Not Accepted to Any Desired Colleges? What Was Decision?

Johnny523
Fri, 10 Jan 2020 03:29:32 +0000

Nhatrang:

You know, the “message” here on CC is soooo different from what I observed IRL. I’ve known almost every senior who graduated from our HS for the last 4-6 years. Everyone (parents, GCs, friends) has beaten into the kids’ head so much that they have no chance at any of the top schools, may as well don’t even try, and the majority didn’t.

I think this is highly dependent on the area where you live and the specific high school. My kids go to a very diverse high school in terms of economic and social class. The GCs need to spend most of their time with the kids who are on the fringes to graduate, and the kids who want to go to college but come from families that don’t know anything about college admissions. They don’t have much time to work with the kids who might end up applying to 8 safeties and no reaches - the GCs see the kids are applying to college so that’s good enough.

Conversely, I have friends whose kids got a very UMC school and it’s more typical of people who post here - a lot of encouragement and pressure to apply to reach schools and not enough consideration of safeties.

I understand the disappointment you expressed in seeing kids not being encouraged to aim higher. At the same time, the “CC message” is just as bad when you see all the posts in April from kids and parents of kids who didn’t get in to any of their reaches or matches (that might not have been more reaches than matches), and only got into a safety they don’t like or nowhere at all.