Angry over the college admissions process

Parents Forum
721

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<p>Well, those “safeties” were not really safeties. Perhaps they considered “level of interest” as an admissions criterion, indicating that they do not want to be used as safeties. Or a specific division or major applied to was much more selective than the school in general.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1314309-how-find-assured-admissions-safety.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1314309-how-find-assured-admissions-safety.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

722

<p>I think it is a matter of semantics, but I always defined a “safety” as a college where the student is guaranteed to get in. That would include:

  • Colleges that are open to all (such as community colleges)
  • Colleges where all individuals with certain gpa or test scores are guaranteed a spot (usually publics)
  • Colleges where the student has already been promised admission, such as a college with rolling admission or EA</p>

<p>I think there is another category - “likely” that can be close to a safety… but I think that’s where the confusion sets in. I think that parents and student looking at stats sometimes make a mistake in thinking the admission process is tied to ranked stats – that is, in assuming that if a college admits a high percentage of applicants, then those with higher stats are sure to be admitted. But many colleges are focused more on enrollment management factors – this isn’t merely a matter of “demonstrating interest”, because the college are more sophisticated than that. They are looking for students who potentially might enroll. I’m sure they can recognize the red flags that let them know that a particular student is in essence overqualified for their school.</p>

723

<p>^ Agree.</p>

724

<p>calmom–I agree 100%. I think too many people are focused on GPA and SAT/ACT scores and beyond that can’t understand why they didn’t get in when a “lesser” student did. It’s the whole package that counts and that whole package counts at the “safety” schools too. I guess we just take a more realistic approach to this. DS is applying to one highly selective school. We don’t call it a “reach” school because his stats are just fine for admissions. We look at it as they have a single digit acceptance rate and who wins the dart toss to get in. If he gets in GREAT, if not, we are not taking it personally because they also turned down 25,000 other students who were equally as qualified. People need to realize that. It’s not a slam against your child. PARENTS also need to be realistic. Grinnell and Carelton are not “safety” schools to the 5 Ivy’s you applied to. Grinnell and Carelton are going to look at your app, see they were “afterthoughts” and then reject you because they want kids there that want to be there.</p>

<p>The schools our kids are looking at they have a high 90% chance of being accepted. For most people that would be a safety, but it’s still not a sure thing, we know that and not only are they applying to several schools to help their chances, they are also applying early, just in case. With the exception of one school, they will have acceptances/rejections all in by Christmas. That gives us time to regroup if necessary (which I don’t think it will be-but just in case). If every school you apply to has an April 1st notification, you have no time to regroup.</p>

725

<p>I didn’t think safety schools had to be 100% safe, but then I’d have been fine with either kid taking a gap year. I also made both kids avail themselves of any rolling, priority or EA applications. Oldest got into one safety by Thanksgiving, and youngest knew he was into a reach in December. That certainly made the final wait for both of them easier. In both cases the safeties offered programs the kids were interested in, not just favorable stats.</p>

726

<p>I think a school can still be considered a safety if it’s a state school (especially in your own state), a lot of kids from your high school apply and go each year, and nobody with your stats has been rejected in recent years. But you still might want to have two of them.</p>

727

<p>I believe in two safeties, just so that a student has a choice. Maybe the big state uni plus something considerably smaller that is likely to offer merit money.</p>

728

<p>It should also be noted that if mentalgardener’s son has a poor work ethic that may have shown up in the teacher/guidance counselor recs–which are very, very important. That he is extremely intelligent does not, unfortunately, predict performance in collge–strong work habits do. Further, colleges know that not every course a student takes will engage/stimulate him or her, but they are necessary prerequisites to either future studies or life. So showing the ability to work through boring classes is a necessity.</p>

729

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<p>This is such a good point, in general. I’ve known so many young people - and parents - who have told me they or their child is brilliant, and their unspectacular grades are due to school being too boring for them.</p>

<p>I’m not saying that parents and students shouldn’t be unhappy when a student is not being appropriately challenged. If possible, I’d encourage them to make every effort to find a school or class better suited to the student. However, I’m not impressed by “brilliance” that can’t do rote work when it is required. When listening to this tape I’m usually silently thinking I’d never hire this person for a job or award them a scholarship.</p>

730

<p>^ And I am also so tired of parents brushing this off becuase the students are boys and dull classroom work is more suited to the girls. I think that attitude demeans the young men of this generation and gives them an excuse to work less. We all have to do boring rote work as adults, even in the most fulfilling career and it bothers me to no end that parents excuse the lazy behavior, knowing the young man will be great once he gets to dream school.</p>

731

<p>Well, we did spend an awful lot of time making sure that school worked better for girls, and in the process, I do think we short shrifted the boys. I have two daughters, and even I see this.</p>

<p>I mean, how many boys are dx’d with ADHD simply because they aren’t girls?</p>

<p>I don’t know, but I’m not sure we don’t need to swing back a little bit towards a more drill based, test based school culture, and the measure of mastery of material rather than the measure of the ability to hand in the homework which is only there to make sure you master the material.</p>

<p>When I was in school, they used homework as a way to boost the effort grade, but you were graded on your test scores and finished papers. The swing in the complete other direction, where a kid can get a C in a class, but have A’s on all of his tests, does seem pretty preposterous to me. Are we trying to teach the material? Or trying to reward effort over learning? JMO</p>

<p>i think this is symptomatic of the damaging mission creep we see in our schools all over the place, where schools are places to worry about what people have in their lunch box, etc</p>

732

<p>For someone with the reasonably good stats, there are a lot of state schools that offer admission in this country and they don’t have to be within your state.</p>

<p>Here are some:</p>

<p>Iowa State (offers at admission within 2 days with an online app with zero paperwork - they assume you are honest about your numbers and only check paperwork when you register).<br>
University of Kansas
University of Kentucky
University of New Mexico
University of Pittsburgh
University of Minnesota
University of Texas at Dallas (guaranteed admission for someone with 1800 SAT)
University of Houston
University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, Huntsville, Birmingham)</p>

733

<p>The problem with safety schools is that they get stuck on the bottom of a kid’s list and are often not mentioned or even thought about. Neither parent nor child truly feels this is going to be where the student is going to go and prefer talking about all of the reach schools that get recognition, nods and smiles from people who ask about the student’s college plans. This is a societal thing that has evolved.</p>

<p>When I applied to colleges, most of us had a “safety” school which was our main choice. That was our LIKELY school, not safety school. That was where we were likely to go, unless BY CHANCE we got accepted AND got enough money to the one or two other choices we had picked as lottery tickets. A kid would apply and sometimes get accepted on the spot to the local branch of the state university that was affiliated with our situation, and that would be where s/he was all set on going. Living at home, working part time and commuting there, in hopes of transferring to the main campus of said school in a couple of years, saving money for living expenses that would be in the picture when that happened. There might also be an app in for Big State U, but would only work out if the money panned out. ALso maybe a less expensive , selective option that might give money since it was reputed to do so for a number of kids. But the usual course was the local school. The top students might have tucked a reach or two in the mix, but those were lottery tickets. I was highly unusual in having so many reaches on my list, but believe me, no one knew about them except those who had to be told. It was not a bragging thing to do. It was also a major pain to apply to more than a couple of reach schools since there were no computers, copy machines were rare and used the old brown wrapping paper and each rec had to be typed out using the old carbon paper. No common apps either. I was embarrassed to ask for more than 2 recs so I had about a half dozen teachers writing recs for me. THey all had to be originals. </p>

<p>Things have evolved now so that kids are routinely (and my kids are included) applying to 10 or so schools, and it’s the top lottery ticket choices that are least likely to pan out that are getting the attention. Harvard could not care less if you tour them 7 times and tell them how much you love them. All that happens when a family does that is build the kid up all the more for a devastating emotional disappointment when it doesn’t happen. It also gives the kid an attitude in his/her interactions with admissions at Small LAC that takes demonstrated interest very seriously. I’ve heard kids make disparaging remarks about some very good colleges that they feel are beneath them but are “safeties” so they have to give them some love–well, most of these kids are not good actors and adcoms are not fooled all of the time. I had to smack one of mine on the head when he was on that roll at a school where he was not interested, and then smack myself on the forehead with the realization that he wasn’t the only one not getting it. Parents have to build up the interest for these safeties even as peer pressure and society is going to be making it look like “everyone’s going to certain schools” , a claim that is obviously prepostureous from the statistics of how many are getting accepted.</p>

734

<p>cptofthehouse–EXACTLY. Our son’s #1 real choice is also his financial and academic safety school. It has everything he wants in a school. His true #1 is highly selective and he understands that and the mantra is “IF you get in and IF they give you big bucks to attend…”. It also has everything he wants out of a school, just on a bigger scale than his safety. His safety also has a better program in his major, but the other school’s program is just fine too. It’s this “I have to go to the best school possible” mindset that gets kids into trouble and we see threads about “I don’t really like my choices so which one should I pick”.</p>

735

<p>I have two daughters and a son, and it seems clear to me that the way “school” works these days is tilted in favor of the girls. There was a time when girls applied in far fewer numbers than boys and we’ve done a lot in the is country to change that. And I agree that perhaps we’ve gone too far to the other side. The application numbers have shifted dramatically in the past twenty or so years. But because of this, I also think being a “smart” boy does have its advantages.</p>

<p>We don’t call safety schools, safeties; they’re likely schools. And I do think we send kids mixed messages when we tell them over and over again to Love thy Safety and then push them to accept admissions to a higher ranked school for prestige or whatever reason you want to stick in there. And I also agree that applying to two such schools is wise so that kids have a choice. That’s all we ever really wanted for our kids; a choice.</p>

<p>But I also think there are some really brilliant kids out there with awesome stats but don’t really contribute much to their school communities and therefore, wouldn’t be very attractive to a college community for the same reason. I’ve read essays where the only thing the kid talks about is his own intellectual curiosity - which is a great thing to have, but it can’t be the only thing you’re offering. </p>

<p>There are very few 4.0 students at our school. However, a year or so ago there were two who graduated. It’s a very small school. And I am very involved on a parental level. I had never heard of these two girls. As it turned out, they were purely academics. Great students, but not involved outside the classroom. I think they did fine in admissions, but did not get tickets to the big dance like Harvard or Yale. </p>

<p>When it came down to two schools for my D, a “friend” commented about one, “Oh that was my D’s safety” as if it wasn’t worth her D’s interest. Beyond the fact that I found her comment extremely arrogant and borderline insulting, I thought why apply if you can’t be bothered to attend? And although D didn’t pick that school, the one she did choose is one where she can be both a student AND enjoy life outside the classroom. S’s choices were different and he is truly an intellectual. I am sure his recommendations said something about how he could blow any preconceived notions about football and lacrosse players as students out of the water. Again, different strokes. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of his attractiveness to schools was that he was a “smart” boy. And although he had a 34 ACT and a GPA to match, I think it was the rest of him that actually got him the offers.</p>

<p>Finally, my S (a college jr) says there are some girls in his major that are crazy over-the-top workaholics. They stress and freak endlessly. S works incredibly hard, but says the pressure some of these girls put on themselves make them impossible to work with… it’s all do or die. Not sure what we’ve done to our girls in getting them to the top of the food chain, but what I do know is that the gpa of girls at our school is higher than the boys overall, but on the test scores and as merit finalists - boys win the day. what this pretty much tells me is that boys might not care in the least to become the teacher’s pet, but they are still learning pretty darn well.</p>

736

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This has been true for a long time. I think there’s just a different distribution among boys and girls when it comes to certain kinds of smartness, such as ability to do well on standardized tests. I can remember in my own high school class, there were two boys in the top 10 for grades, but two boys also had the highest SAT scores, by far (and one of those didn’t have a top GPA).</p>

737

<p>Modadunn–I don’t know that we have run into the school as a whole tilted toward girls but we certainly have run into a few teachers that strongly favor girls over boys. The AP World teacher is one…and is the NHS Adviser. There are 1/3 to 2/3 boys:girls on the NHS and that does not match the line up for class rank even remotely. In fact, in the past 2 graduating classes at least, the boys that were in the top 10 of the class were never admitted to the NHS?? DS has been a strong history student, loves the subject, yet, he mysteriously has been getting lower grades in the class than our DD how HATES history, doesn’t really try all that hard in the class but is suddenly getting the best history grades she has EVER had…makes you wonder.</p>

738

<p>AWESOME post #734 by cptofthehouse, about likely/safety schools and attitudes. My family’s problems were all outlined there. Regretfully, we have only one child so what we’ve learned won’t benefit another child.</p>

<p>D applied EA to both state flagships (Ga Tech, UGA) and was accepted at both, with auto-admit to UGA Honors College, in mid November. This was a very good achievement, but did we celebrate it? Nope, we took it for granted, and were focused on the apps to single-digit and low double-digit schools she was putting together at the time. Come April 1, it turned out those November acceptances were her only choices. Truth to tell, both are very fine schools, and there are lots of students who would envy her acceptances there, particularly at Tech. But our family had to make a belated course correction to appreciate this. Ugh, that was a mistake.</p>

<p>Wonderful D is a very sensible young woman who swiftly picked herself up, made a choice and is moving on more and more happily. So she will be fine, but I wish for the high school classes of 2013 and beyond, that they have better information and wiser parents.</p>

739

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<p>I’ve never understood why the desire to do assigned work is seen as a pejorative. Doing the homework is often the best way to learn a subject and to solidify one’s knowledge of that subject. Why is a person who has a personal credo of doing her best work all the time and who does homework to learn labelled as someone who wants to “become the teacher’s pet?”</p>

<p>rant over…</p>

740

<p>My D’s school had more girls than boys in NHS too, and when I asked about it, was told that lots of the boys never completed the necessary paper work to be admitted. Some of the ones who did failed to attend enough meetings to keep their eligibility. I personally think NHS should go back to being just about grades.</p>