<p>DD is a very different child than DS - much more social and well-rounded in terms of interests and activities. She is also very independent. She will definitely follow her own path and any attempt to “program” her, however well intentioned, will not work. If I can just relax and let her develop in whatever direction she chooses, it should be fun. I just don’t want her to do nothing. She has a couple of friends who aren’t motivated academically and don’t seem to have any outside interests, whether it’s sports, music, whatever. While they are nice girls, the influence of friends can be pernicious.</p>
<p>I guess that the most important thing is that parents realize that each child is different. My youngest son sometimes feels the pressure of being his older brother, and he’s told me that, too. We live in a small community, so everyone, it seems, has heard of his older brother and what he’s done academically and community-service wise. One of my youngest’s teachers called him repeatedly by his older brother’s name one day. The kicker is that she had never met the older one!</p>
<p>At least the youngest one can laugh about it.</p>
<p>I have two children. My older one is a high school sophomore, who has not figured out what she wants and how to do it. She has respectable grades and will probably do just fine on her SATs when she takes them. She does not know what colleges she wants to attend, nor does she particularly care where she ends up (naturally we are not even considering Ivies). My younger daughter (9 years old) has spent the past 3 months carefully poring over her sisters college books looking for colleges. She already has her choices narrowed down to 3 (only one of them an Ivy).</p>
<p>My children are different and their approach to college selection and admission will be different.</p>
<p>I have real reservations about the contents of the first post. “Lesser Ivy” : Why this term? It sounds like such a consolation prize for terrific colleges, and as has been pointed ad infinitum on CC, the Ivies are all quite different and do not fit every student, no matter how stellar that student may be.</p>
<p>I don’t see the point of trying to groom a child so that said child can aspire to the colleges that an older sibling did not get into. The child should aspire to a college that best suit that child, and no one else. It appears that child #2 is different from child #1. Focus on child #2’s strengths and interests. There will be a college–many colleges–, that will fit child#2.</p>
<p>Every kid is different, and as a result, every kid’s college search is different. I (as the first one in my family to go through the process) applied top-ranked science schools with a heavy research focus, and ended up at MIT. Stepbrother wanted to stay local, and only applied to in-state publics. Sister wanted a school with serious students and strong theater and/or film and creative writing programs, which meant that her applications overlapped with mine, but not entirely. Littlest Brother has several years to go, but is likely to want large state schools with strong sports programs that everyone rallies around and where he won’t be too hosed academically.</p>
<p>D1 went to a “lesser” UAA school, but less can be more! Chill pill anyone?</p>
<p>olf fort</p>
<p>Part of the problem with the ranking system of USNews is how much weight is given to peer assessment. So some schools are highly regarded because people have heard of them so they get a higher PA so they get a higher rank so they are more highly regarded. You see how circular that is? Of couse the Ivy League schools are all good, but their importance has been blown all out of proportion by these ranking systems. I’m with ILikeDice. Too much pressure and for what? There are thousands of good schools.</p>
<p>Having just finished with the third (and last-phew!), it was like starting from scratch each time. The only thing any of my kids had in common was a disdain for anything with an Ivy or Ivy-like label. That left several thousand schools to look at. </p>
<p>You are now in the position to forget all about college admissions for a number of years. When the time comes for her to think about it, she will have developed her own talents and desires. Your job will be to help her hone and visit and research schools that may be right for her. That may not include any elite or top colleges, but the search will be just as fun and meaningful for her. </p>
<p>Enjoy the person your child is, not the person you wish they were. Dreaming about what you would like just leads to unnecessary disappointment.</p>
<p>bethievet - you can agree or disagree with the ranking, and even completely discount them when you are making your decision. We did when our daughter decided on Cornell rather than Duke (is higher ranked). But to keep on saying that Ivy league is just a sports league is disgenuine.</p>
<p>If you read my post, I was not advocating for people to just look at ivies, as a matter of fact, I was saying the opposite. I think the ranking is not accurate for some schools or for certain majors, but I think over all it is pretty accurate. Whether you want to use it to make your college decision is a different matter.</p>
<p>My child #1 made the college selection/admission easy: she knew what she wanted, got accepted ED, was done with the drama before her friends even began. </p>
<p>But the lesson I learned watching all of her friends and their college-admission angst – it will be OK. No matter where they go, it’ll be OK. There are many good schools and many good options. There are no guarantees whether you go to an Ivy or to the junior college in town. Success in the generally understood term (doing well in school, graduating, going either into the job market or grad school) is 95% you, not your school. </p>
<p>Child #2 is so different that nothing we did with his older sister will apply. He’s his own man. And that’s a good thing.</p>
<p>This is OP responding from a different computer. By using the term “lesser Ivies” I did not mean to besmirch them. But it seems that folks tend to group Ivies in “more prestigious, less prestigious” groupings. Look at the thread for the Harvard wait-list - many of those “waiting” were admitted to other IL schools or top tech schools such as MIT. As graduates of state universities, DH and I are THRILLED that DS is going to UP. He was initally disappointed because his first choice was Princeton. However I also believe things happen for a reason, and he really liked UP when he visited it (twice) over the last couple of months. So he is finally happy with where he is going, thanks in part to his non-IL friends who slapped some reality into him when they heard where was accepted.
With DD, while I don’t intend to try to program her into an Ivy clone, I hope I can encourage her to develop more of an interest in math, science or engineering. Girls who do well in those subjects in high school and intend to pursue them in college can practically write their own ticket - colleges are very anxious to help more women get into those fields.</p>
<p>The ranking are probably pretty accurate in measuring what they measure, but they can’t tell me which school is best for my–or which school is best along dimensions I (or more importantly, my son) care about.</p>
<p>Look at the acceptance rate for HYPS again. Your next child would have a perfect SAT and be the val and in the state orchestra and still have a great chance of not getting in.</p>
<p>To the OP- do not misinterpret the top school’s interest in girls who want to focus on math and science. It is absolutely not a hook. It is at best a moderate tip factor, i.e. two girls with pretty identical profiles but one has strong Science/math oriented interests and Ec’s, the other a humanities type. In that situation, all things being equal, your math/science daughter gets a second look. </p>
<p>Where the math/science thing counts is below the top tier. Smith, Barnard, Tufts, Northwestern-- that’s where the adcom’s sit up and take notice of a science-oriented female. I would be flabbergasted if Harvard didn’t have their pick of the strongest female math/science students in the country with rejection rates that reflect that. Yale has stated their interest in building their science and engineering departments… but again, if the overall admit rate is 9% and your kids academic interests push the admit rate up to 12-13%… is that meaningful? </p>
<p>Moreover, a strong math/science profile is only meaningful at the top tier schools if the kid has had a chance to take advantage of their natural gifts- if your kid is struggling to keep up with an advanced math class so doesn’t have the bandwidth for Intel, physics olympiad, AIME competitions, a robotics team, etc. the high grades and high scores aren’t going to mean much to the Princeton Adcom.</p>
<p>I have to put a plug in here for going with the natural gifts. Look at some of my posts over the last three years. You will see the tracks of my angst over my second kid’s - my son’s admissions. I worried and anguished because he wasn’t taking the eat high school for breakfast path of my first kid. I used this forum as a kick in the butt, lots of people told me in no uncertain terms to back off my son. I mostly did.</p>
<p>Time came for his admission season, well, first I kept my hands off his applications and his essays. ENTIRELY. Second, his own quirky path, no national anything, no leadership, just following his own interests, at the end of the day on paper oddly enough made a good story.</p>
<p>End result? Good outcome. As good or better than his sister’s. Who had taken the clearer path to ostensibly admissions success. So go figure. Breathe a sigh of relief. And let your kid find her own way. All will likely work out in the end.</p>
<p>A lesser ivy? You have to be kidding.</p>
<p>It is a complete joke to agonize over the difference between a Cornell or Penn and a Yale or Harvard.</p>
<p>For that matter, it is a joke to worry about the difference between a school ranked 25 to 50 and one ranked 1 to 25.</p>
<p>My son is at Cornell, and the idea that he accomplishment at getting in is tarnished because it is a “lesser” ivy is repulsive.</p>
<p>For god’s sake, some people really need to get a life and stop obsessing ceasingly over this stuff.</p>
<p>According to my brother-in-law, a big shot on Wall Street, a ton of the top people are from state schools that some who frequent CC would, at least based upon what I have read, think was the same as going to a online college. </p>
<p>I actually have steered away from CC lately, and now I know why.</p>
<p>D #1 chose a state school. In the fall, D #2 will be attending one of the ‘elite’ schools listed in the top 10 of USNWR. (However, I would have preferred she attended a state school honors college where the class is taught by prof not TA). Where D #3 attends, will be her choice when the time comes. </p>
<p>As parents, we need to treat each child as an individual. Whether he/she attends an Ivy, an elite, a state school, or even comm college, be supportive and encourage him/her to excel in the chosen field of study.</p>
<p>I think what many parents unfortunately fail to recognize is that this whole college process should be about letting the kids forge their own paths. It’s not about bragging rights for the parents. It’s not about parents trying to live out their dreams through their kids. Most importantly, it shouldn’t be about parents acting as dictators by planning out how their kids spend every waking moment of their day in hopes of padding their high school resumes to attach to their future college applications. For crying out loud-whatever happened to letting kids be kids. Too many parents on CC sound like they’re trying to raise some kind of AKC purebred dog to parade around the show ring. I’m not saying that parental involvement isn’t needed. Sometimes it’s a good idea for parents to step back and reflect on why they feel the need to put so much pressure on 13-18 year olds to be the best of the best. I know brilliant successful well balanced adults that went to public state universities as well as not so successful depressed adults that graduated from Ivys and vice versa. It’s the ability, character, possession of common sense, integrity, and self-motivation within the student that will prove to be of more value than the “brand name” of the college from which they graduate.</p>
<p>“But the lesson I learned watching all of her friends and their college-admission angst – it will be OK. No matter where they go, it’ll be OK. There are many good schools and many good options. There are no guarantees whether you go to an Ivy or to the junior college in town. Success in the generally understood term (doing well in school, graduating, going either into the job market or grad school) is 95% you, not your school.”</p>
<p>Truer words were never spoken, and it is a pleasure to see another poster echo what I’ve told my kids over and over. (I’ve got one just graduating college, another a rising h.s. senior.) And I’d add that if you define success as finding happiness and fulfillment in life, as I do, it is 100% you, 0% your school. I’ve never even heard of the book mentioned above (“What High Schools Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know) etc.”), but its full title alone makes my eyes roll back in my head. Absolutely nothing you do to parent to your 13 to 18 year old should be driven by “what colleges are looking for”. My daughter attended a private middle school, our first experience outside of the public school system. One of the first notices that was sent home to me, the parent of a fifth grader, was about an upcoming speaker on the college process. (Probably the same person who wrote that book!) I was horrified, and the school’s obsession with college was one of the things that made us bail for high school. Neither my kids nor I gave college one thought until the middle of their junior years of high school–they were too busy actually living their current lives to plan their future ones, and that was just fine. And while I think this site offers some interesting information, I fear it significantly helps ramp up the hysteria over the college process, and that’s a shame. Go ahead and offer your children broad opportunities to enrich and improve themselves, but to the end of enhancing their lives and enabling their dreams, not packaging them for college.</p>
<p>Back a bit more to the OP’s point, my first born got into his “perfect” college ED, hated it, and transferred after his freshman year. So the big lesson I took away from all this was to just relax about the whole thing. Moreover, second child is a totally different sort, so by necessity the college exploration process is entirely different for her than it was for my son. As with my son, she will be in the driver’s seat, not me. I think the CC parents include a lot of high achieving folks who are used to having a lot of control over everything in their lives. But trying to exercise that kind of control over your kids’ college process, whether you start at age 8, 13 or 17, is a recipe for unhappiness all around. The day they leave for freshman year all your control is gone anyway, so you’ll be a lot saner if you start relinquishing it sooner rather than later.</p>