I can’t say this to my kid’s face, of course, but...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m so sorrt, OP. It’s been a train wreck if a year..

I agree OP. My DD who only got one B in four years of HS, got rejected at all the top schools she applied to. Her counselors told her not to apply to any safeties because she didn't need them (small school, really dumb counselors, IMHO). She got accepted at our state U and a few other mid-level SLACs, but no Ivies, no reaches. She's a great kid, with many accomplishments, but this is a terrible, terrible year to apply to college. She's going to do a gap year becasue she doesn't want to go to any of the schools she got into. She has a gap year job offer, so she's going to take that. Not a career job, but she'll make some money and wait for better days ahead. It sucks OP, it really does. Only weakness in her application I see is that she got a 1480 on her SAT, but she only took it once. She hates standardized tests, and I told her if she hit 1450, that was good enough.

This is no different than any other year.

Ridiculous. Do you live under a rock?

Yes - many youth deferred applying to schools for a year due to pandemic so i would imagine that there were much higher rates of applications to good schools.

[Anonymous]

Posts like these make me so grateful for UT and the top 6% rule in Texas. Of course, our hs is very mediocre so that helps too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this kid speaks two languages, has mid 1550, near 4.0 average, volunteers with seniors, and still only got into one true safety with a high acceptance rate?

What the heck? I am worried. Parent of an eighth grade boy.

OP is a troll. They keep posting to keep this thread going, digging a more extreme narrative, plus the clickbait title. It's obviously fake.

Not op, but this is not a fake, as I have seen this happening this year myself. I think this is becoming a new norm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So this kid speaks two languages, has mid 1550, near 4.0 average, volunteers with seniors, and still only got into one true safety with a high acceptance rate?

What the heck? I am worried. Parent of an eighth grade boy.

OP is a troll. They keep posting to keep this thread going, digging a more extreme narrative, plus the clickbait title. It's obviously fake.

Not op, but this is not a fake, as I have seen this happening this year myself. I think this is becoming a new norm.

It's not over yet. This is the kind of kid that can have at least 1 ivy admit just by chance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP.. clearly private has no advantage over public...

No where is perfect. Many blue ribbon public schools in pricey zip codes have very high rates of success in selective college placements and success in national merit scholar program.

If college placement is not your only concern, Good private schools often have many advantages:
1. General College preparedness;
2. More mental and physical health resources;
3. More Opportunities for team sports for wide range of abilities;
4. Strong performing arts/ visual arts programs as well as academics;
5. Better Flexibility with reaching different types of learners; and
6. Greater ability to discipline/ expel students who are bullies.

That said, so much is luck in terms of clicking with peers. There is wide spread drugs and alcohol abuse/ vaping at both public and private schools in the DMV area. So not sure there is much advantage on that score. The main advantage to us is being well prepared for the rigors of college and beyond. Youth can thrive at many different colleges if they have the tools.

Some youth are much happier at public schools so it just depends on your child’s needs/ Preferences.

[Anonymous]

I feel for you, OP! My big 3 kid with lower stats than your son received 4 rejections and one WL in the last 2 days. Waiting on a few more decisions. Slightly freaking out here, but keeping calm for my DC. DC does have 2 acceptances in hand that are fine, but DC isn’t thrilled with it. DC will hope to get off the WL or learn to love one of the accepted schools. Gap year is not something DC is interested in. Judging from the scattergrams my DC should not have been outright rejected at all those schools. This year it is rough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I give up. It’s hard to to stay optimistic. He worked his ass off at his private school, got mid-1500 on his SAT, continued his in person volunteering throughout the pandemic (which I was not excited about, but he wanted to do it). He has had one B+ his entire 4 years of college, the rest As. His teachers speak highly of him and I believe they must have written good letters.

His counselor said his list was solid. He’s been waitlisted or rejected nearly everywhere. He has one acceptance to a “likely” and that’s it. Only one place teaming and it’s a huge reach, esp this year.

It’s hard to stay positive, happy, and upbeat for my kid. He is unexcited about the one place he got in. I know I should try to point out the positives of getting in that one place but it is so hard. I wish he would defer and take a gap year. I brought it up once but he said he isn’t interested.

I’m not thrilled with his college counselor at school. She hasn’t even checked in on his to see how he is doing. I give up on that process too. He is crushed. I am crushed for him.

I’d anyone else having this horrible of a situation? And please don’t say, “my love sucks too, my daughter only got into Emory and not Brown” or some such nonsense. His safety he got in is a safety for everyone.

Yes, the same thing happened to my son last year. It was hard, probably harder for me at first. It really took all summer to accept it. He was not at all excited until he got a t shirt in the mail and met his roommate online. The positive side is he’s doing extremely well. When I ask him if he likes it, he says yes, but still mentions “it’s not a good school.” He says he wants to transfer to one of his original top choices after sophomore year. When I ask why, he just repeat the ranking number. Yet he’ll say he likes his professors and the school...so he would be transferring just for a chance at a better recruitment path. I let him know sometimes it is good to be a big fish in a small pond, and that if he keeps on this trajectory he will have his pick of grad schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“ And to demonstrate their commitment to the test policy, colleges have to accept 30 to 50 percent among the students who did not submit a test score.”

Is this true? It would explain all the deferrals and WLs we are seeing at my DC’s Big3 private. My kid has shown me MANY tik toks of kids getting into T20 schools this year - bragging that they only had an 1100 on the SAT or a 26 ACT and just didn’t submit scores. They have hit the lottery. It is a crazy admissions year.

I feel for the professors and administrators, then. They will have to dedicate yet more resources to tutoring and scaffolded learning.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, OP.....read most of first 10 pages, now here...loved the American Exceptionalism questions....

So many themes from the posts resonate: the counselors failing us; wish I had prodded her to take more APs, despite despising history and English; and wish they had not cancelled the SAT she was scheduled for the Saturday 12 hours after lock down started last year(would have made no difference to the pandemic, the numbers in those days were far lower than they are now)....my daughter did Kahn Academy every single day for an hour and a half prepping for three months, because she utterly bombed her first attempt at SAT....then they cancelled the test, schools said they would be test optional, but kids who had good scores from their first try submitted them....I just feel we were doomed from the beginning....our family [grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins all raging about this right now] is super emotional, we've been raging, ranting and crying > 24 hours after finding out she did not get into UVA, after being waitlisted at Tech...W&M will be a hopeless joke. We have to stay in-state due to the VA 529 plan having been paid since birth, and me being low-income. The safeties she's in are safeties for everyone, and she is not excited about them, thanks to the prevalence of snobbiness throughout the DMV that brainwashes so many of these kids to look down on non-elite schools...heck, it's brainwashed me!

That exceptionalism question list was great, because why the hell don't we want a fully-educated country where every single person, without exception, attends college paid for with our tax dollars, and comes out debt-free, ready to serve humanity?

I just constantly see stupid stuff, like removing ALL the native plants in the names of erosion control(?) along the W&OD bike bath in Falls Church, and replacing with monoculture grass: as if all the chickory, purslain, mullein, echinacia, milkweed, etc, wasn't holding erosion at bay ? But more importantly, by providing bee and butterfly corridors with those flowers, we were saving the food supply of the planet...

...but on my bike ride today, I just saw total ecological devastation, replaced by acres and acres of freaking GRASS, and I too, GIVE UP, OP. We are just a stupid country, ignoring obvious ecology 101, because somehow we know better in the name of erosion control or whatever they're doing on the bike path....
I see trees being topped until their deaths, yards with NO TREES, or ONE ornamental tree (final height 5 feet), no flowers for bees that are vanishing faster than I can type this post, and I just think: we are a completely uneducated country and we are doomed, all of us...so what the hell does it matter what college anyone gets into, if we can't see for our nose in front of our face how quickly we are demolishing all the habitats and vanishing all the other species that we are inextricably interlinked with, for our assured mutual survival or destruction?

Because we don't believe in education, and waste so much stupid time watching football and other sports, more and more kids are going to be left out in the cold from college, since the few ivies/state schools cannot possibly educate everyone who needs an education....which means more people will be suceptible to conspiracy theories and more likely to elect demagogues, the next one of whom could be successful at fully ending Democracy in a way that Trump wasn't.

We're stupid Americans, the college process here is stupid, too many smart, caring kids are left in the cold, and because of that, one day we are going to be paying a terrible price, both in the loss of our democracy and the loss of our planet due to consistent ecological destruction, i.e. human made global warming.

Right on, OP, I mourn for your loss. I keep raging and grieving, not sure when it will abate.... but don't sugar-coat it for your son, you both have every right to feel whatever you feel. Thank you so much for starting this thread.....be kind to yourself as best you can for now....

[Anonymous]

Oh, OP, just read your long reply on page 23....even more poignant....thank you for sharing, I think I am going to start crying again....this year is just sad in every direction....but your son volunteers, "is not mean about it" and sounds like all you could ever want in a son... He and you are still alive, we reading here are not among the many hundreds of thousands who have died this year... and the pain of all this is going to last as long as it does, there is no quick "getting over it" and being all curt and brusque about resetting expectations, etc....ignore those people...thank you so much for sharing all this....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ And to demonstrate their commitment to the test policy, colleges have to accept 30 to 50 percent among the students who did not submit a test score.”

Is this true? It would explain all the deferrals and WLs we are seeing at my DC’s Big3 private. My kid has shown me MANY tik toks of kids getting into T20 schools this year - bragging that they only had an 1100 on the SAT or a 26 ACT and just didn’t submit scores. They have hit the lottery. It is a crazy admissions year.

I feel for the professors and administrators, then. They will have to dedicate yet more resources to tutoring and scaffolded learning.

That assumes test scores actually mean anything.

(FWIW, I was a NMS Finalist, and I think standardized tests just identify how good you are at taking standardized tests.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had this situation. My suggestion is to really work the waitlists and consider hiring a college counselor to coach working the waitlist. He may get a spring admit.

How could a college counselor help work the waitlist? If there is a counselor that has connections at a particular school, then maybe I could see how someone might be able to put a thumb on the scale. Otherwise, I'm not sure how that would work.

The guidance counselor at our private has lots of connections to admissions offices. He used to be an admissions officer at a very desirable college.
Yes, he can work the waitlist, and he will make calls for kids to nudge the schools into taking these kids. That's part of his job. He doesn't lie about the kids, he just gives them an extra boost if he can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe putting so much stock on kicking your ass in high school to get into the perfect college wasn't the best idea huh? Maybe just emphasizing doing your best, working hard and then seeing where that takes you would have been better. Not basing your self worth on The Perfect School.

I'd also guess you are let down because you thought paying for private school would mean you were exceptional no matter what.

You'll all survive. Look up people who have kicked ass in the life after attending your disappointing safety school.

You have a gigantic chip on your shoulder. It's unattractive.

[Anonymous]

Sure he does. But so do about 200 other counselors. And many top schools don't really use the waitlist to boot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. I thought these were the tiers: safety/likely, match/target, and reach/dream. But it seems like several posters have used "likely" as a synonym for "match" instead.

This is the issue when your stats are high. Your match schools tend to have <20% acceptance rate or even lower, which means they are a reach for everyone. Basically, there are more high stats kid than spots in the top ranked schools' freshman classes, and none of them only take high stats kids. This means, every year, high stats kids get shut out of the top schools, and this has always been the case. Many "lower ranked" schools have very high stat students. It is also a problem for a high stat kid who thinks she is too good for a lower ranked school -- she's going to have competition there and may not realize it until its too late.

So when you get passed over at work by mediocre coworkers, don’t overestimate your mediocre skill set. We don’t wanna see another Karen going off on the National tv over some big nothing.