<p>The National Merit Scholarship award is just based on the PSAT score (a few extra things are required for finalist application, I know). Yes, the finalists are bright, but there are many non-finalists who get into highly selective schools. National Merit isn’t a very important thing to the highly selective schools, although it can be useful for scholarship money to less selective schools. Many kids don’t prepare at all for PSAT and may greatly increase their relative scores by preparing for the SAT, which is what is important for college admission. Add grades, essays and recs to the mix and National Merit becomes a pretty minor thing. I don’t mean to diminish this accomplishment, but want to point out to the OP that it should not be the basis for thinking a particular student is a likely admittee for a highly selective school.</p>
<p>*“If someone doesn’t give you something and you need it- you either get it someplace else or shrug and say “oh well”.”</p>
<p>This works only if you know that the issue exists.*</p>
<p>BUt that was my point
if you ask for something- as when the parent was asking for names of other choices of schools despite the counselors assurance that he didn’t need any other names.
They didn’t get anyother names- even though just the fact that they were asking, indicates to me, that they felt that was something that was needed.
I don’t ask for something I don’t need & if I do ask & I don’t get it, I find another way.</p>
<p>I realize that this family has a different parenting style- being involved in the college process is “helicoptering” and the child had different ideas about his chances/goals than the parents did.</p>
<p>BUt for someone who is aware of the numbers of articles published over the years on college applications,but not be able to make their financial support. dependent on that their child has realistic choices .sounds odd</p>
<p>I just can’t reconcile the fact of two college educated parents- relying on the counselors to find all the info for them.</p>
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<p>well, if they had not gone through the college application process recently, and were “hands off parents” as her posts seemed to indicate , then it could be hard to know if you need outside advice and then where to go to get that advice. I think my lucky stars I found CC, but I also had a college advisor for a client, and knew from her, years in advance, exactly how tough it had become for top kids to be accepted at “top” colleges. What I found at my son’s school was that for parents who were not in the “how hard it is to get into college loop” because of their “anti-helicopter” mentality , their children suffered the same type of acceptance results .</p>
<p>As much as kids want and need independence at the age of 17 or so, I don’t think they’re really prepared to handle a situation as complex and error-prone as applying to colleges without the guidance of a knowledgeable adult.</p>
<p>In fact, their previous experiences may have misled them. When they made the transitions from elementary school to middle school and from middle school to high school, school personnel led them through all the necessary steps, and the possibility that they might end up with no school to go to did not exist. And when they took standardized tests in school, their teachers made sure they were prepared (because the school’s neck is on the line, too). Now, all of a sudden, they’re in a very different position where, for example, a school’s chemistry curriculum might be a very poor match for the SAT II test in chemistry (to use a situation mentioned by the OP), and nobody at school seems to know or care, let alone advising students on how they might overcome this disadvantage.</p>
<p>As I was reading this thread, one detail stuck out to me the most. The child is headed to a university and is feeling that he is better than his institution. (That is my interpretation of the issue.) That bothers me a lot as a reader and as an unbiased student from a different university. One has to be grateful for his/her blessings (instead of the disappointments) and take advantage of them in order to succeed at this level. (Many people who attend universities around the country are smart.) If he does this, I’m sure he’ll be able to make great opportunities and like-minded friends. However, if he begins his freshman year moping around without motivation, he may have a tough time in and outside of the classroom. These problems would make the possibility of grad school (and maybe even a transfer) much more difficult. My best advice for him is to keep his head up and cherish what he does have instead of doesn’t have. As the clich</p>
<p>Peege, Welcome to CC. I, too, am a new parent on this forum, though I was a lurker for a while. Also, my son is at our state U, because for the program he wanted, it was the best match for him. He turned down a number of “name” schools where he was accepted but did not get into this specific, competitive program. I was a bit disappointed where he ended up going (my pride, my problem), and I think it was a bit of a let down for him since he graduated from a highschool where most of the kids are going to selective colleges. His closest friends are going to Ivies, including Harvard and Princeton. But he had a great year at state U, decided he did not want to try to transfer after reexamining the other programs, and is getting what he wants out of the school despite initial doubts.<br>
Just to let you know, your son is not the only one who was shut out of all of the selective schools on his list. This is happening more and more, as the most highly qualified kids, like your son, are increasingly focusing on the top schools. There just are not enough spots for everyone, so it becomes a sort of musical chairs situation, and some kids just do not get a seat. Though most of the kids at my son’s school did get into a “top” school, one young man we know with a great gpa, toughest courses, nearly perfects SATs and SAT2s did not get into his top choices,including his father’s alma mater, a huge blow to the student and family. He did get into Tulane, Boston College, Carnegie, Wm &Mary, along with our state school. Though his profile were “matches” with the top schools, schools that only accept 25% or less of their applicants are really nobody’s match. They are lottery tickets, since so many of the applicants are outstanding, and two or three classes can be made with equal quality as the actual chosen class. So kids who are applying to those schools really need to pick a second layer of schools, still outstanding and considered first tier, but not as selective. The young man I referred to, by the way, is very happy with his choice despite his initial disappointment when he was not accepted to his first choices and found other kids not as highly “qualifed”, by any measurable standard were. That is a hard one to swallow for parents and kids. The schools to not put the kids in a numerical order for choices, according to their profiles. Any little thing could make the difference between those chosen and those not, when you get that stage of admissions. Just getting a different ad com reviewing your app could tip the balance. Please do not let this poison your attitude.<br>
As for transferring, if your son does extremely well, it is certainly a possibility. A number of those kids selected for the top schools do not pan out. A major subject can be depleted with kids shuffling around their major choices. A dedicated student from another school with excellent grades has possibilities for transfer.<br>
This site has a wealth of information. If you read through the entries, you will see the profiles and stats of many kids. They are frighteningly top drawer. And some still get rejected. When I first looked at some of the “resumes”, I was so intimidated. Even though our highschool is considered excellent with many kids going on to selective schools, I had no idea so many kids had such credentials. It is a sobering realization.</p>
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<p>This is very interesting. I remembered taking Achievement tests back in my hs days after finishing a subject I would never take again such as Bio. We were advised to do this through my hs.</p>
<p>When my D entered 9th and 10th grades, I specifically posed the question if she should be taking these exams (now they were SAT IIs) to her teachers and gc AND her career college counselor. They all said not until junior year. If only I had followed my instincts OR had CC to ask back then.</p>
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My National Merit son went off to an elite LAC (not Ivy) and simply didn’t do so well. Unfortunately, in our state it is next to impossible for to transfer into the UC system from an out-of-state college, as the transfer spots are all held for the kids coming out of the community colleges - so my son is now finishing at a CSU, the next tier down. So as frustrating as it is to see your son’s griping, this whole thing may be a blessing in disguise. You’ll never know, but I think one problem is that my son was used to getting A’s without much effort, and he didn’t have the discipline and organizational skills to keep up at college. He had the brains and ability, but he solved his organizational issues by putting effort into some classes and blowing off others, so he has a transcript full of A’s and D’s. (Which oddly enough averages out to a 3.0, but those D’s don’t transfer)</p>
<p>I think your son will get over his feelings once he gets into the swing of things at Minnesota. He’ll make friends, get involved socially, find some classes that he really likes, sit through others that aren’t so great, call you and gripe when he’s feeling down, then not talk to you for weeks when things are going fine. That’s the real tricky part of freshman year: the kid will call with an hour long rant, and then you will spend the next several weeks fretting over whatever it is the kid was complaing about, and then 3 weeks later when you finally are able to win the phone tag game and catch him when he’s not too busy to talk, it turns out that he’s completely forgotten whatever it was that set him off. – so I highly recommend taking things said with a grain of salt, including the line he is now feeding you about not wanting to work hard because all the hard work in high school was for naught.</p>
<p>Kids are feeling a lot of internal conflict before they go off to college, and they express that in a number of ways. What they really are thinking is that they are scared they have made the wrong choice (no matter where they are going), and scared of being away from home, and sad to leave their family and friends and familiar turf. </p>
<p>So I don’t think you should blame yourself or try to second guess the application process. Your son followed a perfectly legitimate approach that many students follow: apply to the state U. as a safety and otherwise only to elite reach colleges. It is legitimate under the rationale that the middle level (match schools) are no better than the state U, and simply not worth paying private tuition for. I’m not saying that everyone would agree, but my daughter followed a similar approach and I can certainly see the logic of it. My daughter “won”, since she got into her reaches – but she would have adjusted if she had ended up at UC campus. I am seeing a lot of her classmates adjust to the reality that they are attending their safeties; it simply is part of life, not necessarily bad planning. Just because a kid voices disappointment when talking with their parents doesn’t mean that the kid can’t cope. What your son will find at U.Minnesota is that a large university offers a tremendous array of opportunities, and as much challenge as he is willing to seek. It just is going to take some time for him to get his bearings and figure it all out.</p>
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<p>it is a legitimate strategy if the student and parents realize going into the process the the student may actually end up at the safety and they are comfortable that this would be a favorable alternative to other possible safeties (as you suggest). </p>
<p>however, it is a troublesome strategy, when students and parents truly believe that if you apply to 6-10 super selective schools you are bound to get into one of them and you only need to throw in a safety for the sake of saying you have one.</p>
<p>there is absolutely nothing wrong with having the state school as your safety - both academically and financially it will often be a great value. the problem arises when students and parents fail to understand ahead of time that the safety may become their reality and to therefore choose it accordingly.</p>
<p>i believe on one of the threads listed in sybbie’s earlier post, part of the discussion was just how hard it can be to get a student to love their safety – there is natural disappointment when a student doesn’t get into where they really want to go. and it can be really hard during the planning stages to get a student to contemplate not getting into one of the top schools – especially for a parent to convince them of this (when i talked about safeties with my daughter, she got a sad look in her eye and asked if i didn’t think she was good enough to get into the school she wanted). its a really hard balance to encourage you child to reach for the stars and at the same time warn them about what might happen if they fall on their face while doing so.</p>
<p>Qualified, but cut, what now???.. time to move on - deal with the hand dealt and drink that lemonade - how sweet it just might/could turn out to be - that is unless one uses rotten lemons and no sugar.</p>
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I don’t believe that this was the case here, at least not from the parent’s perspective. The sense I get is that the kid had high hopes, but the parents were just as happy to see him close to home at a more affordable college – but they are concerned now because of negative statements the son is making. </p>
<p>I understand where the OP is coming with that, because that very closely reflects my own attitude throughout the process this year. I focused on making sure that my daughter got her apps into UC on time, and figured I’d let her handle the rest, on the rationale that if she really wanted to go to an elite private all that badly, she’d figure it out. I was not hands off, but I certainly let her take the lead. My personal feeling is that the U of California was good enough for me, good enough for my kids’ dad and their grandparents… it ought to be good enough for my kids. In fact, I made it clear that I would not promise to pay for any other college unless financial aid brought the private within range of the cost of the public – I am very happy to see my d. go off to Barnard for $16K/year… but if they had wanted $29K (as NYU did), then I would have said “tough” - as far as I am concerned, I have promised my kids the cost of an in-state public education, and that’s all I’m willing to front. </p>
<p>My daughter refined her strategy somewhat as the application season wore on, but she had also rejected my suggestions of safety/matches likely to award good merit aid early on, and I felt concerned that she was setting herself up for a fall. If I gleaned anything from these boards, it was that my d. clearly didn’t have the test scores or other stats needed to get into the schools she applied to. So I was quite prepared to see skinny envelopes in the spring, and I assumed that my daughter would be despondent for awhile, then rally and start to build up enthusiasm as the summer wore on, knowing full well that many of her high school classmates would also be bound for whatever UC campus she decided on. </p>
<p>So I could see myself quite easily ending up in the same shoes as OP, starting to feel queasy in August if my kid still seemed to be wallowing in a rejection funk. I’m lucky that my d.'s fate ended up involving a better result, but obviously my daughter could no more count on her reaches than OP’s son. Sometimes it isn’t a matter of poor research or planning, but simply what the kid wants. Maybe OP’s kid did get good suggestions, but simply decided that he didn’t want a Grinnell or a Kenyon or a St. Olaf. I think that was what my daughter was thinking when she struck Goucher and American U. off her list, and got starry eyed talking about Barnard and NYU. Not that she was certain of getting into her reaches, but simply that she couldn’t find any non-reaches that were more to her liking.</p>
<p>Just want to say a word about the gc issue here, since it felt like an attack. 1) I liked our guidance counselor. So if I gave the impression I was whining about that, I apologize. 2) Though I did like her, this is a weak area at our school. We have 4 counselors for 1750 kids and they keep adding different responsibilities to their workload. Our son had four different guidance counselors in his 4 years, not by design. They kept leaving because they are given way too many different responsibilities, all to save money that is going instead to tax cuts for people who earn over $500,000/year. Maybe you think that’s fine, I don’t. This counselor I liked left in December of my son’s senior year and someone who had retired many years before came in for the 2nd half of the year–not ideal to say the least. She left specifically because they are dumping another responsibility on them for the coming year. 3) When 80+% of the H.S. grads from this school go to college, I think it’s reasonable to expect these paid professionals to have better information than was made available to us. I can only attribute the lack of information to the budget cuts and too heavy workload on these people. 4) Is it a parent’s responsibility to assist the student in acquiring information? To a certain extent maybe, but this is not my profession, nor is it my hobby. I did locate some reference sources: internet and books, but they were not very good when it came to rating majors. The CC links I’ve seen in the past 2 days are better than what I found before. 5) The comments that I and others have made about gc are meant to be informative and instructive to others. That’s all.</p>
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Excellent insight, Calmom, and I agree completely.</p>
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This quote describes our family to a T. Each family does what works for them but, in the long run, I think this attitude has many benefits.</p>
<p>Peege, I think most people simply cannot rely on their high school guidance counselor (unless they attend a very small school), as providing appropriate “guidance” re the college process, choices, etc. Yes, they are overworked, and have too large caseloads, but really, it is too important a decision to leave in the hands of someone outside the family.</p>
<p>I agree with Allmusic. Where a student decides to go to college takes up at least 4 years of their life and can cost more than $100,000, plus determine lots of the tragectory of the student’s life. I think it’s reasonable for GCs to be able to provide basic options, but otherwise it’s such a big decision that I think the students and their families should be doing much of the research in figuring out a student’s best options.</p>
<p>One could make a comparison to buying a house. One would expect a real estate agent to know the basics about neighborhoods, contracts, and to be able to roughly help one narrow one’s choices. Still, the client would be expected to also do lots of research into things like the school districts, transportation options from work, type of people who live in a neighborhood, how one can get the best deal, etc.</p>
<p>Your dilemna hit home! I finally joined the CC forums after browsing for months. Our son is similar-NM finalist, 2400 SAT, 35 ACT… but grades down due to not doing/turning in homework type issues. Young-will be 17 in fall, ECs included academics, music and sports (runner-state cc meet with team etc.), many AP’s-9 exams with mostly 5’s a few 4’s. (C in chemistry last semester and a 5 on the AP exam … an example of post rejection senioritis). Couldn’t make him apply to schools he did not wish to. Rejected from MIT & Stanford, grades most likely a major factor, but even with a 4.0 instead of a 3.8+ his chances were 50-50 due to the applicant pool. He’ll happily go to UW-Madison next week. Many kids here go to U of M so I understand your son’s reasons for choosing as he did (even if we parents know their logic is often faulty). I really wish your son was going to join mine in the Honors physics course at Madison!<br>
I understand why he didn’t apply to LACs also- science with grad programs is totally different, allowing experience with grad labs and interacting with the type of grad student one hopes to be.
I’ve noticed differences in east/west coast parents compared to us midwesterners. Far fewer CC members, school choices different, possibly because of geography- distances to schools on either coast are vast, whereas so many of the east coast people can easily drive to so many private schools to check them out and their kids would be fairly close to home (GB to MN is a 5 hour drive-not a consideration in choosing between UW & MN). We also faced the issue of son applying to schools less good in science than UW, it didn’t make sense to apply to second tier schools just to go to a private school. He has a large storage box filled with unsolicited materials from schools all over the country so his choices were not based on lack of exposure.<br>
Take heart mom- we’re lucky our public flagship schools are good, our sons will get exposed to the big leagues and be competitive for the best grad schools. Read enough CC posts and your feelings can be all over the map, from envy to feeling lucky and finally to adjusting to reality.</p>
<p>Too many kids focus on their reach schools, considering them matches because their stats fall comfortably within the upper 25% of their range. With less than a 25% chance of getting into one of those schools, it’s really almost a moot point trying to decide between Columbia and Brown. Or Princeton vs Yale. Unless you have something specific and rare that one of those particular school wants, you are still playing the lottery.<br>
The schools that need the most scrutiny are the true matches and safeties. I have noticed that the better students don’t even want to think about those. It’s feels so much better to dream about an ivy or little ivy, instead of the more realistic choices. And the safety schools usually are tacked on with little thought. It is a bitter pill to swallow when you end up going to these schools that you just added to your list because it was the right thing to do and they were just insurance. The way I feel about it is to apply to your reach schools, and then forget about them, other than what you have to do. Don’t visit Princeton 3 times getting your expectation way up there. Look at the schools that you’re pretty sure you’ll get in, and picture yourself there. Some kids pay so much attention to their high reaches, they lose out on the next level of selective schools, especially if they are schools that are keenly looking for demonstrated interest. That next layer is no longer a sure thing the way admissions is going.<br>
You are fortunate to have a very good state university with a fine department in the subject of your son’s interest. And that he got in. State U’s are no longer to take for granted anymore either. Especially in popular, limited majors. You had better get those apps in early, or you can lose that spot.<br>
I remember when I was applying to college, mosts kids applied to State U and a back up less selective state college, with their attention more on the commuting schools, junior colleges, and satellite branches of the State U. The top student may have thrown in the best private college in the area, and a rare kid would try his luck at an ivy. It was considered over the top that I applied to 6 schools. My husbanad applied to his state flagship school,the best school in his state, a top Catholic school (to placate Grandma), and a parent’s alma mater. Without the interest of his Dad and Grandma, he would have just applied to the two school in his state. He was an excellent student, and these days it probably would be quite different. Though the horizons are widened for our kids, in a way it is tougher because those top schools that we did not consider that are now widely picked by the best students, are so much harder to gain acceptance than in our day.</p>
<p>to wis75</p>
<p>"We also faced the issue of son applying to schools less good in science than UW, it didn’t make sense to apply to second tier schools just to go to a private school. "</p>
<p>I wish more people felt the same. UW, UofM, UVA, UC – these are world-class institutions. The people teaching there are doctorates from the finest universities in the world. To get tenure at these schools requires true achievement. Honors colleges within them offer the small-class size and intellectual rigor you find in the most elite LACs and, I believe, Ivys. On top of that, a degree from Berkeley or UCLA has more international name-recognition than most of those twice-the-price LACs. Though I agree that weaker students could fall through the class in those large publics, I also strongly believe that any good student can get a superb education at these schools and certainly a good enough preparation for graduate-level work at Ivy-caliber grad schools.</p>
<p>easy answer, transfer out. No reason to settle for less if he has the stats.</p>
<p>Just saw your thread. Wanted to let you know our cousin majored in Physics at the University of Minnesota. For graduate school, he was given full rides, to Harvard, MIT, Minnesota, and several others. So obviously if you have it, you can get in anywhere from Minnesota. I wouldn’t worry one bit.</p>