<p>for years, S2 had thought that he would make MIT his top choice. then he went to an admission meeting and reluctantly concluded that he and MIT would not be a great fit. He seriously considered Chicago. But two things made him less enthusiastic. One was the Core. He was not against it as such, but concerned that it might make scheduling the courses he wanted to make more difficult. The second thing was distance and location. This was actually less of an issue for him or for us. If he had not gotten SCEA, he might have applied to Chicago, and who knows? He might have ended up there and done well there.<br>
S1 actually could have gotten off the Chicago WL. Apparently, he was quite high up. But he got other offers and decided to accept one of them. I don’t think the ones he was considering had higher than or even as much prestige as Chicago. Certainly not in this house. But I believe that S1 considered distance as part of “fit.”</p>
<p>funny thing about travel. </p>
<p>I remember one Thanksgiving where we had to pick up D at 3:15 AM, due to bad weather delaying departure in Chicago for something like 8 hours. I remember other nailbiters wondering if she could get to Ohare due to bad weather. Midway was out because at the time they only flew to Providence RI or Manchester NH. (and who do you think was going to spend the time on the road, DD to O’Hare or me to Providence? There’s a limit to what we should do for our kids. 
)</p>
<p>funny thing about travel. </p>
<p>I remember one Thanksgiving where we had to pick up D at 3:15 AM, due to bad weather delaying departure in Chicago for something like 8 hours. I remember other nailbiters wondering if she could get to Ohare due to bad weather. Midway was out because at the time they only flew to Providence RI or Manchester NH. (and who do you think was going to spend the time on the road, DD to O’Hare or me to Providence? There’s a limit to what we should do for our kids. )</p>
<p>That’s great – but that’s a different discussion than the impact of peers on one’s choice.</p>
<p>NMD, you said upthread “I guess PG and JHS that you suggest our kids just ignore their peers. Great advice…but quite impossible for mere mortals in practice.”</p>
<p>Let’s play a mind game. Let’s say your family had been transferred to a midwestern state while your very bright and accomplished daughter was still in hs. And she was seriously considering HYP. And the kids in her school were all, “Well, what a bunch of eggheads. You really should go to Flagship State U. They have the most awesome parties and the football team rocks. We can all room together, too!” Would you find it a) easy or b) hard to tell your daughter to ignore such peer pressure? I’m pretty darn sure you’d find it easy to tell your daughter to ignore such peer pressure because you’d all just laugh and roll your eyes and think, oh, whatever. And you wouldn’t feel any need to “explain” HYP applications to any of them; you’d just go ahead and do it and whatever they thought of it – who cares.</p>
<p>So why is it suddenly any different when the peer pressure is HYP or bust?</p>
<p>PG:</p>
<p>H and I come from a different culture where the notion of “peer pressure” was either unknown or frowned upon when we were growing up. I remember one of my mother’s favorite phrase" “just because others do it/have it does not mean you should be doing/having it).” And we raised our kids accordingly. In their own way, they have never been swayed by what others do/wear/listen to. It does not mean I cannot sympathize with kids raised in American peer culture especially when what they want does not seem unreasonable.</p>
<p>Your analogy strikes me as off the wall. </p>
<p>I don’t know about what goes inside the school NMD’s D attended. But in ours, because it is far more diverse, not all high achievers focus on the very top schools. We do not have a wall of shame. In fact, until the last few years (after both Ss graduated) the school did not bother posting a list of colleges where its graduates were matriculating (and does not post numbers). But we on CC have all read of kids doing cartwheels in the cafeteria while other kids try not to break down and cry.</p>
<p>I like Pizzagirl’s analogy.</p>
<p>So my husband and I were just talking about how happy we are for our daughter, who just got into Tufts. Then we realized, it’s not an Ivy League school. What will we tell the neighbors? ;)</p>
<p>By the way, one of my daughter’s friends, who just got into Penn, texted my daughter congrats. Maybe the kids aren’t the problem after all?</p>
<p>Ugh. We have all been talking around in circles for days.</p>
<p>No one is unsympathetic to a disappointed girl, especially one who is full of drive and talent and brains. Even if she is more disappointed than she should be, because she goes to school with mean kids who tease her because she didn’t get into Harvard or Yale. </p>
<p>That girl vanished six years ago. She grew up and did other, sensational things.</p>
<p>So now we are dealing with a story her father told about her. And the story is double-edged. One edge – the one we all want to use – is that being disappointed in college admissions is not the end of the world. You can come back and triumph in the end. Quality will out! </p>
<p>But the other edge is that, to appreciate the quality of her redemption, we have to take seriously the despair she felt at the outset. It wasn’t just that for Hanukah she got a pink dress with a blue bow, when she really wanted the blue dress with the pink bow. She suffered a real privation! A natural princess, she was cheated out of her rightful kingdom, and sent to the College of the Paupers. Horrors! And despite her commoners’ college, she triumphed anyway, a triumph so great it compensated for the depth of her fall. By, effectively, winning a gold medal in the academic Olympics, she Showed Them How Wrong They Were! </p>
<p>If you tell THAT story – and I think NMD did, although not in such an exaggerated way – part of what you are doing is validating the idea that there is some huge gap between the Dream Schools and the College of Paupers, and that only a superhuman achievement can transcend it. I don’t like that story.</p>
<p>The story I would rather tell is that the princess got a pink dress rather than a blue dress. She had a little pout about that, because she had her heart set on blue. But it turned out that pink looked pretty nice on her, too, and that the handsome prince didn’t care WHAT color dress she was wearing, because she was so smart and interesting.</p>
<p>LOL, BurnThis, Tufts doesn’t even sound like the name of a university - it sounds like it should be a tissue brand or something! But congrats!</p>
<p>I haven’t heard news from our school, but I don’t think any of my son’s close friends are applying early anywhere - at least not ED.</p>
<p>I’m liking the posts JHS is writing today. Post # 589…another winner.</p>
<p>Well done, JHS. I can tell you went to HYP ;-).</p>
<p>Congrats, BurnThis. I can’t help but notice you’re from LA. (Do they even fly from LA to Boston? Seems insurmountable to me.)</p>
<p>In terms of travel, I don’t think of Chicago as being all that far. In an emergency, it wouldn’t take <em>that</em> long to get there. And one of the things my son has said he really likes about the experience is getting to know a lot of kids who <em>aren’t</em> from the Northeast, and learning what those strange people in the Midwest are actually like. Sometimes, just to amuse himself by conforming to people’s pre-existing stereotypes, he exaggerates his New Jersey accent for effect. And mentions that there was a Sopranos episode that showed our building in the background of one scene. </p>
<p>But even I have my limits as to what I would tolerate. He’s mentioned that he’s already thinking of applying to graduate school at Berkeley. California? Is he serious? Why would anybody want to go to school out there? Nobody does.</p>
<p>lol about Tufts’ name, mathmom. My husband’s response every time anyone mentions Tufts is “That’s a hard school.” Get it? Toughs. </p>
<p>Thanks, PG. Good point about the travel, should have looked into that before she signed the ED agreement! ;)</p>
<p>Heck, my H has been known to commute to Chicago for day trips for work, including dropping by campus to see S1.</p>
<p>I can drive a day trip to Chicago from here, and have. I’m one of those parents who MOSTLY encourages a “more than 500 miles from home” selection criterion for colleges, but I make an exception to that for two colleges: our own state flagship university and the University of Chicago. It’s still up to each of our children to decide where to apply (indeed, WHETHER to apply to college) and where to enroll if admitted to more than one college. The social pressure here is not too intense.</p>
<p>JHS: You forgot to mention that the blue dress with the pink bow has been more coveted by the girls in that particular school. But I totally agree that the pink dress with the blue bow is just as nice. </p>
<p>Do you have an analogy that works for guys? My Ss would die before wearing a dress with or without bows, and whether pink or blue. :)</p>
<p>PG: Check out the cost of a Boston-LA vs. Boston-Phila flight. Would you believe that Boston-LA is nearly $50 cheaper than Boston-Phila, both non-stop?</p>
<p>I don’t know how long the $150 Boston-Chicago roundtrip fares will last. they certainly were not available last spring when I had to travel. They were not available back when I wanted my Ss to check out Chicago.</p>
<p>JHS is a Yale alum!!! I always like his posts.</p>
<p>“Ugh. We have been talking around in circles for days.”</p>
<p>Days? How about a week. It should have sufficed to stop at Calmom’s post #58 on December 3 (the day of the OP) which said it all.</p>
<p>Calmom’s post #58 was excellent. And she is a UC grad. I almost always like her posts.</p>
<p>My nephew who is from DC was interested to see that it cost much less money to fly to Houston than to Ithaca. He’s a happy camper at Rice. (Not the only reason he chose Rice, but it did factor into the equation.) Personally, I never much liked pink or blue in dresses - I’ve got brown, black and maroon.</p>