School advising kids to "try again next year" regarding college applications

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First of all "Big 3" does not guarantee admission anywhere.

Publics always do better in this area.

Parents need to do their jobs and have their kids target safeties as well.

OP here.
These are kids who applied only to schools 50-125 and are not getting in. They thought they had safeties.

The RD round of decisions hasn't even happened yet, so this is complete BS.

yes.
But the kids that the college advising office is talking about have been rejected from all (or all but one) of their EA options and applied to 20+ schools.
This is what is being talked about: kids who applied to places like Auburn, Wisconsin, Indiana, Clemson, Wake Forest, Penn State etc---all ED and EA and all outright rejections (not deferrals).

Why would those schools want someone in the bottom half of their class?

My DC is at one of these schools and is in the bottom half of the class. I can confirm my DC was rejected EA from Auburn and Boulder. Around a 3.2 GPA. ACT composite is 33 with several subsections 35. I know people want to dismiss test scores, but I put them out there to show you that the kids at the bottom of the class are still highly capable students.

I had a kid like that last year too. Same GPA and ACT at big3. Got into all likelies and targets and 1 reach. We were never told to try again. Actually counselor was more than kind and always encouraged DC. Sometimes it works out. You just never know what college is looking at. And no we are not URM or athlete.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard from my kid that results are so bad this year at our (Big3) school that the college counseling office is now telling kids
to either take a gap year OR matriculate at a lower tier school and "try again next year".

Have you heard this? It is worrisome or typical advice?

I heard that you are making sh*t up. What schools have released RD decisions?

Someone keeps making this point, but a lot of kids apply almost entirely EA. There are many schools where is you look at the scattergrams at NCS, plenty of students apply EA and no one applies RD, and they tend to be lower ranked schools that have become more unpredictable. So while I think results will shake out in March to be better than they are now, many kids have heard from a slew of EA schools and may not be waiting on many if any RD schools.

This isn't true. My DC applied to many schools that only had ED and RD as options and the top school on DC's list only has RD.

It isn’t true for you. It is true for others.

Of course. PP said No one applies RD. That is what is not true.

I was the PP. I meant there were many schools, maybe I should have said certain schools, where no one seems to apply RD, and that’s because NCS (and a lot of schools) puts such an emphasis of getting your apps in in the EA round if you can. And you are right, its probably not literally no one, but if you look at certain big state schools or some less competitive private schools with EA like Fordham, for instance, most students who choose to apply there, apply EA. The overall point again is that there are people who might already be in the position where they have heard from most if not all of their schools already. I was just reacting to people saying the initial post was BS or a troll post simply because RD has not come out yet. It may not be. And if you got some surprising deferrals, you may be pretty stressed right now event though at the end of the day some of the deferrals are likely to turn into acceptances.

but this is where it all falls apart. Being deferred to RD is not the same as being rejected. From what I have seen in the DMV among private school kids AND among those from schools in high income areas and known for great academics - the kids who got in ED mostly had hooks. A few swung really low ang got into a true safety. Sure, it's true that many (even swinging low) are getting deferred....and those trying early for target/reach were often rejected. But there is still RD to come - and that includes the DEFERS.

Read the whole sentence that you bolded. I say the very same thing. Nothing falls apart. Someone might be very stressed right now even though RD has not come out yet. Someone earlier kept claiming the whole original post was a lie. More than one thing can be true.

Apologies - we are definitely in agreement. I was scanning too quickly .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First of all "Big 3" does not guarantee admission anywhere.

Publics always do better in this area.

Parents need to do their jobs and have their kids target safeties as well.

OP here.
These are kids who applied only to schools 50-125 and are not getting in. They thought they had safeties.

The RD round of decisions hasn't even happened yet, so this is complete BS.

yes.
But the kids that the college advising office is talking about have been rejected from all (or all but one) of their EA options and applied to 20+ schools.
This is what is being talked about: kids who applied to places like Auburn, Wisconsin, Indiana, Clemson, Wake Forest, Penn State etc---all ED and EA and all outright rejections (not deferrals).

Why would those schools want someone in the bottom half of their class?

My DC is at one of these schools and is in the bottom half of the class. I can confirm my DC was rejected EA from Auburn and Boulder. Around a 3.2 GPA. ACT composite is 33 with several subsections 35. I know people want to dismiss test scores, but I put them out there to show you that the kids at the bottom of the class are still highly capable students.

I had a kid like that last year too. Same GPA and ACT at big3. Got into all likelies and targets and 1 reach. We were never told to try again. Actually counselor was more than kind and always encouraged DC. Sometimes it works out. You just never know what college is looking at. And no we are not URM or athlete.

I am the PP with the rejections. Our counselor has not told us to try again and has been super encouraging as well. We are all hopeful a few of the deferrals and RD applications will work out. But Auburn was considered a safety, so the rejection was surprising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard from my kid that results are so bad this year at our (Big3) school that the college counseling office is now telling kids
to either take a gap year OR matriculate at a lower tier school and "try again next year".

Have you heard this? It is worrisome or typical advice?

If I spent 200k on a high school and that was the outcome, I'd want a refund

Yah, nope. Money is well spent regardless. To each their own.

One more time for the cheap seats: you do not send a kid to a private school, Big 3 or whatever, solely because you think it will increase their chances to get into an Ivy or the cream of the crop schools. If this is your attitude, you deserve to be disappointed.

One more time for the cheaper seats: we are not talking about "Ivy or cream of the crop schools". We are talking about kids getting rejected from all their picks ranked 75+.

Yelling back from the very cheap seats:

The level of privilege that leads to someone is shocked that their kid who isn't in the top 50% of their class, can't get into schools like Fordham and SMU (the bottom of the T75) which are well within the top 20% of National Universities (the most prestigious of the categories on USNWR), is what we are talking about.

For those whining about how public schools are better, you do realize that the kids in the bottom 50% at public are going to Montgomery College, or UDC or maybe if they're lucky someplace like Frostburg or Christopher Newport.

But keep whining. It's amusing to us in the cheap seats.

This. Bottom 50% at Big 3 only means that the kid's parents have enough money to pay for Big 3. Your child would still be bottom half at public. Stop with the delusions that your child is only bottom half because they are at a private school.

Not even close. They have standards and must meet certain grades. The average SAT at a school like GDS, NCS, Sidwell or STA is hundreds of points above private school kids and even if you did the median score it would still be so much higher. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Most public schools have kids who won't go to college, they also have kids who just aren't very bright. The kids from GDS, NCS, Sidwell, STA... are competing against the top quarter or 10% of a given public high school not the whole class and those kids are going to look as good as if not better on paper than a kid in the bottom quarter of a private

They are competing against the top 25/30 percent of high achieving DMV schools. so about 100/160 plus from each school, each graduation year. Not all "big 5" etc kids are that accomplished or capable, really. There is a small group at each school that is akin to the top 10 percent at Whitman etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I heard from my kid that results are so bad this year at our (Big3) school that the college counseling office is now telling kids
to either take a gap year OR matriculate at a lower tier school and "try again next year".

Have you heard this? It is worrisome or typical advice?

If I spent 200k on a high school and that was the outcome, I'd want a refund

Yah, nope. Money is well spent regardless. To each their own.

One more time for the cheap seats: you do not send a kid to a private school, Big 3 or whatever, solely because you think it will increase their chances to get into an Ivy or the cream of the crop schools. If this is your attitude, you deserve to be disappointed.

One more time for the cheaper seats: we are not talking about "Ivy or cream of the crop schools". We are talking about kids getting rejected from all their picks ranked 75+.

Yelling back from the very cheap seats:

The level of privilege that leads to someone is shocked that their kid who isn't in the top 50% of their class, can't get into schools like Fordham and SMU (the bottom of the T75) which are well within the top 20% of National Universities (the most prestigious of the categories on USNWR), is what we are talking about.

For those whining about how public schools are better, you do realize that the kids in the bottom 50% at public are going to Montgomery College, or UDC or maybe if they're lucky someplace like Frostburg or Christopher Newport.

But keep whining. It's amusing to us in the cheap seats.

This. Bottom 50% at Big 3 only means that the kid's parents have enough money to pay for Big 3. Your child would still be bottom half at public. Stop with the delusions that your child is only bottom half because they are at a private school.

Not even close. They have standards and must meet certain grades. The average SAT at a school like GDS, NCS, Sidwell or STA is hundreds of points above private school kids and even if you did the median score it would still be so much higher. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Most public schools have kids who won't go to college, they also have kids who just aren't very bright. The kids from GDS, NCS, Sidwell, STA... are competing against the top quarter or 10% of a given public high school not the whole class and those kids are going to look as good as if not better on paper than a kid in the bottom quarter of a private

They are competing against the top 25/30 percent of high achieving DMV schools. so about 100/160 plus from each school, each graduation year. Not all "big 5" etc kids are that accomplished or capable, really. There is a small group at each school that is akin to the top 10 percent at Whitman etc

Disagree. I would say most kids at the top three schools are pretty exceptional. You can’t even compare that to public schools. Many kids from public schools don’t even go to college. You have to look at the average SAT and ACT and yes sorry standardized tests do matter. They are very very high and well above the national average by several hundred points at the big three. Facts matter!!