Scenario for Admissions Disappointment

Parents Forum
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<p>Thanks jamimom. Unfortunately I do think we did some things backwards in respect to how we chose the schools. If I had read Jonri’s post about the supply and demand concept, s could have added some schools to the list where music was more of a sought after talent and also some schools that were more sure safeties as you have suggested. It was really stupid of us to think that he’d have a great shot at Oberlin, even though he’s at the top end of their range “statistically” because they already have gazillions of pianists. They probably would have liked him better if he had said he did needlepoint. I realize now that although I knew that the schools wanted to achieve a ‘balanced’ class, I did NOT fully appreciate what it meant on the acceptances percentages.</p>

<p>hormesis3 Thanks for posting that article. It was very interesting.</p>

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<p>idad - gold is a lovely color, I think. Philosophical interests - sport as an Art. Something the Greeks also knew - and we tend to forget in the west.</p>

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<p>andi, if he had visited Oberlin and shown some interest, I am sure he would have been accepted there. Had he told them they were his one and only and appealed in person there, he would have been accepted right off the waitlist. But I don’t think that is where he wants to go is the truth of the matter, unless he has changed his mind. Also if you look at the acceptance stats for Oberlin this year, they are in the selective arena. They really got a lot of apps this year, a rising trend I noticed a couple of years ago. </p>

<p>I am hoping that he gets into a school that is good fit for him. I think he has a lot to bring to a college. My fingers are crossed for good luck!</p>

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<p>Great thread!</p>

<p>-cardinalsfan is correct that schools admit classes, not individuals. Very true. So find out which schools seek your skill set/demographics.</p>

<p>-mini: Brown basketball cheer: “Pursue them! Pursue them! Make them relinquish the ball!”</p>

<p>:)</p>

<p>Some anecdotes about a non 4.0 recruited athlete:</p>

<p>My D is an athlete whose sport definitely helped her get in to a very selective LAC. Her SATs were right about median for the school, and she also has another very deep music EC. So, she is clearly qualified to be there-- but it certainly doesn’t hurt when you have a coach fighting for you. </p>

<p>Her biggest minus was not being in top 10%. (She was in top 15%.) I think without the sport this might have been a stopper. </p>

<p>She is a very mild mannered and balanced person who has more than once been satisfied with a B rather than burning and pining for an A. Thus many other kids have her beat on GPA. But this sort of balance can be a big asset in life-- not getting too hung up on details, seeing the bigger picture, being satisfied with “good” outcomes, etc. Maybe this explains why some non 4.0 athletes do well in their post college years? </p>

<p>Anecdotally, I have noticed that perfectionists can have a really hard transition to HYPS where they are no longer ‘the big cheese.’ My D will have no such issue. ;)</p>

<p>Also she is the only kid I know with ZERO senioritis… just got an incredible report card for the 3rd quarter, 3 A+, & even an A in her nemesis subject, math-- which she has finally conquered, because (drumroll) she now attends the class <em>2x per day</em>! Since sport season is over and she has 6th period open, she goes to math twice-- and it was completely her idea to do this. 2/3 of the seniors in her school don’t even take math. She also took Community College summer science classes twice, so wound up with 5 lab sciences… and she is not a “science person” either! </p>

<p>Finally she has always worked for money (since age 13) and last summer she Managed a staff of 10 people-- 9 of whom were older than she was. There are many 4.0’s who can’t make that claim. </p>

<p>Just pointing out that a kid like mine, “a 3.7 recruited athlete,” can have other important qualities for success that cannot be revealed by GPA alone. Most of us are aware of some 4.0 s who dropped from AP classes to non-AP after their college acceptances came in…</p>

<p>Still, despite our hope for an athletic “bump” in the admission process, we were also <em>very</em> strategic in our thinking within the athletic game. My D knew what she wanted: LAC, D3, residential campus, tight-knit community and the best academic environment she could get into. She also really wanted to be a starter on the team.</p>

<p>We focused on schools that were aspiring to be better in her sport rather than those that were already national championship caliber, figuring she’d be a bigger asset at an aspiring school (so, not Williams.) We also focused on schools where she’d be a geographic “plus” (so, not Pomona.) Then she narrowed the list from there based on what schools she liked best for atmosphere, feel, fit. </p>

<p>We were very fortunate to find a perfect match school with a great coach who supported her application. </p>

<p>So her dream came true too! However we had a couple of quality backup plans in place with other great schools she would have been happy to attend. I was actually sorry the day she had to bid those “safeties” goodbye because they were such appealing schools.</p>

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<p>Marite</p>

<p>THe %tile numbers are from a publication that I have hard copy of…the book that came with my scores in 1966. It doesnt state the number of test takers. </p>

<p>I am assuming it was about half or so of what it is today, which was around 1.4M SAT takers, as of 2003. </p>

<p>Couple of tables you can use to guess at conclusions.</p>

<p><a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d95/dtab178.asp[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d95/dtab178.asp&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt173.asp[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt173.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>second one shows the huge percentage jump in enrollment from 1960-1970…almost doubled. </p>

<p>OF course, the admission of women to certain Ivys doubles the impact of the population increase, and its true that the schools have not gotten that much larger. Maybe the best point is that the size of the top several percent cohort of applicants is a great deal larger today than it was in 1966 (maybe four times if you use formerly all male schools), and certainly a lot larger than it was in 1955. Anyway, I should probably give this point up…its only peripherally relevant to avoiding admissions disappointment.</p>

<p>I agree with the poster who noted that disappointments are part of life. Its hard to avoid them. The important task is to target your applications in a way that gives you the best viable alternatives to the “dream” schools. Indeed, this is neither simple, or easy to do. This board was a help to me and my son last year, and hopefully it will help others in the future.</p>

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<p>Dadx:</p>

<p>Thanks. Besides the influx of women, I would guess Asian-Americans began to apply to colleges in much larger numbers beginning probably in the mid-1970s (delayed response to the lifting of the Exclusion Act). But while the pool of excellent applicants has expanded, the notion of dream schools has not caught up with it; yet, schools other than HYPSM have benefitted from the overflow and raised their standards quite significantly and should be considered dream schools in their own right.</p>

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<p>Marite,</p>

<p>Yes, …in fact in looking for some stats I stumbled accross some data that showed that in 1972, Asian american applicants were about 2% of the pool, compared to around 10 today. I can hardly believe that number was quite that low in 1972, but I guess it has been a long time.</p>

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<p>

This is one of the most important things I have learned from cc. I tell all my friends that they need to understand this first and foremost. If you want to take classes with the kids who used to only be found at HYPSM you now can attend many other schools.</p>

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<p>SBmom -
how clever of your D to attend math class twice. My son has started reading ahead and finds that it makes the conceptual bits a lot easier to process when its the second time you encounter them!</p>

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<p>Blossom said:>>You are hearkening back to the so-called golden age when academically talented Jews, Asians, African Americans, etc. didn’t even bother applying to the Ivy League.>></p>

<p>Marite replied :Blossom is being overly generous. Jews, Asians, African-Americans would not have been admitted.</p>

<p>I’m not so sure about this – both my father-in-law and mother-in-law graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1940s and they are Jewish. Maybe you’re referring to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton? I can’t speak for those schools, but I do have many Jewish relatives who have graduated from Penn in the last 50-60 years.</p>

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<p>There were indeed Jews who graduated from elite schools, but there were strict quotas. I know the first Jewish prof to have been given tenure at a major LAC. He only retired a few years ago. I believe he got his Ph.D. some time in the 1960s. Of course, he would have attended college in the 1950s. Once Jewish quotas were lifted (I believe thanks partly to AA), the number of Jewish faculty and students skyrocketed.
As Dadx found out, until the early 1970s, Asian-Americans constituted only 2% of the college applicant pool; now they constitute 18% of the admitted students at NE top schools such as Harvard and very significant percentage of top UC schools. This is partly because of increased number, and partly because the new immigrants are better educated. When I came to college a few years after the lifting of the Exclusion Act, there was still a Chinese laundry in the middle of extremely preppy Harvard Square. It’s now long gone., as have most of the preppy shops. As for African-Americans, Brown vs. Board of Eduction did not result in significant numbers of AA applicants at non HBCU for a long time. Mexican immigration to the US also did not begin to alter the social landscape until much later.</p>

<p>In the “good old days” members of very large groups of college applicants of today would just not have had a chance.</p>

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<p>Thanks again Jamimom. You’re very likely right about all that you mentioned in your post. Also, since they have ED I and ED II they had already taken a lot of kids from our hs who had clearly made that commitment.</p>

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<p>Andi said:</p>

<p>“Another earlier poster referred to the amount of time the college athletes have to devote to their sports in college and how it makes it difficult for them to maintain high grades. Well that’s AFTER they are in college. High school sports is not any more demanding than commitments to music, debate, theatre or many other activities.”</p>

<p>Andi, have I got a deal for you! You come spend the rest of the school year at my house, where YOU can get up at 4:30 in the a.m. and prepare breakfast for my S’s before they leave in the dark for their morning workout. YOU can worry about how tired they are as they go from there to school all day and YOU can wonder if they got enough calories at lunch to make it through their 3-hour workout after school. YOU can then feel your heart wrench when they walk through the door with piles and piles of homework, already bleary-eyed from exhaustion, willing themselves to stay awake long enough to do well enough to maintain their straight-A averages in their honors and AP classes. YOU can then lie in bed wondering how on earth they’re going to get up the next morning and do it all over again, HOW the Beethoven piano concerto is ever going to get practiced given this schedule, HOW long-term projects will be completed since the next three weekends are already blocked out to travel for athletic meets. YOU can figure out how to juggle things so there can be some sort of family life among all this…can’t go away at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, can’t go away at Spring Break…can’t go away June, or July or the first two weeks of August – EVER. Not EVER. YOU can decide when so much is TOO much and these boys must be pulled back from their commitments. YOU can tally up in her head the number of Friday evenings they have missed gatherings with their friends in the last four years because they have to get up at 5:45 on Saturday mornings for practice, and YOU can wonder how the heck these kids are going to manage to compete academically with their peers who aren’t athletes who have hours more time a day to study and involve themselves at the school in activities and clubs where the teachers get to know, like and recommend them while my S’s are the “Who’s that?” kids.</p>

<p>And if it were before last December, YOU could wonder whether my older S had driven himself into the ground like this throughout high school only to be rejected from the schools he so desperately wanted to represent as an athlete in favor of someone who took more practice SAT tests than him.</p>

<p>And THEN you and I can sit down and talk about how undemanding high school sports are. </p>

<p>For every example given of an unworthy athlete in your last post, I believe the same could be said of many URM’s who were so zealously defended by the parents here against Thom Yorke on a recent thread. But somehow, if a URM posts lower scores and grades, it’s acceptable. If an athlete posts lower scores and grades, it’s not. What about legacies? Are they held to the same standards? Should they be? Basically, I think what we would all like to do is create a standard that favors OUR child, and OUR child’s specific abilities, talents and passions. And there’s a good reason for that – they are qualified! They really are! </p>

<p>But we all knew by the time our children were in sixth grade that the burgeoning numbers graduating from high school in an affluent society did not bode well for any of our children, individually. We all bet on it one way or another, consciously or not. For some, the bet paid off; for some it didn’t. </p>

<p>The universities strive for – what is that word? – diversity. Can’t diversity includes athletes, just as it includes people with purple skin, just as it includes people whose greatest apparent qualification for attending is that their mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers attended, meaning, I guess, that they really know their way around campus?</p>

<p>FWIW, my S scored higher on the SAT than the legacies in his class going to Princeton and higher than the students going to Penn and higher than those going to Stanford. He was away, missing more school and more homework in the middle of a school-week when I called to tell him he had scored an 800 on the Verbal. The other kids may have taken their SAT’s again; my S didn’t, because the demands of his sport made it impossible for him to study for it. If he had, I’m confident he could have grazed the 1600 ceiling.</p>

<p>If you know much about Ivy recruiting and the “banding” requirements to which they must conform, you know that, like Stanford, they don’t have to go dragging Neanderthals out of caves. There are many bright athletes who see their sport as a ticket to an education they’ve dreamed of, just as there are musicians who feel the same way and many poets and many mathematicians. There are opportunities for all of these people to compete at the high school level and boast to the colleges of their accomplishments.</p>

<p>There may even be some who have worked harder than my own S. And who scored higher on the SAT. And who still didn’t get into Ivy U. And ten years out of whatever college those kids go to, they’ll bury all the rest of the kids because they know how to work hard, how to demand excellence of themselves and how not to give up on their dreams. I know they’ll be fine, just as I know that my younger S, who may very well be among them when his time comes, will be fine. The dream doesn’t end here – it’s just beginning!</p>

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<p>Bravo, Dizzymom. I can’t wait to hear how Dizzyson does next year representing his wonderful college in his sport.</p>

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<p>AMEN, Dizzymom. The same can be said of students passionate about any number of ECs. Like your boys, my son has learned how to manage his time and push himself beyond perceived limits. He is a 4 year letterman, 3 year all-state musician and top 1% of his class, as well as holding a job and doing volunteer work. The organizational skills and ability to focus that was necessary to get them through these rigorous schedules will serve them well throughout life.</p>

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<p>Dizzy, I liked your post! However, I don’t think kids like yours or even mine are the ones who tick people off so much. I think it is the kids nowhere near median SAT (let alone superior SAT) who, without the sport, are decidedly UN qualified to be at the school. Your son was a great candidate for an IVy with or without the sport. My D was dead center at her school without sports. What about the 1100 SAT athlete? I can see why that sort of thing bothers people whose 1450 kids are not admitted.</p>

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<p><<<you could=“” wonder=“” whether=“” my=“” older=“” s=“” had=“” driven=“” himself=“” into=“” the=“” ground=“” like=“” this=“” throughout=“” high=“” school=“” only=“” to=“” be=“” rejected=“” from=“” schools=“” he=“” so=“” desperately=“” wanted=“” represent=“” as=“” an=“” athlete=“” in=“” favor=“” of=“” someone=“” who=“” took=“” more=“” practice=“” sat=“” tests=“” than=“” him.=“”>>></you></p>

<p>While I admire the spirited defense of high school athletics, I feel it imperative to point out that NO ONE should do any activity just to improve their chances of getting into a specific college. That way lies madness. To do anything with intensity and success, pleasure in the activity is essential.</p>

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<p>dizzymom did you actually read through my posts??? If you did, then I truly don’t understand your vehement reaction. Your son is an excellent student. That has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m talking about. I love sports. I did many sports myself in school and I still do. You are acting like I think athletes don’t work hard and don’t deserve to go to college. I never said or implied any such thing.<br>
I know many kids that work very very hard in high school doing a variety of activities be it volunteer work in soup kitchens, debate teams, music, math and science teams. Any child who excels at any given activity puts a lot of time into it. I just don’t see that athletes put any more time into what they do than other students. It sounds like you lead an incredibly busy life as the mother of athletes but perhaps if you lived in the house of someone who was on the debate team on a national level you’d realize that those kids stayed up until all hours doing research and studying for their honors course etc.
Sports brings enjoyment to college students through their own participation and because people enjoy sports rivalries whether it’s between two high schools or two countries. Sports builds character and leadership skills.
My personal belief, for what it’s worth, is that there are many other activities in life that are just as valuable and I don’t think that athletes should be given special privileges.<br>
I’m sorry if you mistook my post to be a personal insult to your children but I certainly never intended that.</p>

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<p>lkf, that is also what I was trying to say earlier. I don’t understand the devaluing of athletes. I don’t see my other D who is heavily involved in the performing arts as being any more commited outside the classroom than my child who did three varsity sports (though she also did many performing arts, including being an accomplished pianist). The value is in their commitment to their passion, their leadership, their accomplishments in their areas of interest. The athlete is not any more valued. But neither is the kid who was commited to the arts or to debate or a myriad of other endeavors.</p>

<p>Again, I realize some of the “debate” is over athletes who got in with credentials that were “subpar” for that college. I understand that point to a degree but I think there is overgeneralization about ALL athletes. I know that at my D’s college, there are NO athletic scholarships. I know in my own kid’s case, she got in on her qualifications, not athleticism as she was not a recruited athlete. In fact, the coach in her favorite sport at the college she ended up attending (which for her sport is Division 1), would not even talk to her UNTIL she was ADMITTED. She had no clue if she could be on the team until she went to the accepted student open house and FINALLY had a meeting with this coach (long story, not worth getting into here but the woman is no longer at the college). So, her sport did not get her admitted but indeed she is on that varsity team and is in every race. I just wanted it to be made known that there ARE athletes out there who got into college on their academic and other merits, not CAUSE they were athletes, and who are just as academically qualified as the next kid. And at schools like my D’s school, there are no athletic scholarships. And maybe the whole deal with football and sports like that is different and my D is not in a high profile sport, but I still think that a student who was immersed in a passion, be it sport or some other thing, looks strong as he/she balanced strong academics with also a very commited outside activity. And in my house, this is true for BOTH the athlete and the artist. '</p>

<p>MotherofTwo wrote:
“Suzie - This is off your original topic of athlete bashing, etc., but I just wanted to say that your D was very lucky she could be involved in all of those activities during high school. I assume your school is fairly small. Our school is very large, and the coach or director of each activity wants full commitment from the participants. Very few athletes play more than one sport (except track, three seasons). For example, a basketball player who is also talented at soccer will drop soccer to concentrate on basketball. Also, it is very rare for an athlete to be in the music program, because of the time commitments and conflicts. It is really a shame, but that’s the way it is. I repeat, your D was fortunate to be in a situation where she could do all that.”</p>

<p>Our school is pretty small, yes. There are 600 kids in grades 9-12. but I could definitely agree that even here, the coach or director of each activity expects full commitment from participants. Though one difference is that kids can play more than one season of a sport, unless they are on some elite travel team and specialize in one sport (ie., club soccer or some such). Anyway, both my kids run into major conflicts in their schedules constantly. This has always been an issue. It is possible to do many activities but it is difficult. As far as performing arts and sports mixing (as my oldest was able to do)…it was not easy. Band and jazz band are in the school day here. Private clarinet lessons were able to be scheduled during the school day because she was so commited outside the school day. Piano was private and at night (though conflicts arose with those lessons but that person was very accomodating). Dance and sports definitely clashed in her schedule. During soccer season, she sometimes just had to miss dance and it was early in the year in dance, not rehearsing yet for as show and most of the dance teachers were willing to work it out. I recall one year when my D was on JV soccer, she told her tap dance teacher she had to miss the first six weeks of dance classes and she was fine with it but my D gave her a firm return date and then soccer was to have ended but at the very last moment there was some rescheduled game and my D was told of the game the day before and she told the coach that she had commited to her dance teacher to return to dance by that date and she was going to honor her commitment as she had given up dance to do her soccer and that particular soccer coached was *<strong><em>ed beyond belief and spoke to my D in such a unprofessional way that I would like to forget it because my D was so dedicated to that team and he spoke so poorly to her that he brought her to tears and she is one to never cry. I recall one dance teacher who was not going to let my D be in the performance because she had to miss one rehearsal because she was in All States for Music (on clarinet) and All States is related to a subject (band) she takes IN school, not as an EC and she had to do it (plus it was an honor) and she already knew the dance. But each person gets very territorial and some do it to such an extreme (even though we truly believe in commitments to an activity) and sometimes they just do not understand that kids have a life that sometimes involves something that they have to do for another teacher and they ultimately *</em></strong> one teacher off in the process and they can’t please each one and it is not like they are asking to goof off and be irresponsible. One thing my D did was that she had played softball her entire life and planned to play varsity in high school. She was on JV as a freshman. But she went to the meeting about Varsity softball preseason and the talk that that particular coach gave was one that centered on that the only thing that mattered was winning and that you could never ever miss a practice. Well, the JV coach was not quite like that. So, each spring, my D has gotten into All States in music and has her annual dance performance and those are during spring sports but the JV coach was accomodating with advance notice, and she knew this particular Varsity coach would not be. So, without further adieu, she switched spring sports to Varsity Tennis because she was a tennis player (was immediately placed as the number one singles player) and to tennis coach once said at an award banquet how my D “defected” to his team, LOL. And you know why? HE was a parent and HE truly understood a reasonable conflict and he allowed her to go to All States for music and to her annual dance performance, because other than those things ,she was truly commited, never missed a practice and was a very dedicated team player and was their best player in fact. So, the attitude of particular teachers (like the tap dance teacher and the tennis and ski coach) were what made it work but we have had some along the way who were so locked in that if the child had anything going on in their life besides that person’s one area, watch out. Luckily, we have had some folks who were somewhat flexible within reason. My younger D, for example, has been the lead for a few years in the school musical, even though one day per week she must miss for rehearsal of her dance troupe. By the same token, my older D could not do the musical cause he would not let her cause of some conflicts with the ski team for the first couple of weeks, that D did musicals in the summer. An example of a coach with a human heart was in senior year my D was the starting and only Varsity Soccer Goalie and she went to every practice and game but told the coach in the summer that she had a college visit planned to Yale that included interviews and other meetings and she purposely planned it around the games and would only miss practice and he was cool with that cause of the advance notice. So, the week came for the trip to Yale and lo and behold, a game that week was rained out and reschedled at the last minute to be when she was to go to Yale and had all these appointments lined up. She was in such a quandry as it was the big game against the best team but the coach told her that he supported her trip to Yale and that if he was in the same situation, he’d go to Yale and not give it up. He saw the bigger picture. He called a goalie up from the JV. She went to Yale as planned. I have been grateful for coaches and directors like this. I’ve seen both extremes but this is one that seems more human to me because you know, they are kids afterall. If a student can show commitment but has something reasonable that comes up with much advance notice, I really think sometimes some of these folks who run ECs need to bend a little bit as long as the kid is not taking advantage and is being dedicated in every other way. But all this is to say that we have indeed run into conflicts when the school concert is on game night…oy, I have driven a hundred miles from one event to get the kid to the next one so they don’t displeasure a teacher or coach…we have gone to great lengths to make it work. My child even wrote a college essay about this lifestyle and all the things she balances in her life. </p>

<p>Susan</p>

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<p>Suzie - I totally understand how hard it was for your D to juggle all of these activities, and I admire her ability to do so. My son did track/xc (3 seasons) and was by no means the star of the team, but he got a lot of grief for wanting to miss some after-school practices (not meets) just for winter track (which is really sort of like an extra season) to be on the Math Team and Scholars Bowl team. At track banquets, the coach would mock him and his friend (who was also in all the advanced classes) about “how many books they had read on the bus (traveling to and from meets)” and called them the “Brain Trust”, etc. When else were they supposed to get their school work done if they weren’t getting home until 7 or 8 pm at night? As far as music, at our school if a student who plays a band instrument is not in the (very time consuming) marching band, he or she is not allowed to go on any music trips, try out for county or state bands, be in jazz band, go to music banquets, or even be in the advanced in-school ensemble, which is a class. The student may only take the lower ensemble as a class, and nothing else. The thing is, our school has about 750 students in each GRADE so it is easier for the coaches/directors to be even more inflexible, with a larger pool of students to draw from. As far as sports, we are a very sports-crazed community, and there is such a pool of talent that it is very difficult to even make the soccer team or basketball team unless you play on a club team or AAU or whatever during the off seasons. Many kids who have been excellent and committed basketball or soccer or baseball or softball players through junior high don’t even make our high school teams. That is what I meant when I assumed your D must have attended a smaller school - I was in no way trying to minimize her accomplishments or how difficult it was for her to participate in all of these things.</p>