Scenario for Admissions Disappointment

Parents Forum
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<p>Dadx- Greene is correct ( he said all the Ivy League schools, not HYP). Greene should know. He was a former admissions officer at Princeton, is a member of Princeton’s faculty board of advisors, graduated from Dartmouth and got a master’s degree from Harvard during the period he talked about.</p>

<p>But I also note (in your provided stats), that the average for Yale’s class of 1955 had an SAT average of 1201 (the same time period as the 85% acceptance rate at Stanford) and 1236 for the class of 1960. So HYP probably got a lot more competetive in the 60’s compared to the other Ivy’s in the 70’s. One only has to look as far as Brown which was Colgate’s twin in terms of selectivity for a long time.</p>

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<p>Tiger Woods at Stanford? I dunno if I agree with this statement. My ‘known’ group of HYS athletes with mid-October admits are all Olympic contenders.</p>

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<p>OK. Here’s a happy ending. My daughter’s dream school was the University of Chicago. No ifs, ands, or buts. We (lovingly) gave her the hard facts: We can’t pay $43,000 per year. If you don’t get a scholarship, it is out of the question. And we are not kidding, so don’t get it into your head that we will magically be able to produce the money. She got in, got her full scholarship. I cried in relief. We drove her to Chicago. I cried all the way back to Texas. But she’s deliriously happy with her choice and that’s what matters.</p>

<p>P.S. We realize that our daughter somehow got lucky, and she realizes it too. That’s why my advice is this: Apply to financial reaches, matches and safeties but be sure you could be happy at any of them. Sometimes fortune smiles on you and sometimes it does not, so you have to make your own opportunities. Also: It doesn’t matter whether you are accepted at your dream school if you can’t afford to attend. So make sure you have two types of dream schools – realistic dreams and “Hail Mary” dreams.</p>

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<p>echosensei, there are so many great schools, each with their unique qualities and acceptance policies. Instead of falling in love with one school and applying to some others as well, I encourage students to find a group of schools they could love and make sure the list includes a great safety. After acceptances arrive is the best time to commit their young student hearts.</p>

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<p>congrats silly. Great story. Kudos to your D for accepting the hard line. I’m losing patience with the “If Pigs Could Fly” students.</p>

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<p>Right, which is why I also posted:</p>

<p>“One more thing - FIND A SAFETY YOUR KID CAN LIKE.”</p>

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<p>Cheers – Your post reminded me that it is extremely important for parents to be honest about what they can and cannot pay. I have seen quite a few disappointed kids who mistakenly thought their parents could pay more than was possible. I don’t think I have ever posted this, but I was diagnosed with breast cancer when my daughter was a freshman. Because I did not know what the future held, we had some talks about her college dreams earlier than we might have. This turned out to be a good thing, because I learned that she was interested in costly private schools. I purchased some books (the most enlightening was “Discounts and Deals at the Nation’s Best Colleges”). That’s where I learned that the Ivies and their ilk do not offer merit aid. I was able to firmly tell my daughter that the only way to attend an expensive private school was with hard work and determination to earn merit aid. She took my advice to heart and worked very hard to achieve her goal. My son is a high school freshman and I have had the same talk with him. He is an excellent student, but he doesn’t have the same drive my daughter had. However, the same statement holds true: If he wants to attend a costly private school, he will have to earn merit aid. So we will use the same strategy again – financial and academic safeties, matches and reaches.</p>

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<p>I can post it because my mother and father knowingly told me to apply “anywhere”. Then, when I got off a Private U waitlist, they changed their minds. </p>

<p>Oh well. That’s life.</p>

<p>I wasn’t thrilled by their obstructing but I wasn’t going to let it ruin our relationship. They had the money, but it was their money. I never felt entitled to it. Just the oppostie. I knew they were entitled to change their minds about their money. It was 1974 and I didn’t expect adults to behave like Saint Frances of Assisi.</p>

<p>I immediately opened my own wallet–which had a grand total of $1000 in it. </p>

<p>I never looked back-- even though I had NO idea what I could earn as an architect. For goodness sake, I thought I might take three or four plane rides in my ENTIRE life, nevermind the three or four long haul across the world trips I take per YEAR, LOL.</p>

<p>I could not see the future, but I did believe in myself. I thought I could make my own way and I did.</p>

<p>That said, I have done the opposite for my Ss. I told them they could go anywhere and I made sure I could back that up.</p>

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<p>I remember 1974, and what $1000 was worth back then. Did you earn that from summer or term-time jobs before college? </p>

<p>I wonder what the comparable amount of money would be today, adjusting for inflation.</p>

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<p>“Can those of you with kids who did get accepted to their dream schools make some positive suggestions about it?”
Echosensei, my son did get into his dream school. He (with our guidance) worked really, really hard to put together a knockout application that told his personal story. He also applied ED.</p>

<p>But, you know, when I read about this years success stories I still have a soft spot for his so called safeties. I just KNOW he could have been happy had he ended up at any of the eight colleges on his list – including the less selectives. And that is a good feeling.</p>

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<p>Thank you all!</p>

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<p>Jonri’s message is something that is obvious once you think about it, but most people (including me) don’t usually think about it. Excellent observation. This is one of those posts that I wish could somehow be “enshrined” so that it would be easy to find in the future and all CCers could read it (rather than being buried as the one hundred and thirty-first message in a thread that will be relegated to the archives.</p>

<p>I read something similar about a prestigeous LAC (don’t remember which one) that said the odds of getting in were greatly improved if one let them know that their declared major was going to be physics or some other hard science.</p>

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<p>Another vote to enshrine jonri’s post #131, and also the following, pithy and critically important comment

This approach of the Almighty Dream and the Back of the Pack just must be abandoned. It is dangerous to the mental, educational and financial health of all the kids and parents who buy into it. </p>

<p>Thank you, jonri and Mr. B. If folks read only two things on cc before making their List, these should be the two. IMHO.</p>

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<p>The NJ section of the Sunday NYTimes quoted a college advisor at the Pingry School who said that the difference between working in NJ and his old prep school in the midwest was that the families in NJ don’t trust the system to be fair. Small wonder. I don’t have a problem with top schools fishing for oboe players or students from Idaho, but anecdotally we hear enough stories about kids who were cited as top hispanic scorers for the PSAT/NMSQT who grew up in white families where Spanish wasn’t even spoken. Needless to say, these students are now on their way to the ivies or their equivalents. The colleges can and should aim for diversity, but they shouldn’t encourage students to game the system.</p>

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<p>(At the risk of belaboring this), when stats are involved people should be accurate. Greene is certainly wrong. Using Yale’s published data, and assuming HYP combined had the same average (unrecentered) score of 1408, it is highly unlikely that the remaining five schools admissions lowered the overall average for admits in the sixties to anywhere close to 1100. Even with Penn and Cornell having larger populations, this ridiculous. The other five schools would have had to have averaged about 975 for the overall average to come out there. Greene should fix this in his next reprint. </p>

<p>I have seen “stats” like this before from other consultant sources—one appeared in a very glossy mail solicitation by a local admissions consulting firm. They are marketing hooks for consultants seeking to expand their market by creating the idea that students would once have been admitted to the Ivies but now need the consultants help. That may well be true, but it is so for a great deal fewer students than the consultant needs to support himself (apparently).</p>

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<p>Jonri- I like your perspective on supply and demand. Interesting post.</p>

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<p>I dislike the athletic preferences because it’s not fair. In theory, at least, affirmative action is supposed to compensate for a bad hand in life (doesn’t take into account socioeconomic status all the time, but that’s a whole 'nother thread).</p>

<p>In my case? Well, I have a friend who applied to Stanford and was definitely Stanford material. It was his first choice, and then he got waitlisted (and eventually, rejected). He’s not a college-level athlete, but he is on the [removed to protect the innocent] team, and now has to watch a team mate with little or no academic ability get a full ride at Stanford, with all the athletic perks (tutoring, special treatment, etc) that is implied. He’s going to a great school anyway, but it’s not his first choice.</p>

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<p>Dadx- I think you are running the risk of belaboring this. My original point was that the Ivy League was not always this tough to get into. (You focus on the 1960s thing to dismiss it as a myth). Yale didn’t have to compete students until after World War II, Stanford’s admit rate was 85% in 1951, Harvard’s average verbal SAT was 583 in 1952, Yale’s average verbal was 603 in 1957. Competition didn’t spice up until the 1960s. It’s as if showing Ivy League graduates in the 1950s were not that bright by today’s standards was sacrilege. I was trying to show sadness in the fact that intellectually bright students couldn’t pick their “dream school” today as they may have before. That a winner take all society that has made the US great has also had an immense downside and that there is now a risk of greater and greater disappointment and the emergence of schadenfreude especially when things that are seemingly unfair occur, e.g. the admission of so many ‘less qualified’ athletes, special interests, legacies, donors, URM, etc. Does it do anyone any good when kids at Stanford and Yale who didn’t get into Harvard can feel such extreme remorse?</p>

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<p>I came to this discussion late, sorry. But this topic comes up from time to time on CC (if ya hang here long enough, the same topics are revisited year to year!), and I also feel strongly that there is a lot of athlete bashing on these forums. By the way, bravo to Xiggi’s posts on this thread. While I am sure there are recruited athletes at SOME colleges in SOME specific sports who MIGHT have lower than the mean academic qualifications for that college, it is a VERY BROAD BRUSH STROKE to imply that all those who are athletes do not measure up to the rest of the academic pool at the college. </p>

<p>Since I read others giving anecdotes here of “dumb jocks getting into elite colleges”…I’m gonna give my own anecdotes to the contrary, just to point out that the assumptions are very broad and generalizing and simply not true or indicative of the majority (while I recognize there are some who fill that profile or stereotype)…</p>

<p>I have an 18 year old daughter who played three varsity sports in high school. She excelled at all three of them. She was NOT a recruited athlete at colleges, however, and I would say that athletics were not a “hook” of hers. But let me dispel the myth of a dumb jock, if you will. She was valedictorian of her class with straight A’s (4.0) in the most difficult courses available. And as not to make this a thing that says that athletes are more valuable or athletes spend more time at their ECs…I will add that she was just as heavily involved in the performing arts…two instruments…All States musician…band…jazz band…dance classes her whole life…select tap dance company…musical theater. So, this is not athletics vs. the arts. At our high school, I observed in her graduating class that the top 15 or so students were in the NHS. As I watched the induction, it dawned on me that almost every kid in that top 15 played AT LEAST one varsity sport. Last year, the val (my d) played three varsity sports and was awarded Scholar Athlete at her school. The sal, played two varsity sports (was tops in the state in one of them) and is at Middlebury. My D is at Brown by the way (again, NOT a recruit). The girl ranked third played three varsity sports, and was a standout in one of them. So many in the top ten were athletes. </p>

<p>Now, at Brown, my D happens to be on one varsity sport team. She still is getting straight As. The time commitment to her sport is great. This semester, she was gone every weekend from campus until recently. The practices are daily. She missed a full week of classes to go to the National Championships where she got Academic All American. A few teammates were designated Academic All American. One of them came in second at Nationals as an individual. Her team came in second in Nationals too. The girl who I just mentioned is pre-med. While the team was away that week, they studied their butts off between training (I know cause I was there and saw them not take any free time to enjoy the weather but to return to their condo to study, unlike some teams that were there. I would say that her teammates are excellent students. Many went to private schools, though my D did not. None are dumb jocks. </p>

<p>This athlete bashing on CC is one thing I could never understand. I don’t think my D’s sports were any more valuable than her arts activities. Her sister who used to also do sports but dropped them in middle school due to increased commitments with her performing arts activities ALSO devotes time round the clock to her EC endeavors/passions. I clearly do not see the musician, actress, dancer, etc as any more worthy than the athlete or vice versa. Each has pursued her passions. Each has excelled at her activities and received recognition at pretty high levels. Each has something to contribute to campus life. I venture that adcoms saw it that way too. I don’t think they said, let’s take this athletic girl and the hell with her academics. Her academics DEFINITELY fit the qualifications for the schools to which she was admitted. The two schools on her list that gave merit aid, gave it to her. I view the sports on her resume as this: long term commitment to area of passion…and achievements in those endeavors…and kid wants to continue with these when she gets to campus (this was true of her arts interests as well). She talked about seeing herself on their playing fields, in their concert halls, on their stages. She was going to bring something to their building of a class. She already had the acadamic stats to get in. NOT ALL athletes get in on their athletic prowess alone. Many many many ALSO have the academics to be admitted. </p>

<p>To those who said that there is no way to be at the top academically and ALSO do the time commitment to athletics…I say look at our school…so many at the top are also our top athletes in the school (as well as top musicians and actors). At our school, the kids at the top are ALSO engaged heavily outside of academics. They are not just smart, they are engaged to other pursuits. I see that now in my D’s college student body. These students are not just high SATs and high GPAs…they are involved in much else outside the classroom. Sports are ONE of those outside areas of engagement, albeit a heavy duty time commitment. </p>

<p>Susan</p>

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<p>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>