I would like to start out by saying this is not a rant just one parent's observation as I've participated in this process over the past 3+ years; I would like to thank the many members who have provided their effort, time and expertise in transmitting the information that has been so valuable to me and I am sure others on the site. I would like to be as transparent as possible so that others may benefit from this Odyssey that was just undertaken – –
There are many reasons why parents and their children play the game of high stakes college admission but I think it gets crystallized down into the scene that we will probably remember from "Jerry Maguire" where Renée Zellweger says as the curtain closes to the first class compartment of the airplane to her son "first class used to mean a better meal and a more comfortable seat-- now it means a ticket to a better life" there is some truth to that statement as far as I see it in terms of this process that many of us have entered.
As Northstarmom might have pointed out my daughter was competitive in most every way except one – she was not an athlete in any way. In every other respect, she was "beyond the 75th percentile"; perfect score on the ACT; NMF; 800/800/750 on 3 SAT II's. She took 90% of the APs offered at her school and got fives on all of them. Her unweighted average was 98.5 out of 100. She was the editor of the literary magazine for the school which has won awards across the state, and she was the technical director for the theater company for 4 years- proficient at mechanical props and such.. She started her own business and website and makes $$; and most importantly (as seems to be the rage today) showed a "deep EC" over 10 years with the culmination in a GS gold award project with 3 regional speakers, 2 national speakers on safety issues for girls regarding pertinent topics of the day including sexual assault, financial literacy and the like.She has also held other leadership positions across her state for STEM programs, and currently has a nomination for the US presidential scholarship for her state.
As you can see, It appears as if she has almost all the things that "they"prize/request/advise.
Unfortunately, she is a middle-class/barely upper-middle-class white female from a high tax state/NE with parents or family who are not legacies of any of the schools she applied to; her ancestors come from Northern Europe; and she is not interested in sports competition.
Her results were typical of what many will report today-- denied at H, Y, Brown, MIT. Waitlisted at Bowdoin, Williams, Davidson.You might be wondering if she neglected the other things that we all talk about on the site. She did not. She visited each and every small school/LAC and interviewed at each one (other than Williams which has no interviews). She wrote personal thank you notes to each interviewer; she wrote personalized essays that mentioned professors by name for the classes that she shall sat in on while attending. She weaved and the such that (at least in this parents opinion) would likely make any Adcom smile in a gesture of knowing. In other words it was not generic, it was not canned; it was authentic.
Everyone has read the platitudes 1000 times "it's a crapshoot"its holistic/they can do what they want (and boy they sure do)- but this does not answer the why of the process for some.
I'm struck by what I read on a recent thread concerning the boy that was lamenting his friend's inability to get into one of 4 Ivy League schools that he had chosen based upon his stats, etc- and the multitude of pages that ensued all of which were enlightening- the most enlightening for me was the post by Lucilake who provided the concept of "institutional engineering".
As I mentioned at the outset this was our family's foray into the high-stakes game of college admissions – I have one special needs child was already in college doing well and I have one behind this child who is decidedly average in most every way!!!. Again, I am so grateful for the information provided on this site- it was interesting throwing our family's hat in the ring for this process.
PS before anyone takes us/me to task she has applied and has an acceptance to a financial safety a full ride to a NMF school.
↧