Disappointment
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Anonymous
This is so un-American! I am an immigrant from Asia. What attracts us so much about America is precisely that, as long as you work hard, you always have another opportunity. Tiger parents often pushed kids hard in their childhood, then the kids lost motivation once they left home. |
Anonymous
Yeah, but you aren't getting into MIT or any other top school if the only thing you have going for you is a GPA and SAT score. You have to balance your life so you aren't one note. |
Anonymous
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If not for the Engineering I'd say W&M hands down (I'm honestly confused why she applied there with an intended major of engineering) but Tech is the obvious choice here.
Buy her some swag, pay your deposits and tell her to get busy finding a fun roomate! |
Anonymous
I understand your frustration, as I posted earlier your daughter has a wonderful academic profile and she will do great wherever she ends up. But be careful with comparisons and comments of "unfair" because you don't really know and neither does your daughter even though she may believe that she does. We had a typical 'sports kid' at my daughter's school last year; cheerful, well liked, and captain of the volleyball team for her junior and senior year. People knew that she did well in school but she wasn't obviously standing out. She would have been on nobody'd RADAR for a top school unless it was to play volleyball. Senior year rolled around and: She was named as an NMSF. The kids in her AP classes were shocked because she was a 'sports kid' and many of them actually questioned that she belonged in the AP classes She was named the schools 'Scholar Athlete' for the year. None of the 'sports kids' ever imagined that she would have a 4.6 GPA and neither did her coach She was an AP Scholar with distinction because she had 12APs with all 4 and 5s as far as I know. It turned out that she also had probably 600 hours volunteering at a local hospital (and she's not premed) and another 200 or so hours at the local foodbank. I only know this because she is my kids best friend but it is a quick illustration as to why people need to be careful with the "unfair, people with lesser stats got the spot" comments. Most of the time there is something that you just don't know. |
Anonymous
Correct, this is the academic baseline. If you have it the box is checked and other things come into play. They can fill the class many times over with kids who are academically qualified and capable. |
Anonymous
America doesn’t do everything right. The education system is a perfect example of this! It is a huge waste of time, money, and effort to try and get every kid to go to college. Many kids should be put on a vocational track in high school, as many countries do. |
Anonymous
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We know a family whose top stats daughter was deferred and then waitlisted at UVA (but she did EA not ED because she wanted to ED an Ivy. We've all heard that song before.) They are PISSED at UVA about it. It was pretty shocking to hear them discuss it.
Which brings me back to - you should ED the best school you have a strong shot at. Not some crazy reach school. Anecdotally most kids we know had great results ED-ing a realistic choice. |
Anonymous
| OP, to you your kid seems unique but she's a dime a dozen on paper to admissions people. For everyone of her, there are five hundred others. Her grades don't make her different. So what does? |
Anonymous
Could not agree more. Open enrollment in Honors and AP classes at our public HS has been an unmitigated disaster for the kids who actually deserve to be there. Tons of kids are literally flunking. It should not even be possible to flunk an AP class. It means someone screwed up somewhere. |
Anonymous
Totally agree with this. In some cases, its actually by design that you don't know what the real story is with another kid. At out private, there are some maniac parents who are willing to bring others down to elevate their own kids. These people are to be feared during college applications. For all the EC's that my kid was doing outside of school, he was very, very quiet about it. No one realized the full extent of it until very recently. He was able to stay off the radar for the duration. |
Anonymous
Your kid is literally hiding ECs for a leg up on admissions. You are exactly the type of parent we are talking about. |
Anonymous
You are a fool, that is obvious. Your comment is pretty stupid in so many ways and highlights your status as a mental midget. I wish that this thread happened earlier this week, your comment would have made for a good laugh. On Wednesday I was chatting with Adam Steltzner Chief Engineer of the last Mars Rover Mission (Perseverance). He's from the bay area and was in town for a conference. Adam dropped out of HS to play in a rock band. He then ended up at a community college before going on to study at CalTech, get his Phd and spend his entire career at the JPL. If you told him that potential was fixed at around 6th grade he would give you a curious look and then use his life story to make you a fool. He is wickedly smart, wickedly funny and a great person but he does not suffer fools gladly and you are a fool. |
Anonymous
A key difference between America and other countries resides in that the public education system is funded by local tax payers, not but a central government. We have autonomy, not dictatorship. If you like the vocational track so much, there is community college where you can send your kid to. |
Anonymous
Is there some sort of informational rights that other parents have about what my kid does outside of school that I am not aware of? |
Anonymous
Yes. These schools were looking for a combination of factors that those peers had. Your insistence that your child is a better candidate and that the situation is unfair means that you don’t understand what the school wanted. There is no unfairness here, just you mistakenly thinking that the degree of effort your daughter put in should have automatically resulted in a punched ticket. |