<p>I suppose they were also including time spent waiting around at the airport.
These days, the flight could be 500 miles, but it still would take three hours to get in & out.
I didnt really press them for details. Afterall, many kids attend local schools less then 100 miles away, but are hardly commuting.</p>
<p>There were significant differences in college admissions in the 5 years between my two daughters (e.g. Harvard went from having 20K applicants per year to having 30K). The changes in the 35-40 years since I applied have been astronomical.</p>
<p>I get that a lot too. I have family that went to U of Chicago, Rice U, Stanford, Carleton, and Wash U. And even where they did not go to those schools, people gauging based on where they applied. And I also hear from locals “UT Austin is not hard to get in to, why don’t you just go there?” There are also assumptions that any place you apply will of course give financial aid…and “state school is not that expensive.” People who graduated 10 years ago paid just a few thousand for an entire years worth of state school. Now, instate at A&M is $22,000 and that assumes you do not live in the honors housing, which is more expensive, and you get the cheaper meal plan.</p>
<p>I Don’t remember the hard selling either. My daughter has gotten so much mail from colleges. the pile is literally knee high now. She’s gotten 3 letters from Harvard telling her she should consider the Ivy league and seriously, she’s not getting into those schools. She’s applying to one just because she loves the program but she’s a low middle candidate with no real hooks. It just adds to the stress when these top schools that Don’t really want a kid send them butter them up to boost application numbers.</p>
<p>Oh, we had the hard sell by the late 80s – I kept all the college junk mail I got until I sent in my deposit in May, and I filled my summer camp footlocker to the point where it wouldn’t close. </p>
<p>Sorry to hear it’s the same now or worse…I was hoping that “going paperless” would have cut into the load now that I’m a parent and having enough trouble with household clutter!</p>
<p>Haven’t read the thread … got sidetracked by the title. ONE thing? Hahahahah … :)</p>
<p>yes, we got catalogs in the 80’s but not 7-8 varieties from the same school in 2 weeks. I’m fine with the ones for which my kid has a real shot. The emails, even the phone calls I’m tolerating. I’m bothered by the hard sales pitch from schools with 7 percent acceptance rates. They do it to increase their rankings.</p>
<p>That is infuriating, turtletime. I was a National Merit scholar back in the olden days, which is part of why I did get a critical mass of brochures and guidebooks and handwritten “please come visit and apply” notes, I imagine. And, in a way, I experienced on a small scale what our kids are experiencing now – I got excited that these prestigious schools “wanted” me, only to discover that they were mostly high reaches for me once you looked at my GPA (B+/A- average, not terrible, but not Ivy, even in the 80s). </p>
<p>It does seem disingenuous for super-selective schools to be marketing themselves so hard to kids who are too young and inexperienced to temper their hopes and expectations. (And, in an age where half the schools we look at are bragging about “being green,” all that paper and printing seems especially hypocritical!)</p>
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<p>Well my son is a sophomore in a well known university in the Midwest and I get the same sort of answers because it is a completely unknown school in FL.</p>
<p>Sometimes these threads make me sad- and very appreciative of my grandparents (the ones I have left and acknowledge the fact that I am their granddaughter… but that’s for a different thread). </p>
<p>I went to my grandfather’s 2nd least favorite college. You know what he said? “Honey, if you’re happy, I’m happy.” He didn’t go to college and was successful. His happiest kid is my dad, who is the only one that didn’t go to college. </p>
<p>I’m the only one on my mom’s side- period- to go to college. She didn’t, her brothers didn’t, and none of my cousins did. My grandma did, but she passed away almost 20 years ago and she went to college in the UK and never could quite figure out how American colleges worked lol. </p>
<p>I’m kind of appreciative of the fact that my parents’ friends’ kids don’t really go to college other than our local CC/uni. The type of competition between parents and grandparents I see is just absolutely insane. It’s about your KIDS/GRANDKIDS… not YOU. So glad I never got that pressure. I feel bad for the kids who do. I went to high school in a middle to upper middle class area and most of my friends were Michigan legacies. To not go to Michigan or higher tiered schools in those families was just shameful. OTOH, in my family, graduating high school on time was a badge of honor :D</p>
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<p>That’s really sad and manipulative, and just another example of one of the bad conequences of the marketization of higher education. What’s good for the institution (lots of applicants, low acceptance rate) is not good for the student, or for education as a whole.</p>
<p>It really is a shockingly cynical thing for a not-for-profit institution to do.</p>
<p>Dodgersmom, you made me laugh! Thank goodness there’s at least one other person out there like me. My husband comes from a family where each and every one of them went to a HYPSM school and each one can recite the places they applied and their SAT scores along with a host of other scores. Are they kidding? I can barely remember taking the SAT let alone completing college applications.</p>
<p>The thing that most drives me crazy is the quick assumption that a kid going to a (insert name of elite school) is necessarily smarter than one going to (insert name of non-elite school). </p>
<p>Also, that for all the talk of single digit admission rates that every class of kids and parents assume, sometimes really smugly, that their kid will get in and that those who didn’t had something obviously inferior that got in their way. Until of course they don’t.</p>
<p>About a week before she graduated from hs, my D was asked by the Dean of her school where she had chosen. It was a safety. He was incredulous and he turned and walked away from us. She said he didn’t talk to her the entire last week of school.</p>
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<p>Seems not to have been much of a loss. ;)</p>
<p>Who cares what the dean thinks? What possible contact is she ever going to have with this person, ever again?</p>
<p>WHen I went to college, anyone could get in to USC. It was not competitive at all. The people my age who went there are all the prissy, rich crowd who grew up being handed everything, but never to bright. Inherited a lot, never has had to work for much. I am sure the new crowd of grads will be different since it is more competitive. But I don’t know.</p>
<p>And Northwestern…my husband went to U of Chicago and Northwestern was also a school that we are shocked to see has become so competitive. There was even a movie once, with Gwyneth Paltrow where remarks were made about how the people at Northwestern were not so smart and couldn’t figure things out, etc. I think it was called “Proof.”</p>
<p>On the National Merit thing…I grew up in Iowa. I was NM and so was my mom (who grad high school in South Dakota). I know that my daughter would have been NM with ease in Iowa or SD, but my mom still thinks she did better, was smarter, etc, than any of her grandkids, and cannot figure out why her grandkids cannot do any better than this. My daughter is commended NM. And my mom was offered automatic admission to places based on NM status. It is just not that way anymore.</p>
<p>I’ve really enjoyed this thread. My D is a junior. We are older parents, so in our case the grandparents are quite old. My father-in-law (age 80) keeps repeating the myth about the millions in scholarship aid that supposedly go unclaimed each year. I’ve told him that’s a myth but to no avail. I realize that it’s code for “don’t ask me for money.” My mother-in-law is his second wife. She did not go to college nor did anyone else in her family. MIL ran a successful business for many years and just retired at age 70. She makes it clear that she thinks college in general is overrated, and especially the expensive out-of-state schools. FIL went to UCLA as an in state student a long, long time ago. They just cannot comprehend the cost and competitiveness of college today. They are quite affluent and have four grandchildren (our D is the oldest) but they quickly shut down any discussions of college. OK thanks for letting me vent, I feel a little better.</p>
<p>You know what killed me as a mother…when ‘well meaning’ friends and relatives threw a big bucket of cold water on the euphoria of acceptance in April…</p>
<p>“Congrats on {DD or DS}'s acceptance to all those prestigious schools…it must be great getting to check the minority box”…</p>
<p>Yeah…she just checked that box and four years of hard work, study, sports, science fairs, art portfolios, volunteer hours, great letters of recommendation, hours on essays, agony of days/weeks/months of SAT prep, … meaningless.</p>
<p>It makes me want to slap someone. No one ever says, now that my kids are thriving with top grades at prestigious Us,…“Gosh. Sorry about implying that your kids were allowed in over their more deserving and smarter white peers. That was rude, mean-spirited and completely offbase.”</p>
<p>I recently rediscovered my SAT scores (yes they were computer printed, not hand written) from the dinosauer days. For the time period they were very average & I was wait-listed at our State U; on the banks of the old Rar-i-tan. I went on to a state school and eventually RU.</p>
<p>My neice & nephew are older than DD, and are already in college or just competing applications. After a holiday meal, we broke out my score sheet for all to see and snicker at. They needed to be placed in perspective for the time, but it made for great levity at the Holiday table.</p>