How to convince parents of reality of acceptance chances?

Parents Forum
41
  1. I don't think it should be that hard to figure out roughly how many kids from Singapore get accepted at a particular college, on average, in any year, or for that matter at all of the colleges to which your parents want you to apply. Assume that a few of them have been accepted for some sort of "hook" reason, and some of them may be coming out of elite U.S. prep schools, so have something of a different path in. Then you and your parents should ask yourselves how clear it is that you are among the top x candidates from Singapore. That should give you a reasonably clear sense of your chances.

I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between your assessment and your parents’. I also suspect that protecting yourself from disappointment is at least as strong a motive with you as protecting your parents from disappointment. You should be honest with them about that.

  1. In truth, you and your parents don't really have different attitudes. You just have a slightly wider view of which U.S. colleges it would be worth paying for vs. NUS, and a stronger sense of the educational benefits of U.S.-style liberal arts curriculum. Those are things on which you should be able to have a rational conversation with your parents. But prepare yourself carefully in advance.
  2. For what it's worth, when my kids were attending the University of Chicago (5-10 years ago), there were lots of students from Singapore there, many of whom had government scholarships. Far more of them than of students from China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. My kids certainly had the impression that UChicago was a top destination for students from Singapore.
42

I was under the impression that the parents wouldn’t pay at all unless the college is an Ivy or the local safety. I hope OP can convince them to be more reasonable. However, I do think s/he should know if the parents are willing to pay for each school s/he applies to and, if so, how much they’re willing to pay. Any schools that cost more than the budgeted amount can immediately be taken off the table when financial aid packages come in.

43

Now that we know the OP is female, it might be work to put Wellesley on the list. Wellesley has had substantial cachet amongst certain Chinese communities for a very long time, since it was the alma mater of the extremely prominent Soong Mei-ling '17, AKA Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Cross-registration at MIT would help, no doubt.

44

Since you are interested in science, why not consider engineering instead? Female applicants, even international ones, have a real advantage in the top schools because the applicant pools is mostly male. Look for schools that have close to a 50-50 gender mix. You can always transfer to a different department if you find it is not for you. Also look at Cal-tech, Cornell, Michigan all of which have stellar reputations.

Michigan has an alumni (all schools) conference in Singapore May 15/16 … http://www.michigan.asia/. There is a reception May 15th eve at the Grand Hyatt - I’d go and ask alumni what there experience was like and take your parents!

45

@TooOld4School, whether being a female applying to engineering is an advantage or not would depend on the school. At the elite schools where the gender ratio of the total applicant pool is balanced overall and it’s easy to change majors, it generally isn’t.

Also, if you are talking about overall, except for the tech institutes, the applicant pool to the elites is 50/50 or leans female.

Being an unhooked female applicant to the elites is generally a disadvantage these days, if anything.

46

From OP: They’re even reluctant to let me apply to other colleges which are great (and very selective) but not well known in Asia (e.g. Rice, Vanderbilt, USC). To them, it’s either I get into a top US college, or I attend our local university (my safety school, but a very decent school, well-respected internationally and one that I’ll be satisfied attending).

I read that as parents not even being interested in Vandy, Rice, or USC, that it was Ivy or bust. That’s why asked if her local school, NUS, was higher on his list. If it is, then why bother having the argument with the parents about applying to those?

If I misunderstood, sorry.

47

Updates: So I went to see my GC today, and… it was pretty depressing. Basically, unless I have a hook, legacy, or an international olympiad medal, my chances of getting into good US colleges are close to nil. I do think that what she said is partially to wake up the uninformed kids out there who think they’re going to get into ivy leagues with Cs and Ds (there are actually quite a lot here haha) but still, it doesn’t look very optimistic.

I was asking her, is that anything I can do in particular to stand out, I mean I’m assuming essays matter a lot, and she just shook her head obscurely. Not very helpful.

Don’t get me wrong, I never assumed the college app system was built on fairness or that it admits purely based on merit - I mean, when demand for a school outweighs supply so much, a college has the right to pick and choose which students it wants. But man, from the pov of an applicant, it sucks to know that my chances are pretty skewed already because of factors I can’t change (race, nationality, legacy).

I went home and had another long, long talk with my parents. Basically, my dad is now almost indignantly insistent that I apply to US colleges anyway (I think he now really wants me to get into one and then shove it in my GC’s face hahaha) and that he’s completely willing to pay all the fees for applications. Whether or not my parents will pay for a school for USC though, depends on a few things - whether I get a scholarship, if USC gives me a merit scholarship… and after a while, my dad admitted that if, by next April, the only US college I get into is USC, he will have to think about it if I think USC is what will make me happiest.

But honestly it feels ridiculously selfish and I probably won’t go to USC, etc. if I don’t get a merit scholarship or local scholarship, because while my parents can afford the cost, it’s still around a quarter of a million dollars (!!!) and my dad would probably have to delay retirement for a couple of years.

At the end of the discussion, we basically decided that if I got a local scholarship, 99% of our problems would be solved haha because I won’t have to worry about the cost, I won’t have to worry about whether the reputation of the college is good locally because I’ll already have a job… ahh, that’s the dream. But because of how the timelines work out, I’ll only know if I get a local scholarship somewhere in next March, so my only option is to apply to the US colleges, and see how things turn out next March when all the decisions come back.

[replies will be in the next post]

48

@MYOS1634 I did consider those two schools, but Georgetown went off the list almost immediately because they take somewhere like 3-4 applicants from my country a year, which is less than Stanford(!!!) if you can believe it. As for Wellesley, I’m not particularly drawn to LACs, and also I think it’s almost literally unheard of over here, which would make convincing my parents even more difficult.

@PurpleTitan Yup, thanks for your reply. I did choose colleges like Vandy, Rice and USC because they offer big merit scholarships to internationals, even though they’re obviously very competitive. USC’s merit scholarships aren’t completely impossible though, because I know a few seniors who got full-tuition or half-tuition scholarships from USC.

@JHS Thanks for your reply! It’s actually surprisingly difficult to find out how many singaporeans there are at certain colleges, especially because my GC told me they don’t allow us to see past year’s stats and data on Naviance… I do know that about 4 go to yale a year, 5-6 to stanford, 3-4 to MIT… don’t really know for the other colleges honestly, but I’m gonna assume that it’s similarly small numbers.

Yup, like I said, if you get a government scholarship, most of your worries vanish away, and you’re pretty much free to go to any decent college you want. It’s definitely something I’m gunning for but again it’s a very competitive scholarship.

49

Essays do matter. Elite schools admit people, not numbers.

50

BTW, while not sure things, you’ll have a decent shot at Cal, UMich, UCLA, and USC. Possibly Vandy as well. Being a non-Ivy in the South means it isn’t on the radar of as many internationals as the Ivies and being almost twice the size of Rice means it will take more internationals than Rice.

51

Here’s the page with Harvard’s info: http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics. (You can search by country and by school. It’s enrollment data, but at Harvard acceptance and enrollment are pretty close.) Basically, it seems to have accepted 4-6 students from Singapore per year, although it may have gone below 4 the past few years. Total Harvard College enrollment has been in the range of 14-22 students.

Cornell has really detailed information: http://www.isso.cornell.edu/about/stats14-15.pdf. There are currently 49 undergraduate students at Cornell from Singapore, roughly 12 per class. The Cornell data suggest that Singapore admissions at all levels have been declining over the past 5 years.

It’s interesting to note that 2/3rds of all Singaporean students at Cornell are undergraduates, while at Harvard only 1/12th are undergraduates.

52

Re: Cornell, aside from the College of Arts & Sciences, please be sure to review the course offerings in Policy Analysis & Managment in the College of Human Ecology. And note that Economics in CAS is extended in the applied direction by business-oriented offerings of the Dyson school in CALS. I imagine CALS will also extend Biology and Biochemistry in applied directions. Courses relating to urban planning in the College of Architecture, Art & Planning may also be of interest to you. A student in the Arts & Sciences College can take courses in any of the other colleges at Cornell, for the most part,. providing he/she has the prerequisites.
Cornell admissions wants to see that applicants have imagined how they might fit in at the university and utilize its resources. Many, or more likely most, students there do wind up taking courses at several of its colleges.

53

I think you can read too much into data about how many students from a given country are at a particular college. The real question is what percentage of students from the country who applied were accepted. It may be that a college which only has a couple of Singaporeans would like to attract more.

54

@monydad I was actually really interested in the policy analysis major at cornell and seriously considered applying to college of human ecology… I’m just sad that they don’t allow double majors across colleges. But I’d be really happy to be able to minor in policy analysis (which is open to CAS majors I think) and take courses in CALS if I could. Yup I’ll definitely make sure to highlight how i intend to make full use of the resources available to me if given the opportunity

55

A few months back, I wrote an essay that I thought would be good for my common app essay. I showed it to a few adults, who edited it, and now looking at it again, it doesn’t sound anything like me. So I decided to start from scratch and try and write a new essay that reflects me and my thoughts… and wow that is difficult.

I know this isn’t the right place to do this, but I was wondering if any of you great people who have given me help and advice would like to read through my (very rough) draft of an essay and give me feedback on the kind of impression you get from it? Please PM if you would like to read my essay, thanks!

56

The post at #13 is a huge stretch. If you’re parents take it that way, they are extemely dense and I’m sorry for you. That’s a perfect analogy to describe your situation. If they are as extreme and as radical and shortsighted as you say, then maybe they do need something that radical.

12 well, me and GMT come from different cultures, so that's two at the very least who don't find it offensive.