Reply to Sorry but this American college admissions "rat race" is stupid ...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What is it teaching our kids? About "merit", hard work, financial inequality, value? Parents I know are gnashing their teeth over the blatant games played by colleges who seemingly hold all the power. But can't we vote with our feet? Select colleges outside the US system that are more fair (Canada, UK, Ireland, Scotland, etc.) or pick honors colleges in less competitive US colleges that will provide our kids with scholarships and better opportunities. Our public state schools (at least mine) has good intentions but feels broken as well.

What is it all for?

The parents telling me you need to "prune your child since middle school for a cohesive college narrative" and hire consultants to make you marketable, make me feel so sad and hopeless.[/quote]

You do not have to join that "rat race".  For our kid who was "qualified", we helped them find a great list of realistic Reaches, Targets and true safeties. Then we made sure they knew their chances at the reaches were small because the acceptance rates were single digits (and maybe 10-15% for ED once you remove the athletes, etc).  They got into all of their reaches and targets.  Got Deferred from their ED1 (and ultimately rejected---T10 school), WL at a T30, in at NEU with first year abroad, and WL at another reach.  Everything else they got into with good merit.  So they had 6+ excellent choices and are doing very well at their ultimate choice

Our kid chose to pursue their one main EC that they love and we didn't force them to fill their days in HS with random stuff they didn't want to do.  We also let them as a STEM major choose in HS to not waste time with APUSH or AP Eng, as those while they could have done well and gotten an A/A-, would have consumed a ton of time each week.  Instead they chose to spend 15-20+ hours on their EC and loved every minute of it.  And took 7 STEM APs instead and AP Psych. 
And you know what, the top 2 schools they ended up choosing, well heck neither would allow you to use AP credit to place out of your "core curriculum".  That literally would have been the only reason my kid would have taken APUSH/AP Eng--to get the college credit.  
So in the end, they ended up at a T40 (chose between a T40, T50 and a safety in the 60s) and got the HS experience they wanted academically [/quote]

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