<p>Correct, but I don’t think the Associate Provost at Northwestern University should make fun of denied kids. I thought they are a bunch of professionals over there!</p>
<p>Don’t take this personally. Just move on and don’t look back. Every kid gets rejected from somewhere if they are reaching a bit, which they should be doing. </p>
<p>As long as your kid blooms where he is planted, that’s all that matters.</p>
<p>This seems pretty different from the Penn case. It doesn’t look like this person was making fun of applicants’ essays or qualifications. It appears, in this case, that the admissions officer was keeping a file on calls from parents and guidance counselors who had decided to throw their weight around, make threats, etc. If these folks really said things like, “Go to $%%!” “I’ll call my %$^&ing Senator!” “You’ll never get another applicant from my school,” and “I know Pat Ryan!” they deserve to be made fun of. I don’t think that the OP has anything to complain about, unless s/he was one of the pushy parents being ridiculed.</p>
<p>Additionally, as far as I can tell, this was all kept in house. The OP’s friend has, most likely, breached confidentiality and is the one who is really causing these parents to be embarrassed (though I noticed that names are not included). The leak may also be a violation of FERPA, though I’m not sure about this at all.</p>
<p>The guy created a new drop down menu in their online contact system for “angry calls” and had a set of pre-defined keywords ranging from a couple of common vulgarities to the name of one of y’all’s senators. I laughed. But I’m also a horrible person who reads Admissions Problems regularly.</p>
<p>When you look at the other photos on the right hand side of the page, it would seem that they have made a category on their internal computer systems for “angry calls from parents and counsellors” with various subcategories including “I know Pat Ryan”, “**** you” and “I’m calling my senator”. </p>
<p>Surely this is just a spot of office humour? When people go out of their way to give staff abuse (and I’ve been on the receiving end of abuse from members of the public more times than I care to count, though not in a college admissions context) it’s unsurprising that the staff will use humour to get them through the day.</p>
<p>I agree, if admin adding a category for angry calls, with common complaints is the problem you have OP, sorry but I don’t see that as being a problem either. My guess is that they created those categories because those are actually common threats that they get. The problem isn’t that someone created the category, the problem is that someone created the need for it to be done.</p>
<p>I actually LOVE this! As someone who deals with these kinds of phone calls every day, I could use the following system for incoming messages: “For abusive jerks, Press 1; for threatening, scary people Press 2; to whine, Press 3…” OP, your child will be better off if you just move on with your disappointment and find happiness and opportunity in another place…</p>