do college admissions get ugly at the Big3 when all the parents are Ivy grads?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a family who just went through the college admissions process with two kids at two different DC privates, yes, it does get ugly at times. The most polite thing that happened to both of my kids, was classmates asking them not to apply to a certain school because it was classmates' first choice, and my DCs application would hurt classmates chances of getting in.

That was polite; it got worse from there. Lots of academic cheating happens as well.

Good luck - I'm glad it's all over!

How could classmates know where your children apply? Were your DC already been accepted into a non-binding EA when classmates asked?

[Anonymous]

Either drop the H bomb or avoid the question. Saying you went to school near Boston >wink< >wink< is even more pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am so curious how this works out.
My kid just started at a Big3 for 9th.
I was looking through an email that I was on and out of 30+ addresses, 10 are Ivy alumni addresses.
This prompted me to google a bunch of the rest and out of 20, I easily hit 5 Harvard grads, 2 Duke, 3 Stanford, etc. There was one lonely Boston College grad. lol The rest were all.Ivy.

Now the reality is that last year this school sent maybe 15 kids to the Ivy League. 1/2 were sports recruits. 1/2 were minorities (some overlap but not entirely).
There was maybe one kid each to HYPS. One to Duke (and of these 5 or so kids a few were athletes or URM).
That's it. Period.

When you have a parent body that overwhelmingly went to the Ivy League (or other tippy top schools) themselves and the spots for their kids are EXCEEDINGLY few (i.e. single digits) and everyone (50 people?) wants these spots, how does this work out?
Does it get ugly?
I am so curious and am sort of frightened to find out.
(BTW I went to a SLAC).

Most of their kids don’t get in to their ivy from our experience. It almost works against them except the million dollar donors. They get in and it is almost unfair to other kids that deserved it more but don’t have $.

[Anonymous]

Don’t forget many of these parents are duplicates as you’re talking about mom/dad for one kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Legacy preference is going the way of the dodo. Kids will have to compete on merit.
2. But, life isn’t fair, and most of the Ivy parents take parenting just as seriously as they did their SATs, so a lot of their kids are going to be competitive, even without legacy preference.
3. Can’t we all just collectively NOT CARE about who gets in where anymore?

In the “tippy top” schools? Unlikely. Even though parents maintain it’s all about the journey, for most, it’s really not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a family who just went through the college admissions process with two kids at two different DC privates, yes, it does get ugly at times. The most polite thing that happened to both of my kids, was classmates asking them not to apply to a certain school because it was classmates' first choice, and my DCs application would hurt classmates chances of getting in.

That was polite; it got worse from there. Lots of academic cheating happens as well.

Good luck - I'm glad it's all over!

That’s so bizarre. Did your child still apply I hope?! I mean arent they all trying to get into the same or similar schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t forget many of these parents are duplicates as you’re talking about mom/dad for one kid.

no, many if not most kids have least one parent from one of these schools. Some have both.
It's a really, really striking number of parents who attended these top schools. i'm not one of them so i'm not patting myself on the back by saying this. Just observing it.

[Anonymous]

Easy. The kid who has two H alumni parents and is also an athlete/URM gets the spot for H!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I have no idea about admissions, but this is insane to me. Do people who have been out of school for long enough to have high school aged children really still use their college alumni addresses?

One angle to consider - Using an alumni alias email isn't so strange if it was the first email you had and then continued to use it ever since. It takes a lot of work to disentangle all the places you've used it as a login id etc. Of course, not everyone fits into that category but many people I know from school (where this WAS the case - and is not an IVY) still use that alias. It has nothing to do with status - it's a consistent email address - just like keeping the same cell number that has a non-DMV area code because that's where you had your first cell phone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on this thread, I just checked for my kids big 3 class email and wow there are several alumni emails! I play it cool with gmail and just let it slip occasionally that I went to college near Boston.

Yuck. Why do you even feel the need to do this? Or to "play it cool". Why do you need to let others know in the first place (unless you are speaking with someone who also attended and you want to talk about shared experiences)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Easy. The kid who has two H alumni parents and is also an athlete/URM gets the spot for H!

Or what typically happens is that the spot (singular) goes to an unconnected URM and the Harvard legacies go 0/20. Its wild at the Big3 schools.

It's just crazy that you have this many Ivy grads who are outlier successes stories for their universities (CEOs, managing partners at their law firms, people with national prominence in their fields, etc) and none of their (very bright) kids will get into their parent's alma mater.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a family who just went through the college admissions process with two kids at two different DC privates, yes, it does get ugly at times. The most polite thing that happened to both of my kids, was classmates asking them not to apply to a certain school because it was classmates' first choice, and my DCs application would hurt classmates chances of getting in.

That was polite; it got worse from there. Lots of academic cheating happens as well.

Good luck - I'm glad it's all over!

How could classmates know where your children apply? Were your DC already been accepted into a non-binding EA when classmates asked?

I'm the PP quoted here. All these schools are small - everyone knows everyone and they all talk about where they're applying, as much as the school leadership and counselors tell them not to. And yes, they are all vying for the same 20-30 schools so it's really tough.

Yes, my DCs still applied to those schools; one was EA and one regular admission. In one case, both DC and classmate got in (it was my DC's safety); in the other case, DC got in and classmate did not. One was an Ivy and one was not.

Previous question on academic cheating - lots of ways to cheat, but DCs told me of students paying other students to write papers for them. Really smart students doing the writing, and the going rate was $100.00. It's not uncommon.

[Anonymous]

So it’s common for a classmate to pay another classmate to write a paper for them? Crazy. How can a Big 3 school not spot this cheating?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Easy. The kid who has two H alumni parents and is also an athlete/URM gets the spot for H!

Or what typically happens is that the spot (singular) goes to an unconnected URM and the Harvard legacies go 0/20. Its wild at the Big3 schools.

It's just crazy that you have this many Ivy grads who are outlier successes stories for their universities (CEOs, managing partners at their law firms, people with national prominence in their fields, etc) and none of their (very bright) kids will get into their parent's alma mater.

And this is why it’s so sad that everyone here is clamoring for spots at the Big 3 or whatever schools. The top NY or New England schools do far better with college placement. Either the schools aren’t as connected or the parents you’re talking about aren’t as impressive as people in the dc area think they are.

[Anonymous]

Putting aside the pretentiousness of using those emails (especially when we all know they have others could use), here is a thought — I’m guessing many of these people went to those schools for graduate and not undergraduate. In that case, most schools do not give a legacy bump.