For parents that were shocked their kids didn't get accepted...
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Anonymous
+1 Especially funny that the parents who went to those now-super-selective schools just don't recognize that they were not that selective when they went and the profile of accepted students was not as astronomically high as it is now. They probably would not get in themselves now and you'd get the same peer group they think is so important at somewhat less selective schools. https://www.ivywise.com/blog/college-acceptance-rates-then-and-now/ |
Anonymous
My son is a junior at Walter Johnson high school, a well-regarded local public. You wouldn't believe the idiocies spouted by his counselor. Busy students and parents might be heartened by such insane advice, and not go looking for other suggestions. In which case they might be disappointed. |
Anonymous
So you acknowledge the system is broken and no one should expect it to be logical and therefore they shouldn’t complain? Applicants can and should be angry. It’s ridiculous that there’s no reliable way to predict chances of admission and people are right to be aggravated with a needlessly opaque and Byzantium system that protects and enriches these “non-profits.” |
Anonymous
Honestly, I'm not sure. I would assume they did. After he was denied, we didn't look for reasons. The GC told us it was a "safety" and DS wanted to go there. He still feels a little sad about it. It really was his top choice. The reach was done at the last minute, because he felt like he was supposed to have a reach. In our house, we started calling admissions a lottery. You have to have the grades to play, but after that it felt like a lottery. |
Anonymous
Sorry that you feel I'm being nasty. I understand why families and/or kids would feel upset from rejection. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't be down. What I'm trying to understand is what happened that put them in the situation where they were surprised? There is a difference being upset about rejection but you realized the odds were low versus being surprised because you didn't think rejection was a likely outcome. So is that the answer--they didn't have accurate information? Are students largely applying to schools in information vacuums? What are college counselors telling students/families? |
Anonymous
Examples? |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
The public school counselors have many things to juggle; college counseling isn’t their focus, with very good reasons. You need to spend the time doing the research yourself or pay a private college counselor to get the current data. |
Anonymous
j Same here. Paying attention to the previous cycle and the general comments/results on other forums/message boards it became clear to spread the submissions to a wide range to cover all bases. We were also not beyond applying to T100+ for safety. So we were delighted when 50% of her admissions ended up in the T25 - T40 range. Expecting the worst and not expecting anything to happen as we wished left us positively happy with the outcome. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
+1 Maybe some parents don't have the time or resources to be as knowledgeable as they could be. Why is it so necessary to be nasty? Your shocked others aren't living your same life? That's honestly strange to me. |
Anonymous
I heard there was expected to be a huge increase in applications but I wasn't sure what that impact would be. We figured that the schools would still look at tests for those students that did submit them. I remember seeing statistics showing that for TO schools in the prior year, the acceptance rate was higher for students that did submit test scores. We guessed that the increase in applications is mainly from students who are reaching at schools that they normally would not have applied to and that the schools will still find a way to admit students according to their normal standards. In short, we figured that TO was largely a form of virtue signaling. Apparently, we were wrong. My kid's counselor was very reassuring to our kid regarding his chances of being accepted. Looking at the Naviance map for his ED school, his stats are in the heart of a cluster of checkmarks and only one X. Despite this, we applied to 20+ schools because ED/EA rounds completely shattered our preconceived notions. Now the counselor is voicing frustration and the sinking feeling that the students haven't been given adequate guidance this year. One student with a 3.6 GPA and 1350 SAT applied to a "normal" number of schools and did not get into any of them. We did consider the math/odds but felt confident about our kid's stats, ECs, recommendations, and essay quality. Even if he has bad luck at one, two, three, or four schools, he should not have bad luck at 10 or 20 schools. We are engineers and we understand statistics; both of us are also in administrative roles and write documents targeted toward a variety of audiences so we understand the importance of connecting with the reader. I believe we were rationally optimistic based on the then-best-available information. I do want to congratulate all the students that got into a school that they are happy with. It's a valuable opportunity and I wish them the very best. |
Anonymous
There's a difference between someone having unrealistic expectations and those that looked at past admissions trends and had set more realistic expectations, only to have that expectation shattered by what has been a very different year compared to the past. |
Anonymous
You can blame public schools all you want. |
Anonymous
I wrote this and I'm a public school teacher. My oldest kid is a junior. Being in denial about Covid grade inflation is just stupid. It 100% happened. Many kids would have earned their top grades any year. Many others who elude not typically get straight As joined them these past 2 years. I have a kid in private high school and there was Covid inflation there as well. My typically A/B student got straight As with doing maybe 1/3 of the work. |