<p>I would politely ask that you take my post in the way in which it was intended--as support for someone who is going through a very, very difficult time at the moment. That you are a Yale grad precludes your "getting it" in the same way as andi does (or even as I did as the mother of an EA rejectee). Of course you will defend Yale, as well you should. Of course both andi's and my opinions of Yale have been altered as a result of our negative experiences. Both are completely understandable. On two threads now you have countered me and presented statistics to support your opinion. I respect that. However, you also stated that Duke does NOT read essays at the same time that my son received a call from his Duke regional rep. praising a special essay he wrote (and speaking in great detail about it) and also one of his unique recommendations. So, you see, there is room for both of us here to be right...or to be a bit misguided. The bitterness which andi and her son presently feel is REAL and it is WARRANTED. I do not take it to mean that they will never emerge from this place of anger. To the contrary, I think it is important for them to address this and then move on in whatever productive way that they choose. All that I am saying is that I understand their feelings and acknowledge them, and frankly, at this moment I share them. </p>
<p>Andi: At our very competitive public high school last year, out of many who applied, only one kid got into Yale: a recruited athlete with a middling academic record. You have every right to feel frustration for your son. Vent away on this board! And it sounds like you are not paralyzed by your frustration at all. You and your son are moving forward, doing everything you need to with those waitlists. You're one courageous lady. I have my fingers crossed for Swarthmore for your son.</p>
<p>CC is a great place for posters to either vent or brag if they do not feel they can do so in "real life." I am sure that Andi is doing all she can to support her son and help him put his energies into getting off the waitlist at another college. But it is hard to wait until the end of May and in the meantime, it is hard to hear--in real life--someone she knows boasting about the achievement of a kid who is so obviously not an academic.</p>
<p>The sad truth is that of all possible hooks and despite the scorn that many have visited on Affirmative Action and legacies, being an athlete is the biggest hook. It can be explained in different ways. Probably the most signiticant one is the importance of athletics to alumni. After all the Ivy League began as and continues as an athletic organization. Even Swarthmore, when it decided to eliminate its football team that had not won a single game, received howls of outrage from alumni. It was all that was talked at at the alumni reunion that year. Athletics are also important to current students--see the acres of coverage given to THE GAME in both the Yale Daily News and the Harvard Crimson. There is as well the idea that it takes a lot of discipline for a student to excel at sports and to do decently in academics. It is something that hiring companies take notice of. One, of course, can say exactly the same thing about talented musicians, a group to which Andi's son belongs, but I have heard it said about athletes a great deal more, perhaps in defense of the academic potential of athletes.</p>
<p>I cannot help read this thread in conjunction with postings about families who spend $45k preparing their kids for Ivy admission (not counting prep school). It includes tutors at $120 an hour for each and every AP course taken. The family of the athlete seems to have done the equivalent by sending him off to a prep school. </p>
<p>Understanding all this does not preclude feeling bitter; nor does it prevent Andi from doing all she can to help her son navigate through this very difficult and stressful time. It is absolutely no use telling Andi's son that living well is the best revenge when he is suspended in limbo. Tell him so at the end of May when he knows whether he will be going to college--not Yale--or taking a gap year.</p>
<p>Andi, I can COMPLETELY understand that this situation with the athlete is just adding insult to injury. I would be really upset in your position. I think that this is the ideal place to complain honestly and just get things off your chest, since you probably don't want to get the reputation of having sour grapes in your community. In your position, I would maintain a nonchalant attitude just to protect my little bit of pride! I don't doubt that you are maintaining an optimistic attitude with your son, which is the appropriate thing to do. </p>
<p>I think your experience (though I'm sure you'd rather have skipped it!) will be invaluable to other parents down the line. You probably now see how you and your family might have handled things differently, and by sharing your experience you are probably helping many current juniors.</p>
<p>I do think that the athletic edge is fully presented in "A is for Admission" by Michelle Hernandez and also in the book "What It Really Takes to Get Into the Ivy League..." by Chuck Hughes. My kids are brainy/music types -- no great athletic genes in our family. The preferences for athletes has been a sore point for me for about 12 years. On the other hand, my H points out to me that colleges are in business. The teams bring in revenue which allows them to do the more intellectual things. Is it fair? I don't think so, especially with regard to those schools which boast about their elite academic atmosphere. My S was WL at a school which would have suited him well, but athletes with lower stats got in. His friend was WL at the Ivy my S will probably attend, while a Legacy with lower stats got in. In the bigger scheme of things, this falls into the category of "Life's not fair." And I really believe that success is the best revenge, as a previous poster mentioned. The PG year seems to be unique to the east coast -- we've lived in California, the northwest, the midwest and now the northeast, and I had never heard of it until we lived here. It seems strange that one year of work should outweigh the previous track record. </p>
<p>So, as far as I'm concerned, complain all you want on this board!</p>
<p>Although I don't share in the indignation at Yale, I too feel nothing but support and sympathy for Andi and her son, whose plight could have happened to nearly anyone here.</p>
<p>This situation was created by the op's misreading of the competitiveness of admissions - as I recall, the s. only applied to very competitive schools and had no safeties. We only know what the op is telling us about the athlete who did a PG year and was accepted, and she can't know everything in that student's record. I agree that anonymous internet forums are great for venting, but this has gone beyond that. I can offer sympathy to someone who's been hurt by the admissions process, but we're being asked to do this by denigrating an entire institution (Yale) and an individual (the athletic recruit). The very title of the thread is sarcastic and the op is coming off, to me, as someone I hope to never meet in life. If she believes what she's written, then she should be happy that her s. won't be attending a school with the kind of student Yale (or any other school that they received bad news from) is accepting. Moving on can be hard to do, but necessary. All the emotional currency being placed in bashing Yale and that unfortunate athletic recruit should be spent working the wait lists. I'm sorry if this hurts your feelings.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So, as far as I'm concerned, complain all you want on this board!
[/quote]
I absolutely agree - providing a place to vent is one of CC's most valuable services, and andi has a most legitimate reason for feeling as she does.</p>
<p>Admissions decisions at Yale seem to me the most baffling of all elite schools. I just can't believe the profiles of the kids they reject. When my oldest d was a senior in 2001, an athlete from her hs was accepted at Yale when several top students were turned down. He, however, was well aware of why he was accepted and very open about it: mid-1200 SATs, maybe top 30 percent of the class, but gifted at a niche sport AND from a family that could afford to put their name on a building. It educated some folks in our school system about the realities of the Ivy admission scene.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You are welcome to disagree with my posts, Berurah, but I would politely ask that you not misquote me. I have never said anything about whether or not Duke reads essays; after considerable searching, I found an exchange about this with jonri, not myself
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ivyqueen~You have my most sincere apology. I have indeed mistakenly attributed something jonri said to you, and for that I am very sorry. I posted that at 6:00 this morning after three hours of sleep and on the way to drop my oldest daughter off at a forensics tournament. But that doesn't excuse my mistake. Again, I apologize.</p>
<p>achat~<em>lol</em> It would probably be bagels with lox and cream cheese here or homemade biscotti and something else?? (But, I am sure, your bagels there can beat out ours here ANYTIME!! ) Good luck with the grouches! :) ~b.</p>
<p>Post #59 makes some very good points that all the parents reading this thread should keep in mind. </p>
<p>Overall, the thread makes the surprising point, another surprising fact I learned on CC a while ago, that being rejected one year doesn't mean an applicant will be rejected the following year. I learned this in a thread about high school students who were applying as juniors--they were told they could reapply as seniors if they didn't get in the first time. Reapplying after a gap year also works, as various CC threads have reported. Thus for the person who is ardently set on getting into a particular school, there is more than one chance. </p>
<p>As for me, I usually imagine my family taking one chance, each child's senior year, per child for the child to get into some highly competitive college. And we plan first around finding admission and financial safety schools, so we don't get these nasty suprises. But there are various kinds of second chances or first-and-a-half chances for those who look for them.</p>
<p>As the Dad of a Yale rejectee, I too find post #59 very on point.</p>
<p>And I'll add that those in search of a "perfect" system are engaged in a Fool's Game. Every suggested tweaking or realignment I've ever seen would help the cause of some students and hurt the cause of others. And by golly, there's a startling coincidence that each proposal benefits those associated with the proposer. </p>
<p>It would help a lot if people would step away from the implicit notion that admissions to HYPSM schools represents some absolute ranking of merit conferred upon the students. </p>
<p>It would also help if both parents and students came to understood top-end college admissions as probabilistic and fuzzy-logic rather than deterministic and objective. </p>
<p>My pointed advice is: get a grip and move on.</p>
<p>To go a step further, I think there would be no logical bitterness on the part of any parent or student who understands how the "game", and it is a game, works.</p>
<p>Are you mad and dissapointed at the State when your lottery ticket isn't the winner?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Are you mad and dissapointed at the State when your lottery ticket isn't the winner?<<</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>Bad analogy. Drawing the lotto numbers is a totally random process. College admissions is not. It involves a lot of subjective judgments, competing agendas, and human opinions.</p>
<p>I believe I have finally read one too many posts reflecting this attitude of entitlement and pettiness. Look, it is not Yale's job to reward your son for the fact that he worked hard and learned a lot in high school. If your son has done this, HE HAS ALREADY GOTTEN HIS REWARD.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster who suggested that your son should be happy not to be attending Yale if he doesn't respect the institution's values. I understand that it would have been better if you had known more about Yale's true values before he applied. This is why I encourage everybody to take a hard look at many of the over-hyped institutions out there BEFORE lining up for them like lambs to the slaughter. I agree that the refusal of many high academic achievers to apply to such schools is the only thing that is likely to make them change their admissions criteria -- IF this is an important goal.</p>
<p>I suggest that your son not try in the future to reapply to Yale or anyplace else that rejected him. Chances are decent that he would be rejected again, and what's the point of spending the first one or two years of college wishing you were someplace else where you may never be? You already paid Yale $50 (?) once to have its chance to accept him, and now Yale has lost that chance. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, and I think that your son should apply, possibly even for spring semester admission, to some more institutions where he is likely to be valued (or even actively recruited!) rather than someplace where he has to beg for consideration.</p>
<p>There are two prime threads to this discussion. One, the "fairness" of Yale's decisions and the right of an institution to make their own criteria for who can belong. Two, the emotional response of a mother to another mother who somewhat thoughtlessly blithely responds that her kid got pretty easily what the other kid so desired.</p>
<p>Rational response is possible to item one. Heated argument which remains non-personal is possible for item one. Not really possible for item two, at least not for any mother I know. We are programmed to want to kill anyone who seems to have taken what our kid wanted. What we wanted for our kid. So I agree with with the posters who tell andi to vent away. We can give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she did not say any of this to the thoughtless mother, nor to her son. We can assume she comes here to help keep herself on the honorable parenting behaviour path. Right?</p>
<p>And is the decision-making for top college acceptances fair? Question to be wrangled over again and again on this board, having been wrangled over many times before I imagine. Let's pretend we are in Philosophy 101 and ask - "What is fair?', what makes anything fair or not fair? In Politics 101, what should the goals of higher education in the US be? What should the financial policies of the government and private education be? What are the realities of paying for the operations and strategies of a top university? You see, my D benefited from the legacy status that's so reviled, from the able to pay status, so I acknowledge my absolute lack of qualification to argue dispassionately. But I know were I andi, and we so could have been, I would still be processing the emotions with difficulty. Moving on - but still processing.</p>
<p>I feel it is awfully bad taste to be accusing a parent who is grieving that her child did not get accepted anywhere of being petty and having a sense of entitlement and telling her that her son has already gotten his reward.
I am sure that Andi was able to maintain her composure when the parent of the athlete told her of his Yale admission. She has known the young man since second grade; I have no reason to doubt her description of him or of his parents' willingness to shell out $30k+ to make him attractive to yale.
In retrospect, Andi's son should have applied to some less selective schools. But that's water under the bridge. What we can do is to provide a virtual shoulder to cry on and some words of support, not rub salt in her wound. For those who advocate that she and her son move on, I ask: Where? Her son has been waitlisted and won't hear from the schools until much later. Ditto if he has applied to other schools. Meanwhile there is a lot of time to kill and to brood on the what ifs.</p>
<p>I actually think Zagat's analogy is a good one. We spend 18 years preparing to apply and then get a combined total of 45 minutes of a few people's time to assess our candidacy. That means a lot is random. How the adcom feels when he picks up your application, whether you happen on an adcom who shares a passion with you, random. </p>
<p>The unconnected at my school totally consider HY and P a lottery with no rational outcome. Some of us just get lucky.</p>
<p>And thank you Andi, for sharing your situation and your very human reactions. Someone is going to feel less pain next year because of what they learned from your story and the ensuing discussion.</p>