has, just more of it — more ECs, more APs, a few more tenths of a point on a GPA or tenths of a percentage on test scores — that’s not going to make their application jump out of the pile. One kid writes an essay about how the 2 weeks he spent in Guatemala really opened his eyes to poverty blah blah blah, and another kid writes about taking care of his little brother with cerebral palsy while his mother works the night shift; those are the things that kids don’t see when they assume someone “less accomplished” took their rightful place at an elite school. I remember reading an account by a kid who got into Harvard with decent but not stellar test scores, who wrote his essay about growing up poor in rural Hawaii, spear fishing and hunting wild pigs for meat. It would be easy for someone with higher stats to think that kid was less deserving, but from the adcom’s POV, he brought something unique to the school that yet another suburban kid with a 36 ACT would not.
Maybe kids would be less shocked by their results if they understood that elite schools aren’t selecting kids based on who has the highest scores and the most ECs, they’re selecting the kids who can offer the specific things the schools (and the individual application readers) are looking for in that specific class for that specific year, and those things include athletic/musical/artistic talent, racial/ethnic/socioeconomic/geographic diversity, a representative spread in terms of majors, and, yes, access to donors who will boost the endowment fund. The kids who fill in the small number of remaining slots generally have some unique talent or interest or compelling backstory, not just a 12th AP or a 1600 instead of a 1580.
I think kids would be much better served by doing what they love, being who they are, and seeing where they land, instead of sacrificing four years of their lives in pursuit of one of the incredibly limited slots at one of a handful of schools, and then feeling angry and resentful that it was “all for nothing.”
@USCWolverine My kid with high stats applied to colleges ranked from #4 on the national university rankings to one around #60 in the LAC rankings. She would have been willing to attend any of them. They were selected mostly based on strength of major and fit with her personality. She did not attend the highest ranked school of the bunch (in fact, she picked the 4th highest of the 8 in terms of ranking). She had a great experience and is now in a PhD program in her area of interest.
So you tell your kids:
- You work hard in HS and ECs to get a great high school education that will serve as a firm foundation for you no matter where you go to college.
- You look for colleges with a range of selectivity that you would be happy to attend. Matches and safeties are harder to find than reaches, so focus more time there.
- Once you have acceptances, take a hard look again. Don’t just pick on ranking, but where you can achieve your goals and be comfortable.
- You can achieve career success from a variety of schools. It isn’t the school that makes you a success, it is what you do with the opportunities offered.
My other kid went to a LAC ranked around #50. Also not the highest ranked school she got into, but her choice. She had a very good experience, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and got a job she loves after graduating through a school alum.
Parents set the tone. If you make it all about school ranking, your kids will follow your lead. So think about the story and message you are giving your kids.
^ I wholeheartedly agree. And it needs to start with parents. Parents need to encourage their students to pursue their interests in high school and beyond, help their students find a college where they can thrive, and stop focusing so much on a small number of schools as some reward for academic achievement.
My D has grown up around my friends who are all graduates of top schools yet never felt any compulsion to attend my alma mater or any other highly ranked school. That’s just never been a focus in our house and was never a topic of discussion. She never felt that her ECs and courses in high school were for the purpose of getting into any particular college. And when all decisions were in, our discussions centered around pros and cons of each option, and ranking had absolutely no part in the discussion. As a result, the process of identifying schools, visiting schools, the application process and admissions season were much more enjoyable. And most importantly, she has never questioned her ability to be successful and achieve her goals coming out of any college.
The posts I’m seeing on CC this application season really sadden me.
“One kid writes an essay about how the 2 weeks he spent in Guatemala really opened his eyes to poverty blah blah blah, and another kid writes about taking care of his little brother with cerebral palsy while his mother works the night shift; those are the things that kids don’t see when they assume someone “less accomplished” took their rightful place at an elite school.”
Ok but the colleges have no way of knowing if the kid who takes care of the little brother would not be vacationing in Guatemala if he was in the same position as the wealthier applicant, and you don’t know if the wealthy kid would also take care of his little brother if the roles were reversed.
BTW, a lot of kids who do go to Guatemala or a country like that in the summer do end up at Harvard or Yale. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, the wealth at the ivies is staggering, for every kid that takes care of his brother there are 4 or 5 kids that have family incomes over 250K.
“from the adcom’s POV, he brought something unique to the school that yet another suburban kid with a 36 ACT would not.”
This is another myth that’s just not borne out by the facts. Selective schools also love kids with 36 ACT
“One kid writes an essay about how the 2 weeks he spent in Guatemala really opened his eyes to poverty blah blah blah, and another kid writes about taking care of his little brother with cerebral palsy while his mother works the night shift; those are the things that kids don’t see when they assume someone “less accomplished” took their rightful place at an elite school.”
Ok but the colleges have no way of knowing if the kid who takes care of the little brother would not be vacationing in Guatemala if he was in the same position as the wealthier applicant, and you don’t know if the wealthy kid wouldn’t also take care of his little brother if the roles were reversed. Penalizing and rewarding based on context is one of the reasons that admissions process is perceived as being unfair.
BTW, a lot of kids who do go to Guatemala or a country like that in the summer do end up at Harvard or Yale. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, the wealth at the ivies is staggering, for every kid that takes care of his brother there are 4 or 5 kids that have family incomes over 250K.
“from the adcom’s POV, he brought something unique to the school that yet another suburban kid with a 36 ACT would not.”
This is another myth that’s just not borne out by the facts. Selective schools also love kids with 36 ACT, the average at these schools is 32-33 or 1500 SAT. Again, the typical ivy league student has an average SAT of 1500 and comes from a wealthy family in the suburbs. You make it sound like the ivies have mainly kids with 1200 or 1300 floating around the campus and getting a lot of FA. That’s just not the case, they’re pretty privileged.
“The kids who fill in the small number of remaining slots generally have some unique talent or interest or compelling backstory, not just a 12th AP or a 1600 instead of a 1580.”
The 12 APs actually is the one point that is accurate. The top colleges look for about 5-7, but they have to be the right APs. Note though that a lot of kids at Harvard, MIT and Stanford do have 10 APs. Again, the selective colleges love the 1600s which they need to balance the 1200 or 1300 hooked kid.
“There are thousands more high stats students than there are spots at elite schools.”
But how many high stats kids are there, not a million, then that wouldn’t be considered high stats? I think 1450 SAT and 34 ACT would be high stats, and a quick google search put’s that at about 100,000 students, maybe less if you assume some overlap. And how is an elite school defined, if it’s the top-20 of us news adding the top 5 lacs and the top 3-publics (UM, UCB, UCLA), that’s also a lot of spots. I think the issue is really unhooked high stats going after unhooked slots at the elite schools.