Stop the Speculations :)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this happens at many schools.

Just because it happens at many schools does not make it right. Private schools cannot rely only on large donors and financial aid students. It is not a sustainable model when tuition is skyrocketing. If these schools continue to coddle the large donors, athletes, and lifers, in the college admissions process, guess what? The "middle class" families will leave and fewer will want to enter. Everybody paid the same purchase price to attend the school, they should be treated fairly and equally. In fact, non financial aid families who are full pay but not big donors, sacrifice a lot of their income to enable their students to attend private schools. Their hard-earned money is wasted because the schools don't care about their students in the college admissions process.

[Anonymous]

So many people having this same conversation. This and why did we get rid of AP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this happens at many schools.

Just because it happens at many schools does not make it right. Private schools cannot rely only on large donors and financial aid students. It is not a sustainable model when tuition is skyrocketing. If these schools continue to coddle the large donors, athletes, and lifers, in the college admissions process, guess what? The "middle class" families will leave and fewer will want to enter. Everybody paid the same purchase price to attend the school, they should be treated fairly and equally. In fact, non financial aid families who are full pay but not big donors, sacrifice a lot of their income to enable their students to attend private schools. Their hard-earned money is wasted because the schools don't care about their students in the college admissions process.

I'm at a private school and I don't think this is happening. In any event, private school applications go up every year, so this isn't their concern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this happens at many schools.

Just because it happens at many schools does not make it right. Private schools cannot rely only on large donors and financial aid students. It is not a sustainable model when tuition is skyrocketing. If these schools continue to coddle the large donors, athletes, and lifers, in the college admissions process, guess what? The "middle class" families will leave and fewer will want to enter. Everybody paid the same purchase price to attend the school, they should be treated fairly and equally. In fact, non financial aid families who are full pay but not big donors, sacrifice a lot of their income to enable their students to attend private schools. Their hard-earned money is wasted because the schools don't care about their students in the college admissions process.

I'm at a private school and I don't think this is happening. In any event, private school applications go up every year, so this isn't their concern.

It's time to start educating the middle folks that this is happening and to tell them to use their hard earned money in more productive ways than in private school education. These schools are a business and their bottom line is profit, not your students' welfare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In private schools you do not have the option to not have counselor letter but maybe some
schools will start considering this to keep the process fair.

They cannot do away with the counselor letter from a private school as that is where the meat of all information about a student is-rigor, estimate place in class, etc. The stuff parents aren’t allowed to see!

I wonder if these letters go as far as to “recommend” certain students at certain places too or if that is done with a phone call. I’m beginning to think private schools slot the students where they think would be best for the whole class and not just the student applying. You really put yourself at their mercy if this is the case!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In private schools you do not have the option to not have counselor letter but maybe some
schools will start considering this to keep the process fair.

They cannot do away with the counselor letter from a private school as that is where the meat of all information about a student is-rigor, estimate place in class, etc. The stuff parents aren’t allowed to see!

I wonder if these letters go as far as to “recommend” certain students at certain places too or if that is done with a phone call. I’m beginning to think private schools slot the students where they think would be best for the whole class and not just the student applying. You really put yourself at their mercy if this is the case!!

Private school counselors strongly recommend certain schools to certain students...translation, if you apply to the list I gave you, I will write you a wonderful recommendation letter. If I tell you that you should be applying to say (and I am literally randomly picking a school) Muhlenberg, but you insist on applying to Harvard...your recommendation letter to Harvard will be a neutral letter = reject.

This is the downside of a private school where the colleges know the counselor knows the kid. There is no way for the counselor to use the "I have 500 kids under my purview...no way I can know them all" excuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In private schools you do not have the option to not have counselor letter but maybe some
schools will start considering this to keep the process fair.

They cannot do away with the counselor letter from a private school as that is where the meat of all information about a student is-rigor, estimate place in class, etc. The stuff parents aren’t allowed to see!

Most counselors at private school do not know the kids. My kid is a senior and has talked to the counselor maybe twice.

I wonder if these letters go as far as to “recommend” certain students at certain places too or if that is done with a phone call. I’m beginning to think private schools slot the students where they think would be best for the whole class and not just the student applying. You really put yourself at their mercy if this is the case!!

Private school counselors strongly recommend certain schools to certain students...translation, if you apply to the list I gave you, I will write you a wonderful recommendation letter. If I tell you that you should be applying to say (and I am literally randomly picking a school) Muhlenberg, but you insist on applying to Harvard...your recommendation letter to Harvard will be a neutral letter = reject.

This is the downside of a private school where the colleges know the counselor knows the kid. There is no way for the counselor to use the "I have 500 kids under my purview...no way I can know them all" excuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's time to start educating the middle folks that this is happening and to tell them to use their hard earned money in more productive ways than in private school education. These schools are a business and their bottom line is profit, not your students' welfare.

Huh? Aren't most of these schools 501(c)(3) organizations?

[Anonymous]

Evidently stopping the speculation doesn’t stop the paranoia. It sure seems you lot believe everything designed to screw your kid.

[Anonymous]

^^^We got no list other than the computer generated one from College Kickstart that basically said our high rigor, high GPA and test score kid would get in nowhere. There was no comment on our ED1 choice where kid is legacy. Granted, we didn’t specifically ask about our chances or what the school thought of our decision because we didn’t get the sense they really care about our student one way or the other. I’m hoping there won’t be too many other ED1 apps from our school to the same college (at least not of same gender) and our kid already has one rolling acceptance they would be ok with for a year and then hope to transfer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In private schools you do not have the option to not have counselor letter but maybe some
schools will start considering this to keep the process fair.

They cannot do away with the counselor letter from a private school as that is where the meat of all information about a student is-rigor, estimate place in class, etc. The stuff parents aren’t allowed to see!

I wonder if these letters go as far as to “recommend” certain students at certain places too or if that is done with a phone call. I’m beginning to think private schools slot the students where they think would be best for the whole class and not just the student applying. You really put yourself at their mercy if this is the case!!

Well the other side of this is parents who are shooting WAY too high for their kids. I was at a recent Big3 parent gathering at a Big3 and a parent was going on and on about current college junior who (in her mind) was forced to apply "way too low". This kid ended up at a top30 school with roughly a 3.6-3.7 GPA and a 1500. Two years later and this parent still thinks the school undersold her kid. The reality (if you look at SCOIR data) is that no one got into the Ivy league with under a 3.89 that year and countless were rejected.
This parent has a current highschool junior with worse stats than kid #1 and is saying "well, with this kid we're applying where we want. We're not getting screwed over by the school again."

So literally you have a 3.6 get into a top30 university and the parents (TWO YEARS LATER) are still not happy. There are some HIGHLY, HIGHLY delusional parents at the top privates.

[Anonymous]

This is exactly why the school college counselors should be providing parents with more info and not less. Backing up assertions and recommendations with cold hard facts and data that is actually useful (not the SCOIR data which is essentially meaningless if you don’t know possible hooks and that they leave the parents to interpret for themselves) would be welcomed, at least by this parent!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is exactly why the school college counselors should be providing parents with more info and not less. Backing up assertions and recommendations with cold hard facts and data that is actually useful (not the SCOIR data which is essentially meaningless if you don’t know possible hooks and that they leave the parents to interpret for themselves) would be welcomed, at least by this parent!

How is SCOIR useless? At our school they take out the hooked kids. The GPA curves are pretty darn definitive for most schools. (they're sobering but definitive). I.e if your kid does not have a 3.9, do not attempt an unhooked Ivy bid. If you're not above a 3.7 you'll probably end up at a school ranked above 50.
I mean, it's all there. I've posted about it before (on DCUM) and parents argue with me. "Oh, no way--lots of kids getting in XYZ with 3.5 GPAs.". Well, no. The actual data doesn't show that.

I really think the schools (at least some--maybe not GDS) give more data than parents report. They just might not give data that parents want to believe.

[Anonymous]

^^^ I have no idea what they do with hooked kids from our school with respect to SCOIR data-parents aren’t told!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ I have no idea what they do with hooked kids from our school with respect to SCOIR data-parents aren’t told!!

Have your asked? What did college your college advisor say?