<p>And? Plenty of kids are going to be disappointed. Some very seriously so. And that’s always sad.</p>
<p>But there is a HUGE difference in the response of the parent who has PROACTIVELY approached the process as “there are a lot of great schools out there, let’s build a list of great places you’d be delighted to go to!” and the response of the parent who wore their Wanna-Be-Ivy-Parent heart on their sleeve ever since the kid could toddle.</p>
<p>And there is a HUGE difference in the response of the parent who, after the disappointment, says, “Their loss, not yours. You’re going to kick butt wherever you go - you’re that kind of kid. Now let’s go buy a t-shirt from your new school and learn the fight song!” and the parent who feels the need to reinforce the notion that yep, indeed, where you’re going, sonnyboy, will never be as good as the one that got away.</p>
<p>And there is a HUGE difference in the response of the parent who says, “You got into some really great schools - wow, what an accomplishment! Way to go, kid! Woo-hoo!” and the parent who says, “Well, I suppose if you HAVE to, these other top 20’s (or whatever) are good enough … I guess.”</p>
<p>Everything you’ve posted says to me that your sympathies lie with the second type of parent in each scenario. I mean, you felt SYMPATHY for the parents of the poor disappointed child who “only” got into 2 top 20 schools because OMG-they-weren’t-Ivies.</p>
<p>“But if he got into other great schools, isn’t the parental message to send him that - hey, you still did fabulously, look at the wonderful time you’re going to have at Emory / Rice / Carnegie-Mellon / whatever?”</p>
<p>I dont make it my business to tell other parents how to interact with their children. I know with MY daughter what I did when she got a rejection was to say that she did fabulously, would do well (probably, no promises), etc. But I ALSO acknowledged and accepted her disappointments. I found that as a parent its necessary to sometimes just listen and say “yeah that sucks” before you explain how it can all work out for the best. </p>
<p>At Univ of Chicago business school rejection letters were called flush letters. At the end of the year the grads attended a flush letter party. For every three flush letters you got a free beer (couldnt be a beer for every flush letter, or we’d all have been on the floor) The “best” flush letters were read aloud, and some of them were howlers. We all laughed, and we all moved on. But damn we didnt pretend that NONE of those flush letters were from companies we would rather have worked for than the ones we did end up working for.</p>
<p>“Do you get knocked down and get up again, or do you lie on the floor bemoaning how awful life is when in the grand scheme of things, you still have it pretty sweet?”</p>
<p>when I have been at my best, I ACKNOWLEDGED the disappointment, worked through the grief and THEN get up again. When I have denied the loss, and avoided the negative emotion it has often risen up to bite me in the rear. </p>
<p>Sadness isnt bad. Disappointment isnt bad. They DO NOT have to mean depression, lying on the floor or whatever. Thats something some of us have to pay a therapist (underpaid but usually employed liberal arts grad, in case any kids are still listening) to learn.</p>
<p>"My dear departed father (born during WWI, his father’s bar business ruined by prohibition, went to high school during the Depression, had his house wiped out by one of the Johnstown floods, and was an infantry officer in Europe during WWII), prohibited my brother and I from using the word “fair.” "</p>
<p>Pizza,
You speak so strongly and absolutely. And do not seem to understand the nuances of HOPE then DISAPPOINTMENT.
I hope that you are more sympathetic that you sound to your children when they DO have disappointments.
And I also hope that you let them REACH for the highest they can.</p>
<p>As parents, as humans, this is not a black or white thing.</p>
<p>TBF, it really is hard when your stats and qualities “match” HYPSM, and you like one or several or all of them. Do you understand that???</p>
<p>Sympathy =/=whining or entitlement or a weakness about needing everything to be fair.</p>
<p>BrooklynBornDad- At Chicago Law we brought the rejection letters to “wine mess” on Friday afternoon and got a free wine for each one! They said “Harvard Law letters don’t count because we all have one!”</p>
<p>the weekly party was actually called a Liquidity Preference Function (hence this particular one was “The Flush Letter LPF”, but unless you know at least vaguely what that means in neoKeynsian Economics, and what U of Chicago B school at the time thought of Keynsian Economics, the joke kind of falls flat.</p>
<p>What a family should do prior to sending the applications in is one discussion that happens over and over on this board and (evidently!) on this thread. And I think this board serves a really worthwhile service in helping navigate that experience. What a family should do after the results are in, whether or not they did the first part" right", is a completely different discussion - again jmho. ymmv.</p>
<p>I hope it’s not too rude to ask how many parents on this board who are giving advice to other parents as to how to manage their and their kids’ disappointment at a rejection by a college have kids who did not get into every college they applied to? And actually had to put these theories into practice? Apologies in advance if this is a rude question. Or if it was asked and answered a few hundred posts back.</p>
<p>xig, you’re doing great. Keep up the yeoman efforts on this thread. </p>
<p>MOWC, for med school a “badge of honor” is how fast Pritzker (Chicago) rejected them. “All the best doctors have this story.” lol And I believe my child may be in the running for shortest elapsed time from submission to rejection. It was a matter of a couple of hours. Submit secondary online and simultaneously pay fee. REJECTED. The rejection didn’t sting (she knew there’d be plenty of those) but the timing…that she noticed. ;)</p>
<p>Fwiw, I do not know why anyone would think that PG precluded her children to reach for the highest. None of us know what the definition of highest meant to the twins. Since PG has shared plenty of details, most know that they both were successful with their ED applications. In general, the ED represents the pinnacle of one’s application. </p>
<p>Further, does anyone really believe that it would have been best for PG to gently push her kids to add a couple of the usual HYPS suspects on their lists, in order to cover the gamut of positive and negative reactions? </p>
<p>Last but not least, I do not know how any of us can find fault in a process that yielded two ED admissions and an ecstatic combination of parents and children. </p>
<p>Of course, it is possible I missed the references entirely.</p>
<p>Many of the families in Dallas get a lot of practice with this sort of thing due to the applications to private schools starting with 3 year old preschool! Back when my kids were born it was a “call from the hospital to get on the list” sort of thing. This could all be repeated, with all the stress, at 1st, 5th, 7th and 9th or some combination of those. There were many disappointed kids and parents along the way. I suspect part of the problem is that once you get your kid into the selective single sex private school, you want to stop holding your breath and assume that the college process will go as hoped!</p>
<p>I’m reminded of a line spoken by a Yale rep to interested parents and students at my kids’ hs… In response to a question about chances of getting in, he said (something to the effect of, and I’m paraphrasing less eloquently than he), “while the chances of any particular applicant getting in are relatively small, your chances of getting in are zero if you don’t apply at all.”</p>
<p>Curm- I think it was one of the NYC residency programs that told my son in law that they hoped he “wasn’t going to show up wearing his cowboy boots because this wasn’t Texas!” He didn’t select that school on his match list!</p>
<p>My youngest was rejected from Headstart! (He threw a block at the woman who had asked him if she could take his picture and proceeded to take it after he had said “No.”)</p>
<p>My oldest was rejected from three reaches, and waitlisted at what I assumed was a match. The school he attended was one we knew was theoretically a great school, but it’s not in the top 20 of USNWR, it wasn’t until he *really *looked at it that he realized what a great place it was. In retrospect perhaps better than his original first choice.</p>
<p>My youngest was rejected from three reaches, but then he had a reach heavy list because he loved his safety. He was thrilled with two of the reaches he got into (and still loved his safety) so choosing was difficult, but in no way did he feel like he was settling.</p>
<p>Nearly a half century ago, I trundled off to my freshman year at my first-choice eastern LAC, thrilled to have gotten in, and expecting to find the same kind of positive school spirit that I had experienced for 15 years living literally across the street from a different LAC, where my Dad taught.</p>
<p>But when I got there, I discovered that a large percentage of the student body consisted of self-described “Ivy League rejects.” The most commonly expressed sentiment about the college was “[College x] sucks.” The atmosphere was best described as “toxic.”</p>
<p>So I would agree with you, PG, let all the attitude cases who can’t get over the fact that they didn’t make it into HYPSM and had to settle for a sixth choice college just stay away. Become plumbers, you’ll make just as much money and probably have more fun.</p>
<p>(And before anyone starts searching my past posts to find out what my college was so they can cross it off their lists, note that (a) this was almost 50 years ago, and (b) the college has undergone major changes since then, including becoming co-ed and almost killing the once-dominant Greek life - which I’m sure has completely altered the culture.)</p>
<p>EDIT: Not that there’s anything wrong with being a plumber!!!</p>
<p>I finally got caught up on all the posts on this thread. Man you people post a lot. There is a difference in graduating from HYPSM and the other top universities. Differences in opportunities in investment banking, consulting, and in job opportunities overseas, particularly Asian cultures. Even PG has admitted as much. I remember one post by her where she said something like HYPSM may offer 26 things but these other top 20 schools offer 24 so “ big deal”. There is more than enough at these other schools for any one student to take advantage of. There in lies the issue. Reasonable people can argue whether the differences are IMPORTANT but it is hard to argue that they don’t exist. If you don’t think the differences are important, then of course you can’t understand why someone is very disappointed with failing to gain admission. If you don’t think the differences are important, that opinion is justified and should be respected. By the same token, if you do think the differences are important, that should be respected as well, not looked down upon or considered laughable.</p>
<p>Frankly, and you can flame me now, I find more differences between HYPSM ( and a handful of other schools like CalTech) and the other top 20, than I do between the other top 20 and the next 50 or so. Is there really a difference between Northwestern ( sorry PG ) , Tulane, SMU and University of Georgia? They are each highly regarded in their region. </p>
<p>Hunt I appreciated your thoughtful and balanced comments. And Texaspg, I understand and appreciate your perspective.</p>
<p>Who said anything about not acknowledging disappointment? However, there’s a diff between disappointment of a hope / dream you had not materializing, and disappointment because you felt something you were <em>entitled</em> to didn’t materialize. And let’s face it, some of the posters on here are clearly describing circumstances where kids had felt entitled or owed admittance into tippy-top schools with sub 10% acceptance rates. Like they thought they were special enough to be in that 10%. The sense of entitlement that “well, of course I’m going to be one of the 10%” is what is puzzling.</p>
<p>Texaspg - you’re right, you said nothinga bout the young amn of your acquaintance. The parents are the ones who were “disappointed” at their son’s poor showing with only his two top-20 acceptances. You’ll still forgive me if I say that if I were meeting them in real life at a cocktail party and I heard that sob story, I wouldn’t feel terribly sympathetic nor would I indulge them more than minimum of sympathy. They still won the jackpot big time.</p>
<p>I understand that the differences are important to some people. At the same time I do not understand someone being “very disappointed” with failing to gain admission to a university where they had probably less than a 5% chance of getting into, once you factor in/out all the special admits. The reaction should be, “well, that was to be expected, but I would never have known if I hadn’t tried.”</p>
<p>What it tells me is that some kids indeed do think they are special snowflakes (or perhaps more accurately, the parents think their kids are special snowflakes), and that 5% chances of getting in are just numbers that don’t apply to them. Well, guess what. You have to look these acceptance rates right in the mouth before you apply, and be fully prepared to be on the wrong end of them, and manage your expectations accordingly. Parents who dreamed of Ivy while leaning over the crib and blithely thought that the kids were shoo-ins for schools of that nature aren’t managing their own expectations accordingly if they don’t do so.</p>