<p>Re post #48 by Nrdsb4, that was my comment that you quoted, that I didn’t think that admissions personnel should “completely dismiss” the disappointment of highly qualified students who are rejected. As I mentioned “upthread,” I have only good things to say based on local experience with NU admissions.</p>
<p>bclintonk mentioned an acquaintance who works in admissions at Swarthmore, and used to “lose sleep” over rejecting applicants, but now just thinks that they will go to another top school instead. I think that person will come close to dismissing the disappointment of applicants, if he/she continues very much further along the same trajectory.</p>
<p>If your S/D is admitted to a good fraction of the schools to which he/she applied, and so are all of their friends, you may think everything is “hunkey dorey” and nobody should react to a rejection with disappointment, since the prudent applicant will still have multiple good options. If your S/D is admitted ED to his/her top choice, you might have a hard time empathizing with a student who was not so lucky.</p>
<p>Again, I am not defending the parents–definitely not! Nor am I criticizing NU specifically. However, I do think that some of the dealing with disappointed and even angry parents comes with the territory in admissions. Doesn’t it?</p>
<p>If students are applying to reaches as well as matches and safeties, they will most likely feel the sting of rejection even if they end up happy when it’s all said and done. Disappointment “comes with the territory” of applying for college, does it not?</p>
<p>They get over it…unless their parents continue to make a big freaking deal out of it. </p>
<p>Dealing with angry parents and verbal abuse may come with the territory, but that doesn’t mean admission staff can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t be able to object to it and vent about it. This was not a huge deal and the OP made it sound like the staff was making fun of students…NOT TRUE.</p>
Sure. And so does grousing about it. You have to keep the grousing behind the curtain, of course, which is why in this situation I mainly fault whoever leaked.</p>
<p>I don’t think that anyone should be particularly disappointed if rejected by a true reach. Personally, I’d give a student who is exceptionally well qualified on all grounds, but who is rejected by the HYPSM-category of schools a free pass to feel disappointed.</p>
<p>In one regard, I wonder about NU’s admissions policies. From what I’ve gathered from CC, they have been rejecting a higher fraction of the IMSA applicants (Illinois’s special math-science high school). Perhaps this goes along with their reduction in admissions rate overall, so there’s nothing unusual about it. But if the shift for IMSA applicants is larger than the general shift, then I would wonder about it.</p>
<p>The parents are one thing. The GCs calling and saying that NU would never get another applicant from their school? What’s that about?</p>
<p>My opinion: Elite universities buy mailing lists, and maybe hire marketing firms, and I don’t know what all else, to generate mass mailings to entice students to apply. Every fall there are naive first time parents posting about HYP “recruiting” their child. I have to believe that is the point of the mailings. Even intelligent and otherwise sophisticated and worldly parents fall for this, ime.</p>
<p>When someone accepts a job in a college admissions office where only a tiny fraction of the solicited applications are successful, it is probably a pretty good guess you’ll have to be dealing at times with an extremely ticked-off public. </p>
<p>The behavior of the parents in the OP is inexcusable, but understandable imho. The behavior of the admissions office is inexcusable and unprofessional, again imho. I want to emphasize unprofessional. I don’t care how badly applicants, parents, teachers or guidance counselors behave - I believe the admissions counselors need to behave politely and professionally or look for another position.</p>
<p>Seriously? It’s “understandable” for parents to call admissions staff and yell at them, curse at them, threaten to use their contacts to hurt their careers, etc.? I actually don’t understand that at all. Would NEVER have occurred to me to do that.</p>
<p>Cursing at people and yelling at them is harassment in my book. These parents probably didn’t give their names, but if they did, NU would have been well within their rights to file a harassment complaint. Sorry…harassment is in the eye of the recipient.</p>
<p>But it’s TRUE - the rejected applicants will most likely go on to other very good colleges. It’s unfortunate that these colleges only have room for 10% of applicants, but once they’ve sent out nicely-worded rejection letters, what else do you expect the adcoms to do? What good does their losing sleep do? </p>
<p>How CAN these adcoms “take on” the hurt of the 20,000 students they turned down? They can’t. They just can’t. At one point they have to draw their own personal line – they try their best, they make their best decisions in light of what they know and how applicants present themselves, and they’re sincerely sorry that there are more great kids out there than they have beds for – but at the end of the day, how do you expect them to “bleed” for all these kids? What does that “bleeding” look like? I expect them to be polite and courteous, but there’s also a point at which enough is enough and they have to distance themselves. Any professional has to.</p>
<p>My guess is that the OP is one of the parents who was made fun of – who threatened, or cursed, or whatever. The OP doesn’t strike me as the type who would have reacted with equanimity.</p>
<p>You’ve got it all wrong, Pizzagirl–the parents who are angry about this were just trying to obtain justice for their unfairly rejected children. The mockery only proves that they were right.</p>
<p>Oh my goodness, I’ve heard stories from friends who work/have worked in Admissions offices. I used to find them difficult to believe but no longer. It’s amazing how some parents react to their children being rejected. Truly amazing. At one school, they eventually had to get a restraining order against a parent who became increasingly threatening. I agree with pizzagirl, I would bet that the OP was one of the badly behaved parents who was discussed by the admissions staff.</p>
<p>Working in the medical field, I second what Pizzagirl wrote. We MUST distance ourselves from our patients or we would all become clinically depressed or worse. We cannot take on their pain or the pain of the families or we would not be able to give them proper care.</p>
<p>And yes, when we are stressed from being blamed for things beyond our control, verbally abused by patients or family members who have no idea what they are talking about and have zero medical knowledge, and are not appreciated for the good things we do manage to do, we sometimes sit in the break room and let off steam. This is called being a fallible human being. I personally would never write anything down, but I guess if someone wanted to film us in our private moments and release it out of spite, we wouldn’t always come off so well, but most of the people I’ve worked with really do have a passion for helping people. But we’re not perfect and don’t like being treated badly any more than anyone else would.</p>
<p>Several times, here on this thread, admissions committee members have been compared to medical professionals. In my family of origin most of the men were doctors, as were most of their (male) friends. I was taught from an early age that patients were never discussed in public settings, nor in family settings, only ever with other professionals in consultation. I never knew who my father’s patients were unless they told me themselves. When I left home 40 years ago and went out into the world, I did learn this was not a universal standard of behavior. Maybe it is an unrealistic standard, but it is what I was taught to see as the norm, not as something exceptional.</p>
<p>I don’t see how any behavior, no matter how outrageous, on the part of parents, students, teachers, guidance counselors excuses unprofessional behavior on the part of the admissions committee. Maybe they have to call security or get restraining orders or have someone arrested. I am pretty sure this can still be handled in a professional manner.</p>
<p>Re Pizzagirl #68: I posted earlier that I don’t think that the admissions personnel should be losing sleep over rejecting applicants. Nor do I think that they need to take on their hurt. I think that if they are sincerely sorry about the well qualified applicants that they wind up rejecting–as PG suggests–that’s where there reaction should be.</p>
<p>There’s some distance between being sincerely sorry, and an “Oh, whatever” type of reaction. Or “This is America!” </p>
<p>If the admissions personnel are excusing their rejections of highly qualified applicants on the grounds that they will most likely go on to other very good colleges–well, this is “most likely” the case, but I think there will inevitably be a few good applicants whose available choices are not so good, unless they are willing to take a gap year.</p>
<p>I haven’t noticed whether anyone has dealt with my example of the IMSA student who wanted to go to Northwestern for nanoscience.</p>
<p>It seems to me that quite a few of the posters who think that the particular university does not matter so much are taking a long view, that there are many routes to success, and one can follow many different careers. True enough. But if you look at things in terms of the university experience itself, the various colleges are not actually interchangeable.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t excuse the behavior of the parents. I guess I have a different reaction to the admissions lists, if they are just tallying by category vs. if they are tracking and identifying specific people who called (in the absence of actual threats).</p>
<p>Also, despite all of my posts, I am not encouraging wallowing in the disappointment. However, I think it is healthier for the student to have his/her disappointment honestly acknowledged, and to have some time to get over it, rather than being forced to drop it prematurely or keep it bottled up. After a little time, the student can look at the other options with a better frame of mind.</p>
<p>This thread was started in late May. NU notifies students of acceptance/rejection in late March. Nevertheless, OP doesn’t seem to be able to stop wallowing. It’s been 2 months. Long past time to move on, IMO.</p>
<p>I recall on one of the very first college visits I did with my oldest kid, we got to the admissions office and they were only running tours that day and no information sessions, as they usually do. I asked why there were no information sessions and they replied that the admissions decisions had just gone out and that the adcoms were very busy taking calls from parents. In my naivety, I was like, “huh?” Why would parents call a college if their kid was rejected? Rejections go with the territory! And at very selective colleges, highly qualified students are rejected all the time. Sure, a student or parent can feel disappointed. But angry? Vindictive? Calling the adcoms? Absurd!</p>
<p>I find it fascinating that the OP started a thread here, and did three posts on this thread only. Gotta wonder how many other sites she/he has joined so that she/he could do the same. Spreading leaked news…</p>
<p>Yeah, ok, gloworm, you are right–April + May is really more than I was thinking of, in terms of the time needed to get over it. On the other hand, I suspect that the screen shot was leaked recently, which clearly revived old feelings.</p>
<p>Maybe NU should consider rewriting its rejection letter? The recent drop in their acceptance rate may have been accompanied by rejection of a number of students who were projected to get in. (N.B.: I am certain that PG would be admitted under any standards.) But assuming that there was actually a change in standards along with the drop in rate, as opposed to just an increase in applications in the “reject” category, then they are probably experiencing some reaction to the change. In these circumstances, it is hard to know what is “normal” in terms of the number of incoming phone calls. I might have suggested comparing with The University of Chicago, which has also had a sharp recent drop in acceptance rate, but I suspect that there are some personality differences between the applicants, which might not make it so useful as a point of reference.</p>