<p>“So this is my ‘disappointed’ thread. My, even if it was (sort of) expected, it still hurts thread…Misery loves company thread.” </p>
<p>My ‘misery loves company’ story is with my older DD. She was a National Merit Semifinialist who didn’t make Finalist due to grades (she struggled in an overloaded IB semester and gave up instead of asking for help.). Typically this kind of thing happens to boys, but sometimes girls too. </p>
<p>Anyway, I do remember that this time of year can be disappointing when a student has not worked to full potential.</p>
<p>The rewards are out there in life for hard work. But you have to work hard to find the rewards and then work hard to earn the rewards.</p>
<p>For the hard workers on this thread: Try to find a job that pays overtime if you work extra hours in a week, and then patiently wait until crunch time hits and work a ton of overtime. Overtime is the easiest way of giving yourself a pay raise, and all companies have crunch times that need you to work long hours for a period of time. Your paycheck will handsomely reflect the long hours that you put into your job and you will feel very rewarded.</p>
<p>For the slackers on the thread: Get yourself a government job. You can do hardly any work and not get fired, and you don’t have to work overtime. You proabably will get paid less but you will enjoy your job more. (My apologies to government workers on the thread. Many government workers are hard workers. But those of you who work hard understand that it’s hard to get fired from the government.)</p>
<p>GwenF … I now realize that my thread title was not “on topic” as it were. LOL At least not on the topic I was expecting! It is amazing how much he matured at the end of last year/beginning of this year. I think he’ll be OK without a gap year, but things like that and the fear of top school flame out do pop into my mind a lot.</p>
<p>katlia … You do of course realize from being on CC that there are matches and safeties to be considered as well as the state flagship for applications next year. We did that some, and I knew at the time he was reach heavy.</p>
<p>… and to reply to someone else</p>
<p>Yep, part of the reason he was reach heavy was that I thought the app process might give him something of a wake up call. Better the universe shout it than me! I do want him to realize choices have consequences ESPECIALLY these consequences that are NOT the end of the world. College is not the end goal, and the particular college wasn’t my end goal either. Finding a fit would be good. I thought he had 6/7 reaches, 3/4 matches, 2 safeties and one wild card. </p>
<p>Yes, Mythmom, 2blue, it was joining in wasting the champagne instead of tasting it … not that we need champagne to love the kid thread. … I’ve got to do better with the titles!</p>
<p>physicshobo … I’d note that envy is a natural emotion, but wasted effort. I often tell myself (still! at my advanced age!) “Think about yourself before you think about the Jones, because their grass is greener because it is fake. Mine is full of mole holes, but it is real.” … that is just a way to say to accept your feelings, but translate the energy into YOUR OWN life and accomplishments.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that “success” is not measured, in real life, by the US News ranking list. Yes, there are kids who will be accepted to Ivies and other elites this year who will go on to become the leaders, movers & shakers of their generation – but the vast majority will finish college and go on to lead lives that are far more ordinary. </p>
<p>And there are young people who will follow different paths who will rise to prominence in the future, and many more who won’t, but who will end up leading perfectly respectable lives, gainfully employed, raising families of their own. </p>
<p>So yes, its a little bit painful in the spring of senior year in high school… but 10 years down the line, life will have taken over. </p>
<p>And I’d note that the high school slackers do not necessarily turn out to be life-slackers. Later on they may find a career that is engaging and rewarding, and become quite successful in their own right.</p>
<p>DD got into 3 of 6 Ivy applied to, but NOT her dream school. I remember well how I HATED the defer … wait wait wait wait … reject scenario.
She is happy where she is and still working to her potential!</p>
<p>And least someone think <em>we</em> make comparisons about the kids … we don’t (at least we watch it) They are special and individual in their own ways and it helps that there is a girl and a boy so they don’t fall into the trap of comparisons. Possibly DS was in her shadow (goodness knows I hear that from my Mom a lot). But I think that is … ah baloney. My sister was TONS smarter, more vivacious, harder working than I, and I basked in her glory without a bit of envy or effort to match her.</p>
<p>OP- you’re in the crunch period for a parent. In many ways, your son will take his tone from you…</p>
<p>You need to find a way to get excited about all the opportunities to learn and stretch and grow at the place he’s been accepted. He’s going to college! Something that people all of the world (and throughout history) weren’t able to do, despite their ability. And he’s going!</p>
<p>His rejections- to be blunt- cease to be relevant as “teachable moments” other than to make him bitter or ambivalent about where he ends up. Nobody with the natural ability of your son burns the midnight oil hoping to prove the adcoms at Caltech wrong. And surely, if he shows up at this college in August with an attitude, it will impair both his social integration and his intellectual engagement.</p>
<p>So let the rest of the envelopes and chips fall where they may. And then get excited and supportive about where he’s going.</p>
<p>Kids like yours will start to work like demons when something hard and interesting and captivating turns them on. It is a shame that didn’t happen already, given his natural ability… but at 18 he’s hardly a fully baked adult. And although the dream schools would for sure have been dreamy… maybe having him in a place where he won’t have turn in his A game starting from day 1 just to keep afloat is a better plan in the end.</p>
<p>And any college will have smart professors, hundreds of thousands of books in its library, visiting lecturers and scholars making presentations and giving symposia on cool stuff. Your son is ready to be in a place where he can tap all of that, i.e. not high school. And maybe when something cool and hard sparks his interest, you’ll watch the slacker evaporate.</p>
<p>Hugs. It’s hard to watch your kid “settle”-- but it’s only “settling” if you take that attitude with him. (in private you get to eat mint chip ice cream and feel sorry for yourself for a day or two!)</p>
<p>It sounds as though OP’s son is not a hard driven, highly motivated student, which is fine, and that he will have an opportunity to attend college. Period. The rest is up to him.</p>
<p>Regarding everybody who is mad at debrockman- I actually agree that school is hard on boys, but while typing this, I realize that school is hard on girls too. Its just hard.</p>
<p>And more to debrockman- you sound really angry and I cant tell how your school has failed your son? He seems wildly successful so what is the problem?</p>
<p>I need to come here to vent so I don’t blurt out “I told you so” right now when all THAT would do is make him mad or hurt. The last 4 years of HS are past my ability for teachable moments.</p>
<p>I need to watch the “settling” mentality and I really need to beat that thought into my H’s brain, too!</p>
<p>I am hoping DS has another accept or two just so he can <em>choose</em> because then it would be a choice and not a settle. </p>
<p>…and that would be half a bag of Hershey’s kisses which were postponed for a week since the rejection slaughter. Now was the time since I am home alone after a visit from my Mom (now THAT would be a whole 'nuther thread!) while DS and DH go east to put DD on the plane for study abroad.</p>
<p>Eso, there are all kinds of successful adults out there whose mom’s spent 20 years wanting to throttle them. I feel confident you will be joining their ranks.</p>
<p>In my fantasy world, my son will be thanking the Nobel committee for recognizing his mom- she’s easy to spot, she’s bald on one side from having pulled out her hair by the roots when he was in middle school. This is the mom who never squelched his independence by hiding his comic books when he should have been doing long division worksheets She didn’t say “I told you so” the summer in HS he spent cleaning grease out of a fryolater (wearing an ugly polyester uniform which ALWAYS smelled of grease) since he missed the deadlines of all the nifty and prestigious jobs his HS teachers were trying to arrange for him. This is the mom who drove him to work without complaining the summer he didn’t have his driver’s license (he didn’t have the money saved to pay his share of the car insurance, so no license) and tacked up the bus schedule on the frig and by the front door so that next Fall so he could get around town- and never rubbed his face in it.</p>
<p>Oh yes, a Nobel prize and a big shout-out to his parents for recognizing that kids develop in different ways and at their own pace, and while some kids are burning up the world at 15, others can’t get off the sofa to fix themselves a sandwich (so they eat the bread right out of the bag). We gritted our teeth, we pulled out our hair, we applauded small efforts at maturity and being responsible… and we were thrilled after the summer of Fast Food Hell when he decided on his own that he absolutely had to go to college and work hard and do something meaningful with his life after spending hours with his co-workers, many of whom were capable and smart-- but never applied themselves at school and ended up stuck behind a cash register or a drive through window.</p>
<p>Your son will get there too. He will meet some professor of neuro-linguistics who studies speech in the brain-damaged and it will change his life. Or he’ll stumble into a lecture about the Iraqi Constitution or the Nuremberg Trials and he’ll have found “his people”. Or his roommate will be an art history major and the two of them will figure out how to get a fellowship or a grant to go to Florence for Junior year and the next thing you’ll know, he’s learning Italian and taking a chemistry class co-taught by an art historian, a restoration specialist from the Vatican, and a chemist.</p>
<p>Who knows. But you need to deliver him to said college with enough excitement and enthusiasm so that he can take advantage of the cool opportunities when he falls on top of them.</p>
<p>Go sulk. You deserve it. And then go get excited about Plan B.</p>
<p>Daughter leaving for study abroad, bright son finally coming up against the consequences (you foresaw but could not prevent) of a certain type of attitude about busywork and whatnot…trying mother (reading between the lines) </p>
<p>Sounds like a spa day for Esobay!!! soon. ;)</p>
<p>Your son will be fine. You will be fine. But, you are completely entitled to your moment of sadness and frustration.</p>
<p>I’ve had mine with my own kids, for various stubborn reasons…Always hoping my kids will learn from MY mistakes :p…rarely happens.</p>
<p>Good luck to your son. I’m glad he has an acceptance. There was some recycled thread on here last year about a kid who had NO acceptances one year. And, who knows? Maybe one of the remaining schools will see what it is that you are hoping they will see. It’s not over yet.</p>
<p>esobau, I feel your pain. My oldest who was #8 in a class of 600 and had great scores, also got deferred and then rejected from MIT, Caltech and Stanford and was waitlisted at Harvey Mudd. The one that really stung was Caltech where my dh had been a grad student. My son seemed so at home on the campus when we visited and I knew the place very well having been out in Pasadena for two years myself. Luckily the admissions gods seem to know what they are doing. I don’t think he could have a better fit than he’s had at Carnegie Mellon. </p>
<p>He too did not write the most inspired of essays, though I thought it was pretty good for him. It’s been interesting to see how my younger son, whose grades are much iffier and scores not quite so stellar is doing. We’re still waiting on a lot of colleges, but I think he is benefiting from the fact that he’s much more personable, and his sunny and slightly quirky personality really comes out in his essays.</p>
<p>Wow! I just tuned in to this thread and was amazed at what I saw. As the mother of one of those bright unmotivated, high test score/iffy grades kids, I have two things to add.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The application process can be a wake-up call. Son did many applications-hoping for that miracle-and came up with one, although it wasn’t a high choice on his list (and wasn’t an ivy or one tier down either). A year later, he is ecstatically happy and cannot imagine himself anywhere else.</p></li>
<li><p>I didn’t have to say I told him so. He said it himself. That became the first step iin my letting go and hhis taking over responsibility for himself.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So . . .why did this thread become so hostile???</p>
<p>blossom’s post is a must-read.
Esobay, it only takes one prof to really inspire a bright student like your son to work like a demon. He’s demonstrated he can do it. And inspiring profs can be found in lots of schools, not just the tippy-top ones.</p>
<p>Like sewnsew’s S, the college application process was a wakeup call for my S. We visited/applied to some colleges that he would have loved to go to, but his grades did not get him the merit aid that would made it affordable to attend.</p>
<p>Definitely a teachable moment. He’s had a great senior year in high school, and luckily got into the engineering program at the state flagship, where I think he’ll do well.</p>
<p>It was a tough lesson for him to learn, but one that he needed to learn to do well in life - sometimes you have to do things you don’t think are important or dumb. I do that everyday at work (unfortunately)</p>
<p>And it’s important to follow through on commitments, it matters.</p>
<p>S also had 2 mentors in both his Chem teachers -positive male role models that he looked up to and listened to. They helped him immensely.</p>
<p>Slacker in high school, in the worst of situations, went to school in an area most of you would not walk in alone (lots of gangs, drug dealings and dog fights).</p>
<p>Made a had a 3.2 when applying to colleges, graduated with a 3.6.
Currently at Tier 4 school, (sophomore). Biology major, managed a 3.9 college GPA.</p>
<p>Accepted into the following as a transfer student already.</p>
<p>Boston U
UConn
U of M: College Park
UGA
and Georgia Tech</p>
<p>waiting to hear from Georgetown (professor said it is a likely acceptance), Columbia (crapshoot), Cornell, Penn, George Washington University, University of Rochester, NYU, University of Washington and Washington University in St Louis.</p>
<p>Took the SAT again after my first year of college. Made a 2250+ on it. Made around a 1900 when I was in high school without prep.</p>