Stressing out at the fork in the road
Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by kchristieh in education
‘Tis the season when high school seniors across the country run to the mailbox each day hoping that a big, thick envelope from the university of their choice has arrived. Until it arrives, the internet makes it easy to track how others have fared, and stress out about what that means for you or your child.
Traditional college information sites such as Princeton Review, Students Review, etc. are most useful before a student applies or after they’re accepted at a college. When you’re awaiting a response, it’s easy to get addicted to College Confidential, which hosts discussion forums on a variety of different topics and different colleges. If you’re even moderately stressed about the application process, you should proceed with caution. Once you start scanning the forums for the schools you’re applying to, you might get hooked. And chances are, your level of stress will go up, not down.
Here are some sample postings:
From the Stanford forum:
I’m hosed and depressed
I get straight A’s, but somehow my rank is 27…my classes are challenging. I don’t understand how this could happen. My friend has the exact same schedule as me but is ranked 21. I used to be rank 3 or 4. I don’t understand. I haven’t even met anyone ranked higher than me, I don’t know who these people are that are beating me. Are they tanking extra classes? I don’t know.My chances of going to Stanford are gone now…my rank was the only thing I had going for me. All I have left are essays. Please, someone help me.
From the UCLA forum:
Welcome in my world everyone !
EVERY SINGLE PERSON told me I had good chances to get into UCLA. And yesterday night, I checked and got rejected.. People with waaaay lower scores than me got in and not me !
Even more, it was my first answer, and almost all of my other choices are Ivy Leagues..
What should I think now ?!
From the Yale forum:
I heard that Yale accepts only 1 person per school, no matter the size or reputation, no matter what. Is this true?
A response to the Yale post read:
as everyone has said, this is untrue. the fact that there is usually only one per year at some mediocre schools is probably due to the quality of the student more than to the quality of the school. it has been true in my case, but as i said that is probably due to the quality of the applicant in my school/town, not to any quota system.
Another useful but possibly-stress-inducing site is the Scattergrams section of Naviance. I believe you can only access this through a specific high school account, but many high schools offer this to their students. It plots how students at a given high school have fared when applying to a specific college, with test scores on the x-axis and GPA on the y-axis. A green dot means a student got in, and a red x means they were rejected. Here’s an example. I removed the college name, since this reflects the students at a specific high school.
Of course, don’t forget Facebook. When letters come from a given college, many kids post whether they were accepted or not.
A friend reminded me the other day that “College is not a prize to be won, but a match to be made.” Wise words to remember. I can’t wait until April 1st, I think.
It doesn’t matter, really.
Many of these Super Competitive U graduates have earned degrees that qualify them to work for Starbucks at astronomical costs to their parents. But why would these kids care if they did not have to work for that money, have no clue about the future financial ramifications to themselves and to their parents, because they really, really wanted to belong to that prestigious group?
But I still remember the amazing experience earlier this year of interviewing young candidates at Cal Poly Pomona (engineering and technology). Some of them absolutely blew me away. in my view, the best and the brightest at Cal Poly’s engineering school could have been successful at any Super Comp U, but for some reason they ended up here and not there. But let me tell you that they were absolutely a thrill to meet, and they will have no problem landing on good jobs and getting far ahead in life.
Most remarkable were the female candidates (and I am absolutely against equal opportunity at the expense of a real talent, so please take this as a genuine compliment). Boy, they were sharp, smart, motivated, and ready to kill in order to eat. Simply put, they would make any lucky employer happy.
I know, I know. Who among us can say “no” to a bright kid who has been admitted to an Ivy League school? And the funny part is that some of these Super U’s may cost less than the UC system.