<p>This is interesting that you posted this–I was beginning to think I was the only parent feeling like this! My dd got into all of her schools–Hillsdale, Mines, Embry-Riddle and three academies, but I’ve felt kind of sad the last few days now that her decision has been made. It had been exciting to imagine her at lots of different places, but now we know to sing Anchors Aweigh! Another step in the moving-on process…3 more children to go!</p>
<p>Cami and everyone:</p>
<p>I’m not even involved in this year’s decisions and I still hate reading about the decisions!</p>
<p>The only rational approach is to be fatalistic about it. If a wonderful applicant gets in School A and not School B, then School A was meant to be.</p>
<p>All you can do is put yourself in position to fill a slot at any given college. Then, it’s just a matter of how many one-armed paper-hangers from central New Mexico they need that year and how you stack up against the other one-armed paper-hangers from central New Mexico who applied to the same school. Nobody’s kids should beat themselves up over decision letters from colleges. It isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>It’s kind of like had you gone to a different hotel, you would have met a different wife! (though as it turns out, in my case, my wife moved into my house before I’d even met her…long story. ;))</p>
<p>The anticipation of the closed door(s) is worse than the actual sound. D reached for Columbia, and she joined the 91 percent of the applicant pool hearing the slam. She can always visit. It helps that she got into Cal …</p>
<p>Yes, and if you’re a one-armed paper hanger from central New Mexico and it turns out your dream school took a Nebraskan unicycle-riding juggler in a clown suit instead of you, do not flog yourself because you cut off your arm and spent four years hanging wall paper in New Mexico when what you really should have been doing is using both arms to juggle pineapples in Nebraska while wearing a clown suit and pedaling a one-wheeled contraption. ;)</p>
<p>1Down:</p>
<p>LOL! Ain’t that the truth…</p>
<p>silly question, from the OP, what one school isn’t posting decisions yet?</p>
<p>I just signed my enrollment card tonight and while it was to my #1 school, I am still nervous. I’m thrilled to be attending, but it is scary to turn down other schools that I liked as well. The other doors are now shut, and I feel good about it! :)</p>
<p>For me at least, the sound of doors closing sounds like the sound of insufficient financial aid and scholarship offers going through my shredder (best $10 I ever spent–at first it was just to trash bad essays).</p>
<p>No admissions committee decided to close their doors on me; one even opened without my asking.</p>
<p>I’ve got a few definite financial nos that refuse to close (or maybe I’m just refusing to close Stanford’s door? I’m already sending out the notices of declined enrollment to the other two.) until I’m notified that I didn’t win this local scholarship that would make them possible.</p>
<p>There’s Maryland and Pitt wide open with big scholarships (though I’ve already decided that if it comes down to these two, Maryland wins, despite its location).</p>
<p>The veiled door–Santa Clara University. Without a scholarship, it’s a no, but I feel I’ve got a decent shot at significant merit money there. I like to think that it’s in the mail right now, en route.</p>
<p>My path is clearing. I just can’t wait to feel the relief of confirming my enrollment somewhere.</p>
<p>My path has been cleared for me. Last year, I visited the Pacific NW to see colleges and I loved it, but I found myself doubting that I could really be so excited to live there, so I applied to a few very-reach east coast schools, all of which I was ultimately rejected from. They seemed neat and idealistic, but when things rolled around, I got a full tuition scholarship from one of the NW schools (Lewis and Clark) and merit money and a great finaid package that can still get sweeter (as school endowed scholarships are released) from the other, U of Puget Sound. I also got into Reed, which was why I visited Oregon in the first place. </p>
<p>Now I’m not so sure where I stand (I got into all the UC’s, but they aren’t even in the running, even with Regents. Amazing how privates can be less expensive than Berkeley, which gave me a measley $206 grant and loans to “meet” my need). </p>
<p>Next week I’m visiting the three schools and I’m going to get a feel for the next few years. My priorities are coming into line and needless to say, I’m stoked. </p>
<p>It feels amazingly better to be told you are one of the 10 best applicants the school had (out of 5,000 or something), and it totally beats a school where everyone is clamoring for acceptance…I didn’t get in, but I was mostly ambivalent. I am so psyched that college won’t’ mean years of debt for me and my parents, that I’m going to live somewhere beautiful, and like interesteddad said, fate is leading me to where I need to be. </p>
<p>I feel weirdly levelheaded about everything. Life can be good if we interpret it to be. I refuse to not think positively. </p>
<p>No more California for me!</p>
<p>reading:</p>
<p>Great to read such a positive outlook. In all honesty, picking colleges is a lot like going to Baskins-Robbins. I mean…is there really any flavor in that ice cream counter that isn’t going to be sweet? So you thought you wanted strawberry swirl when you first walked in the door, but the mint chocolate chip you ended up with is pretty darn good!</p>
<p>It’s all what you make of it. If you expect to have a great college experience, you probably will.</p>
<p>I expect a lot, but I also expect to go with the flow. I’ve read a lot of your posts from the Swat forum when I was checking out Swat and I found them very interesting, in a good way. </p>
<p>And ice cream is pretty much my favorite sweet, so in reality, I’ve been waiting for college for most of my educational life, and I don’t think there is a flavor I could hate. I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason, and I think I’m also ready to be a little bigger fish in a more normal pond than I’ve been most of my life in gifted programs, so to speak. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>On the subject of doors closing and opening, there is a very intelligent discussion on admissions “engineering” at Tim Burke’s blog. The conversation grew from the NYTimes article on gender balancing at Kenyon to more far-reaching discussion. Very interesting reading from the perspective of some college professor types:</p>
<p><a href=“Kenyon’s Confession | Easily Distracted”>Kenyon’s Confession | Easily Distracted;
<p>But, relevant to this particular topic, Prof. Burke wrote something that is very much worth reading as people get their admissions letters this week:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Cheers and whistles for Prof. Burke.</p>
<p>I do think there are cues that can make one flavor in a line more compelling than another. But.</p>
<p>I think Burke is right. Not because there aren’t differences in cultures at the various colleges. But, rather, because graduating high school seniors are not really able to know what “college” will be like and how they will rapidly change in college. High school perspectives will quickly become irrelevant.</p>
<p>I think we see that clearly on CC with such overemphasis on “how is this or that department?” or “will I get into this or that grad school?” – as if college and life beyond is some simplistic mathematical formula. Even questions like “is School A harder than School B” miss the mark, since the workload varies between individual students at any one school far more than the “average” workload differences between similar schools.</p>
<p>This is a great thread, thanks OP.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, loved the ice cream analogy.</p>
<p>My DS is our oldest, and boy, these rejections are HARD! I hadn’t really understood how hard they would be. And why should I even care about these rejections (one expected, one a surprise), because DS got into a school that was one of his top 3 choices, and this school was actually my top choice for him. One would think I’d be completely happy.</p>
<p>I think that all of you are right, it’s about feeling like the world is full of possibilities, and all of a sudden there are a lot fewer possibilities. Very sad. Also maybe the loss of control, from controlling where you applied to and who would write your recommendation and whether you would apply RD or ED to having the school decide your fate.</p>
<p>Still waiting to hear from 2 more schools (completely agree with whoever on another thread compared this to dripping water torture). And only two more kids to go, thank god they’re twins.</p>
<p>Still deciding here. Click on my name and go to topic on choice between need aid and merit scholarship if you wish to. </p>
<p>I know what all of you mean. There is a small school in the west that will forever seem serene to me. And I will probably always miss the atmosphere of the safety school. That school was kind and gentle and comforting, but its best scholarship would have meant borrowing too much. I am going to miss those places. They had the sweet taste of homemade ice cream from spring fruit.</p>
<p>If this sounds dumb and uninformed, forgive me but are WLs binding? can you be on more than one WLs?</p>
<p>You can be on more than one Wait List, yes.</p>
<p>Our daughter and both of us as parents felt a little bittersweet when she was accepted ED to Vanderbilt, in the “what might have been” category. It was a little sad mailing her requests to withdraw applications to both reaches and safeties, for all the reasons mentioned by all you previous posters to this thread.
HOWEVER, as we begin now to hear and read about all the cases of kids who have been rejected and waitlisted to many of their beloved choices, it reaffirmed our D’s decision about applying ED. Driving in the car today, she expressed her deep relief that she chose Vandy early, and applied ED. I now feel as though we have come full circle, from elation and enthusiasm, to sadness (buyer’s remorse, someone said), and now back to enthusiasm with her acceptance and the prospects of what is to come.</p>