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[quote=Anonymous]I don't understand all of the disappointment.  For a few families, yeah, but not for the flurry of disappointed families that have chimed in so far. The one thing that has been a great guide for my family this year is knowing our DC. We know what DC is capable of. We've monitored DCs progress and rankings on testing since DC was in first grade. Now if DC was a 99 percentiler for the past 12 years, then perhaps an application to a top 10 would make sense.  But our DC was not, and despite great grades, a very good SAT, and a fantastic application, we did not allow DC to set their sites on a list of mainly top schools. We crafted a list together of schools that made sense for who DC was - no bullshitting the scores throughout the years, no wishing to impress the neighbors or other parents with the sweatshirts or bumper stickers/magnets, no wishful thinking or dreams of grandeur. DC applied to schools in the ranking range of where DC has shown to be a solid performer for over 12 years.

Now test prep, etc., could have improved some stuff, but not to the degree where DC would have been a standout.  And even if that were the case, the incredible increased competition and money behind top admissions would have made their admissions more out of reach.

Let's take a top school -- let's say Yale. It only has a incoming class of about 1,200 student.  Yale received about 35,000 applications for a little more than 1,000 seats last year.  That's probably about 50 or so seats here in the DMV.  Why would any family be terribly disappointed if their DC was not one of the 50 selected, from this sea of 1,500s/4.8 GPAs that we keep reading about here on DCUM?  That's about one kid per high school here.  Why would a family think their odds are so great that when a rejection comes, they are truly besides themselves?

Sometimes I think this is more about ego and not being able to brag to others about DCs college choice.  The odds have always been this low for several schools for many, many years, not just TO years. But somehow parents and kids presume that they can beat these odds and then get sorely disappointed when they don't.

Not trying to be mean, but I just don't understand the surprise and disappointment that keeps coming across in these posts.

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