Rejections

[Anonymous]

JMU would have been a great fit for his stats - my son is similar and that’s where he’s going. I’m sorry it worked out this way. It does sound like he has some good options and possibly some waitlist options too. Was VT waitlist? So many we know with solid stats on the WL this year. A few with lower stats but obscure majors got in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3.8uw is kind of the minimum……rigor isn’t as important as everyone thinks

Minimum for what? Many kids get into college with lower GPAs than a 3.8uw. The problem seems to be that OP’s kid applied to 2 safeties and bunch of reaches. Why would he apply to VCU and GMU but not JMU? Is OP trolling?

Op here.

Highly regret not having applied to JMU.

UVA came through as a deferral first round at ED results and we then had hope for some positive results for the other colleges then.

It was dumb to waste ED on UVA with that gpa. I always feel like I could be doing more as a parent, then I read things like this and figure I’m doing alright. At least I knew enough to not have my kid do a throw away ED app.

I see people on here ignoring the advice of— whole package, essays, sat, grades, targeted ECs, 4 years math, science, English, history, language over and over again. If you want your kid in at top schools, YES this is all necessary. If you don’t care, that’s fine, just stop wasting everyone’s time whining about how your kid can’t get into a top schools with his crap grades.

And yes, his recs were probably crap. No teacher is excited to write a rec for a kid who underperforms.

Are you this nasty in real life or only on anonymous message boards? Her kids could be super engaged and curious and all sorts of wonderful things that aren't reflected in his grades.

No, I’m realistic. Most kids are getting crap recs because it’s hard to stand out when your teacher is writing 100 recs. You really need to have concrete things that the teacher can put in the rec AND be a student that the teacher connected with on some level to get a great rec. OP’s kid had so so grades and his EC is one SciOly medal, so yes, the recs were probably blah.

Not all schools take recs. For example, VT where he was waitlisted, does not accept rec letters. His GPA and SAT were fine for VT, I don’t understand what happened here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

Hi OP,
Unfortunately these schools are not transparent in terms of what they are really looking looking for, especially from unhooked kids. Statements like "we'd rather see a B in an AP" don't apply equally to all applicants and probably have to be taken with a grain of salt for anyone not FGLI or rural. It's not reasonable to expect students and parents to do the level of research some on this forum are chiding you for.
On hopefully a more helpful note, do research strong letter of continuing interest and ask your counseling office to make an advocacy call for your son to their top waitlist choice- while it is a long shot there are things you can do that will improve chances of getting in off of the waitlist. Don't look back, move forward.
Good luck

Hello,

Do counselors really do advocacy calls?
Should I ask ds to ask his counselor for that?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3.8uw is kind of the minimum……rigor isn’t as important as everyone thinks

Minimum for what? Many kids get into college with lower GPAs than a 3.8uw. The problem seems to be that OP’s kid applied to 2 safeties and bunch of reaches. Why would he apply to VCU and GMU but not JMU? Is OP trolling?

Op here.

Highly regret not having applied to JMU.

UVA came through as a deferral first round at ED results and we then had hope for some positive results for the other colleges then.

It was dumb to waste ED on UVA with that gpa. I always feel like I could be doing more as a parent, then I read things like this and figure I’m doing alright. At least I knew enough to not have my kid do a throw away ED app.

I see people on here ignoring the advice of— whole package, essays, sat, grades, targeted ECs, 4 years math, science, English, history, language over and over again. If you want your kid in at top schools, YES this is all necessary. If you don’t care, that’s fine, just stop wasting everyone’s time whining about how your kid can’t get into a top schools with his crap grades.

And yes, his recs were probably crap. No teacher is excited to write a rec for a kid who underperforms.

Are you this nasty in real life or only on anonymous message boards? Her kids could be super engaged and curious and all sorts of wonderful things that aren't reflected in his grades.

No, I’m realistic. Most kids are getting crap recs because it’s hard to stand out when your teacher is writing 100 recs. You really need to have concrete things that the teacher can put in the rec AND be a student that the teacher connected with on some level to get a great rec. OP’s kid had so so grades and his EC is one SciOly medal, so yes, the recs were probably blah.

Not all schools take recs. For example, VT where he was waitlisted, does not accept rec letters. His GPA and SAT were fine for VT, I don’t understand what happened here

Op here
We re trying to understand this too… one thing for sure is also the sheer number of applicants they have this year.

[Anonymous]

Op here,

Saw this post from another thread.


“The discrepancies are much larger at the 25th percentile where UVA is 1420/32/4.2
but VT’s are 1270/28/3.89"


ds’ numbers are 1540/4.1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

Hi OP,
Unfortunately these schools are not transparent in terms of what they are really looking looking for, especially from unhooked kids. Statements like "we'd rather see a B in an AP" don't apply equally to all applicants and probably have to be taken with a grain of salt for anyone not FGLI or rural. It's not reasonable to expect students and parents to do the level of research some on this forum are chiding you for.
On hopefully a more helpful note, do research strong letter of continuing interest and ask your counseling office to make an advocacy call for your son to their top waitlist choice- while it is a long shot there are things you can do that will improve chances of getting in off of the waitlist. Don't look back, move forward.
Good luck

Hello,

Do counselors really do advocacy calls?
Should I ask ds to ask his counselor for that?

Thank you.

Yes they do. I would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

Hi OP,
Unfortunately these schools are not transparent in terms of what they are really looking looking for, especially from unhooked kids. Statements like "we'd rather see a B in an AP" don't apply equally to all applicants and probably have to be taken with a grain of salt for anyone not FGLI or rural. It's not reasonable to expect students and parents to do the level of research some on this forum are chiding you for.
On hopefully a more helpful note, do research strong letter of continuing interest and ask your counseling office to make an advocacy call for your son to their top waitlist choice- while it is a long shot there are things you can do that will improve chances of getting in off of the waitlist. Don't look back, move forward.
Good luck

Hello,

Do counselors really do advocacy calls?
Should I ask ds to ask his counselor for that?

Thank you.

Yes, they do, it is pretty standard for private school counselors to call for WL students. You should make the request. It can help, what the AO's want to know is that the student will attend if offered, they already know he can do the work that is why he got the waitlist spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

It is not a deal breaker especially if the STEM LORs are excellent, but last year in my DC MCPS Magnet future STEM majors submit 1 humanities LOR (e.g. AP English) and 1 STEM LOR for balance. Happy with the result, full tuition ride at a private T-20, and acceptances at other private T-10s and T-20s. Majority DC's magnet friends ended up in top T-20 schools, including 11 at MIT. Pretty sure everyone did the same with LOR humanities/STEM split.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

It is not a deal breaker especially if the STEM LORs are excellent, but last year in my DC MCPS Magnet future STEM majors submit 1 humanities LOR (e.g. AP English) and 1 STEM LOR for balance. Happy with the result, full tuition ride at a private T-20, and acceptances at other private T-10s and T-20s. Majority DC's magnet friends ended up in top T-20 schools, including 11 at MIT. Pretty sure everyone did the same with LOR humanities/STEM split.

PP. BTW DC rejected at Georgia Tech (RD), Cal, UCLA. Got in UMD (in state) but did not get Honors (did not have the 4.0 UGPA). Didn't even try to apply to UVA since no chance as OOS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

Hi OP,
Unfortunately these schools are not transparent in terms of what they are really looking looking for, especially from unhooked kids. Statements like "we'd rather see a B in an AP" don't apply equally to all applicants and probably have to be taken with a grain of salt for anyone not FGLI or rural. It's not reasonable to expect students and parents to do the level of research some on this forum are chiding you for.
On hopefully a more helpful note, do research strong letter of continuing interest and ask your counseling office to make an advocacy call for your son to their top waitlist choice- while it is a long shot there are things you can do that will improve chances of getting in off of the waitlist. Don't look back, move forward.
Good luck

Hello,

Do counselors really do advocacy calls?
Should I ask ds to ask his counselor for that?

Thank you.

Yes, they do, it is pretty standard for private school counselors to call for WL students. You should make the request. It can help, what the AO's want to know is that the student will attend if offered, they already know he can do the work that is why he got the waitlist spot.

Op here,

He is not in a private school though.
( Although is in a magnet.)

[Anonymous]

OP, are you in LCPS then? Just wondering because LCPS has more grade inflation than FCPS, which might explain things? At the admitted students day, VT said the average gpa for this admitted class is 4.1. Anyway I have an idea - it’s a long shot but maybe you can go to the VT open house at the end of this month (looks like a big event) and ask to speak with an admissions officer. At that point your son can express that VT is his top choice. I don’t know if that would help in any way? What do others think?

[Anonymous]

The schools rate your grades and stats against other kids in YOUR high school. So if OP's kid has a 4.1 but other applicants in his high school have a higher GPA, then guess who they're accepting? That's the thing that sucks about being in a magnet or in schools with lots of high achieving students. My DD got into UMD with stats lower or the same as her friends at Poolesville HS (MCPS), but those friends didn't get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here.

I understand his gpa isn’t good.

But I have seen a lot of these statements below and thought perhaps there is hope somewhere.

“Colleges would rather see a B in a challenging class than a B in an easier class.”

“They want to see you have challenged yourself to the hardest classes your school has to offer.”

We know better now and yes have learnt a lesson.

To a pp, his only EC was not only a Scioly.
He has awards from his sports which he has done since Freshman, has leadership role, TSA, and more.

His scioly medal was from state level after getting the gold in regional.
I am not saying that he is excellent, he is not; but am clarifying to a pp that he did have more than one EC.

He picked 2 Stem teachers for his recommendations in classes he got As in and had good rapport with.

Again, I see the biggest issue has been his unweighted gpa. I honestly don’t see whats wrong in his app, except his gpa and that he didn’t take 4 years of a foreign language.

Hi OP,
Unfortunately these schools are not transparent in terms of what they are really looking looking for, especially from unhooked kids. Statements like "we'd rather see a B in an AP" don't apply equally to all applicants and probably have to be taken with a grain of salt for anyone not FGLI or rural. It's not reasonable to expect students and parents to do the level of research some on this forum are chiding you for.
On hopefully a more helpful note, do research strong letter of continuing interest and ask your counseling office to make an advocacy call for your son to their top waitlist choice- while it is a long shot there are things you can do that will improve chances of getting in off of the waitlist. Don't look back, move forward.
Good luck

Hello,

Do counselors really do advocacy calls?
Should I ask ds to ask his counselor for that?

Thank you.

Yes they do. I would.

I would have them call too. Also send a letter of continued interest stating it’s their top choice and will enroll if accepted. Add any accomplishments since app was submitted. Send ASAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People need to stop referring to OP's kid as 3.5 when everyone else uses the weighted scale. It is very misleading. I agree that comparing different school system's weighted GPAs is comparing apples and oranges but referring to unweighted when all anyone hears otherwise is weighted is worse.

The kid had high rigor and a 4.1W from (I think you said? sorry not to reread) FCPS. That is definitely too low for UVA. It is a maybe for William and Mary. And if not Engineering or Business, last year would have been in at Virginia Tech. I am not surprised that OP's kid assumed a yes at Virginia Tech. From everything I have seen on DCUM and in real life, Tech got MUCH harder this year.

Another school that has gotten MUCH harder this year if you're from NOVA is Tennessee. It wasn't that long ago (last year?) that Naviance showed everyone with a 4.0 and above getting in. And a very misleading school on Naviance is Penn State. Naviance shows it as a sea of green at many GPAs but they seem not to distinguish among between satellite campus and University Park.

I am afraid, OPs kid counted on schools that would very recently have been Targets or even Safeties per Naviance and had very bad luck with everything moving quickly. This should be a lesson to all of us with younger kids.

Nope. Delusional. Schools don’t care about how your school fake weights grades—they report those made up GPAs because it makes the school look good. But, it really comes down to how many Bs little Johnny has. OP’s little Johnny had almost half Bs, that’s crap for UVA and CWRU.

Let me express it a different way. MANY MANY MANY kids with 3.5-3.6 UW get into Virginia Tech. Before this year, I didn't know any high rigor kid with a 3.5 or 3.6 UW GPA who did not get into Tech outside of engineering and business. I can fully understand why they saw it as a target. It is not delusional of them. Of course, targets are not the same thing as safeties. Maybe the C made the Target a reach but that was happening in real time and not a known entity when the kid applied. Obviously the lesson is to have more targets and safeties that you actually like but, if OP's kid is at McLean/Langley like mine, I totally understand why they expected to get in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3.8uw is kind of the minimum……rigor isn’t as important as everyone thinks

Minimum for what? Many kids get into college with lower GPAs than a 3.8uw. The problem seems to be that OP’s kid applied to 2 safeties and bunch of reaches. Why would he apply to VCU and GMU but not JMU? Is OP trolling?

Op here.

Highly regret not having applied to JMU.

UVA came through as a deferral first round at ED results and we then had hope for some positive results for the other colleges then.

It was dumb to waste ED on UVA with that gpa. I always feel like I could be doing more as a parent, then I read things like this and figure I’m doing alright. At least I knew enough to not have my kid do a throw away ED app.

I see people on here ignoring the advice of— whole package, essays, sat, grades, targeted ECs, 4 years math, science, English, history, language over and over again. If you want your kid in at top schools, YES this is all necessary. If you don’t care, that’s fine, just stop wasting everyone’s time whining about how your kid can’t get into a top schools with his crap grades.

And yes, his recs were probably crap. No teacher is excited to write a rec for a kid who underperforms.

Are you this nasty in real life or only on anonymous message boards? Her kids could be super engaged and curious and all sorts of wonderful things that aren't reflected in his grades.

HS math teacher here. I don’t think about grades at all when I write recommendations. Don’t listen to this poster. I don’t go back and look to see if the student earned an A or a C. Sure, I write about how they performed in my class and try to write something personal about them. The actual grade is irrelevant. I’ve written personal and fantastic recommendations for students who earned very low grades. Not everyone is an A student, despite what DCUM thinks.