DS Freaking Out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those public school parents reading the thread, can you post the name of this magic college counselor? We really have no clue. My kid was just like “I think Georgetown is my first choice” but honestly I think that’s because she likes the cupcakes and has seen the spires from the car. I think we need a little help.

Being enchanted by the spires is not the worst criteria for selecting a college, but lol re the cupcakes. Fellow public school parent here. I have no clue who these mythical college counselors are, but I wouldn’t waste any time thinking about them. Just educate yourself about the process, shell out for some test prep or use the free version on Khan Academy, and help your kid find a range of appropriate schools to apply to. Do not expect much help from the HS counselor.

[Anonymous]

My kid goes to Basis DC for free. They have two counselors (at least one of who has a PhD) helping the 50 seniors. They spend a class period each day working on their applications during the fall. They have schools come to do presentations quite often. The counselor helped my son come up with great ideas for his essay and then worked with him to edit it throughout the fall. It's fantastic now. The counselors are available evenings and weekends for calls/emails with parents and their students. I've been blown away by how helpful this has all been. The only thing they didn't do was SAT prep.

Meanwhile, I've been helping his friends who are at SWW with their essays and on selecting schools. Those kids don't seem to be getting much support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. You are misreading the post. I am not freaking out. DS is. I am just trying to figure out how to explain things to him in a way that is as accurate as possible. I don’t know if connections help the way the used to. I know this is the way of the world.

Yes it is mainly that his best friend spilled this after the process. They’d talked about how fun it would be to go to the same school, etc. all along and then my DA felt sort of blindsided. I explained he was under no obligation to say anything and he said he wished he didn’t know.

Keep in mind as others have said he is a teenager and their brains fire up in different ways.

My first response was to be proud for working hard and getting good grades and SAT score and focus only on himself. That he in the end will have greater confidence in himself.

But he is still upset and feels like he was “played.” He said he wouldn’t have applied to so many of the same schools if he’d known. We talked about how he needs to focus on the future.

My question was about how much those connections really work these days and if I can honestly tell my kids, “things have changed and those connections don’t help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues” vs “sorry, kiddo.”

You can't make any predictions. Each school is different, and it sounds like you have a rather vague (and perhaps grandiose) understanding of the connections that were exercised.

If he is upset about how his friend handled it, you can discuss his feelings and whether this development changes his opinion of his friend. But that is really between them (though of course you can support your child if he is upset).

I would stay out of the business of trying to reassure him that this does or does not matter in 2022. He is one of many kids waiting to hear back, and he will cope with the news he gets and make the best choice from among his options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. You are misreading the post. I am not freaking out. DS is. I am just trying to figure out how to explain things to him in a way that is as accurate as possible. I don’t know if connections help the way the used to. I know this is the way of the world.

Yes it is mainly that his best friend spilled this after the process. They’d talked about how fun it would be to go to the same school, etc. all along and then my DA felt sort of blindsided. I explained he was under no obligation to say anything and he said he wished he didn’t know.

Keep in mind as others have said he is a teenager and their brains fire up in different ways.

My first response was to be proud for working hard and getting good grades and SAT score and focus only on himself. That he in the end will have greater confidence in himself.

But he is still upset and feels like he was “played.” He said he wouldn’t have applied to so many of the same schools if he’d known. We talked about how he needs to focus on the future.

My question was about how much those connections really work these days and if I can honestly tell my kids, “things have changed and those connections don’t help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues” vs “sorry, kiddo.”

I have zero sympathy for your son, who is so naive that he can't see his own privilege, and I think you're equally pathetic for posting this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to Basis DC for free. They have two counselors (at least one of who has a PhD) helping the 50 seniors. They spend a class period each day working on their applications during the fall. They have schools come to do presentations quite often. The counselor helped my son come up with great ideas for his essay and then worked with him to edit it throughout the fall. It's fantastic now. The counselors are available evenings and weekends for calls/emails with parents and their students. I've been blown away by how helpful this has all been. The only thing they didn't do was SAT prep.

Meanwhile, I've been helping his friends who are at SWW with their essays and on selecting schools. Those kids don't seem to be getting much support.

I'm impressed. My kids were at MCPS and didn't get anywhere near that level of help, although they did have college visits. The guidance counselors were just too busy with planning schedules, helping with kid emergencies, attending IEP meetings and everything else they do to offer that kind of one-on-one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to Basis DC for free. They have two counselors (at least one of who has a PhD) helping the 50 seniors. They spend a class period each day working on their applications during the fall. They have schools come to do presentations quite often. The counselor helped my son come up with great ideas for his essay and then worked with him to edit it throughout the fall. It's fantastic now. The counselors are available evenings and weekends for calls/emails with parents and their students. I've been blown away by how helpful this has all been. The only thing they didn't do was SAT prep.

Meanwhile, I've been helping his friends who are at SWW with their essays and on selecting schools. Those kids don't seem to be getting much support.

I'm impressed. My kids were at MCPS and didn't get anywhere near that level of help, although they did have college visits. The guidance counselors were just too busy with planning schedules, helping with kid emergencies, attending IEP meetings and everything else they do to offer that kind of one-on-one.

Well, BASIS counsels out a lot of kids before 12th grade and does a poor job accommodating many special needs, so their counselors have more time to help with college apps. They also advertise college admissions very heavily when trying to get people to apply to the school, so they kind of have to get it right. An MCPS school doesn't need to do this because they're not trying to get more people to enroll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. You are misreading the post. I am not freaking out. DS is. I am just trying to figure out how to explain things to him in a way that is as accurate as possible. I don’t know if connections help the way the used to. I know this is the way of the world.

Yes it is mainly that his best friend spilled this after the process. They’d talked about how fun it would be to go to the same school, etc. all along and then my DA felt sort of blindsided. I explained he was under no obligation to say anything and he said he wished he didn’t know.

Keep in mind as others have said he is a teenager and their brains fire up in different ways.

My first response was to be proud for working hard and getting good grades and SAT score and focus only on himself. That he in the end will have greater confidence in himself.

But he is still upset and feels like he was “played.” He said he wouldn’t have applied to so many of the same schools if he’d known. We talked about how he needs to focus on the future.

My question was about how much those connections really work these days and if I can honestly tell my kids, “things have changed and those connections don’t help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues” vs “sorry, kiddo.”

OP, you are right to ignore the crazy responses and yes, he is a teenager.

As to the bolded question, here is what I can tell you based on very close relationships I have with senior development officers at a couple elite colleges and conversations I have had with them: The bottom line is that it is now much more difficult to buy or influence your way in to a school where the family does not already have a relationship and where the family has not been making large donations for a long time. Connections and influence like that don't help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues.

Are there exceptions for a small handful of prominent extremely wealthy families and their kids? Sure. But post-Varsity Blues (and the Harvard admissions trial), the barrier between development and admissions has gone up a lot. Today, at pretty much every elite college, development officers are not allowed to communicate with admissions about particular applicants, which was not always the case. They can identify a file as a development case, and that's pretty much it (and it's going to be a rare case that that will happen where the family is not already giving). And all of them are also terrified of a hypothetical lawsuit and discovery (see Harvard trial) that would make them look bad or be embarrassing individually and for the institution, so they do adhere to this pretty carefully. Now, does it ever still happen that there might be a specific applicant where the VP for Development, or even the President, talks to the admissions director? Sure. But that's going to be a very small number of instances, especially when the family hasn't already been giving to the college.

[Anonymous]

Some of the data on this website might be useful to you for talking down any student who's freaking out about maybe not getting into the 'right school'....

https://lesshighschoolstress.com/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. You are misreading the post. I am not freaking out. DS is. I am just trying to figure out how to explain things to him in a way that is as accurate as possible. I don’t know if connections help the way the used to. I know this is the way of the world.

Yes it is mainly that his best friend spilled this after the process. They’d talked about how fun it would be to go to the same school, etc. all along and then my DA felt sort of blindsided. I explained he was under no obligation to say anything and he said he wished he didn’t know.

Keep in mind as others have said he is a teenager and their brains fire up in different ways.

My first response was to be proud for working hard and getting good grades and SAT score and focus only on himself. That he in the end will have greater confidence in himself.

But he is still upset and feels like he was “played.” He said he wouldn’t have applied to so many of the same schools if he’d known. We talked about how he needs to focus on the future.

My question was about how much those connections really work these days and if I can honestly tell my kids, “things have changed and those connections don’t help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues” vs “sorry, kiddo.”

OP, you are right to ignore the crazy responses and yes, he is a teenager.

As to the bolded question, here is what I can tell you based on very close relationships I have with senior development officers at a couple elite colleges and conversations I have had with them: The bottom line is that it is now much more difficult to buy or influence your way in to a school where the family does not already have a relationship and where the family has not been making large donations for a long time. Connections and influence like that don't help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues.

Are there exceptions for a small handful of prominent extremely wealthy families and their kids? Sure. But post-Varsity Blues (and the Harvard admissions trial), the barrier between development and admissions has gone up a lot. Today, at pretty much every elite college, development officers are not allowed to communicate with admissions about particular applicants, which was not always the case. They can identify a file as a development case, and that's pretty much it (and it's going to be a rare case that that will happen where the family is not already giving). And all of them are also terrified of a hypothetical lawsuit and discovery (see Harvard trial) that would make them look bad or be embarrassing individually and for the institution, so they do adhere to this pretty carefully. Now, does it ever still happen that there might be a specific applicant where the VP for Development, or even the President, talks to the admissions director? Sure. But that's going to be a very small number of instances, especially when the family hasn't already been giving to the college.

Varsity Blues does not seem like the appropriate analogy whatsoever...I honestly do not know what is.

In Varsity Blues they were photoshopping heads onto rower's bodies, taking fake pictures of kids on an Erg machine, manufacturing Soccer awards/rankings when the kid did not even play soccer, etc. All with the full cooperation of the Yale Soccer coach, Georgetown Tennis coach, Stanford sailing coach, who were taking bribes to then vouch to administration that the kids were in fact star, recruitable athletes. Additionally, they were paying doctors to write fake notes that a kid needed extra SAT/ACT time (honestly, stop giving anyone extra time...the process is so flawed and manipulated), paying ACT/SAT Test proctors to look the other way while a paid test taker was taking the test for them.

This was manipulation on a grand scale,

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

You and your son should absolutely be freaking out. I mean it only gets worse from here on out. Godspeed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Explain to your son what college counseling looks like for his friends attending public schools.

Right? My son went to public school and his guidance counselor tried to tell him to apply only to Rutgers "although you probably won't get in." My son told her, "I hate New Jersey." She just shrugged and ushered him out of her office. That was the extent of his college counseling.

+1

Langley?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. You are misreading the post. I am not freaking out. DS is. I am just trying to figure out how to explain things to him in a way that is as accurate as possible. I don’t know if connections help the way the used to. I know this is the way of the world.

Yes it is mainly that his best friend spilled this after the process. They’d talked about how fun it would be to go to the same school, etc. all along and then my DA felt sort of blindsided. I explained he was under no obligation to say anything and he said he wished he didn’t know.

Keep in mind as others have said he is a teenager and their brains fire up in different ways.

My first response was to be proud for working hard and getting good grades and SAT score and focus only on himself. That he in the end will have greater confidence in himself.

But he is still upset and feels like he was “played.” He said he wouldn’t have applied to so many of the same schools if he’d known. We talked about how he needs to focus on the future.

My question was about how much those connections really work these days and if I can honestly tell my kids, “things have changed and those connections don’t help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues” vs “sorry, kiddo.”

You can't make any predictions. Each school is different, and it sounds like you have a rather vague (and perhaps grandiose) understanding of the connections that were exercised.

If he is upset about how his friend handled it, you can discuss his feelings and whether this development changes his opinion of his friend. But that is really between them (though of course you can support your child if he is upset).

I would stay out of the business of trying to reassure him that this does or does not matter in 2022. He is one of many kids waiting to hear back, and he will cope with the news he gets and make the best choice from among his options.

+1

Went through this last year, everyone is in for some surprises, OP. Everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. You are misreading the post. I am not freaking out. DS is. I am just trying to figure out how to explain things to him in a way that is as accurate as possible. I don’t know if connections help the way the used to. I know this is the way of the world.

Yes it is mainly that his best friend spilled this after the process. They’d talked about how fun it would be to go to the same school, etc. all along and then my DA felt sort of blindsided. I explained he was under no obligation to say anything and he said he wished he didn’t know.

Keep in mind as others have said he is a teenager and their brains fire up in different ways.

My first response was to be proud for working hard and getting good grades and SAT score and focus only on himself. That he in the end will have greater confidence in himself.

But he is still upset and feels like he was “played.” He said he wouldn’t have applied to so many of the same schools if he’d known. We talked about how he needs to focus on the future.

My question was about how much those connections really work these days and if I can honestly tell my kids, “things have changed and those connections don’t help as much as they did pre-Varsity Blues” vs “sorry, kiddo.”

Since you don't know the details, the answer is "sorry, kiddo". I know from a personal experience that while the connections can't pull through an unqualified candidate, if there two qualified ones, the one with connections wins, all else equal.