Would you be angry if your alma mater rejected your DS or DD?

Parents Corner
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<p>I’m responding to JNSQ in post #44: “On objective, irrefutable measures to which I was privy [GPA (known through Cum Laude honor society), other honor society memberships/scholastic awards, National Merit, AP Scholar awards, ECs, athletic/service involvement etc.) my daughter was undeniably superior to several classmates who were admitted. One girl in particular was downright dull. We could not for the life of us figure out why she was admitted to this selective university, and freshman year was given a SINGLE dorm room (unheard of at this particular place) until we learned her mother works for the university (accounting) and reports directly to the president.”</p>

<p>It certainly seems to me that JNSQ spent time comparing the stats of her D to the stats of other classmates who did get accepted. JNSQ and I are different people, obviously (despite being alums of the same place), and for my money, I wouldn’t spend time noticing or caring about other classmates who were accepted because it would require a level of poking about in other people’s business that is unappealing to me. All it would do is make my rejected kid feel worse, to focus on the “unfairness” of Johnny down the block who got in and he didn’t. Far better to remind them that life is unfair in general than to make an example out of resenting Johnny down the block.</p>

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<p>What you’re seeing from colleges who responded, I think Stanford was the example given earlier, is a good PR department. The dream school my daughter got wait listed at has an excellent PR department. I made a couple of phone calls during the applications process about financial aid. At some point I realized all I was getting was a slick response to my inquiries that didn’t really tell me anything. This school is very popular, I was left to conclude that the more popular the school the more inquiries they get and the more the need for good PR.</p>

<p>Maybe this PR makes some people feel better, I guess that is what these schools have figured out. To me it’s just fluff. Their careful response don’t tell me anything that I couldn’t have figured out on my own and they don’t change anything. In the end there is no ill will on anyone’s part, it’s just a really tough time to get into colleges.</p>

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<p>Re: #142: Okay, but you used my quote, then apparently responded to another poster.</p>

<p>If you are involved in your kid’s school, it is very easy to become knowledgeable about who the outstanding students are and what their accomplishments are, without having to “poke about in other peoples’ business,” at all. I have a sincere interest in my kids’ friends and classmates activities, and the school (and local newpapers) broadcasts all of their awards, etc., not because I am comparing, but because some of them are so impressive, and its always satisfying to hear about how well your kids’ school is doing in the news.</p>

<p>My kids do not resent other kids who get into good schools that they were rejected from. If anything, they lose respect for the schools who make admissions decisions seem so random.</p>

<p>Pea - I agree. I just think many colleges could do a much better job of bringing their alums down easier when their <em>qualified</em> kids are rejected.</p>

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<p>Since Williams has been mentioned here a few times, I thought I would mention that they offer to counsel the children of alumni regarding their chances of admission, and the director of admissions (I think) calls the alumni to let them know when their children are not admitted. </p>

<p>Both of my children were admitted, so I did not get that phone call, but we had not had one of the counseling meetings, so we had not been told one way or the other what to expect. I know I would have been really upset at getting that phone call from the director of admissions. Sure it’s a more personal touch, but I think under the circumstances I would probably rather just receive a form letter and go on believing that my kid wasn’t admitted because someone in admissions goofed and didn’t read their file carefully enough. </p>

<p>In any case, I completely understand feeling upset and angry, at least initially. I think those feelings would have worn off eventually as long as my kids thrived at the schools they ended up attending.</p>

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<p>Decisions that seem “random” may have been influenced by factors that go beyond the numbers, though. You may be able to deduce whether your kid’s “competition” at his or her high school has a similar GPA, got awards, took similarly difficult classes, etc. But you don’t know how their admissions interview went…or how good their essay was…or their community service activities…or what their recommendations said…or whether they had a college coach or professor encouraging their admission…or many other factors that go into the admission decision.</p>

<p>I don’t think it’s helpful or healthy to eye other people’s children suspiciously and say, “My kid deserved admission a lot more than THAT kid.” That way lies madness.</p>

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<p>Not that a college needs to send every single person an explanation of a rejection, but I think that any student or parent who wants to know why could be provided with some sort of reason. Although maybe they don’t want to say that their decisions are somewhat capricious at best, random at worst. When you consider that some number of different people are reading applications, what are the chances that everyone will provide equivalent evaluations? Does anybody ever think that their kid might have been accepted if the application was read by a different set of people?</p>

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I’ve heard the admissions officers from Yale, Dartmouth, Penn and various other schools say pretty much this every year when they come to our school. They say things like “we could have put together just as good a class from the kids we rejected” or “we had a reason for every kid we accepted, but we might have a different reason on another day.” In addition they are assembling a class. Maybe by the time they read your child’s file they were thinking we need some more oboes, or we’ve got too many lacrosse players, or ballet dancers, or I’d really like another kid from Wyoming. Do you really want to hear, “You’ve got a nice kid, but we had too many ballet dancers who like history and volunteer at the hospital.”?</p>

<p>And I agree you shouldn’t draw too many conclusions about what you know about a kid from school. My son wasn’t the top kid in his class, but he had some pretty interesting accomplishments outside school that truly showed what sort of academic potential he had.</p>

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<p>Watching a wonderful student get rejected from his/her top choice school is heartbreaking, true, and it may be the first time our talented, hard-working, accomplished kids have been told there are limitations in their world, important things they won’t get to do-- no matter how qualified and deserving. When a rejection comes from an outside-of-the-family college, it’s possible to regain one’s composure and adjust–that may not have been the best school after all. When the rejection comes from a parent’s alma mater, it’s impossible to feel removed like that. Double ouch.</p>

<p>So I’m here to add a hug to all those of us who suffer when our kids suffer. And for the legacy kids (and parents), there’s an added stigma (dare I even bring this up here?) that they may be looked upon by the cold outside world as slightly <em>less</em> worthy than any other garden variety admissions reject due to the unrealistic but persistent community expectation that a legacy kid has a big advantage.</p>

<p>So I’ll add a bigger hug to those legacy kids (like my own) who got left out of the party.</p>

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<p>I absolutely believe this, or at the beginning of the stack of applications rather than at the end, or after lunch instead of before, or on Wednesday instead of Thursday. The selection process is an art, not a science.</p>

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<p>FWIW - I’m sure people from d’s high school are looking at her extremely outlying SATs on Naviance and thinking, “What the heck?!”
She absolutely bombed her SATs - took them only once and didn’t submit them to any of her schools. ACTs were much better but those are not plotted on our school’s Naviance. So don’t believe everything you hear.
And as with mathson, her outside of school’s ec’s were very significant but nobody knows about them either. I do shudder when I think of what people must be saying behind closed doors though. C’est la vie.
PS Her only rejection was from my alma mater where she would have been a fourth generation legacy. None of us could care less.</p>

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<p>Personally, I would feel that if my son/daughter didn’t get into our alma mater in spite of the albeit small advantage of being a legacy, then they probably didn’t belong there. I would continue to support my school for the great education I received and hoped my child felt the same about the university they attended. </p>

<p>For those who would stop supporting their school if their child didn’t get in: sounds like they were only supporting it in HOPES that their child got in. Especially those who only did so in the years leading up to the application.</p>

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<p>If you lined up all the parents in my kids’ class and asked them where my kids are legacies, I’d expect 490 to say “no clue! Who cares?” and maybe the other 10, who ate friends of ours, to know. I haven’t a clue where other kids are legacies.</p>

<p>My kids would probably be perceived as smart grinds by other parents. They each have significant EC’s that no one at school knows about. That’s cool by me. They’ll tell the GC and teachers when appropriate, but I see no need for them to broadcast what they do around school. </p>

<p>And when it comes to things like awards published in the paper, really, if it’s not my kid or a close friend, it goes in one ear and out the other. I just don’t see a need to retain the names of random classmates who were NMF or placed first in state in debate. </p>

<p>I think a lot of this is related to Myers Briggs styles, though. As an I, I’m not interested, and as an N, I don’t notice the details unless they directly concern me. I suspect some of you are E, S and F!!</p>

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<p>My two kids did/will not apply to my alma mater, which is fine with me since I feel no real connection to it. But I´ve been curious about whether, if they had applied, should they have even included their legacy status in the application since I never gave a dime to the school.
Does anybody know if it is actually a negative when an alumni parent has not contributed–when they see the legacy status, do they actually look up the parent and note how much they´ve given over the years?</p>

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<p>It won’t ever hurt you but yea they do look up to see how active you’ve been as an alum.</p>

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<p>I have a friend who worked for my alma mater in alumni fundraising, and she absolutely had access to what we (and our mutual friends) had donated over the years. She left that job partly because it made her uncomfortable to have to pressure us for more donations, and now does a similar job for the similar-status u across town.</p>

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<p>I have done alumni interviews for many years for H, and my son was rejected outright. His GPA was below average for the school, although all other aspects of his application were in line with admitted applicants. I have continued to interview since the rejection, but my heart really is not in it, and I am thinking about giving it up.</p>

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<p>(Tapping back into CC wth S2… this forum was a gift with S1’s process…)</p>

<p>This is an interesting thread because it happened to me. S1 was rejected as a double-legacy at a T-20 school. I was not angry, but I was sincerely disappointed and heart-broken, not because they rejected my son, but because I truly LOVED my school and thought it would be a very good fit for him. I was actually embarrassed to bring it up on CC at the time because so many legacies seemed to have an edge. I wondered why my son could be so much less than others. I realized he was a marginal applicant, and totally blew any chance of standing out, other than as a legacy. But I did expect him to be wait-listed.</p>

<p>We had been consistent (but not super BIG BUCKS) donors since graduation, and I had been very active in alumni affairs, until I moved away from the area. So, after the rejection, I just had to put away by college trinkets for a while and re-group. (Big hugs to all of you who have shared these same feelings…) What I did not realize was how much my college, and admissions in particular, had changed. My goodness, even my stats would not have gotten me in anymore.</p>

<p>But here comes the ironic part. Months later, as my son was getting ready to go off to his chosen college, where he had a very nice merit scholarship, my ex and I got several letters from our alma mater addressed to us as parents, not as alums. How strange! Although we never did get a tuition bill, we did get a solicitation to purchase a “finals pack” to send to our student who was never accepted! It did feel like rubbing salt in the wound. We finally wrote a note, explaining that they must have gotten their mailing lists mixed up, and received a very nice reply. But the whole episode left us not only wondering what REALLY happened, but also how they could have messed up something like this.</p>

<p>Later that year, I DID think twice before writing out my annual contribution check, but I continue to give money to both my alma mater as well as my son’s college, because 1) I am grateful for the education I received, and 2) I want my school to continue to be the fine institution that it is. (And no, S2 will not be applying here as his interests lie elsewhere.)</p>

<p>But I find it so sad that admissions has gotten so competitive that kids that would benefit and ultimately succeed at certain schools cannot get in. And I hope that students who do get accepted realize how fortunate they are. And last, there is a happy ending, as S1 is VERY happy where he is. Everything does happen for a reason…</p>

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<p>mom2sons, I really admire how you handled the situation and I’m so glad that your S is very happy where he wound up.</p>

<p>I hope I was clear, although I suspect I was not, that I do greatly sympathize with the disapointment in not being able to share such a wonderful experience with your child.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure when this thread was created, but I stumbled upon it. I read this message from jonri:
“Remember that a generation ago, 90% of the alums of these colleges were whites. There’s only so much room for white kids from affluent homes in the Northeast (especially suburbs) with two college-educated parents who are not recruited athletes or EXTRAORINDARILY qualified–USAMO, Academy-award winning actors, Intel top 40, etc. That’s the category most legacy kids fit within. They can’t take all of them–or there would be no non-legaicies in that group at the college.”</p>

<p>It made me ponder. I am a Princeton legacy, but my life is quite normal. I go to a large public school. I have good credentials, but not elite. Most people would never suspect my own dad went to Princeton. Comparing myself to the elite legacies, do I stand any chance at admission to my father’s alma mater?</p>

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<p>wasslion- thanks for stumbling onto this thread. I don’t know the answer to your question but my D will find out in less than 3 weeks if she is admitted to both of her parents alma mater. If she is rejected, I’m going to try and take the high road and continue to donate each year to them as always.</p>