In Yale! WL Harvard |
+1 And the tiger moms who do push their kids in? Guess how the T10 goes? Kid gets well below means on tests, parent mad that T10 courses are hard, parent tries to micromanage and doesn’t understand school “not helping” kid, tries to get tutors, all the normal parents whose kids got in without all this and are handling the bumps by digging in and going to office hours eyeroll silently on the parent pages and resist the urge to state the obvious —tiger mom’s kid isnt ready for T10 and is spiraling (i have kids at different ones—this is reality at both the ivy and the non). It all works out. But it works out best if you leave the kids be and let them get in with minimal guidance or not. |
Honestly, I don't know what I would have done differently. While I hate to say this, but reading this board and college confidential really helped manage expectations in terms of what colleges DD should apply to. Ultimately, she got into 10 out of 12 schools. The schools that she didn't get into were schools that were high reaches for nearly everyone- Carnegie Mellon and University of Pennsylvania. Also, knowing how difficult it is to get into those schools made the rejection completely fine. I know some people have the attitude of "just apply" or "you will never win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket" - but we wanted to limit our lottery tickets because we weren't sure how bad the mental toll would be upon seeing rejection after rejection. Having said that, DD has strong stats and got into all the top schools in the state (W&M, UVA, etc), but we knew that even with strong stats, the chances of getting into the reach schools that DD got denied from were in the single digits. Also, we never discussed "dream schools." |
Kids whether they were at the top of the class in high school with no tutors and no parental involvement or at the top with parents being involved often have to learn when/how to ask for help in college and use the resources there. And whether you have a free-range parenting style, tiger parent, or somewhere in between there should always be an element of taking into account your child’s maturity and giving space for the role/relationship to change over time. For, one of my kids I was heavily involved checking grades in 9th, not really in 10th, even less in 11th etc . It was a bumpy road at times but I wanted intro play out when we were there to be guardrails and could help them get support . My other has been pretty independent about high school but I worry that in college being that the perfectionist tendencies and being able to get by without needing help makes it hard to ask for help in college before it becomes a bigger problem. They also can get by with procrastination for assignments in high school (while still getting good grades) a way that won’t work in college. So beyond getting into college I would say in high school if your kids can learn to advocate for themselves in different situations and learn good time management skills (breaking down work and not procrastinating on big assignments)- those will be life skills. |
Agree with this, especially for a kid that has strong interests. Our kid had HS, travel, and rec teams in his sport as well as a job coaching and working camps. Some of his coaching was in the language that he studied in immersion K-8. He helped a neighbor who was a retired biologist with some research for fun over the summer and did an international research summer program in the same field and in his immersion language purely for fun. Put together, all of that told a story of a kid with 3 strong interests that had interconnected throughout his life. Nobody was trying to “craft” anything, kid just did what he liked. Now, in college, DS is majoring in a field related to his HS research and minoring in literature of immersion language. |
+1 I remember reading this advice back in the day here and it was probably the best piece of college advice I got here. |
Is a real narrative like a Soundbite? Short 2-4 sentence description of who the kid is, what moves them, what they want to be, and where they want to go?? |
This is the approach we have taken with our kids. Will know next year if it was a good one. Although I don’t know what counselors have told him. |
I think this sounds insane. |
Let your kids go for it. I told mine to not apply to Harvard and she got in! |
Settle down. |
Apply TO most places - better likelihood for success!!
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Uw GPA is all that matters….. maybe it will change with a return to test scores. But prob not. The guidelines that ppl throw around here are good. |
Read Jeff Selingo's book and dcum (even though some info is toxic and incorrect). These things will at least give you a decent idea of what to expect. Also, understand that the cost of college is insanely expensive - you just don't want your kid to get into his/her dream school only to be told by you (parent) that you cannot afford to send them. |
This is interesting. And weirdly right. And looking at our private and the outcomes, it is actually pretty accurate. The kids who are going to large Flagships had parents who went to large Flagships. The kids who are going to lower tier Ivies had parents who went to Duke or Northwestern and they did not get in as legacy. Fascinating- will need to see if I find an exception…. |