Can you remind me why my DC will not get into the same schools I did?

[Anonymous]

I applied to 5 colleges

Kids today apply to maybe 15+

Larger population

More international applicants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a sad statement that a HYPSM grad can’t puzzle out the math on this.

ALDC with an easy major

Abby Lee Dance Company?

[Anonymous]

The real answer is that it’s not really that impressive that a kid is nice and has great grades. Their parent has a top education that is to he expected.

Who cares, that is a nothing burger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a sad statement that a HYPSM grad can’t puzzle out the math on this.

Book smart but no common sense.

[Anonymous]

Too many "A" students that don't deserve to be "A" students, and more of them think they deserve to go to an Ivy.

Also, there's a striver/test prep culture that wasn't there 30 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Also hard from around here OP because there are SO many HYPSM grads floating around. Any graduating class from a desirable high school is likely to have 10+ grads per year who are legacy at HYP between 2 parents (be it a large public like Whitman or Langley or a private like Sidwell). legacy status doesn't mean much in the DMV.

[Anonymous]

The old folks have been complaining about this process since at least the early 1960s, when Yale folded the then-less-competitive school of engineering into the school of arts and sciences. OP benefitted from a system that put less and less weight on ancestry and more and more weight on academic achievement and then — what? expected that process to stop at the exact point where it would most benefit their family forever? That’s not how a one-way ratchet works.

[Anonymous]

Many top schools are more than 20 percent international students. Admissions would np be much easier if that number was cit across the board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Deep in the last century, I got into Carnegie Mellon engineering after getting decent (not great) grades at a good (not great) public high school in Pittsburgh. My teens are technically minded but I recognize that they have little chance of getting into the same school. Getting decent grades at a decent public high school in our area simply isn't going to get them in.

The stakes are higher, the competition is much much tougher and Carnegie Mellon, like a lot schools, is drawing from a much larger pool of applicants. The US has a large share of the most desirable schools on the planet. Yes, more Americans are applying to American colleges than a generation ago. That probably goes triple for the rest of the world. And all of these kids are smarter than I was.


And then there's the cost of going to Carnegie Mellon in 2023.....yeah, that's not going to happen.

Took DD to Carnegie Mellon. NOt an engineer, an actress. It's beautiful there. We loved it. Too competitive and too pricey. But wonderful. Ain't happenin...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The first page of this essay explains it pretty well.

https://lesshighschoolstress.com/

Parent of a Kindergartener here - You have just saved me 12 years of stress!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Deep in the last century, I got into Carnegie Mellon engineering after getting decent (not great) grades at a good (not great) public high school in Pittsburgh. My teens are technically minded but I recognize that they have little chance of getting into the same school. Getting decent grades at a decent public high school in our area simply isn't going to get them in.

The stakes are higher, the competition is much much tougher and Carnegie Mellon, like a lot schools, is drawing from a much larger pool of applicants. The US has a large share of the most desirable schools on the planet. Yes, more Americans are applying to American colleges than a generation ago. That probably goes triple for the rest of the world. And all of these kids are smarter than I was.


And then there's the cost of going to Carnegie Mellon in 2023.....yeah, that's not going to happen.

Took DD to Carnegie Mellon. NOt an engineer, an actress. It's beautiful there. We loved it. Too competitive and too pricey. But wonderful. Ain't happenin...

If you weren’t going to pay for it, seems odd to even visit.

[Anonymous]

Also, when I applied to college, I had 10 schools I applied to. That was really rare then but I need to hedge my bets with a generous financial aid package. Most kids applied to 6 or so schools.

I know many, many seniors who have applied to 20+schools. I know a kid who applied 2 years ago to 30 schools.

Applications numbers are up because kids are applying to many more schools than prior generations did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank the boomers for destroying the USA standard of living

Wow, never heard that one before. Probably because it's ridiculous.

Other countries understandably wanting to raise their own standard of living is the biggest explanation of the US standard of living going down, followed closely by Republicans' reduction in taxes multiple times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The first page of this essay explains it pretty well.

https://lesshighschoolstress.com/

Parent of a Kindergartener here - You have just saved me 12 years of stress!

Glad it helped. My kids definitely look at things differently after seeing all the data gathered on that website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The old folks have been complaining about this process since at least the early 1960s, when Yale folded the then-less-competitive school of engineering into the school of arts and sciences. OP benefitted from a system that put less and less weight on ancestry and more and more weight on academic achievement and then — what? expected that process to stop at the exact point where it would most benefit their family forever? That’s not how a one-way ratchet works.

This. Read fiction from the early 20th century and the talk about going to Princeton to take the entrance exam and then enrolling or not knowing what to do after boarding school and then going to Harvard. The Ivy league used to be the preserve of the wealthy, then some time post WWII, academics started to really matter. We've gotten to the point where, unless you are slap your name on a new dorm wealthy, academics trump almost everything else and, thanks to financial aid, money is no longer a real barrier to entry.