Reply to tell me about colleges that didn't make your kid's list

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Amherst. They were sooooo snooty. Kid took it right off the list.[/quote]

This is a true story.

Years ago the Director of Admissions at Amherst visited my NoVa public when they were looking to diversify their applicant pool.  I was among a number of seniors invited to meet with him.  He made a presentation about the school and then asked if anyone had questions.

No one had questions at first, so he pointed at me and said “I’m sure you must have a question.”  On the fly, I asked him if a middle class kid from a NoVa public would feel at home at a college with a lot of private school graduates.

For whatever reason, he lost it and started yelling about how misguided the question was and how Amherst had rich and poor students from all over the world, including Harlem.  I was totally mortified.

Later that day I got called to my guidance counselor’s office. My counselor was also the head football coach and I thought he was going to chew me out for asking an inappropriate question and embarrassing our school.  Instead, he said that he’d reviewed the grades and test scores of some of the seniors with the AD and that the AD had committed to admit three of us, including me, to Amherst if we applied.  I never found out if he knew I was the same student who had asked the impertinent (although, in hindsight, fairly innocuous) question.

I didn’t end up applying there.  I did visit Amherst once, on a trip to Massachusetts to see Williams, and wasn’t crazy about the vibe.  But one of my classmates did take the AD up on his offer, and went on to be very successful. [/quote]

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