First, let me say for me this topic isn’t about elite schools and the OP agreed. It also isn’t necessarily about getting denied. It’s about a process that people can find stressful for various reasons. No, parents and students aren’t always blameless, but neither are the colleges. And great for you if you have years of experience dealing with schools or know how to research and find the “real” resources for your information. Most of us aren’t you - I know, shame on us.
Are parents and students idiots for not always knowing about EA and ED and need blind and meets need and holistic and showing interest( to an absurd degree) and hooks?
Obviously to some they are, which says a lot about you.
There’s a huge learning curve for many when dealing with college admissions, especially for the first time. Especially coming from a place that lacks a lot of the advantages of those who can pay for a lot of perks out of the gate. Yes - it can be stressful. Doesn’t mean there aren’t some who create unnecessary stress.
Is it a regional thing?
D graduated in '18 and the college process was definitely not stressful for her, nor was HS in general. (There is a difference between hard work and feeling stressed). Most students were looking for merit $ in their college search. Maybe we were fortunate to live in a state with lots of regional colleges (that most people on CC would never have heard of) but the vast majority of D’s class stayed in state and followed the $, even turning down T20 acceptances. Many of those regional schools have rolling admission. Lots of friends applied to ONE school, got in in October and were done. The kids didn’t talk to each other about the process until “wear your college shirt to school day” in May. No one wanted to make anyone else feel badly if they were deferred/denied/wait listed.
The vast majority of their parents also went to schools in-state and became doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, consultants, etc… so people didn’t feel like they had to leave the state to be successful.
Kids also heard the message from day 1 that competitive college admission was likely to result in rejections and to not take it personally. GCs encouraged students only to have 20% of their applications go to reach schools. (The one student we know that got totally burned blew off the GC’s advise and went for all reach and one safety…he’s at his safety which he swore he’d transfer out of the second he could, but is actually loving it and thriving). In our GC meeting, we spent all of 2 seconds talking about the 2 reach schools on D’s list and the rest of the hour talking about the match and safeties to make sure they really were categorized properly.
I saw a well adjusted group of kids, working yard, enjoying their senior year, and now being successful and happy wherever they landed for college.
As a transplanted Northeasterner, we’ve found the Midwest to be much more laid back. Maybe this is true for college admission as well???
I did a quick search and did find this older article that says people on the east coast report the highest stress levels: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2011/region. There is also a more current mental health rating that shows most of the NE states in the top 10 for mental illness of any kind. Maybe this trickles down to kids too.
@momofsenior1 Don’t think it’s a regional thing. Such a fine line between working hard and feeling stress, a line that is different for each individual. IMO stress is a factor that drives some people to work hard.
We live in the same general area as you, and I can attest that my kids’ high school is an intense scene with many kids feeling serious pressure throughout high school, which ramps up even further with the college app process.
It’s a high achieving school, lots of successful parents who push their kids, and high rates of student depression/anxiety, with many kids in psychotherapy. Many students share their application lists and at least in D19’s experience it was hard to get away from all the college chatter and posturing, even in her friend group.
So high school culture thing? D’s school was a Catholic school. Big focus on service/mission and strong feeling of family within the school. Definitely more of a collaborative vs competitive environment.
Read a lot of apps and you see an admirable resilience among so many. In fact, resilience is one of the factors sought by elites. They know their programs can have a high bar, including based on the level of classroom peers. They look for companion traits, as well. Much more than just stats and titles.
Never heard of some red yellow green marking. We read what a kid chooses to present, in record and in his writing. These reflect choices and thinking. No “computer system…assesses the applicant’s interest in the school.” We do it. A system record does show how many from the hs historically applied, were admitted, and enrolled, but it’s NO robo screening. It’s context.
I advocate a digging. Not promoting what you or someone else heard or think you heard.
As for, “participating in an unpredictable, unknown and often arbitrary” process, if that’s what sends any kid into anxiety, don’t wait for college results to tend to it. Don’t think you place your kid into the college app process and ignore his reactions, then wait all summer for the college to take care of it.
Don’t willingly set him or her up for the expectation it’s corrupt. We’re the parents. Set the right and reasonable tone.
But most of all, as another poster emphasized in another thread, use critical thinking. Not judgments and hearsay.
It’s stressful if you are looking to get into colleges that have selective admissions standards or you meds a certain amount of money from financial aid or scholarships to get one you want.
I worked in an area where if those kids did not accepted to a “sleep away college” with enough money to swing it, their choices were on line colleges or having to get to the “local” community college which was 30 minkes away somehow.public transportation options were limited and most of them had no access to a car regularly. It was part time job and part time college if they didn’t get accepted to a school with enough money.
Many are not knowledgeable about the process and have no clue how to get the info that could optimize their chances. Not from their parents and the school College counseling is poor.
I think what @roycroftmom is referring to is the use of predictive analytics in the admission process. For some schools they use this to best target kids likely to attend (managing yield). Maybe the tippy tops aren’t using data in this way because the yields are already high.
One example-at least as of 2 cycles ago, every app in the door at Dickinson gets put into their analytic model based on the factors important to Dickinson’s yield…this is done before anyone reads the app. The model puts apps in deciles—from high to low likelihood of attending. Then, the reviews begin from there. Apps in the low deciles (less likely to attend) aren’t getting the same reviews as those in the high deciles.
OTOH that process is opaque, while on the other hand, the presentation that details this practice is readily available on youtube.
@momofsenior1 - I’m midwest, and I just from reading on this site, I’ve decided that I’m very thankful it’s not in our culture here to have any stress about college admissions/prestige. none. Sure, it’s cool for kids to go somewhere out of state; I’ve had two kids go through two different school districts; neither felt any stress. It’s just not a thing. AND I (being slightly competitive ) am thankful for that! It has been interesting watching others who are transplants from other states. I didn’t quite understand their thought process until I discovered this website.
I don’t see why the colleges are the target of all this certain anger. Why not the high schools and the testing system, where you wait all year for AP results? And where a single teacher can affect grades.
Pick safeties well.
This isn’t about some secret recipe I’m privy to. Or some rules you think they handed me, that you don’t get to see. It’s an application process and like most of those, you do your best and hope for the best. After D1 applied, I said, “Now it’s in their hands.” But well before that, we were looking at what mattered to her targets. We weren’t acting like it’s inscrutable.
Whether you aim high or not, try to learn what matters. It’s both a life skill and a help. Don’t just declare it impossible.
Lehigh was also very upfront about yield protection. There were articles published about how they track demonstrated interest and how much higher yield is for students who make on campus visits.
One part of the “research” for schools that made D’s college list was a fairly intensive google news search on the universities. For better or worse, some schools had enough negative press that they were dropped from her list. For example, UIUC didn’t make my D’s list for even a visit because of their budget issues. They have a great department for her major but it was a big turn off for her. The same research highlighted that Lehigh wants to feel and witness the love.
My alma mater also closely tracks yield and it’s one of their big talking points to alum as they struggle to reach out to an ever growing number of applicants.
We found Naviance helpful in viewing acceptance activity from my sons’ high schools on a macro level. The schools were large enough that the data set was actually useful. Certain universities just didn’t take kids from our schools, no matter what the stats. The schools knew the students would go elsewhere. Armed with that info, my sons adjusted lists their accordingly.
I would have been a lost soul had I not found CC after S1’s sophomore year. I googled looking for info about Harvey Mudd, which a parent friend and teacher had both suggested to my son. CC came up in the mentions. Sheer dumb luck! FInding CC also saved us a bunch of $$ as well. We had been considering an admissions advisor, but was not finding anyone who knew about the local magnet programs. They were more focused on schools in areas that were much less economically diverse. CC helped us weigh the issues and make better decisions.
Am wondering if the initial “nanny-nanny- booboo”,tongue sticking out at the colleges tone in the initial post may be influencing the tone of several of the additional posts here. Just conjecturing. CC has many knowledgeable and experienced posters here. Rather than throwing shade at them, perhaps some, especially those who are just going through or just finished the cycle for the first time and may be licking some wounds or praising above or both, might find a more congenial conversation more helpful. This process is stressful for many— parents, applicants and college staff.
There’re plenty of blames to go around:
- College rankings that cause applicants and their families to chase “prestige”;
- Testing system that encourages repeated tests;
- Colleges that encourage unqualified and under-qualified students to apply (by making their admission standards opaque enough that these students appear to “qualify”) in order to make themselves to appear more selective, and thus more “prestigious”;
- Parents who put their kids into activities these kids have no interest in, just for the sake of college applications (some even go into debt to finance these activities, as another current thread on CC indicates).
If the OP didn’t want to talk about “super selective schools” maybe she shouldn’t have brought them up.
- I don't think being limited to 5 applications that are identical no matter which school you're applying to and having admissions based primarily on score cutoffs sounds less stressful than our system.
- "Qualified" in the US isn't a hard stats cutoff even though many people seem to wish it was. Having higher stats than another student in the same range doesn't make your student more qualified. You qualify for acceptance or you don't.
- I haven't seen stats for US mental illness rates or causes compared to the UK, and none have been provided here so I can't comment.
- If colleges deem activities frivolous, they aren't considered for admission. If they're considered for admission, colleges don't consider them frivolous.
I agree jym that some here definitely need to check their tone. And on that note - I’m out.
You should reread @QuantMech’s post on Oxbridge’s interviews. They’re not about scores. BTW, US colleges have cutoff scores too. They just don’t tell you.
Who said “qualifications” should be based on stats alone?
No one knows what’s frivolous. The colleges don’t tell you. And besides, the flavors keep changing so theses parents keep chasing.
They change because the needs of the school to compose a class change every year. One year they may need bassoon players, the next they may want someone for a math competition.
The limited number of applications in the British system does not really affect the stress level in my observation. It does mean (or used to mean) that a student cannot apply to both Harvard and Cambridge.
The real stress-reducer in the British system of university admissions is the relatively high level of predictability of the outcomes. Occasionally A level results fall short of the grades required to secure admission, and there can be surprises in that regard, but the outcome is academically based.
lookingforward often emphasizes personal traits in discussing what the US colleges are looking for–for example, resilience and “companion traits” in post #124. These are personal characteristics. For that reason, I don’t fault a US student with outstanding academic qualifications for taking it personally if he/she is rejected. Because the admissions in the UK are very largely academically based, students do not feel as though admission is a judgment on them as a person.
In my experience, the British universities have all of the liveliness of US universities, and they have full communities. The orchestras, theatrical groups, and choirs are filled. So are numerous student interest groups, across a wide range of topics. They manage to assemble vibrant communities without looking for “fit” so much. They do also consider and admit students whose previous academic experiences have not been as strong as the mainstream–but Oxford, at least, offers these students an additional pre-university year at the university itself, so they actually have time to come up to speed.
How is it stressful for the college admission staff, @jym626? No one other than the enrollment manager suffers if the college wrongly estimates yield, and short of actually accepting a bribe, the actions of admissions officers are unreviewable and unaccountable (Well, absent class action litigation as in the Harvard case, I should qualify)
Do some google searches @roycroftmom, you can find detailed accounts of what admissions work entails. A few observations:
Admissions/enrollment dept leaders and staffers alike are at risk of being fired for missing target numbers (applicants, yield, regional, etc). There are many metrics that each department tracks and every year many admissions department experience significant turnover, some leave by choice, others are forced out.
Admissions staff work long hours, travel frequently, and earn modest salaries—factors that can be stressors for employees
I don’t think it’s fair to say that AO actions are unreviewable and unaccountable—none of them are making admission decisions in a vacuum—there are multiple reads of applications across the AO team with some in a paired format, and multiple team meetings to discuss applicants.