I applied to 10 colleges with a typewriter in the early '80s, visited them all, and took the SAT subject tests, SAT and ACT, and did SAT prep. Despite all that, I only got into my 2 safety schools. My HS GC was shocked so she called some of the AOs that she knew to find out why. One of the schools said it was because too many kids from my county applied (Westchester, NY), and another school said they admitted too many kids from my school the prior year. Looking back, it’s so obvious that my junior year grades weren’t up to snuff, but it’s interesting that geographic and school diversity was important back then too.
I didn’t even know they had SAT subject tests in the 80s!! I had never heard of them.
Anyone’s D.C. Are over-reacting whenever asked for college status? My DD didn’t want to set up the portal from schools she applied yet to check on applications status. I knew couple schools already post acceptance on their portals so I kept reminding DD to set up every few days (login information were only sent to her) but she just thinks I am annoying…
Me yesterday morning “Wow - a snow day would be a good time to finish those essays”
DS “Sure”
Me at bedtime “So…no essays?”
Oh well, the Jan 1 apps were submitted on 12/30. I would guess that the 1/15 essays will be done on 1/14. He seems to need the pressure of a deadline but I am so worried we might run into a technical glitch.
It will get done but my blood pressure is going through the roof!
Yeah, my son says, “let me handle it.” He has affordable acceptances, so I should just let it be. But he’s focused on the reachiest of reaches. His acceptances are safeties.
It’s the ones in between, that he applied to as a balanced set of colleges, that he needs to be thorough with. The likely outcome is not the reach. If he ultimately prefers something beyond a safety, competitively ranked schools often care about interest. But he hasn’t been interested in applying to their big scholarships, he has just relied on the merit that the schools award automatically.
I just think it’s a mistake, albeit a mistake he may just have to make. He doesn’t seem to get that the window is now, when he doesn’t have an answer. Once he gets that answer from the reach, it’s all over but the commitment to whoever has accepted him and is affordable.
Being in my own little world, it hadn’t occurred to me that some of you have kids that are still working on apps. Hang in there - this won’t go on forever!
On the issue of “I would never get into the schools I got into back then if I applied today”, I have this observation.
Back in the day the SAT was more of an aptitude test. In other words you showed up at school on a Saturday morning and took the test. No one was taking courses to learn how to take the test, no one was buying books and doing tons of practice tests. You showed up and took it and then you were compared to everyone else who showed up and took the test.
In my 70’s suburban PA high school it was very rare to have kids who scored higher than 1300 or 1400. And the kids that did got into Ivy league schools. My brother had a 1300 something and got into Dartmouth and Yale. I got into Lafayette, Lehigh, and Georgetown with an 1160. Of course neither of us would get into those schools with those numbers today, but I expect that both of us would have the advantage of the courses, and practice tests and would also score higher.
I think that’s true to some extent, @burghdad. Some of the test for the SAT has been dialed down a bit, away from the completely esoteric words that no one would know unless they took latin or just studied a thesaurus in your free time. But, although I din’t think people studied to the extent they do now, I remember my husband took a Princeton review course and also took a number of practice tests before the SAT.
oh why would they announce college acceptances? Our school just has a t-shirt day – i think it’s May Day - where everyone wears their shirts, and it’s published in a year-end newspaper article. Kids have enough pressure without knowing that the person sitting next to you in English is going to the school you were denied from.
@jjkmom I’m sure that I’ve been called annoying more in the last year than in my lifetime!
So interesting to think back. I applied in the 80s too, remember handwriting my essays! I only originally applied to 4 schools (Harvard, Yale, Brown and Williams–can you imagine what CC crowd would say!!). My parents made me add 2 “safeties” (Bucknell and Trinity)-- I still remember how I felt disappointed that they had so little faith in me!! Good lord, the ego of the 17 year old! Got into 5/6 (Harvard said no) and felt vindicated. Ah well, times change and I can’t say that I’d have much chance to have those options if I was applying today. When I went to Yale it cost about 10,000.
My DD’s high school hounded us for acceptances as well as merit awards, they wanted to tout them loud and proud as often as possible - even listed every single one in the grad ceremony program along with the total $ her class was awarded. My DD tends to like to be difficult and would not provide the school with the information, her IB coordinator kept contacting me but I respected DD’s wishes and said nothing. Her name only listed one school next to it when in reality she was accepted to 5 out of 6 applied too.
Back in 1980 I applied to two schools, MIT and Cornell. Had won an ROTC scholarship, so had it paid for. Only I was rejected at both schools. In a depressive funk, I spent the next year at the local college in my home town. Fortunately we moved, so I got a chance to transfer to a big state school in our new home. FInished double major in three years and went onto to PhD at same big state school.
My head just spins as my daughter seems just a feather floating thru this process. She has some really unique activities and strong application packet, if she would just take control instead of drifting thru the process.
Found out the school DD just set up interview for already accepted one girl from DDs high school under early action. Seems like the interview is now just a pointless practice for the other top schools interviews as it’s way unlikely a top school will take two girls from the same small high school.
I have a pretty average kid (to outsiders) - she was looking for a direct-admit nursing program in-state, so that all made it a mostly straightforward application season. There were some schools she dismissed out of hand without visiting, and others have fallen in the standings even after admittance. I think it would be much harder to have a high-stats kid who really could go just about anywhere - how in the world do you narrow it down?
She is currently liking what I call The Little School That Could. She had never heard about it until she was looking into nursing programs, and it turned out two cousins by marriage both went there. One for nursing, one for physical therapy, and they both loved their experiences there. She agreed to go to their honors program competition in the dead of an Ohio winter, so that shows dedication. 
We are still waiting for two nursing program decisions which, ironically, might be announced while she is at the above competition. Mentally, she wants to know what all the admission decisions are before she commits. If one of those admits her, I think it will be a harder choice. And, we wait …
@curiouspup Oh, not only does my son’s school announce every acceptance on the morning announcements…when my son scored well on the ACT - they went to his class and told him and the class, they announced it to the entire school later that day at pep rally…and then the principal announced it to every parent on the sunday night phone call that goes out. He was mortified…the kids have been pretty nice about it all, but really??? They didn’t even ask him if it was ok.
^^That is insane and totally not OK!
@ChattaChia my DS would be mortified. He likes to lay low and rarely talks about college stuff, grades, or test scores. Sometimes the parents here complain about the lack of recognition for academics (or anything besides football) but the opposite extreme would be worse.
omg @ChattaChia that is awful!! Not to mention a violation of his privacy [-X I would complain about it. The ship has sailed for your S, but you can perhaps spare some future teen that horror. My D has kept her scores very tightly controlled. None, and I mean not one, of her friends know her scores. For a while she was so uninterested in the process she simply didn’t know them, so that by the time she did know them, she realized they were considered “high” and she didn’t want the noteriety. So her lips are sealed. 
Oh yeah, we always let the answering machine catch the Sunday night call, and we were standing in the kitchen when it started. She got to the topic of ACT, and was going over the general results…my son says…“she wouldn’t”…we listened on…“she couldn’t”…and on…“she did.” I saved the recording for future laughs…
I had parents who know me text congrats to me…lol
@ChattaChia , I cannot imagine! Our school announces NMSF and will put out a news release for a perfect ACT or SAT, but even then the student assents and is involved, gets their pic taken, etc… Just to announce it like in your case sounds crazy.