Northwestern University did not learn

3girls3cats
Sun, 02 Jun 2013 12:58:55 +0000

Having worked in consumer mediation for many years, I’ve seen predictable patterns in people’s reactions to disappointment. To keep from becoming too jaded and unwilling to listen to people, our office did have humorous scripts and shorthands to categorize demanding/unreasonable/obnoxious people. It really did help to laugh some and blow off steam. I’m sure it works the same way in college admissions.

I did get a kick out of two different sets of influential and wealthy parents who reacted with indignation–indignation!–when their children were deferred in the early round to a certain Ivy. I have no idea how the admissions office reacted and I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that reaction but we parents at the high school were more than a bit taken aback. The thing is, in both these cases, the intervention worked. I suspect that the brokering wasn’t done with the ordinary admissions officers. Even more reason for admissions officers to complain about over the top parents.