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

[Anonymous]

OP is full of it. This didn't happen, but good job trolling! 25+ pages and counting.

[Anonymous]

If your child is half-Asian he should have checked multiracial as his ethnicity. That is what we have taught our children to do. They are biracial.

[Anonymous]

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.

It has definitely been different due to COVID. You would think reading DCUM that we are in a baby boom like we had after WW2, making admissions impossible. That is not the case there is no demographic bubble. What has happened is the focus more and more falls on relatively few schools, and kids apply to more and more of those few schools. I guess this is the USNWR effect, but it more or less creates a Tulip Bubble type of rush for these schools, with everyone thinking their kids won't have opportunities if they don't get accepted, which does not objectively appear to be the case. If we had never had USNWR turning some percentage of the population into Lemmings, this all likely wouldn't be a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi, this is Op again. I don’t want to out my son but he is half Asian American and half parent from another country. Not Georgetown Day, but I don’t think it would be wise to say which one. I thought most schools prefer not to use the term safety anymore because no school is a “safety” or sure bet anymore. Our school also calls them “likelies.”
We slip up a lot and still call them safeties but they are right, there are no safe bets.

I think my son will have to be convinced that calling admissions reps won’t be bothering them and making his chances even worse. I hope the counselor is encouraging because he is more likely to trust her advice than ours, we are old and out of it.

This is our only child, so we having nothing to compare. We know the application process is hard this year and we were trying to be realistic but never thought he would only get in one school.

Unfortunately, I think your DS being Asian-American hurt his candidacy, particularly with the private universities you listed (I don't get what happened with UVM). Other HAPAs try to obscure being of Asian descent (I am not saying that you did this), but the Common App's request for information on parents' education and place of birth will raise the issue anyway.

Your counselor should have accounted for this and added either larger publics (where they have more slots) and/or SLACs, particularly in the South and Midwest (where being Asian may be viewed more positively).

+1. Another Asian-American here, who gave my HAPA kids first and middle names that don't give away their Asian ethnicity specifically to avoid this kind of discrimination. Our last name is sort of vague and could be European, which helps (didn't help me back in the day, because my first name/ my parents' names/ their places of birth/ the colleges they went to all gave it away).

They can continue to try to engineer a system that discriminates against Asians, and we'll continue to find ways around it. My kids will NEVER check that box on their applications.

I am Asian-American and this happened to me. I went to an Ivy/T14 university that did not have many Asians relative to the student population. But for the legacy boost for my own DC, this same discrimination would have happened to him too. It's just part of the stupid admissions game now.

[b]Don't they have to check a box for race/ethnicity?

No, there's usually an option for "prefer not to answer". But also, HAPA= half Asian, in case that is the part that is unclear to you. They can check another box that better reflects how they identify themselves. Nothing wrong with doing that, and why should they disadvantage themselves by checking the Asian box?

[Anonymous]

This thread has gone down a crazy rabbit hole...get off of the shrooms people. My kid's 5/6 on acceptances, hard work and good choices in apps pays off, if your kid didn't get in it's not the pandemic even though you want to blame it, accept the safety, foundational whatever you want to call it and move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone down a crazy rabbit hole...get off of the shrooms people. My kid's 5/6 on acceptances, hard work and good choices in apps pays off, if your kid didn't get in it's not the pandemic even though you want to blame it, accept the safety, foundational whatever you want to call it and move on.

I don't understand why some people insist this year is no different. This is first time in history standardized tests were off the table for every single school; grade inflation at many schools due to online learning and other challenges; kids who deferred last year; many colleges got an insane number of applications. I'm not debating whether it is good or bad. But to say it's no different due to the pandemic is bizarre. Have you been reading the news?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

What does this mean? He didn't get into Emory (or similar) with >1500 SAT and near straight A average??

+1

We need to see the schools (or do similar ones if you feel your actual list is too personal to share) to have an opinion on what went wrong.

I don't think you realize how competitive admissions are nowadays. Emory has an average SAT of 1500 and average unweighted GPA of 3.92 and acceptance rate is less than 15%. I know people with 36 ACT denied from Emory

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Emory isn't a safety school for "everyone" though. A lot of people would be thrilled to go there.

You need to tell us the schools or comparable schools if you truly want educated opinions on this.

II

I doubt Emory is a safety school for anyone given that they have less than a 15% acceptance rate and average ACT of like 34

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone down a crazy rabbit hole...get off of the shrooms people. My kid's 5/6 on acceptances, hard work and good choices in apps pays off, if your kid didn't get in it's not the pandemic even though you want to blame it, accept the safety, foundational whatever you want to call it and move on.

I don't understand why some people insist this year is no different. This is first time in history standardized tests were off the table for every single school; grade inflation at many schools due to online learning and other challenges; kids who deferred last year; many colleges got an insane number of applications. I'm not debating whether it is good or bad. But to say it's no different due to the pandemic is bizarre. Have you been reading the news?

Some kids are benefited from this year's situation. For example, those who cannot get a good SAT/ACT score. In the past, they will get into a lower ranking school because of the lower SAT/ACT; but this year, they can get into a better school by not submitting SAT/ACT, esp. if they are URM, first gen, etc.

[Anonymous]

This thread is mindnumbingly boring. Except for the parts where Big 3 or Big 5 parents lament their kids' college rejections. That's fun!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is mindnumbingly boring. Except for the parts where Big 3 or Big 5 parents lament their kids' college rejections. That's fun!

And the Emory poster popping up every once in a while to declare how great a school it is!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread is mindnumbingly boring. Except for the parts where Big 3 or Big 5 parents lament their kids' college rejections. That's fun!

It is mean to say something like this while others are in such unlucky position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is mindnumbingly boring. Except for the parts where Big 3 or Big 5 parents lament their kids' college rejections. That's fun!

It is mean to say something like this while others are in such unlucky position.

I agree. These are real kids with real feelings. The poster who posted that should really be ashamed. Not nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your child is half-Asian he should have checked multiracial as his ethnicity. That is what we have taught our children to do. They are biracial.

Clearly you have never laid eyes on the Common App. There is no “other” or “multiracial” box to check. You have to check all that apply, and it is done as a tree, so if you check Asian you then get a drop down menu that prompts you to check Korean or Chinese or whatever. If you check white you then check if you are of European or Middle Eastern descent. And so forth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is mindnumbingly boring. Except for the parts where Big 3 or Big 5 parents lament their kids' college rejections. That's fun!

It is mean to say something like this while others are in such unlucky position.

They would not lament your child's rejection in the slightest, dog eat dog in this world, buck up and get strong, this crap your spewing is weak.