MODERATOR’S NOTE: @lookingforward is right. No links or names of threads allowed.
Sometimes you can do a keyword or user name search and figure them out though…that way no one is overtly outed.
It has probably been posted in this thread before… The threads where one gets accepted to a school and then posts “Oops, I accidentally put down the wrong grades, test scores, etc. on my application. Will they rescind me?” How do you accidentally put down the wrong grade you received?
Beats me how they make all those mistakes so many cited, this season. One of the most important things a kid has done to-date and these errors just “happen?”
Am I a bad person for getting a kick out of reading about the shock an applicant feels when rejected by their safety? Especially when the “safety” is a top 40 school?
Yes.
@TomSrOfBoston I share same sentiment
@TomSrOfBoston It’s schadenfreude. It can be a common reaction to perceived entitlement gone bad.
I feel bad for the kids who miscalculated what a “safety” really is. They’re young; they’re going to make mistakes. I hope they get in somewhere, though.
Trigger warning: Annoying rant to follow…
Most kids have no clue about college selectivity…NONE. If their friends call State U a safety, then in their mind, its a safety. The only thing that will change that attitude is real research, which in most cases will not happen. Parental guidance would have been helpful to that kid. I know there are plenty of “older” folks here on CC that believe these kids need to own the process and parents should sit idly by and let them learn from their mistakes. But this 6 month journey only comes once in their lives and I WILL step in and lead the way, when necessary. Maybe this means DC will take an extra 6 months to enter adulthood - I’m ok with that. Congrats to all of you who made the trek without any parental help. But for me, I will intervene when necessary to avoid costly, meaningful, potential life changing mistakes.
I also consider every time I step in to help a teaching moment. I think I’ve done a pretty good job so far.
Back to more annoying stuff.
@STEM2017 @MotherOfDragons I was referring to those posters who state along the lines of “I can’t believe I was rejected by X University, it was my rock bottom safety. It is so ghetto”. That attitude can come across in an application resulting in denial even with good stats.
Of course, we help them. And yes, they’re learning moments. But when kids aim high, they should be able to think on a high level. After all, this isn’t an automatic 13th grade.
Particularly rankles when they exhibit a sort of arrogance but haven’t reached out for the right info. Or processed what they’ve learned from other than hearsay.
I can see that as still needing to grow, if you want to be gentler.
@TomSrOfBoston for me that would fall more under the “don’t denigrate one thing to make another thing look better” pet peeve that I have.
However, calling a top 40 school “ghetto” is just so ignorant you have to feel really bad for them-life is going to kick them in the behind often enough, I suspect.
Along that line, there are parents who post after the fact and say, “Oh no my child forgot to list xyz on their application and got rejected. Can he/she appeal?” Or “the application was misleading because my child wasn’t able to navigate it on their own.”
I agree with @STEM2017 this process happens once in a lifetime (hopefully). Let your child fill out the application but sit next to them and watch to make sure everything is done correctly. It is a teaching opportunity.
I’ve jumped in the pulpit on this topic a few times (without invitation!!) so my opinion might be no surprise.
When I was 17 I had trouble telling the comb in my back pocket from… that thing next to it. Not because I was a bad person, but because I was very naive and brought up in an unsophisticated environment. I am sure I thought, said, and did things so incredibly stupid it is a wonder Darwin didn’t clear me from the gene pool. Thankfully there were no anonymous internet forums for people to tell me what an idiot I was.
No, you should feel no pleasure when a young person makes mistakes. Yes, you are a bad person if you do and a worse person if you feel obliged to publicly and anonymously rub their nose in it.
I will never understand how some people around here seem to enjoy showing how much they know by telling a young person how badly they did everything. Particularly at this time of year, when there really is no remedy. What is the point?
For the record, though, growth comes from taking on new steps, not sitting in the same muck. It’s equally annoying when so many pat kids on the head for what really is just making it through with minimal effort, less comprehension, little analysis. And yet they have lofty goals. The urge to “be nice” can inadvertently, seriously mislead. It can endorse a faulty path, leave a kid unaware of how to fix or proceed. Ie, grow.
This thread is about unloading and as long as we try to not pinpoint individuals too obviously, I am fine with a poster smacking his head, so to say. If anyone wants to be “nice,” for niceness’s sake, they can do it on a kid’s thread, tell him he’s fine.
It’s not about being nice. It’s about being helpful. Hard truth is valuable when it is useful. Hard cheese is useless.
“Here’s advice for your next job interview” is useful. “Here’s what you did wrong applying to colleges on the chance you will be reincarnated” is not.
“Here’s what you did wrong applying to colleges on the chance you will apply to grad school, or professional school, or a job, or pretty much anything else”, however, is helpful.
^^^^ Cite some examples where that is explicit, or even tacit. I am not saying there are none, but I can’t think of one, and I assume they are in the extreme minority.
Much more common is the “you didn’t pick a safety, you should have followed the advice herein, even if your direct guidance was bad and you came here in a panic, too bad so sad.”
When your gpa is not above a 3.9 or one of your sat sections is not above a 700 and a user replies saying, “You should look into a community college or a test optional.”
*For the record, I have nothing against test optional or community colleges. I think that some users on this website are aggressive with stats and will do anything to lower someones self-of-steem and give recommendations that are not needed."