As Rejections keep rolling in What do you tell your Honor student?

Applying to College Admission Stories
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I’m so sorry for your son’s loss. But I can assure you the decision wasn’t a reflection on his merits or his desire. And there is always graduate school.

For the record, the assessment that “someone else” with lower grades and scores got in over another student is both cruel and unfair. MIT doesn’t admit students who are academically unqualified. Grades and scores are not always comparable depending on circumstances and school rigor but all students within a certain range have proven to do equally as well once enrolled.

I’ve met many of those students who have “lower” ACT scores and “lower” GPA’s and they are as bright, if not brighter, than students who are turned away. And because the stereotype often leads readers to think that means URM or Jock or otherwise hooked, I would note for clarification that that student is just as likely to be a white male from an urban or rural area without access to high tech opportunities, few clubs and no test prep because the schools focus solely on passing the state exams. In any event, having seen the bell curve for admitted students, the scores and grades not as low as you might be lead to believe. But yes - I have met families who believe that attaining perfect scores, grades and loading up on AP courses is the key to getting into MIT. That’s the stereotype, but not the reality. It helps, but it is by no means a guarantee.

But even if it was - look at it differently. Even after you weed out students who aren’t academically qualified, the school is still looking at an astronomical number of amazing and talented students for very few slots. This year there was just shy of 19,000 applications for 1,000 Freshmen slots.

On money - MIT tuition is free for families making less than $75,000 - so the campus is diverse economically and is one of the few places where legacy status and/or wealth have no weight in an admissions decision. One thing you don’t note on campus are obvious signs of wealth or conspicuous consumption. It’s not part of the Institute’s culture.

Please know that in a different year - your son might have gotten the “nod.” Each year it just depends on what attributes are in the mix of applicants that particular year. And more than likely - if he was a good candidate - someone on the committee was advocating for him. But decisions are made by consensus, not by a single Adcom. And I’ve seen even from my husband’s exhausting sessions at his own university, that the meetings are often respectful but contentious before the final selections are made.

You raised a great kid. Maybe starting there and realizing he’s still got great choices at a time when many CC students are facing 100% rejections, is better than putting down someone who received the spot he wanted. Those admitted students are great kids too, with equally proud parents.

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For those parents facing grieving students (I’ve been there, done that several years ago and it’s heartbreaking) it IS NOT a reflection of the student - just a reflection of a time when the Internet has made access to information easier, and where the Common App has allowed too many students to flood the market with applications. I suspect we’ll see a course correction in the near future with the universities and colleges using complex essay and portfolio requirements in their supplements to reduce the number of “serial” applicants.

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Our children, all of them, are amazing. Yes, they may have similar GPAs and SAT scores to those who were accepted to this or that school, while our sons and daughters were rejected or waitlisted, or accepted when someone else’s son or daughter was not. I think the numeric differences between students who were accepted to those who were rejected are generally insignificant (not statistically). I won’t call the process random or a crapshoot, but I will suggest that the admissions system is faulted at its very core for relying so heavily on these metrics.

I believe this highlights the huge problem with the college admissions game as we are playing it. Many schools look at those GPAs and SATs to make at least their preliminary decisions (academic viability - within the top 50 percent of SAT scores and GPAs of current and past students, as one Ivy League representative explained it to my son), especially those schools with tens of thousands of applicants. We all have multiple intelligences - our children’s test scores and even academic successes represent a very small accounting of who they truly are. If s/he is a story, these metrics are 2 pages in a 754 page novel.

I cannot completely fault the colleges either, because they are under their own pressures to make their statistics look good in the interests of their survival. I am a huge fan of some of the smaller LACs who actually succeed in looking at the students holistically. It is hard to do - how do you take the measure of a young person? Their imagination? Integrity? Future ability to change the world? Quiet leadership aptitude (vs. leadership positions held in a limited number of available clubs at a certain high school)? But I would like to believe that schools are going to have to do this at some point if they want to continue to attract our children. Bring on the complex essay and portfolio requirements for college supplements - then use them to find the students that will be the best fit for your school. The best acceptance letter my son received? The one that quoted his own essay back to him as their reason for accepting him. That meant infinitely more than 3 generic waitlist letters.

My hope? After working through this stressful and sometimes painful process, our children will grow and mature through their losses, and realize they are more than a reflection of their SAT scores and high school GPAs. Once they graduate from the college or university lucky enough to have them, they will work to change the admissions process to be more holistic and less reliant on the same generic measures that were used when they were applying to colleges. They will better discern the truth of who their own amazing children are.

Sorry for the rant. Hope the kids are doing better and moving on.

264

"It’s just RUDE to overapply like that! "
Exactly what I was thinking as I read many of these posts. 10, 15, 30? Really? This girl had to have had lots of help with those applications. There should be a limit on how many schools you can apply to on the common application or otherwise.

265

First and foremost, these two – courtesy of Jeffrey Brenzel, the newly retired dean of admissions* at Yale (and a Yalie himself ['75]):

[Epilogue:</a> After Colleges Accept You | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/after-colleges-accept-you]Epilogue:”>After Colleges Accept You | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)

[Beyond</a> the College Rankings | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/beyond-college-rankings]Beyond”>Beyond the College Rankings | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)

And yes indeed, some opportunities that many people would kill for, other people get – and they just plain hate them.

For example, as the son of an IBEW electrician in New York City, I got a summer job as an electrical helper on construction sites. (Those gigs were pretty much reserved for union members’ kids – generally if not always sons.) Great experience (especially if you’re even thinking about electrical or other construction work as a career), a work environment at least as pleasant as most summer jobs, something like $11-12 per hour, and the union even paid our Social Security taxes for us…and this was back during the Cold War!

And I hated every day of it.

Meanwhile, in my experience having been an Ivy grad has helped to some extent, other things being equal. In this age of grade inflation, employers and graduate schools may not know what to make of a 4.0 GPA. But they sure know that if someone managed to get into an Ivy, Little Ivy or Public Ivy, she’s got a good head on her shoulders.

(Not to mention that in many settings, school names get exchanged much more readily than grades. When’s the last time you saw someone’s GPA on his back window?)

In certain lines of work – such as BigLaw, investment banking, management consulting and certain tutoring companies – an Ivy or similar [let alone HYP] degree sits somewhere between “big help” and “unwritten requirement”. (Even if your M.B.A. or J.D. is Ivy or near-Ivy, but your B.A. or B.S. is not, they might ask you what happened.)

More broadly, studies have shown that even (especially) since the start of the Great Recession, Ivy and near-Ivy grads have done much better, other things being equal**. One reason for this is that even though it’s mainly your first and maybe second employer who seriously considers your school, it’s your first and maybe second job that sets the tone for your whole career.

[I’ll be glad to substantiate all this upon request. This post has multiple links as it is.]

Combine that with Ivies’ plunging acceptance rates***, and what high schoolers face is not much unlike the entertainment world, where people put in years and decades of hard (and low-paid) work acting, dancing, singing, playing baseball/football/basketball, doing stand-up, etc.

Basically it’s a lottery ticket with long-shot odds and ginormous prizes…and most of them know that going in. Thing is, people – especially young people – tend to think they’ll always be the exception…especially if that’s been their life so far.

(For example, ask yourself why graduate school [as in M.A. and Ph.D.] admissions is so competitive despite the fact that tenure-track faculty employment has taken a nosedive for many years now. Because you have many very smart college – often Ivy, near-Ivy and the like – upperclassmembers figuring “I’ll beat the odds once again in my life, and get one of those professorships.” Guess how I know!)

Bottom line: Brains and hard work – even over many years – is not even close to a guarantee. To the extent possible with young adolescents, kids (and IMHO it should start in middle school) who might be serious candidates for top colleges and universities should have their college admissions prep include the understanding**** that they can bust their buns with tough courses, many ECs, leadership positions and awards and the odds are the payoff will be they’ll be much better prepared for Honors programs (and they may get serious merit scholarships) at State U.

And if and when they get there, they may just have the last laugh:

[Best</a> Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ.com](<a href=“Best Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ”>Best Colleges & Universities - Ranked by Job Recruiters - WSJ)

[li] He’s staying on at Yale as College Master (Timothy Dwight), and as a Philosophy instructor.[/li]
[**] Or even going further back. Name the last U.S. president who never attended either Harvard or Yale!

[***] Darn skippy I wouldn’t have been accepted today.

[****] As in, a motif woven throughout the prep process and even parenting, not just a disclaimer mentioned once or twice.

What do you think?

266

What do I think? That maybe you tippled a few before posting… this does not seem to have anything to do with this thread (at least what I can follow of it does not).

267

Hello intparent,

Would you want your DS/DD to attend a college where people normally responded like that when they had difficulty following what someone just said?

268

I’m puzzled by the earlier comment that it’s rude to apply to more than 10 schools.

As with many things, it’s not always WHAT you do, but WHY you do it.

If one is merely applying to top-tier colleges to amass a brag list of acceptance letters, yes, that’s extremely inconsiderate on many levels.

If, however, one is applying to 10, 12, or 15 colleges of various levels (reach, safety, state, private, ivy) because his or her going to college is vastly dependent on financial aid package offered, that’s not rude, it’s survival. This is true given that one does not know how to compare the true cost of the colleges up front until the financial aid offers come, which is quite late in the process.

This latter scenario is what we’re facing right now. Survival.

269

I should think if you are being rejected from the majority of the colleges you have applied to it is because you have too many “reach” schools and not enough “match” schools. For the “top” schools, they are only taking 5% of the applicants and probably the majority of those applicants are wonderful students too. Make sure she doesn’t think that state colleges or smaller schools are “beneath” her. Her light can shine no matter where she goes.

270

Such wise words of wisdom out there 'cause this happens ALL THE TIME!

Hopefully what we say to our kids helps show our empathy and also empowers them to move beyond the disappointment. At this tender age, resiliency may be even more important to learn than trig or some other subject.

Comments like “Life is not fair, get used to it” are thoughtless and painful. . . though the sediment may be more true than wished. Discussions before application time hopefully included the concepts of what a great/good match is, the gamble vs surer thing, $, etc.

My son is in his last year of a five year CS major at RIT. I recently asked him what he had learned or what advice did he have from the whole application process that might benefit his younger brother, now a senior. He spoke of the importance of MATCH and went on to discuss the general: “feel like I fit here” aspect of the college/university, the administration, what students enrolled in the department or major he was hoping to study, AND the likely total of student debt one would have on their shoulders upon graduation. . . along with the usual factors we all think of.

He was admitted to Carnegie Mellon, his perfect match with everything BUT the $. They weren’t willing to give him a penny; where as RIT made a very generous offer. At the time it pained him terribly to turn down the admission offer and I cried! But, he and we decided that having over $100,000 in undergrad student loan burdon was not workable. He knew he would be going on to get advanced degrees and hoped to have those paid for by the graduate schools.

Presently, he feels he made the right decision because he found his place academically and socially . . . but we never do get to know how things would have turned out if he had selected the more prestigious school. . . just like in life with most of our decisions!

May the pain diminish as quickly as possible and our kids’ resiliency help them move forward to finding a hell of a good alternative.

271

ExieMITAlum well said: “P.S. - that last statement in bold in the quote above sounds like it came from a student, not a mature adult with perspective. Wishing harm on another for getting an opportunity you covet may point to why the school rejected the student with that attitude. You’d be amazed what nuances I can pick up in a college interview. And for those students it is easy to write “NO” on their application.”

ExieMITAlum expressed my thoughts too. Many college interviewers are pretty sharp and have a wealth of experience of reading the interviewee/applicant. Tone and non verbals can speak volumes. There is also the matter of the Social Media and what may be detrimental.

272

I am so sorry that was their reaction.

I hope YOU are happy with whatever choice made and that they stop grounding you when you go (maybe far away)to school.

273

It’s sad reading about the pain and agony of rejection. My S is waiting for EA decision from his 2 choice schools. They are not reach schools. In fact after touring ivy’s and Big name schools we were turned off by the way they treat students. We had initially thought that a big name school will be the ultimate destination for our S. Now we believe we would rather go to an up and coming school. Maybe it’s my arrogance. I have 2 masters degree and a doctorate. My S has excellent grades and stats. I’d hate to have him spend his college paperchasing the way I did. I point out the business school of Northeastern Univ, named after 2 drop outs, remind him of the biggest names in innovation that never went to college, the truly great ones that never needed a college to carry them. I am so sorry for all the rejections people get. Chasing success and money is chasing after the wrong thing to begin with. What I dream for my S is to be confident enough to be above all these, do great work and everything else will follow, no matter which college you go to.

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I don’t understand this statement. Why were you turned off? How were students treated badly? No, they don’t have ice cream truck or juice fountain for students, but they do treat students like adults and expect them to behave as such. FromBehind - if you truly feel people could do great things without going to college, why is your son applying to schools?

275

oldfort, I can only speak from our experience and it is limited to the schools we went to. Your experience may be different. An example is a prestigious school in NY, where after a long distance of traveling, all that they did was pop a video and send us along with a freshman that pointed at the buildings. We arrived very early and had walked around the campus and actually saw more and learned by ourselves. When we add that to research about stress level, suicide rates, feedback from others, we decided not to bother applying. I won’t go to lengthy details. This is our own experience. I would not draw the conclusion that this may be a good school for your children. Every person will have their own take of the schools.

Your other comment: “if you truly feel people could do great things without going to college, why is your son applying to schools?” People can do great things without going to college. This is not a personal belief, it is a fact. It is an option that some people have taken and succeeded. To conclude, as a result of this, that college is not necessary is flawed logic.

276

I wouldn’t discourage my kid from applying to top notch schools for fear of rejection. Chasing after success is different than chasing after money. If you are referring to Cornell, I don’t think its suicide rate is higher than other school’s. I also wouldn’t cross out a school over a campus tour.

Anything is possible, but what is the percentage?

277

At the end of the day, parents are the last people in the world that have the right to play that role of the therapist if their child doesn’t get accepted into the top school, for parents in the first place form that child’s character to never settle. I can see that, what you should se before your child enters high-school. So mind your whining, you created your child that way. I am not saying its a BAD not a GOOD thing that you did. But you should be the last person to come in the front lines and say “life continues” “it does’t matter” “don’t be so harsh to yourself” ect. and correct me if I am wrong.

278

I wasn’t bothered so much by getting rejected, but by everyone else getting accepted where I wasn’t.

279

I’ll give you an allegory from the business world:

I work on a retained basis to find executives for companies. That means I interview and evaluate executives routinely, and work closely with my clients to help them choose which one to hire.

In a typical search, I will speak to 200 or more executives, most of whom are working and highly successful in the industry in which my client is in (I don’t advertise, so I’m contacting people already in the industry, and not dealing with people just randomly sending out resumes). I’ll bring that group down to five ultimately, and bring those five to my client, who will hire one person.

Although some are turned down because they have job hopped or come across as jerks, most get turned down because they don’t fit the narrow requirements that my client has established for the position. They don’t have enough experience in the industry, or their industry experience isn’t close enough, for example. Or I simply think that their personality won’t click with the management team in place.

Virtually all of the candidates I speak to think they are perfect fits for the position. Some become furious when I tell them no. If they were sitting in my seat, some might realize why those I chose were the right ones. However, they don’t get to see this.

An admissions officer would say the same thing. You haven’t sat in their seat, and read applications from kids from all over the country and all over the world. If you could see how accomplished their applicant pool is, you might get an inkling of why your child was turned down. Your child might get this inkling as well, but with the biased glasses that we all see ourselves and those who are close to us, might not quite be able to see why they chose Kid X over you child.

Remember, there are over 35,000 valedictorians graduating from high school in this country every year, and most valedictorians have impressive achievements beyond academics. Add in the salutatorians, and you’re up to 70,000 kids. Throw in the top 5% and you’re into some big, big numbers. As teacher David McCullough told the graduating group at Wellesley High in 2012, “You’re not special.” (He closed his remarks with a Zen flip, saying, “Everybody’s special,” – it’s a great speech to watch, and is on Youtube).

The high school high achiever is a big fish in a small pond. High school is actually an easy place in which to excel, especially if you’re willing (unlike most high school kids) to work hard. Even people who are modestly successful in the real world work long hours and work hard. Those who have developed a strong work ethic in high school will find that this will pay off eventually if they keep it up, even if they get rejected at dream school and match school and wind up at safety school. Going to safety school certainly doesn’t mean that all that hard work was for nothing.

Some people start their careers at prestige employers like Google. Others wind up with companies making insignificant-seeming subcomponents that become $3 parts of $250,000 equipment. And I’ve seen the latter person become far more successful than the first one I just mentioned, just as I’ve seen some people from Turnip State University far exceed people who have graduated from Harvard.

Rejection is an every day part of life. For many high achievers, a college rejection is the first significant rejection that they get. Some say it’s a hard lesson to learn, but I get rejected constantly, and so do most successful people. I think it’s a necessary lesson, not a hard one. After rejection, successful people just continue on down the road, adjusting their path now and then, and continually turn over the next rock until they get somewhere. Then they keep going down the road and lift up new rocks.

That’s the message I will give my child, who is an incredibly hard-working, busy high achiever and who probably will be rejected at a number of excellent schools at which she could be very successful. She’ll still be special.

280

From Behind: “People can do great things without going to college.”

That’s absolutely correct. And as Old Fort pointed out, “What is the percentage?”

I’ve been working for businesses large and small for 17 years, and can tell you that that percentage is low. There is the extremely rare case of Bill Gates that is commonly brought up, but I wish those people who use him as an example would mention the other 10,000 cases of those who didn’t get to college and found themselves significantly held back because of that. It’s kind of like those stories you read about the lottery winners that neglect to mention the other 100,000 people who spent half their paycheck on scratch tickets and went bankrupt.

To be successful without going to college, you usually either have to start your own business, or work your way up within one.

Starting your own business is extremely hard. Most fail. Some make a living at theirs. Many make only a meager living (you wouldn’t believe how many people own independent stores and make the minimum wage or less when all their hours are factored in). A rare few become successful to the point where the owner makes more than he or she could by working for someone else.

Those who work their way up through a company find they often reach a point where they are blocked within that company because they don’t have a college degree. They also have serious problems if they want to change companies. Even at 45 years old, a new company is far less likely to hire someone without a degree, despite an impressive resume.

My experience with people without degrees working in jobs that normally require a degree has not been great. I’ve found that these people typically are working for companies that aren’t that great, and, in general, that these people aren’t as good as the people with degrees. They aren’t as glib, can’t write as well, and aren’t as good at math. They also don’t have the other skills that the college-educated person with what seems like the same job would have. They also are making less money, not surprisingly. There are exceptions, but they are rarer than you think.

By the way, I do know a few people who have earned millions without a degree. I know countless people who have earned millions, by the way, and the non-degreed would be far less than 1% of those. The only ones I know who have become filthy rich – rich enough to buy a baseball team, for example, or to own a string of companies and have a home on the ocean, in the mountains and one on an island – had college degrees.

After 17 years of being in my current field (see my post above), I’ve noticed one thing. The line between being able to be far more likely to be marketable and to able to control your destiny is crossed when you get a bachelor’s degree.