<p>I don’t have a child applying this year, but the rumblings I’m hearing relate to being rejected by safety schools. One student is annoyed that he was rejected by his top choice, which is an academic safety for him, and yet got accepted to much more selective schools. He prefers the price, campus and social atmosphere of the safety school. He suspects Tufts syndrome–the college assumed he wouldn’t attend. But they were wrong. </p>
<p>I also think that parents just don’t understand institutional need. If the school needs a bassoon player and a newspaper editor, the bassoon playing editor gets the nod and the superstar tennis player with better grades does not. (Overly simplistic, but you get the point.) </p>
<p>Except usually it IS the athlete that gets the nod…</p>
<p>^ But only if he plans to play tennis for them…
My sense is that it’s becoming too much of a game wherein the college tries to guess what students are thinking about them. Schools like Lehigh sound like jealous girlfriends. You just didn’t dote on me enough. You didn’t send me enough love letters and flowers. Besides, sniff, you’re the type who’d probably end up falling for my best friend, so I’m dumping you preemptively. Ugh.</p>
<p>@inparent - yeah, it’s so unfair how those kids who have worked at their sport six days a week for four years, no time off for tests or travel or projects due the next day, and who objectively excel in their sport are given the nod over kids who do a once a week club or community service project. It’s almost like the dedication that it takes to excel in a sport shows discipline! </p>
<p>(For the record, my BF is an Eagle Scout, but he’s an Eagle Scout. You know just by looking at that what kind of achievement, dedication, and hard work it represents; the same often cannot be said of many other high school activities.)</p>
<p>Thank goodness that ECs other than sports never take that kind of commitment. 8-| </p>
<p>That’s right, SomeOldGuy. I, for one, am heartily sick and tired of the parents of recruited athletes coming up with specious reasons why their kid “deserves” admissions more than a kid who works just as hard but is less physically talented. Really, it is a joke. My S played an instrument that he had to practice every day, starting when he was 6 years old. He took private lessons. He participated in the regional youth symphony, and other special groups that took lots of time. That is regarded as a nice EC, not something one is recruited for. He was also a 3-season varsity athlete who was not good enough to be recruited. He put in the same time as the recruited athletes. So what? Get over yourselves. Admit that your kid has a golden ticket that they do not, on some level, “deserve.” Be thankful. Be happy. Don’t try to tell the rest of us that your kid in some way “deserves” admission more, and more than the children of a billionaire “deserve” admission more.</p>
<p>I admit that of all the admission hooks and tips, the recruited athletes piss me off the most.</p>
<p>If you reject my kid and make her feel bad, I don’t like you. It is as simple as that. It is not personal. I don’t have t justify it. It is my right as a parent to have very strong feeling about anyone or anything that makes my kid sad.</p>
<p>All that money/time wasted on [fill-in-the-blank] sports, music lessons, travels, community service projects, getting all "A"s, working hard,…just to end up at the University of ______.</p>
<p>It wasnt wasted.
Just think of where they would be attending * without* those extras!
;)</p>
<p>But Consolation, that can be said about any standard the school uses. Only take the highest gpa or the highest scores, because even though the B student may have worked just as hard as the A student, too bad, we only want the best and the best is who scores the most. </p>
<p>Schools want a more well rounded student body, so they take the athlete who has very good grades and athletic ability, even though there are students with higher stats (and Harvard was pretty happy they took those basketball players when they won today). It makes for a better college experience if they offer sports and music and arts and theater, even if you don’t major in those things. If it didn’t, why would almost every school in the US sponsor athletic teams? And once you have an athletic team, you want to win occasionally, so you want the best team you can assemble.</p>
<p>My daughter ‘deserves’ her merit scholarship and her athletic one as she earned them both. Did she get a push from the coach to get into her school? Didn’t need it. Could she have received a push at another school? Yes. Is that any different than the eagle scout or band member or robotics award winner who may have been accepted over another applicant with higher test scores?</p>
<p>I also dislike the posts about time and effort wasted, that is not good. However, I am sympathetic that many students and parents have tried to go the extra mile to play the ridiculous games that admissions offices seem to require these days, only to be rejected anyway.</p>
<p>This is a high stakes game, and it is very frustrating. The high cost of college, the personal nature of the admissions application questions, impersonal rejections, stupid essay questions, single digit acceptance rates, waiting forever to get a response, lack of transparency regarding how admissions decisions are made, seemingly random and inconsistent decisions, and students who get accepted by being dishonest on applications or having others write their essays, these things are very frustrating for everyone. </p>
<p>Until something changes, is any way that the level of frustration and vitriol with this process can do anything but continue to rise?</p>
<p>“Lots of coffee klatches at Starbucks featuring heated discussions about money spent for college “experts”, special sports teams, music lessons, travels abroad, test prep classes, college visits.”</p>
<p>Hmm. So those parents spent a lot of money trying to get their kid some admission advantage and it didn’t work. They’re griping about the fact that the college didn’t buy it? Well, when some inevitable rejections arrive, I’ll be unhappy of course, but I won’t feel that we wasted any time or money other than what went into the application itself–fee and essays. I think there’s a lesson there.</p>
<p>I think it is possible to express your disbelief or disappointment without insulting those who did get accepted. Keep the sour grapes in a seperate thread if you can’t refrain from trashing some happy kid or parent.</p>
<p>Depending on the family’s own values and the prevailing neighborhood/HS culture, there may be much sense of personal worth and validation of one’s parenting/family values riding on that admission to an elite college. </p>
<p>In the case of the student concerned, validation of their HS career…whether its academics, ECs, etc. </p>
<p>And we’re not getting into worries/concerns about whether rejection by the elite colleges du jour will have a cumulative negative effect…whether friendship/professional networks or in the words of one obsessed Princeton alum…“worthwhile marriage partners”. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>It’s a SCHOOL, not a minor league sports team. Sports should just be a nice EC, not a golden ticket. The orchestra conductor doesn’t get a recruiting budget and a set number of recruits. Nor do the robotics coach, the theater directors, the art professors, or anyone else. Only the athletic teams. (And often, only some of them.)</p>
<p>Look, I realize that schools get to pick what they want. It is what it is. What I am sick of are the justifications that suggest that recruited athletes somehow DESERVE it more than other people. I think that is complete BS. I have never given a damn about the success of the sports teams of any school I attended.</p>
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<p>Many students attend schools that are moderately priced, do not ask personal essay questions, have relatively high admission rates, often notify early due to just admitting by formula without any appearance of randomness or inconsistency, and only being vulnerable to applicant dishonesty if the applicant manages to dishonestly get higher grades and test scores than s/he would otherwise have gotten.</p>
<p>But the things that you do not like are the characteristics that give the school an elite selective prestigious image that causes the school to be more desirable, unlike the schools that have the opposite characteristics. Students and their parents want to feel special and elite by going to a school that is highly selective, rather than going to the same school that high school classmates with 2.7 GPAs and 1000 SAT CR+M scores are going to.</p>
<p>This discussion is an interesting contrast to all the threads where parents and students ask whether this or that will “improve their chances”? As in: Does my kid have to take calculus? Does my kid need to do community service? Does my kid need 4 years of foreign language? How many APs should I take sophomore year? Should I retake my 2250 SAT?</p>
<p>In theory, you shouldn’t do anything just to get into college – there needs to be another reason. Because you can do all those things – take calculus, retake the SAT, etc., etc., and STILL not get into the Ivy of your choice. There are no controlled studies here. So if you’re going to be miserable taking calculus or the fourth year of French, don’t do it ONLY because you think it will get you into Harvard. </p>
<p>ucbalumnus, I think that you misstate the case for many when you say they “want to feel special and elite.” Many kids simply want to go to a school where the classes will be full of people who want to be there, have done the reading, can have an intelligent classroom discussion, and are generally motivated. They have had enough time in class with the other sort of student in the first 12 years of their education.</p>
<p>Personally, I am also ticked off at how many people are starting to hire college counselors to the tune of $2500 or so. Obviously, that is their right if they think it will be helpful. Once people started paying big bucks for hours and hours of professional SAT prep, though, the predictive nature of the test was undermined. Similarly, the widespread use of these counselors obscures certain skills and attributes the application purports to assess. Some students no longer have to plan their own high school careers including course selection, test schedules, or determine the most appealing EC’s for the picture they’re painting. They no longer need the discipline and organizational skills to gather and prepare materials for applications, nor the ability to write a coherent, grammatically correct essay by themselves. The counselor babysits them through all of it. </p>
<p>To the tune of $2500? Try 10 times. People can spend money any way they want. College application process has never been fair - SAT prep, academic tutoring, legacy, URM, sports, better high school…Private college counseling is a small factor relative to other advantages some students may have. I could hire the best counselor, but if my kid has 3.0 average, there is not enough counseling to get my kid into the school she is in now.</p>