I agree this is over the top about what school you get into or whatever.Part of the lesson is not to take these things so seriously.
The 30 page paper with primary sources seems like a practice PhD dissertation. I understand that is how the school prepares students, although it is a little over the top.
Unless she copied or paraphrased a large part of the essay from a source without attribution, the charges could be viewed as libel. I understand perfectly though in the context of that school and so on that the parents don’t want to make a big issue of it. Unless it was blatant cheating, the proper response of the teacher would be to give a lower grade and discuss the issue with the student, not file some sort of charges.
Probably means that they did not take available advanced placement. Granted, it seems to be conventional wisdom on these forums for college students with AP credit (or similar) unconditionally to repeat all of their AP credit, even though that can be a big waste of time and tuition that could be used to learn something new. (A better method would be, if the AP credit is for a course that is an important prerequisite to something else, to try the college’s old final exam of the course that can be skipped in order to make a more informed placement decision.)
@socaldad2002 I couldn’t agree more. This is a world I admit I know nothing about, but I would guess less than 1% of the population does. It is just bizarre to me that this much pressure is put on kids in HS. That this is the HS experience.
So looking forward as to what colleges—what does she want to major in? That should be more of a focus I think when it comes to those EA and ED apps. You don’t need IVY or tippy top schools to have great careers and a great college experience. (Art anyone?)
That’s the discussion that’ll open up a flood of possibilities.
Her call but I do think she should consider owning her mistake if someone asks. I would bet that people would rally around her rather than vilify her. It was labeled UNINTENTIONAL. A mistake. Her teachers back that up as did the administration I think most kids would be saying “that could’ve been ME”
I think gossip gets worse because people make up the story when they don’t know the real one.
@socaldad2002 agree absolutely. And it is not just elite prep schools that prepare kids so well that they find college easier than high school. This is common feedback from the high achievers at D19’s public high school too when they get to their ivy/Top 20 schools. (Obviously the school does not send 70% to ivies but it doesn’t have selective entrance either, and it sends a lot to Cal.) I had been worried about the stress at this school but it isn’t a patch on what OP has described.
For OP, another suggestion to strongly back Tulane. Knowing the kids from my daughter’s class who got in ED or EA, I think your daughter should have an excellent chance there if she has it as one of her early schools.
@socaldad2002 and @Leigh22 I am also in agreement. This whole thread makes me so sad for the young lady on multiple levels.
I guess I subscribe to the Dr. Phil philosophy that says kids should only have 2 jobs:
Getting an education
And having a great time while doing it
I also have a special needs child with autism who will never go to college, and perhaps not ever live independently, which I suppose gives me a different perspective on what it means to be successful in this life for a child. But I wouldn’t want any of my kids to ever look back on their high school years with memories of how miserable it all was.
@ucbalumnus if you aren’t familiar with these elite private high schools I’d be careful about giving admissions advice. I’d be careful anyway – the OP is sophisticated, and undoubtedly has naviance, and has an idea of the admit rate for various schools for kids with her daughter’s stats.
@karen0 I believe Wake Forest has rolling ED. If she really likes the school, she can apply in July or August and get results as early as August. At least it was that way for my friends DD. Excellent school and a great relief to be locked in. Has your college counselor mentioned this? Perhaps she should visit and interview if she’s interested.
“Coalition app does not ask a disciplinary question like common app, although individual colleges may ask this with their supplementary questions. Several dozen schools suppress the common app disciplinary question, at least initially, for example for the first round of reads”
“OP will be asking a lot of the GC—as an example, they will likely ask the GC to write two different rec letters–one that addresses the academic misconduct, one that doesn’t (again, for the schools that don’t consider disciplinary history that require a GC rec)”
Has it been ascertained that the college counselor’s write-up for this student won’t contain an explanation of the disciplinary action regardless of what school she is applying to? I wouldn’t assume the CC is writing two separate recs, but perhaps I missed something…
"If her class rank is around 50% (“solidly in the middle of her class”), UT Austin is a high to unrealistic reach.
And the UCs do weight GPA more than test scores, so her “uneven grades” are likely to make them more difficult to get admitted than you probably think they are."
Agree with the post above #429, @ucbalumnus. When dealing with students from this type of private school, the regular acceptances matrices are pretty useless. Also, I’d bet this school doesn’t even rank its students or calculate GPAs.
Wake has already opened its applications and will release the first set of decisions next month. It does have a nickname of work forest, tho, so I’m not sure that would be a good fit.
Wake Forest is another one of the southern schools with a strong honor code in place since the college’s formation. OP’s GC will be able to best target the D’s list to schools that will be most likely to have a balanced perspective with regard to the unintentional academic misconduct.
UT will derive or estimate a rank using GPA and high school profile, if rank is not provided. UC will recalculate GPA with its own method based on courses and grades the student enters into the application (does not use any high school calculated GPA, if any).
Not saying that the OP intended to be an outsourcing tiger parent. But she may have unintentionally put her kids into such an environment by enrolling them in this school.
The UC schools LOVE out of state full pay students and have holistic review with no discipline history question so she may be a strong candidate for UCLA or Berkeley. Being the middle of her class at a very high achieving OOS high school could still have her GPA in the range where UCLA and Berkeley would want her, especially with her ECs and ability to pay full boat. How many students from her school come out west to a UC each year? I’m guessing not too many. Most important thing to do is make sure she meets the classes taken requirements to get into a UC as an OOS applicant as someone mentioned above. The ask ms sun website has a lot of valuable info about getting into a top tier UC.
I personally would stick with the private colleges and universities that know your school well, OP. Her grades and letters of support will be more meaningful.
I wouldn’t be overly worried about where she gets accepted tbh. Expand the list, maybe get a private counselor. I suspect it will all be fine and she will end up somewhere she likes and will thrive.