do college admissions get ugly at the Big3 when all the parents are Ivy grads?

[Anonymous]

Serious question - could it be that these parents used those alumni addresses for signaling purposes when their kids applied for admission to the big3 school?

[Anonymous]

This thread is so sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is so sad.

+1. A bunch of pathetic parents focus on others email addresses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on this thread, I just checked for my kids big 3 class email and wow there are several alumni emails! I play it cool with gmail and just let it slip occasionally that I went to college near Boston.

Yuck. Why do you even feel the need to do this? Or to "play it cool". Why do you need to let others know in the first place (unless you are speaking with someone who also attended and you want to talk about shared experiences)?

Just go ahead and say you went to Harvard. You do not need to protect us non-pedigreed folk from feeling inferior...or whatever it is you think you're protecting us from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am so curious how this works out.
My kid just started at a Big3 for 9th.
I was looking through an email that I was on and out of 30+ addresses, 10 are Ivy alumni addresses.
This prompted me to google a bunch of the rest and out of 20, I easily hit 5 Harvard grads, 2 Duke, 3 Stanford, etc. There was one lonely Boston College grad. lol The rest were all.Ivy.

Now the reality is that last year this school sent maybe 15 kids to the Ivy League. 1/2 were sports recruits. 1/2 were minorities (some overlap but not entirely).
There was maybe one kid each to HYPS. One to Duke (and of these 5 or so kids a few were athletes or URM).
That's it. Period.

When you have a parent body that overwhelmingly went to the Ivy League (or other tippy top schools) themselves and the spots for their kids are EXCEEDINGLY few (i.e. single digits) and everyone (50 people?) wants these spots, how does this work out?
Does it get ugly?
I am so curious and am sort of frightened to find out.
(BTW I went to a SLAC).

Legacy doesn't go that far anymore, and so what you see at the Big 3 schools is a lot of "grooming" of kids (tutoring, test prep, travel sports) to have the right profile. For Ivies that's superstar academics (top 3-4 kids in the class), or excellent stats plus recruitable athlete, or excellent stats plus URM, or excellent stats plus parents have mega-millions. I can't think of a single Ivy admit at my kid's school last year who didn't fall into one of those categories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on this thread, I just checked for my kids big 3 class email and wow there are several alumni emails! I play it cool with gmail and just let it slip occasionally that I went to college near Boston.

Yuck. Why do you even feel the need to do this? Or to "play it cool". Why do you need to let others know in the first place (unless you are speaking with someone who also attended and you want to talk about shared experiences)?

Just go ahead and say you went to Harvard. You do not need to protect us non-pedigreed folk from feeling inferior...or whatever it is you think you're protecting us from.

Why aren't MIT grads this coy? If someone says I went to school near Boston, you immediately know it isn't MIT or Tufts or Wesleyan because its always Harvard. Of course the person can't say they went to Harvard because that would be uncouth, but they are great at steering the conversation to what college everyone attended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on this thread, I just checked for my kids big 3 class email and wow there are several alumni emails! I play it cool with gmail and just let it slip occasionally that I went to college near Boston.

Yuck. Why do you even feel the need to do this? Or to "play it cool". Why do you need to let others know in the first place (unless you are speaking with someone who also attended and you want to talk about shared experiences)?

Just go ahead and say you went to Harvard. You do not need to protect us non-pedigreed folk from feeling inferior...or whatever it is you think you're protecting us from.

Why aren't MIT grads this coy? If someone says I went to school near Boston, you immediately know it isn't MIT or Tufts or Wesleyan because its always Harvard. Of course the person can't say they went to Harvard because that would be uncouth, but they are great at steering the conversation to what college everyone attended.

Also, Wesleyan is in Connecticut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Legacy preference is going the way of the dodo. Kids will have to compete on merit.
2. But, life isn’t fair, and most of the Ivy parents take parenting just as seriously as they did their SATs, so a lot of their kids are going to be competitive, even without legacy preference.
3. Can’t we all just collectively NOT CARE about who gets in where anymore?

#3 is a tough ask, PP, though it would solve so many problems for American society if it could be achieved. I have succeeded in conveying (and occasionally even feeling) a zen-like calm on the sidelines of my youngest’s games. That has taken all the self-discipline available to me right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am so curious how this works out.
My kid just started at a Big3 for 9th.
I was looking through an email that I was on and out of 30+ addresses, 10 are Ivy alumni addresses.
This prompted me to google a bunch of the rest and out of 20, I easily hit 5 Harvard grads, 2 Duke, 3 Stanford, etc. There was one lonely Boston College grad. lol The rest were all.Ivy.

Now the reality is that last year this school sent maybe 15 kids to the Ivy League. 1/2 were sports recruits. 1/2 were minorities (some overlap but not entirely).
There was maybe one kid each to HYPS. One to Duke (and of these 5 or so kids a few were athletes or URM).
That's it. Period.

When you have a parent body that overwhelmingly went to the Ivy League (or other tippy top schools) themselves and the spots for their kids are EXCEEDINGLY few (i.e. single digits) and everyone (50 people?) wants these spots, how does this work out?
Does it get ugly?
I am so curious and am sort of frightened to find out.
(BTW I went to a SLAC).

I have no idea about admissions, but this is insane to me. Do people who have been out of school for long enough to have high school aged children really still use their college alumni addresses?

You know what's insane to me? That OP, our SLCA grad, has time on her hands to google the educational background of every parent in her child's class. So, OP, what are you doing with that SLAC degree?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on this thread, I just checked for my kids big 3 class email and wow there are several alumni emails! I play it cool with gmail and just let it slip occasionally that I went to college near Boston.

Yuck. Why do you even feel the need to do this? Or to "play it cool". Why do you need to let others know in the first place (unless you are speaking with someone who also attended and you want to talk about shared experiences)?

Just go ahead and say you went to Harvard. You do not need to protect us non-pedigreed folk from feeling inferior...or whatever it is you think you're protecting us from.

Why aren't MIT grads this coy? If someone says I went to school near Boston, you immediately know it isn't MIT or Tufts or Wesleyan because its always Harvard. Of course the person can't say they went to Harvard because that would be uncouth, but they are great at steering the conversation to what college everyone attended.

I’m an MIT grad and I say I went to school in Boston 😀 (because who really cares about the distinction between Boston and Cambridge). I don’t use my alumni email though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Legacy preference is going the way of the dodo. Kids will have to compete on merit.
2. But, life isn’t fair, and most of the Ivy parents take parenting just as seriously as they did their SATs, so a lot of their kids are going to be competitive, even without legacy preference.
3. Can’t we all just collectively NOT CARE about who gets in where anymore?

In the “tippy top” schools? Unlikely. Even though parents maintain it’s all about the journey, for most, it’s really not.

Maybe not, but it’s gone at Amherst and others

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a family who just went through the college admissions process with two kids at two different DC privates, yes, it does get ugly at times. The most polite thing that happened to both of my kids, was classmates asking them not to apply to a certain school because it was classmates' first choice, and my DCs application would hurt classmates chances of getting in.

That was polite; it got worse from there. Lots of academic cheating happens as well.

Good luck - I'm glad it's all over!

How could classmates know where your children apply? Were your DC already been accepted into a non-binding EA when classmates asked?

I'm the PP quoted here. All these schools are small - everyone knows everyone and they all talk about where they're applying, as much as the school leadership and counselors tell them not to. And yes, they are all vying for the same 20-30 schools so it's really tough.

Yes, my DCs still applied to those schools; one was EA and one regular admission. In one case, both DC and classmate got in (it was my DC's safety); in the other case, DC got in and classmate did not. One was an Ivy and one was not.

Previous question on academic cheating - lots of ways to cheat, but DCs told me of students paying other students to write papers for them. Really smart students doing the writing, and the going rate was $100.00. It's not uncommon.

Yes, that is really tough.

[Anonymous]

I have had two kids go through a "big3" - one is a current senior.

What is being described in this thread is not my/our experience at all. If anything, people are supportive of each others kids, offering to help if they have a connection or advice.

Sure, there are going to be schools where applicants think they have a hook and there are 5, 10 or 20 applications to one or another school. But that is the nature of the beast.

At the end of the day, the kids all end up at great schools, regardless of what high school they are coming from.

[Anonymous]

If you have a high school age kid and you are using Harvard alum email address that’s extremely strange because email had barely begun when you were in college. Those alum accounts are for the 35 and under crowd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I have no idea about admissions, but this is insane to me. Do people who have been out of school for long enough to have high school aged children really still use their college alumni addresses?

One angle to consider - Using an alumni alias email isn't so strange if it was the first email you had and then continued to use it ever since. It takes a lot of work to disentangle all the places you've used it as a login id etc. Of course, not everyone fits into that category but many people I know from school (where this WAS the case - and is not an IVY) still use that alias. It has nothing to do with status - it's a consistent email address - just like keeping the same cell number that has a non-DMV area code because that's where you had your first cell phone.

Yeah, no. It’s actually totally strange, douchey, and a not-so-subtle flex.