<p>We haven’t experienced a college rejection (yet), because my son got into his early school. But both kids have been rejected for selective programs (and other things) that they really wanted. One in particular was perplexing, but we’ve emphasized to the kid that what replaced that program was really better. (But just between us parents, we still occasionally wonder what those fools who run that program could have been thinking to reject our wonderful kid.)</p>
<p>I myself was rejected from some colleges, but I was so ignorant of the process back then that I didn’t know enough to be outraged.</p>
<p>I think for my daughter it was choosing where she wanted to apply that was stressful, not the results from her applications, lol. By the time results came in, she knew more about each of the schools, had a clearer picture of what she wanted to get out of her college experience, and was happy with the options on the table before her.</p>
<p>I have experienced both with my daughters. D1 suffered rejection but truly loves her private LAC. I was so worried about D2 and her college list I kept encouraging her to cast her net wider. She did after I pestered her and experienced both acceptance and rejection from her college list. She was one of the lucky few and won the lottery:)</p>
<p>Congratulations to both of your daughters, Tessa. :-)</p>
<p>~ ~ ~</p>
<p>I feel really fortunate, very proud of my daughter, and pleased as a peach with how her first year went. I hope this year is equally as wonderful and that everyone here’s kids, whether they initially took any rejections as a serious blow or not, will have a fantastic college experience.</p>
<p>Proudmomof5, this is from the website of your son.s High School. In no way do they say “if you pay us tuition for 12 years your son should get into an Ivy” </p>
<p>I hope your son is the man that thet they describe, he would make them proud.</p>
<p>Is this St. Mark’s? Isn’t that pretty much a bastion of prestige in the first place? The family I know whose kid goes there is unbelievably wealthy (as in, $8 MM house in Dallas).</p>
<p>You have got to be kidding. I don’t have to go pulling SAT ranges to make a case that the distance between, say the Ivies and NU is minimal and the difference between NU and, say, SMU is quite significant. If you want to make the silly student that there’s HYPSM as one tier and then there’s NU/Tulane/UGA/SMU as another tier, go right ahead - you’d be a ■■■■■, then.</p>
<p>Does it matter which school? I have friends whose kids are at Groton- and they act like the laws of gravity have been reversed when a senior ends up at Lehigh “it was barely his safety school”.</p>
<p>Lessons learned- colleges admit the kid, not the HS. My own kids HS had some very predictable years based on the stats/history, and some not-so-predictable years. Not every high scoring Val with a national championship in something and teachers who will fall on their swords for him is going to bring a value added extra to the class the adcoms are assembling. This year it’s St. Marks, next year it’s Dalton, year after it’s Roxbury Latin. Your school is not going to win the brass ring year after year for every single senior- its’ just not mathematically possible.</p>
<p>And you can’t seriously believe that a school which is admitting in the single digits is rejecting thousands of unqualified candidates??? Those thousands are phenomenal applicants- who will enrich Rice and Northwestern and JHU and Emory and on and on…</p>
<p>A quick perusal of their website reveals that the school was founded by a Yale grad (which may explain the high number of Yale admits every year), 4 recent grads are bound for CPMS as recruited athletes, and 39% of the student body are students “of color.” Facts help a lot when trying to unlock the secrets of elite college admissions.</p>
<p>39% students of color sounds like a stretch, unless white or Jewish is a color.<br>
It’s a wonderful school, even though my family’s experience didn’t end well. There are a number of wealthy families, but also a solid upper middle class like many on this forum. Also a handful of full scholarship URMs which works out sometimes and not as well other times. The school sits in the middle of the Dallas public school district, which is simply horrible. A lot of families in the area really stretch to afford private school tuition rather than move out to the distant 'burbs. </p>
<p>I know plenty of the school’s students who go to state schools (and not just the flagship). If people think the entire class winds up at highly selective schools, that is just incorrect. The school is extremely academically rigorous, and so clearly there are good odds for a lot of the students, but not all.</p>
<p>^ The earliest figure on the thread was about 30%, I believe. I believe the website says something like 32 or 33%. That’s pretty standard for elite private schools of any kind, including from where I hail. The goal is about 1/3 URM’s; sometimes it’s reached; sometimes not. But my earlier point still holds: If a URM with an excellent record (but not quite # 3 or #4 ranked) applies to Harvard, but a higher-ranked student does not apply to Harvard, the non-URM higher-ranked student is not being passed over by “the Ivies.” And if #3 or #4 or #5-6, etc. applies to Princeton, Yale, Brown, and Stanford, but so do all the students higher-ranked than her/him, said student is also not being “passed over by the Ivies” (plural).</p>
<p>That’s a hypothetical, obviously, as I have no facts/stats in any particular case, including ones discussed on this thread. But even 4 admits from one school (to H, Y, or P) is a rather generous number unless the school is literally in the town-and-gown neighborhood of one of those 3.</p>
<p>FWIW, the St. Mark’s family that I know had a kid who went to Stanford (he just graduated from there), and they have 2 other sons currently at the school. But amazingly, the father accumulated enough money to have an unbelievably gorgeous home (I’d link to it, but don’t want to compromise privacy) despite having gone to a slacker school like NU. LOL.</p>
<p>The richest families from my son’s grade were Vanderbilt folks (the Perots) and a Michigan grad. I think a few of the others may have been indicted by now.</p>
<p>Wow. You people are being extremely disrespectful to the privacy of a fellow poster who you know specifically asked on several occasions that the school not be identified by those who had figured it out. Unfortunately, GA2012MOM posted something that made it easy to identify through Google, but to name the school and start discussing it with total disregard for the poster who told the original story is incredibly inconsiderate.</p>