Knowstuff- not sure if I was misconstrued but I think your posts are great!! FYI I completely agree with post 112.
@intparent the “going nowhere” thing is the complete indecision we
have now about where she will go. Will she go somewhere at all? We have rejections and some issues of affordability and no perks/accommodations at schools we considered safeties. It wasn’t about Honors College being a pat on the back. She wanted the housing and seminars and the smaller classes.
It wasn’t that Union didn’t pat her on the back. That’s not why she is resisting them. It is that they did not give her the program she always envisioned being a part of (since she is not the sorority type) and she needed the extra classes benefit.
We put a lot of effort into research. Regrettably, we listened to a guidance counselor who told her she had a shot at an Ivy. And all of my educated guesses on what would happen were wrong. 100% wrong. That just stunned us. So she has to go nowhere. Or Union without room for dance. Or MHO with student loans. Or UMASS with its size and long walks to class.
@Gingerland “Regrettably, we listened to a guidance counselor who told her she had a shot at an Ivy”.
Given what an incredible kid she seems to be don’t you think she did have “a shot at an Ivy”? The GC is in a tough spot. If she/he doesn’t tell you to go for it then they will be second guessed for not advocating aggressively enough. Just because she received rejection doesn’t mean she didn’t have a shot.
Her story of achieving great stats and grades, overcoming the adversity of a serious illness, commitment to dance, etc will all make this disappointment feel modest in short order once she is on to her next opportunity. She sounds truly impressive and no sweatshirt or letter of rejection is going to change that.
I hope the disappointment is replaced with enthusiasm quickly.
First of all, as someone who frequently events, I get it!! Vent for a period of time, but then, at some point, move on.
One of my sons is a very serious athlete. When he was younger he was cut from his team. There was a period of time where it felt just awful, almost as if someone had died. And in the hothouse of that club, a lot of parents acted like it was the end of the world. It was Not. Fun.
That was 4 years ago. Instead of quitting (like the other boy who was cut) he made the best of the lower team, worked harder, and each year moved up a level. Now college coaches are recruiting him. This could never have been predicted when he got the bad news.
I think your situation is analogous. It sucks. It’s not fair. Your daughter is more talented than her results show. Yes to all that.
But when you are ready, it is time to make the most of her situation. Time to work hard and show the world what she has.
A coach once told us he could pick out the kids who were going to go far. It was not the most talented. It was the ones with the most drive.
So yes, take a few days to feel sorry for your daughter. And when you are ready, focus on the path ahead.
No school for any student will be perfect or meet 100% of a given student’s criteria.
I also hope you and your family can overcome the disappointment of the college admissions process. IMO the way the parent(s) deal with adversity and frame decision making is what the kids will learn.
I think we need to relish our kids successes and not their failures (or rejections from colleges). One of our great equalizers when my kids were younger was Chess. You learn to accept wins and defeat in the same day. Maybe you lose to someone not as qualified or that has a private coach etc. You “learn” from your losses and that is how you get better. For my daughter it was dance and voice. With both also sports. I think we are in this “you have to win” mentality. Have to get a participation medal in everything. Not everyone can be a starter, make the team, be the best. Sometimes trying your hardest is just as good. Not everyone can get into the Ivy’s etc. My son had an amazing interview with Cornell. The interviewer couldn’t be a better match. They had the same interests and his future plans was what she was already doing. He left feeling like he nailed the interview and most likely did. Like two weeks later he was rejected. He had the graded, stats and did the said interview.
Again, you can’t always win. He was not even upset or at least didn’t show it. Chess teaches you many life’s lessons. Not always winning is one of them. He’s at a great school and happy and successful. What else could I ask for?
If it is that bad. why not have her take a gap year and apply to a new list next year?
@Knowsstuff I hope you don’t think we don’t know how to enjoy our failures here. I hope you don’t think that a kid who has been told diabetes could cost her a decade of life needs more lessons in adversity.
My kid insisted on going to her choral concert two days after getting out of the hospital for Type 1 Diabetes. I was a wreck. And we celebrated. We celebrated that neither of us passed out. I don’t remember a single song.
And she gets failure. She is very focused on psychology and counseling because so many of her diabetic friends are in crisis and her ability to help them is limited. Some teenagers have a tough time with the idea that their bodies (and well the American health care system) is trying to kill them. So we will celebrate these last two months of insurance before COBRA runs out. And we celebrate that her A1C is good. Also we know that our family will never let us starve or let her go without insulin.
We got our hopes up over the whole college thing. I misread the tea leaves. In my defense, counselors encouraged us to. We thought something might go our way. But we are used to a bit of adversity. I hope you don’t think this is the worst thing that has happened to us.
UMass is one of the smaller flagship universities. If she really can’t walk across campus, they have shuttles. The class size for dance and art is usually set by the size of the studio, not the size of the student population. My daughter was at a small flagship and her theater classes were ~30 because that was the size of the freshman class. Her roommate was a dance major and her classes were no more than 25. The school had just built a new $10M addition to the theater and dance school, and the studios were gorgeous.
You are disappointed because she didn’t get into a top 50 school with FA, but there are a lot of top dance programs that would have accepted her with a lot of merit aid. University of Utah has a wonderful program and provides a ton of merit aid, but it isn’t top 50 and it doesn’t look like you considered any schools outside New England… Did she apply as a dance major? You said she wants to break away from dance, so having a resume heavy in dance and art, without wanting to continue in those areas, turns them into very nice ECs, just like the star quarterback who doesn’t want to play football anymore, or the musician who doesn’t want to continue with music. Great ECs, shows commitment, but I think your daughter was a very well rounded applicant with dance, art, coding, after school clubs when the dance departments may have been looking for a dancer or the CS department into a more science/math person. The schools aren’t always looking for well rounded applicants and do like the ‘pointy’ kids who make for a well rounded class.
I was recently at a meeting and working at table with two people with HS juniors, one with an only child and the other her third child and third college go-round (she nodded a lot at what I said). Of course college talk came up and the mom of the ‘only’ was talking about Brown and Penn. I commented on how hard it was to get in and the ‘Only’ said “Well, I don’t mean to brag but she is second in her class and had a perfect ACT.” I said, "Well, there are 7 high schools in this district so that means 7 ‘second in the class’ kids, plus 7 first-in-the-class kids (and this student goes to the lowest ranked of the 7 high schools). The other woman said “And my son also has a perfect ACT.” (there are 35 perfect scores from this district last year, and I was sitting, very randomly, with two parents of those kids). Of those 14 ‘firsts’ and ‘seconds’ most will go to CU Boulder or CSU. If any are athletes, they might go to a different schools.
Is it that students aren’t getting accepted to college or they’re not getting admitted to the level of school they’ve been led to expect they deserve?
i don’t see how “deserve” comes into the equation? They meet the requirements noted on the college website. The problem is that colleges don’t emphasize all the other information they deem “required” or “preferred” and quite honestly I don’t think they really know. It’s a case by case, year by year basis crafting the perfect diverse class and the result is the crapshoot many applicants experience. In addition, the fall back to the “holistic approach” forgives all sins and defends all results. And IMHO girls are affected the worst because most colleges have more women than men matriculating so competition is particularly bad.
I thought last year was brutal for acceptances when my son was going thru the process, but from what I’m reading and hearing from friends this year is even worse. I feel for the families of super talented, smart, hard-working kids who are dealing with the disappointment right now. It sucks. It really sucks.
Sounds like the best fit is MHC but if I understand properly, it’s only affordable this year because you hoped for merit aid that’d last 4 years but your child got financial aid instead. How about you email them, explain the situation, say you’re afraid that with one in college in 2020-2021 rather than two right now, the college would become unaffordable. Ask how they treat the situation since she can’t attend for just one year.
What about a gap year?
@GingerLand. I am sorry that you had some previous hardships with your daughter and that your upset about the outcome of the college decisions. Many people do in different ways. But it’s time to move past these emotions. You have till May 1st to make a decision with your daughter. Unless of course you apply to schools with rolling admissions or look at schools like Alabama that still might give your daughter a free ride.
At many schools you can make your own major or take classes to get you there. Might be something to look into. No school is perfect but it’s what your daughter does at the school that matters most. The kid makes the school. The school doesn’t make the kid.
There is a saying that you’ve heard on CC alot but it’s true." They grow where they are planted". I have two kids proving that out
Good Luck with your daughters decision.
CC is a tough place to get support for all of these perfectly-understandable feelings, because everyone is at a different place in their process and the conversation goes off in a lot of different directions.
This definitely sounds like a frustrating place to end up. It’s not as if UMass is free - it’s still a significant investment to make for something that isn’t what you and your daughter wanted (for reasons that aren’t primarily about prestige or bragging rights, but about legitimate needs and priorities).
I agree with what MYOS said about having a conversation with MoHo, but getting a guarantee that years 2-4 will be affordable is probably a long shot. If it comes down to UMass vs. gap year… are there gap year options that you’re considering with any seriousness? Could she be happy with taking a year to focus on dance, and reapplying knowing what you know now? It does seem as if there could be some wonderful options for her that she didn’t apply to the first time around. But, maybe a year’s detour doesn’t feel worth it, and she can craft an experience for herself at UMass that she’ll be happy with, including potentially reapplying to Commonwealth Honors after a semester or a year.
It doesn’t look as if UMass’ deferral agreement specifically prohibits applying to other schools, as some agreements do. https://www.umass.edu/admissions/sites/default/files/pdf/Request%20for%20Deferral%20-%20161024_0.pdf So, she could still keep the UMass acceptance in her back pocket and not have to reapply there, if she did decide to take a gap year. Also, you have a while to decide about this. So the more urgent decision is whether she’s still considering committing to MoHo or Union, under the terms of those offers.
I’m sorry you and she have ended up in such a tough spot. It’s hard when you have to see so many others who just got luckier. Hopefully you can find a path through it that will get her where she wants to go.
@Trixy34, fortunately we’re in Florida and she should be a NMF, so we do have some COA scholarships to some great in-state schools, as well as a few OOS options. Her list will literally consist of safeties and high reaches (admissions and/or financial).
I appreciate the perspectives offered here. I think there’s definitely a tipping point - unique to each family - where the odds of successfully pursuing a top school may be too long to justify the time, cost, and angst.
@Knowsstuff, I really like how you laid out the reality for your kids. When it comes to the top 50 schools, it really is a wild, unpredictable game. If my daughter wants to play, I’ll support her efforts, but she needs to understand the challenges and disappointments faced by so many students, including @GingerLand 's daughter. And just as importantly, she needs to know that she can still be wildly successful at a state school; a flagship university or a great public honor’s college is not a consolation prize.
From @gallentjill up thread: “We may be at some kind of tipping point where parents and students just throw up their hands and stop participating in this craziness. The kids will do what they enjoy and what they love and go to the colleges that want them”
Everyone should be doing this already. I feel really bad for all the kids and parents who have bought in to the propaganda that they have to go to a top school, and then the kids feel like they have to take 10 AP classes and do 15 ECs and so on to compete against the tens of thousands of other kids who are doing the same thing.
We need to be telling our kids to enjoy their HS years (although still work hard), do the ECs they are truly want to do, and there are a ton of colleges that will be happy to have them and will be a good fit.
"I have one more kid to get through this and she is not the over committed, multiple passions, 4.0 type. I don’t know what we will do. "
Here’s my suggestion: encourage her to do what she enjoys, work hard, and not stress out about getting into “a good college.”
“i don’t see how “deserve” comes into the equation? They meet the requirements noted on the college website. The problem is that colleges don’t emphasize all the other information they deem “required” or “preferred” and quite honestly I don’t think they really know. It’s a case by case, year by year basis crafting the perfect diverse class and the result is the crapshoot many applicants experience.”
The crux of it is that these school get 5 to 10 times as many applicants as they can accept, and they all meet the requirements. Even if a kid manages to hit the holistic check boxes the school is looking for, it’s still a lottery.
@TrendaLeigh. I have two kids with different ambitions. My daughter wanted a small liberal arts school for theater design (change her major and transferred schools… Making her own major) and my son wanting larger engineering powerhouse. I think we saw every school from the East coast to Midwest and back. Lol.
But we did make a very extensive spreadsheet. Listed every school with anything from deadlines, stats needed, scholarships, financial aid or lack of, merit, costs with room and board differences, instate vs out of state costs, books etc etc etc. We went a bit overboard but learned about a lot of great colleges. My sons “initial” spreadsheet had 38 colleges on it. I know many students that graduated Iowa State University for engineering. It is also an easier admit for a competitive student. Like you’ll know in like 2 weeks of your acceptance with merit. This was a good start for him but it’s actually an excellent school for engineering. We would of never known that if we didn’t research the school. He also spent time at places like Michigan State University. Much lower Ranked but a great school, again quicker acceptance with merit.Etc Then the boom hit… So we were glad he had multiple acceptances first. He ended up with 3 schools in the top ten and is at Michigan now.
My daughter went from one small lac for 2 years then changed majors and schools and it was the best decision she made.(got a Presidential merit scholarship) We learned of great schools for her in “Colleges that change lives” book.
She was also initially accepted to a prestigious college for design that we just couldn’t afford without good merit since her brother was coming up 2 years later. It broke our heart but school number 2 had good merit. I feel I have a decent feel for many types of students with my life experiences as well.
So I would set up “realistic” expectations for your kids. Many stellar stat kids are just getting into their safeties, if that. It’s just the new reality.
@cinnamon1212 Congrats to your sons. Did your older son write about following those outlets? Sounds like my S20!