<p>je_ne - I’m sure you’d see me on that thread too. I’ve read about your experience, and I’m sure it has been very difficult. I’m filing all this in the back of my head for when my youngest daughter goes through it. </p>
<p>I think the hardest thing to really grasp is that these colleges are not rejecting YOUR wonderful child, they are rejecting a bunch of stuff on a piece of paper. </p>
<p>I’d hate to be the person looking at 7,000 applications and knowing that 90% of them are going to be told ‘no’.</p>
<p>It is a little harder to stomach the rejection when there was an alumni interview. It’s not just “paper” at that point. A school alum has met your child and they still said, “No, thank you.” </p>
<p>And for those who say “the interview doesn’t hold any weight,” then why would they bother to conduct the interview in the first place?</p>
<p>Again, my S and I have moved on (especially my S!). I merely wanted to make the point that it perhaps “stings” a little more initially when your S or D feels that they had a great interview with the particular school’s alum, and it’s still a no.</p>
<p>Lex, please please don’t ascribe meaning to the alumni interview that isn’t there. I did alumni interviews for Brown for years-- exactly one of my interviewees was accepted the year I saw 12 exceptional, off the charts kids. I saw 12 kids from a big Midwestern state, mostly suburban, products of really strong, affluent schools- all great, talented, phenomenal. I didn’t see that the violinist was nowhere near as committed to her instrument or likely to play as the kid from the Bronx; I didn’t see that the Eagle Scout was the only child of two professors who had the time to drive him hither and yon to every single activity his whole life whereas the Eagle with virtually the same stats who grew up in Watertown MA was the product of a single parent home where he’d been getting himself to the dentist and the library on public buses since he was 9-- etc. </p>
<p>I asked for a meeting with my regional ad rep that year… i was so upset. I left the meeting feeling differently. It’s just so hard to see that despite the wonderful and talented kid sitting in front of you, there might be someone more wonderful or equally wonderful or not quite as wonderful who just happens to have something the college needs that year. The Adcom asked me, “would you have been happy attending Brown if your entire Freshman hall was comprised of kids from Winnetka, Great Neck and Menlo Park?” which was a great question-- the top schools could fill their entire CLASS with the applicants from those places.</p>
<p>So your kid wasn’t rejected. Your kid is going to do fabulous things in life after a tough assessment process which sometimes yields the results we hope for and sometimes not… but your kid is fabulous nonetheless.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine used to interview for any Ivy, and I asked him why he no longer does it, and he replied, “I could not do it anymore. Of all those years I interviewed amazing kids, one or two got in. I got too emotionally involved in their decisons, so I quit.” He knew well enough he could no longer be an effective interviewer.</p>
<p>I am busily planning the accepted students day visits and of course, most of them fall on school days. S has definitely moved on and has other things on his mind now. I’m doing well, too, and sincerely believe my S will succeed wherever he lands. We have reminded him time and again that the power of his potential has nothing to do with the colleges who accept or reject him. He believes it and that’s all that matters.</p>
<p>I get it, I really do. I had read a great article about a year ago written by a Harvard alum who described exactly what you stated.</p>
<p>It’s actually been very interesting to me, in a sort of “out-of-body” experience kind-of-way, how “intellectually” you can know something (e.g., that the alumni interviews don’t mean anything), but then when it actually affects you personally, you react to it emotionally, at least initially.</p>
<p>I’m with you, mountains. S is over it, I’m over it, and in fact, stunned to realize that where my S will go is far better academically for what he wants to study than where he didn’t get in. Stunned because it is now clear, after the fact, how much the “emotional” side of college admissions overtook the “intellectual” side. Fascinating stuff, and highly relevant to the type of tactics used by universities to “sell the sizzle” as mom2three pointed out.</p>
<h1>2 absolutely gets the financial ramifications. As a single mom, I have always made sure that my kids were “in the loop” as to how and why we live our life as we do, and what kind of resources we have. They might not know all the details but they definitely get the big picture. They get that daddy isn’t going to help pay, even though he could, and they are over it. #2 knows, just like #1 did, that I will do the absolute max that I can for them. I did not insist that #1 take the cheapest route (which would have ended up costing me, out of pocket, nothing, and would have left his 529 plan at about 30k after graduation). Nor will I do the same with #2. Once we have all the FA in hand, we will do spreadsheets and amortizations and he will know exactly what I will be giving, and what he might be required to give, and how much that might cost him down the road. I am a huge believer in having kids understand how debt can be our best friend as well as our worst enemy.</h1>
<p>She got into Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Lawrence. Waitlisted at NU, Grinnell and Wellesley. She’s off to visit the three to which she was accepted later this month.</p>
<p>je<em>ne</em>sais_quoi I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU AND YOUR DAUGHTER CONGRATULATIONS! WHILE YOU WERE EXPECTING A DIFFERENT OUTCOME, TRUST ME SHE WILL FIND GREAT HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS. IN ONE YEAR FROM NOW YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THAT THIS FOR A CAUSE FOR SO MUCH DISAPPOINTMENT.</p>
<p>je<em>ne</em>sais_quoi I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU AND YOUR DAUGHTER CONGRATULATIONS! WHILE YOU WERE EXPECTING A DIFFERENT OUTCOME, TRUST ME SHE WILL FIND GREAT HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS. IN ONE YEAR FROM NOW YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THAT THIS WAS A CAUSE FOR SO MUCH DISAPPOINTMENT.</p>
<p>je_ne, congratulations to your daughter (and her mom, too :)) - she got into great schools! I do not know much about Lawrence, but the Mt Holyoke and Smith graduates I’ve met were all very bright ladies who had no trouble getting where they wanted in their lives.</p>
<p>Thank you, everyone. I appreciate the congratulations. I am trying to focus on the open doors, not on the ones that are closed (or the folks who got through them instead of my girl)!</p>
<p>I can’t wait until I have time and distance away from this experience and am at the looking-back phase! </p>
<p>This note is in response to a few posts I have read about interviews, interviewers and interviewees.</p>
<p>My son had 4 interviews which he reported all went well. He sent the interviewers a thank you note (some via email) after each interview. He also sent them each a note recently following his final decision. My husband called and spoke with the interviewer (post decision) from the school my son decided to attend. The man was very appreciative and expressed some of the interviewers’ frustration that has been spoken about here. </p>
<p>I am curious how an interviewer handles it when the student is very bright but not personable, or there is a personality conflict. Or there is a lack of meeting of the minds or being on the same wave length for the interview. They just don’t click. To no one’s fault. What does the interviewer report? The student may still be an outstanding member of that school. I wonder if this is why interviews are given little weight.</p>
<p>Just pondering here.</p>
<p>Oh, in the mail today came the rejection and wait list offer.</p>
<p>I think alumni interviews are marketing tools. S’s alumni interviewer was so upset he didn’t get into Dartmouth he emailed S many times. They started a relationship about the Coehlo book THE ALCHEMIST.</p>
<p>D’s alumni interviewer called to see if she was okay she was rejected from Brown. He was more upset than D who was relieved because she really wanted to be in NYC. She spent a summer at Brown and knew Providence was not the same for her.</p>
<p>Friends were alumni interviewers for Cornell. They said not one of interviewees was ever accepted. They called Cornell and complained, and Cornell now routinely takes kids from our hs.</p>
<p>They didn’t quit interviewing until Cornell rejected their kid!</p>
<p>je ne sais: I think the difficulty is going to be choosing between Mt. Holyoke and Smith. They’re both wonderful! I’d like to attend myself.</p>
<p>mythmom: I hope one just feels more right to her. She is so analytical, though, she’ll be comparing bunsen burners or atom splitters or microtomes or whatever college science labs feature these days! One reason she loved Mt. Holyoke was the neurons on embedded on the floor of the science building, and the periodic table that lined the sidewalk entrance! I hope she’ll take note of other things while there. I’m sending Thing 1s dad with explicit instructions as to what he should check out! I’ll be home with Thing 2 and Thing 3.</p>