@MusakParent Her stats also made it into UC Berkeley and UCLA. But I raised her with traditional Asian values and the thought of her being around the more liberal Asian population in SoCal scares me. I’d much rather have her be in CO, where there won’t be so much temptations from sunny beaches, dance clubs, and alcohol. I’ve had some friends from high school who went to SoCal for college and became too “outgoing.”
You might be surprised to learn there is alcohol in Colorado. In fact the Coors brewery is visible from anywhere on the Mines campus. I’m a big fan of Mines, but it isn’t the top rated aerospace program, not even the top in Colorado. CU is rated higher.
It’s doesn’t matter whether you “believe” need-blind is legit.
OP, you have many misunderstandings here, which could have been checked, especially if these matter to you.
No, the colleges do not run “background checks on applicants’ FB and other online profiles…” Nor on parents. LOTS of kids have issues with a parent.
You don’t know kids who had their own or family problems, but of course they exist. You just don’t know them.
Questbridge is not a guarantee of an admit.
Berkeley is not Southern CA. And for heaven’s sake, there are plenty of conservative (and/or very religious) Asian families/kids in all of California. Lots of kids dedicated to their academics, research, and internships- NOTbeaching and dancing.
Where do these ideas come from?
And why apply to UCB and UCLA if you dismiss them so easily?
@lookingforward I understand that everybody has different faith and values. It is not my place to impose my personal values upon anyone, but as a mother, it is my responsibility to protect my daughter to the best of my ability. My uncles, aunts, and cousins have been living in SoCal for 38 years and they’re still living there now. I lived there many years ago. One of my cousins is a Berkeley alumnus. One of my aunts, still living there, is an UCLA EE Ph.D. alumnus, class of 1987. My 3 best friends, from Ramona Elementary (Alhambra), graduated from Cal Poly Pomona, Cal State, and UC Irvine. Some of my closest friends from middle school are currently living in LA and San Diego as well. My personal former CA residence, relatives, and closest friends are my resources.
My brother also moved back to CA and worked for 2 years in Air Traffic Control in San Diego.
I hereby thank you to everyone who have taken your time to answer my question. Sigh…I highly doubt that we will ever come to any evidential conclusions, unless we were a former admissions faculty member. Please forgive me for having a lower-than-average EQ in communication. I mostly operate out of such direct rationale that I often times omit many words and feelings, responding with such straightforward expressions that may come across as bluntness. It was not my intention to withhold my personal life experience or my relatives’ and friends’ residential status. I thought it was just irrelevant to the question about which I’m curious. This question simply has been nagging in the back of my mind for so many months. Thank you to all once again for your generosity to spare me the time for this question.
Forever Grateful,
YellowYung83
Anything less than perfection is a cause for “shame”? It’s not unusual for students to come to CC for help when they’re struggling to meet parents’ unrealistic academic expectations. They sometimes feel they have no place to go and nobody to talk to because their parents can’t understand. Depression and its side effects are a huge problem on college campuses. Unless you’re perfect, perhaps you should think about dialing it back a bit.
I was going to write the same thing about the scores. It seems to reflect a misunderstanding about scores in general, and what colleges want.
Anyway, about MusakParents comments about “need blind” schools: it is easy to cherry pick data. Actually 50% of Harvard students get financial aid (It used to say 70% got some sort of aid, so they have cleaned that up) and 20% pay nothing at all. And there are no loans in financial aid packages so 100% graduate debt free.
Your daughter’s scores are prose-worthy! Please do not shame her. Just happened to watch something on the increased rates of depression, anxiety and suicide in teens. The pressure on them is unreasonable. Reward her successes!!
ack autocorrect-- praiseworthy!!
…no one asked about extended family. OP misunderstood some points, including how FA works, what they want to see about both parents. It’s not his ethics or record.
@MusakParent I think you have a point as if offered a spot at an Ivy, students with wealthy parents who can easily pay sticker price and poor parents who have $0 EFC are more likely to accept and improve yield compared to students whose parents have to worry about paying bills every semester. Ivy adcoms have enough experience to be able to judge that by the clues on the common application, they don’t need to look at financial aid forms to predict that.
OP also has a misunderstanding about who exactly attends Ivies. There are plenty of students with parents whose backgrounds are questionable - but it was the students, not their parents, who applied to attend those schools. If you were such a student, would you make your parents’ background known? I think not! You would do everything in your power to distance yourself from that background. So she may in fact know such people, and not even realize she does.
This sounds like an overbearing parent who is way too involved in her daughter’s application process. She wants her daughter to attend a school with a strong STEM program, and dismisses the Ivies as being weak, yet won’t allow her daughter to apply to top STEM schools because she doesn’t have perfect scores? She dismisses other top schools because of possible cultural contamination from liberals who spend time at the beach. She has her daughter apply through Questbridge, and is upset that at least one school attempted to get more financial information. It almost makes me wonder of she conspired with Dad to remove him from the picture so she would be eligible for that “zero” EFC.
I hope the OP’s daughter attends school away from her mother, and gets out from under her thumb. Maybe she can go to Colorado and become a ski-bum.
Your daughter’s ancestors are very far from perfect, on both sides of her family.
That bit about a disgrace to her ancestors’ altars … I though it was a joke. Then I realized it wasn’t.
An Asian HS student near where I live recently took her own life as a result (or at least partly as a result) of parental expectations and shaming like this. Shame doesn’t motivate. Shame doesn’t make you better.
Based on this, your daughter is not the one bringing shame to your ancestors’ altars.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread. What else is there left to say that has not been said?