This is profound.
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I am the original poster and the focus on help me understand, so thanks for those that have done that. And I appreciate the focus on the actual topic, just supporting a parent that is feeling bad for their kid and seeking help with some languaging and understanding.
I am a social worker working with kids. I know the downsides of judging others and the inappropriateness of adults scrutiny of others without cause. There seems to be some judgement and veiled references of not honoring or understanding a kid I donât know- it doesnât apply here. I am withholding some details in case the family is for some reason on this forum here. Trust me that there is cause to be perplexed. And all Iâm seeking is some words of wisdom for a first timer whose kid is hurting. Thanks to those who offer that.
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Fpljjd.
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There isnât because you have no idea of the schoolâs priorities.
Last year a kid got into MIT but not BU. One got into Berkeley but not SDSU. Crazy things happen every day.
That said, good luck to your son in finding a fantastic opportunity.
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Once piece of advice that used to appear on CC but hasnât lately is to apply to one sure thing college that has rolling admission. When that acceptance comes in, your kid can say âI know Iâm going to collegeâ and it takes the sting out of the first rejection (or just the long wait). Both my kids had acceptances by Oct. A friendâs daughter was so excited by that first acceptance that she didnât mind (much) the rejection to her reach.
OP, donât know if any Michigan schools have a rolling admissions school but your child could still apply. Some of the smaller engineering schools have rolling admissions but still have high academic standards. Some state flagships do too (Wyoming does).
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Yes it does seem yuck to compare kids. It feels really yuck to assume that your kid is âbetter thanâ or that another kid doesnât deserve the same opportunity.
Tell your kid (and yourself) to focus on where your kid is wanted, not where you think they should be accepted to. And as others said, focus on your kid, not making assumptions about other kids.
Remember there should never be a goal school but rather the goal to find the school that is a great fit for your kid!
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Have him add a few colleges to his list, especially those without supplements and a Nov1 Deadline (or EA/Priority with decision by December.) A few acceptances will help with the sting.
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Everyone has clearly hit all the relevant points on this, but I will just add:
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On the day it was decided, OP student was a less good fit for what the school was looking for when the AOs making the decision looked at all the information that they had.
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If you and the other applicant posted all information for a general review by a large group to decide which is the better applicant, there may be a different outcome.
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Your student will find his place
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@5280Gr8t , first off, know that you are not the first parent to be upset by a schoolâs decision. One of the CCs at our school told us how although her kid had quickly moved on from rejection by a certain school, she hadnât. Even years later!
In talking to your kid, you also want to model how to handle these disappointments. He wonât get jobs he applies for, wonât be invited to events he wants to attend, will be passed over for promotions, or not have relationship interest reciprocated - to name a few! It hurts every time. Show him how to be the bigger person - how to process the emotions and then move on.
- Acknowledge that neither of you understand how decisions are made and apologize if you added to his disappointment by building up his hopes or suggesting you would be unhappy with him for this outcome. Youâre both still learning about the process and will understand it best when itâs over. So yeah, you two are supporting each other in this journey.
- Remind him that decisions are made based on applications, and neither of you know what they all look like. This is a good reason to go back and make sure your application is as you want it â sometimes adding or deleting test scores, subbing in a different essay, etc can help. But if heâs happy with how heâs presented himself on paper, itâs about their priorities.
- You donât know what matters to the school. Often, after applicants clear a certain bar (gpa and scores), they are all equally qualified. The 4.0 with the perfect SAT is no better than the lowest clearer of the bar. Things that can matter then are out of your control include FA need, interest in certain subjects, etc.
- Remind him that they are creating a class. Itâs not a 4x100 relay team where you need the 4 fastest sprinters. Itâs more like a puzzle. Sometimes some of the pieces already in place will have an impact on that. (My kid, for example, was an athlete but not a recruit at his top choices. On paper, he filled a lot of the buckets that the recruits did. Kinda lousy luck, right? But so be it.)
- Both of you can probably use the skills youâve developed professionally to work through why this stings for both of you. Shock? Belief that an acceptance signified or validated something? Fear about still-awaited decisions? Was this a first choice or is the upset simply that you expected to get in? Why we want acceptances and how we process rejections (or deferrals) is not always about wanting that thing. Kinda like being upset that you were passed over for an opportunity at work that you didnât want!
- Remind him that you know how hard he works, what heâs capable of, and that heâll succeed wherever he lands. No decision changes that. Remind him that itâs wrong to compare to anyone else, but if youâre going to do it one last time, youâd compare him to every kid out there and choose him as yours because you love him to the moon and back.
Hugs to you. Itâs a hard process because we arenât in control of it and the stakes seem so high. But my guess is that the yet-unknown outcome will be a good one. If you want some perspective and a laugh, read this essay by Joan Didion about her rejection by Stanford.
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Part of being an adult is learning to deal with disappoint - you wonât always get what you want, you wonât always âwinâ, and you still need to get up and keep going forward.
So, one thing you should do is model this level of maturity for them by not blaming the school, or some other kid who you know only by âreputationâ or thinking that it must be they only care about âthemselvesâ and their âaveragesâ (talk about just yuck responses).
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@gardenstategal, This response is full of reality, empathy and calls both my kid and myself to be our best selves. I really appreciate your sentiments here. Definitely going to check out the article you linked. Thank you!
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@AlanApar, really nicely said. I appreciate that you were able to read the subtext that I was actually looking to be judged.
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Iâm sure you were looking for it exactly as much as the young scholar who got in over your child and the admissions officers who spend countless hours trying to differentiate between thousands of qualified teenagers for hundreds of available spots.
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And no idea of what the other studentâs teacher recommendations were like. Teacher recommendations (often used to clarify character) and character hold a lot of weight at highly rejective colleges. For example, at Williams, Yale, Stanford, Princeton , and U Chicago, recommendations and character were considered as Very Important on each collegeâs common data set. A similar applicant who doesnât quite match characteristics the college seeks might end up deferred or rejected.
I think part of the OP and their sonâs issue is not understanding how much of the admissions process is totally beyond their control. We all know our kids are completely fantastic. Itâs a rude awakening when you get âproofâ in the form of deferral or rejection that others donât view your kid the same way. Itâs really not personal. Itâs down to the collegeâs institutional needs.
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Very true.
I, for one, hate that LORs are important.
Some teachers are lavish with praise. Others use it sparingly. Some teachers invest a lot of time and energy in writing a personalized LOR. Others invest almost no time or give the kids a form letter.
It is really, really hard to tell which of these types of teachers you are going to get before you ask them to write the LOR.
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Agree 100%. Itâs not personal when your kidâs classmate gets the fellowship, the internship, the job, the grad school acceptance. One of my kids claims that if you arenât getting rejected-- regularly- it means you arenât aiming high enough. I donât have a resilient personality like that but I wish I did!
Life is filled with watching peers âget stuffâ you wanted and part of successful adulting is moving on.
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Absolutely. LORs are highly subjective and may give an unfair advantage to some. There is a reason many schools, the publics in FL for example, specifically ask applicants to not send any.
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At our high school, we had an oddly high number of kids who are related to faculty.
And because of marriage, the kids donât have the same last names as the faculty.
I wonder how this is going to work come LOR time. You would think that the school would not let relatives write LORs for other relatives, but who knows?
It cuts both ways.
There are students in poorly resourced high schools who have demonstrated in many ways that they are more than capable of handling demanding and rigorous college courses. Itâs often the recommendation which points this out.
Is it an âunfairâ advantage when a kid from rural Kentucky is widely considered to be the kindest, hardest working, most intellectually agile and curious student that the town has ever seen? And how would an Adcom even know this without a personal recommendation?
I read such a recommendation. And then met the student when I was interviewing for my Alma Mater. He was absolutely the most compelling applicant I had ever interviewed.
So yes- a finger on the scale for the kids who manage to overcome significant obstacles to even consider a bachelorâs degree coming out of a HS which typically sends kids to the military, minimum wage jobs, or a certificate program in HVAC repair.
I can live with that.
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I note that faculty are typically important stakeholders in the admissions process, and teacher recommendations are typically targeting some of the things faculty care about, namely what it is like to have this applicant as a student.
It is certainly possible, likely I would say, that some students who actually were really great to have in class get only normally good recommendations instead. Of course that wonât be a barrier to them getting into lots of very good colleges if they have very good academic and other qualifications.
But if you are looking at the most selective collegesâwell, if they can afford to fill up their admit classes with students who have mostly gotten really glowing recommendations, why wouldnât they? Again they may in theory be missing some applicants who would also be extraordinarily pleasing to their faculty, but they donât know which of their applicants with merely good recommendations would be like this, so . . . .
And as usual, whether this is âfairâ is not really a concern of theirs. They do want to be ethical, but otherwise they have a job to do, and again I think their standard attitude is if a great kid does not get admitted to their college because of merely having good recommendations, that kid will still go to some other very good college anyway.
Which of course is how all this is actually relevant to the OP. We donât know what this other kidâs recommendations looked like or whether that was an important factor in this collegeâs decisions. But whatever it was, it wasnât really an issue of fairness, it was an issue of them thinking that kid was a good bet to satisfy the priorities of one or more groups of stakeholders in their admission process.
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