@momzilla2D Congrats on your daughter’s choices and thanks for sharing her story. Do you know of others in this GPA range who were accepted ED to UMD? We are in MoCo, MD and I’ve heard of RD outcomes wiping out MoCo students with any GPA below a 4.0. Do you know if ED admits with 3.3 - 3.4? Thanks!
@mom2twogirls I love your sports analogy…
“You put it all out there on the field or court, everything you have and the best that you have. Sometimes everything goes right and you “win”. Sometimes you put all the same stuff out there and you still “lose”.”
Similar to college admissions sports are very personal and it’s hard to accept “defeat” and disappointment. In sports however it is frowned upon when people blame the refs or the rules for the outcome when they loose. People who are defeated at sports and only then claim “it’s rigged” or “the rules are unfair” are displaying poor sportsmanship and whether they want to acknowledge it or not are displaying a lack of respect for both the game and their opponents.
I think in many ways the analogy to college admissions remains applicable throughout.
Agree with @Nocreativity1 - something I’ve seen on cc the few months I’ve been here, where very often people are happy with the parts of the college application process that work for them and complain about the parts that don’t and are therefore “unfair” (of course different parts are unfair to different people).
At an event yesterday I had the misfortune to learn the sort of sad tale of one of son’s classmate’s admissions process. The kid is the oldest kid n their family and the parents have not been through the process before. He is a nice, young suburban HS boy, very good test scores 1500 something, high honor roll every term plenty of AP’s, so very good stats. Played some sports, did a few clubs, NHS, volunteer work. Nothing outstanding , but he was involved and not just a bump on a log.
His parents paid for a college admissions counselor to help them through this process. He applied to 13 colleges, and had 1 safety. He applied to mostly top 20 type schools. He did not apply ED. he applied EA where applicable and was deferred. He didn’t get into any of the top 20, rejected or waitlisted to all of those, and got into our state Uni but no honors college, and one of the local good private universities where one of his parents is an alum. So he went 2 for 13. His parents couldn’t believe it!
I guess he applied for CS at all of the schools where he needed to list a major. Red flag. No ED to any of the top schools. Red Flag. No hook of any sort, RED FLAG!! I could’ve advised these people better than the stupid counselor they hired!! But that’s why I stay out of “college talk” with friends and people I see at events. The parents of this kid were so upset of all of the rejections and heartache they just went thru. Seems like most parents that I encounter are not partiuclarly pleased with the whole college admissions process at the moment.
@RightCoaster I feel bad for all the families like that. The counselor did them such a huge disservice. One of the most important function of a college counselor is to help the family craft a good list. At least he has a couple of good acceptances. I feel that most of us could help families more than some of these expensive coaches.
@gallentjill that was the worst story I’ve heard so far. it seems like most of my son’s friends have done Ok during the process, but with more stress than they thought with plenty of deferrals and waitlists.
That kid’s parents and counselor just though with high stats and grades it was a slam dunk. Obviously not.
Most of the other tales of woe stemmed from the cost of college.
I just try to slink away and go hide and not get wrapped up on it, but it’s hard to avoid everybody. So lots of smiling and nodding and keeping my mouth shut at this point. Or I go sit by someone that has younger kids and they are innocently clueless to the madness of it all, much better!
@gallentjill I agree that one of the most important roles a college counselor plays is to help a family develop a good list. Sometimes they fail at this and sometimes the recommendations are made and a family is unwilling to entertain the notion that their child will not be admitted to top schools.
My non-CC hubby could never understand my cautious optimism throughout this process and he kept thinking I was underestimating son’s achievements. S19 is an average excellent student with good test scores but really no hooks. He’s not an athlete and a white boy looking for engineering from New England. There’s a lot of anti-hooks right there. His really only differentiating fact “might” have been the fact that he’s double counted in the US and international pile and was born in a not-so-popular eastern European country (adopted). Hubby was pretty mad when he was wait listed at Lafayette and Bucknell, although these weren’t even great fits for him.
I agree! When I hear stories, or read other threads, I can’t believe how many times it seems that the counselor really didn’t do a good job of helping kids getting a diversified (that’s the best word I can think of, I mean reach/match/safety mix) list…and that seems to me to be priority #1. When I see that it was a private college counselor, I feel really bad for the parents and a little steamed at the “counselor.”
People don’t really mind if something is unfair if it’s unfair in their favor. That’s the way of the world. I’m still feeling very bruised and I knew that kiddo had a slate full of long shots and there was a good chance the longest shots wouldn’t land. It’s very hard not to be bitter about the institutions that said no or waitlist, and not to be catty about the people who were selected over top of my son.
But we’re rallying. We have two open houses in a week and we’re making a mini vacation of it, even though they’re both an hour’s drive from us we’re staying overnight in between. Accepted one waitlist and put out one more application. We should be closer to decided by now, moving to worrying about the spring play and prom and summer vacations.
The worst thing about waitlists is how it prolongs the uncertainty.
@1stTimeThruMom UMD doesn’t actually have ED. (Apparently, not even EA, but rather “Priority”.) I actually don’t recall, but looking back at the UMD EA thread, I do see some students who were admitted with GPAs similar to my D’s, or with slightly higher GPAs, but much lower SATs. I don’t know how UMD views GPA, but to me, the GPA doesn’t tell the whole story. Rigor, inflation, scales, weighting…so much varies by school. Do you know whether UMD recalculates GPA?
Wow, hard to believe they shut out kids <4.0 in MoCo. That’s pretty harsh. Do you think in-state has become more competitive than OOS? That’s what we hear about UMass Amherst. There was a news report last summer that the average GPA for in state was 3.9 last year. But then my D did get in there, so don’t know what to make of that.
Yes, in-state is definitely tougher, particularly if you come from Montgomery or Howard counties. They could fill the entire class with 4.0 applicants from Montgomery County! It is also tough to try to get in to UMDCP from a private or parochial school because there is open access to APs in the public school system, so the graduates tend to have much higher GPAs than similar kids coming from religious or private schools, even those schools located in DC.
This is what worked for my family:
I told my kids that they could apply to reaches after they completed their applications to their safety and target schools. I advised them to apply EA whenever possible. I explained what those single digit acceptance rates really meant. I encouraged them to try their best not to take a rejection or a waitlist result personally. And as the parent, I modeled that behavior in that when they received a rejection, I said I was glad they gave it a shot and said let’s move on to consider the schools that accepted you and showed you the love (this was a lot easier to do with my second kid than it was during my first go-round with the admissions process). I made it clear what our budget was and encouraged my kids to apply to colleges that awarded merit. My kids were seeking merit and thus did not apply anywhere ED, since we wanted to be able to compare offers. I had numerous conversations with my kids about seemingly having the “goods” to be a successful applicant, but possibly getting denied anyway. I supported and encouraged them to apply to reach schools.
Each of my unhooked, non-recruited athlete, non-disadvantaged kids applied to a carefully crafted and well-thought out college list and had wonderful, sometimes surprising results, including getting in to some of the single-digit lottery type schools and being awarded fantastic merit aid at some colleges. Someone asked me what the secret sauce is. Honestly, I have no idea. If there is a secret sauce, I am sure it’s different for each college. I really wonder if luck plays a part at some point (as has been mentioned above in other posts).
At the end of the day, my four pieces of advice are to 1) have a well-thought out list of schools, including safeties and match schools, and 2) determine your budget, and 3) as a parent, try to set the tone to not take the rejections/waitlists personally (I know this one is hard to do) and 4) do not be afraid to apply to reach schools, but do so fully aware of the admit percentages.
Item #4 above reminds me of the time my daughter, as a rec league soccer player who only played defense, scored a goal from the 50 yard line in the last 30 seconds of a pivotal game. This kid who had never scored a goal, scored one from halfway down the field. Over everyone’s head. In the last 30 seconds of the game. I remind my daughter often of this moment. Did she score this goal because of her great skill? Nope. Did she actually direct the ball to the corner pocket of the goal up and over the very tall goalie’s head? Nope. She just kicked it hard. She scored the goal because she refused to give up on her goal, which was for her team of underdogs to make the championships. She took a chance on accomplishing something that she knew she had a low probability of accomplishing. And with a bit of skill and a lot of luck, she got what she wanted. Could it have turned out differently? Absolutely. But this was a real life example to her that if she had given up, she would have lost out for sure.
I tell my kids that they will try and they will succeed and sometimes they will try and they will fail. I have told them that they are doing a disservice to themselves by not trying and an even greater disservice to themselves by feeling like they have to find someone/something to blame for their failures. I just recently had this discussion with my daughter when she told me she did not get an extremely competitive grant/fellowship that she applied for. She was Monday-morning quarterbacking what, if anything, could have been lacking in her application, starting to over-think everything. I reminded her of her soccer story. I told her it’s fine to be disappointed, but to pick apart her application, especially in light of the fact that she put an incredible amount of effort into it, serves no purpose and in my opinion devalues her effort. I told her that she took her best shot from the 50 yard line and missed. And that it is okay that she missed. There will be other opportunities for her to score.
Great story @PurplePlum . I couldn’t agree more. The application process may be the first time many of these kids experience failure. It is hard, but a necessary life lesson . They will apply for scholarships, internships and jobs that they may not get. Learning early on is helpful IMO. It’s a much harder lesson to learn once you feel like you are well prepared.
@purpleplum Love love love!!! Thanks for sharing
@1stTimeThruMom - I know you were asking @momzilla2D but I can let you know that UMD fills almost their entire freshman class from EA. Admissions make this very clear. So it is very possible that a kid with high stats may get shut out RD.
If you have a student with slightly lower stats make sure they apply EA for their best shot. They may be offered Freshman Connection (spring admission with the ability to be on campus fall semester.) My MoCo godson was admitted thru Freshman Connection and is a very happy sophomore in the College of Engineering now.
I will say that the current freshman profile for UMD still blows my mind. My husband and I would not have been admitted way back when.
Thank you @mountainmomof3 I was literally just reading about Freshman Connection when you replied. I could not find this info on their website…so do you know if a student can apply EA to UMD and ED elsewhere?
@PurplePlum : Wow! What a great story and an even better life lesson! Well done!
If the college application process is the first time a child experiences “failure” then I’d be worried. There are far too many parents plowing the way for kids. Better to learn early how to get knocked down, lick their wounds, and the get back up. Life is full of ups and downs. Sending a kid off to college who does’t have this basic survival skill does not help the kid one bit.
@1stTimeThruMom - I am sure others can chime in with more certainty since my son did not apply ED anywhere but I thought you can apply ED along with other schools but need to withdraw any applications if you are admitted and accept ED offer.?