<p>One of the problems for these ultra-high stats kids is that one tiny weakness in their application can put them out of the running for what would otherwise be match schools. One teacher who judges the candidate to be “excellent” instead of “top 1 percent” or “best in my career”, a phrase in their essay that strikes someone who doesn’t know them as hinting at arrogance or a lack of intellectual curiosity, otherwise excellent ECs that just don’t align with the applicant’s prospective major. A slightly less competitive school might overlook this kind of weakness in an overall stellar application while the uber-selelctive have so many of these kids to choose from that they don’t need to take a chance on one they’re not sure of.</p>
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<p>Families who live in the more rural areas of Upstate NY (the REAL Upstate) are more likely to embrace the SUNYs than those who live in Westchester or out on the Island. In some areas, things that cost more are perceived as better, and I think colleges are viewed the same way. I worked my way through school by taking classes wherever I was working at the time (2 NYS publics and 2 privates), so I was just happy for the opportunity to attend college. My parents grew up during the Depression and my mother’s family could afford to send all their kids to college, but my father’s family couldn’t. They were all smart people, but back then people understood that attending (any) college was a matter of finances. My father and his brother both started their own businesses and all of their children attended college. I think the further we get from the basic ability to attend college vs not having the opportunity, the more likely we are to run into the opinion that state schools aren’t good enough. When there’s a certainty of attending college, I suppose you can better afford to say type A schools are better than B, whether or not they truly are.</p>
<p>My son picked the colleges he wanted to apply to based on their majors, the number of classes in their catalogs he found interesting, and the overall affordability. He does not want to start his adult life in a lot of debt. He’s a smart kid but has no hooks. His composite SAT is in the 1700/2400 range, he has a few ECs that he participates in because he likes them, and he helps out in our community because it’s the right thing to do. He’s just your average home schooler from a small NY town. He applied to less than a dozen schools (SUNYs, Penn State, & a handful of privates and publics scattered across the NE) with admit rates between 40-60%. His essay wasn’t a literary piece, it was just about how he taught himself an activity he enjoys, but it had his humor and sounded like him. Our feeling was that he needed to show who he was and the schools where he’d fit would accept him and the others wouldn’t. So far, he’s been accepted to 7/10 with some generous renewable merit scholarships. We’re still waiting for the last 3 schools (2 NYS privates and a SUNY), but whether he’s accepted or not won’t really matter. He likes all the schools he applied to, he approached each application as if it was the only one he was doing, and he’ll be happy at any of the colleges. As decisions come in, he’s running the numbers and the schools that are making his cut are those with numbers that fall within what he’s deemed an acceptable range. If the winner ends up being a state school, he’s not going to be disappointed. I don’t think we’re atypical for our area, but we’re a single income family (<$75k), so we probably aren’t the ones getting a lot of press. </p>
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<p>Maybe we should turn the question around. I come from that region (I grew up in Connecticut and lived in New Jersey for 15 years as an adult), and I always just assumed that state universities were lackluster places. </p>
<p>Why do people in other parts of the country have a positive impression of their state universities (and I’m not talking about Berkeley and UVA here, I’m talking about more typical state universities)?</p>
<p>@austinmshauri, I wish 1) you would share more of your son’s journey in choosing and applying to colleges and 2) there were more stories like your son’s. You are the ones who should be getting more press.</p>
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<p>Simple. Because other states established public systems earlier (relatively speaking) and invested more in them. To take one example, Ohio achieved statehood in 1803, and one of the first acts of its new state legislature was to establish a public university. By 1810, it had two. Later in time, the Morrill Act institutions fulfilled a similar purpose in more Western states while allowing the old Northwest Territory states to strengthen their public systems. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, on the East Coast, you had state governments run by an elite that educated their kids at private schools and didn’t invest nearly as much in the public system. </p>
<p>@austinmshauri I agree with @SlackerMomMD your story isn’t seen often on here and is far more typical of the college applicant.</p>
<p>I have read this whole thread and the only thing I have really learned is don’t post how you feel on CC. Maybe the OP using SWF in the title stirred people up but really unless you are immersed in the college application and admission process it is rather shocking and upsetting when your child who really has done so well gets these kinds of results. I don’t see why that can’t be acknowledged on here without the need to lecture someone or tell them how to feel. This young woman is going to be just fine-but right how she and her family are hurting-why that is so hard for some people to just understand on here is beyond me. They have learned the hard way that this is a very tough business-nothing like kicking someone when they are down…</p>
<p>“Still, Rutgers and some of the SUNYs (and other state universities in the area like UMass) appear to be quite solid schools that students in those states should not have to see as “beneath” them. Why is that the state universities are so disdained by many in that region?”</p>
<p>UMass Amherst provides a quality education at a not-affordable price ($85k with full tuition merit aid). Really top students can go full- or half- merit aid elsewhere, either saving money or paying the same price. (The issue is that UMass charges $13k/year in fees, which aren’t covered by merit awards.) families with low EFCs can send their kids to top privates for less than UMass. </p>
<p>For the really top students, it’s not a cheap option; I think that it’s then harder to convince smart, but normal, kids that it’s a good option when they see their high-achieving peers turning it down. You can convince kids that the university that took their valedictorian on a full merit ride is a good school and not beneath them. </p>
<p>But they aren’t down. At any rate, no reasonable person should be down. The OP should have included: pre-med, accepted EA to the University of Chicago. At which point, the question becomes, will you choose the financial safety, or the elite school? That is a very different conversation. Hiding the relevant data gave a misleading impression. </p>
<p>Had the young woman applied ED to the liberal arts colleges, she might have had a different outcome. But then she would have given up the chance to apply to so many colleges. I will not lament the admissions outcomes for someone who has a choice, and has been accepted to a leading university.</p>
<p>One thing that might have decreased her outcomes in comparison to prior years is the Common App’s new array of prompts. The lack of “essay of your choosing” makes it very hard to stand out from everyone else, particularly if your dream schools are in your home territory. Emphasizing your background and the community in which you grew up (which one could easily fall into with the background/adulthood ritual prompts), would only serve to underline that you would not bring a new perspective to campus. And the child seem not to have suffered significant failure.</p>
<p>I really think that all of this criticism of the OP’s D’s essays based on what the OP said is rank speculation, and moreover NOT supported by what the OP wrote. I fail to see how an essay that describes in detail the student’s interest in the school based on actually attending a class can be called “pat.” (Note that the essay in question was most likely the “why X” essay, since the personal statement dealt with her community service.) I also fail to see how one can assume that the D’s essay about her community service concentrated on getting the award, rather than on the actual experience. The OP simply said that she wrote about the long term involvement that ended up being her award project, not that she wrote about getting the award!</p>
<p>I find all of this ironic. People whose children got into their first choice, excellent schools are lambasting the OP because s/he a) allowed the D, a student whose ECs were good and whose stats were top 25% at the schools, to apply to similarly excellent schools, and b) is disappointed that she didn’t get in to most of them. People who maintain over and over again that no one, no matter how outstanding, can dare to think that they have a decent chance of getting into selective schools where they are in the top 25% of applicants, stats-wise, and where there is in addition an obvious fit (that being MY definition of a match, btw) are now claiming that the D must have done something “wrong” or she would have gotten in.</p>
<p>Which is it, people? Either she had no chance of getting in in the first place, as you’ve been maintaining, or she DID have a good chance of getting in and did something “wrong.”</p>
<p>BTW, with regard to the URM pile, which apparently we are now denying exists–in what universe, I wonder–schools including Dartmouth and Swarthmore have for a number of years sent a letter to URMs, and URMs only, who inquired but did not apply, asking them to do so. They have sent these letters AFTER THE APPLICATION DEADLINE. How many white girls from MA received such treatment, one wonders. Ha. And yet the OP is delusional in that regard. Right. </p>
<p>This whole thing makes me furious, frankly. As you can no doubt tell. :)</p>
<p>Clearly the way to group approval is to be a mediocrity who is happy with mediocrity. </p>
<p>Well, you could always go hang out in the thread where a parent has characterized what sounds like a perfectly lovely and normal HS freshman as a “plodder.” </p>
<p>@Periwinkle they seem down to me but you are right I shouldn’t presume how anyone else feels. I also should not presume to tell anyone else how they should feel let alone if it is reasonable or not. I don’t really have anything else to add here-Consolation knows far more than I do since I don’t claim to have the depth of knowledge about this process other posters are-I just wish on CC once in a while someone could post something that if you read it is very reasonable to feel without the usual commentary-and with that I am going to go back to observing. :)</p>
<p>@SomeOldGuy I feel sorry for that child. No I tend to dip my toe in CC very carefully.</p>
<p>@Pepper03 - I am not too sure what happened on the thread is what you state. In fact, there is a thread where parents express how upset they were about the admissions process. I think most people get that - sometimes it is good to rant a bit (within reason) to get something off your chest, especially when it comes to your kids. </p>
<p>This specific thread I believe did not focus on how the OP felt, but many disagreed on how it was intellectually rationalized, as a fault of others. That is a huge qualitative difference. </p>
<p>Posters took difference not to feelings, but to the argument it must be others’ fault approach; that type of critical justification is not feeling, but a deduction and conclusion without evidence and a shift away from looking at the possibility that, as @YoHoYoHo stated, the “arc” of the application might not have been in synch. And God forbid, there might have been more students who came off as more worthy of a spot. </p>
<p>If the OP had said, “I am pissed off at the whole process, I do not get it, it treated my daughter unfairly, and I think the system sucks!” I doubt anyone would have said anything - probably would have gotten tons of agreement and support. Hey, who does not like positive things for their kids?</p>
<p>On a more personal note, I took the more preemptive route with my two DSs. I said choose a list of schools, which you would like to attend and just be aware you might only get into one school. If you do get into just one, the college mission is still accomplished. The net effect is their lists included only schools that would make them happy. And when the first acceptance came, each said, “OK, I am done, if it is all rejects from here, I am still going somewhere I like.”</p>
<p>I went one step further - I focused their visits first not on their reaches and high matches, but their safeties and low matches. They loved those schools, and thus my job was done because if they only got into one of those they were fat, dumb and happy. They interviewed at their safeties and low matches and demonstrated interest and they requested meetings with specific professors that they sought out - all meetings were granted too. We called it shoring up your safeties and low matches.</p>
<p>Bottom line - there were no expectations that they would have choices beyond just one and that one may have been, on paper, a safety. A safety-only acceptance is an obvious possible reality if one runs the numbers, as probability says that could easily occur.</p>
<p>The ire comes about because in the real world, a kid from the Midwest whose stats are likely identical to the OP’s D has been denied from U of C and is no doubt upset that a SWF from the Northeast has grabbed HER spot, since truth be told, U of C needs another smart girl from Evanston or Winnetka or Highland Park or wherever like it needs the proverbial hole in the head. That’s the ire. Early admission to U of C was a highly relevant fact which was ignored in order to make what was likely a dig at the perceived racial inequity of it all. And some of us are calling out the BS police. It’s not like the OP’s D is choosing between Framingham State College and Suffolk. She was accepted early to one of the top research universities in the world-- and we’re supposed to claim reverse sexism or racism on her behalf?</p>
<p>The colleges, as reported by OP:</p>
<p>ED I & II</p>
<p>Bowdoin
Davidson</p>
<p>ED</p>
<p>Brown
Williams</p>
<p>SCEA</p>
<p>Harvard
Yale
Princeton</p>
<p>Early Action</p>
<p>MIT
UChicago</p>
<p>You know, I think the salient part of the applicant’s identity is not SWF, Northeast. It’s “pre-med.” The schools listed all have very, very competitive applicant pools. The applicant applied early action to MIT and the University of Chicago, and was 50% successful. </p>
<p>However, the field of premed applicants to these colleges, in the regular decision round, must be fierce. I would assume the colleges would take the sterling academic candidates in the early round, if they had space. </p>
<p>All of the colleges on this list should be regarded as reaches in the regular decision round.</p>
<p>@Consolation,
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<p>How many of the applicants wrote very similar essays? Some of the colleges listed offer free, online access to recorded lectures, so the number who could potentially have written that essay is very large. </p>
<p>@awcntdb thank you for that explanation. Perhaps I read into the OP post but I guess the best thing would be for the OP to address that. I wish I could hang around but I need to get to work! :)</p>
<p>Well, what are you suggesting a student OUGHT to write for a why x essay? I very much doubt that most students take the time to write a special essay like that. If anything, it would show that the student really cared about going to the school. Hardly something to dismiss, I would think.</p>
<p>I’m not dismissing the essays. The problem is, there is the trap of essays all Sounding the Same to essay readers, who must plow through hundreds of them. There are only so many variants out there, apparently, and if tens of thousands of students sit down to write essays on the Same Five Themes Plus College Supplement, many of them will cover the same points in the same order.</p>
<p>I don’t like the “why X” essay, because it seems to call for a student to either shamelessly praise the college. A strong, academic applicant writing about a college’s academics might not make her stand out from all the other strong, academic applicants writing about the college’s academics. </p>
<p>I also think applying to many schools leads to exhaustion for everyone involved: Students, parents, admissions people. </p>
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<p>A little off topic, but how is this even possible? Can all those ED/ EA/SCEA options be done at once? </p>
<p>No, they can’t. Which means an applicant must choose. </p>
<p>Early Decision to any of the ED I schools means an acceptance precludes applying anywhere else. EDII would require withdrawing all other applications.</p>
<p>SCEA means the applicant may only apply early to one college. All other applications to private universities would be regular decision. </p>
<p>So the OP’s daughter could apply early to only one college for most of her list, except she could apply early to MIT and to UChicago. Now that I think of it, I suspect many strong students apply early to those two colleges, for the same reasons. </p>