Tag Archives: college rejections

admissions, editorial, parenting

It’s Time for a Wake-Up Call for Parents (and Students) about College

 

college

The college system is rigged. It’s time for parents (and students) to wake up and smell the coffee. Colleges are businesses and it’s their business to lure your student in, inflate their application numbers, and decrease the percentage of acceptances. It’s a simple tactic used in every business: make it more difficult to obtain and everybody wants it. These elite colleges have sold this view of success to most parents and students—”Get into one of our colleges and you’re guaranteed a great job after graduation, a wonderful life, and success.” It’s a bunch of bunk!

Applying to these colleges carries a steep price, and it’s not just when you get the tuition bill. The cold hard facts are that a small percentage of the best students get offered admission to these colleges. When your above average student who isn’t at the top of the applicant pool puts all his hopes and dreams into an offer of admission and the odds aren’t stacked in his favor, you and your family are in for some devastating weeks and months of disappointment.

In a statistical article discussing demonstrated interest in higher education from Social Assurity, Barnard College’s enrollment statistics were revealed:

Congratulations to the 1,088 students accepted to Barnard College’s Class of 2022. You are part of the most selective class in Barnard’s history. Barnard chose you from 7,897 applicants for an effective acceptance rate of 13.7%.

Barnard’s acceptance rate has dropped precipitously over the past four years. Twenty-four percent of applicants were admitted to the class of 2018, 20 percent to the class of 2019, 16 percent to the class of 2020, 15.4 percent to the class of 2021, and now 13.7 percent to the class of 2022.

Why do we allow our students to be used in this way? Why is it so important that they attend an elite university? Because for so many years, parents and students have believed the lie that says, “where you go to college determines who you will be.” And nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from the truth. Where you go is NOT who you will be.

What your student does with the education he receives will determine his success or failure. It won’t be determined by the name at the top of their diploma or the name on the sweatshirt they wear for the next four years. The reality is there are thousands of excellent colleges who provide a superior education. These colleges change lives. These colleges provide students with degrees that work. These colleges provide large amounts of financial aid to all their students. These colleges give students opportunities to serve as they learn. They don’t have elite names on their buildings. But your student will receive a quality education at an affordable price.

Why would you want anything less for your student? Why would a parent make a decision to go into debt, encourage their student to go into debt, and destroy their retirement to send their student to one of these elite colleges? But it happens every single day as the colleges rejoice and applaud their efforts to milk parents out of a small fortune to educate (or often not educate) their student.

I hear these stories every day. “My student was valedictorian and he didn’t get into any of the Ivies.” “My student had a strong GPA, high test scores, strong leadership and community involvement and she didn’t get into one of the colleges she applied to. What did she do wrong?” It’s not the quality of the student, it’s the quality and the substance of the college list. They applied to the WRONG colleges!

Your college list can make or break the admission results. Apply to the wrong schools and your student will either not get accepted or get accepted and not offered any financial aid. It’s a guaranteed result. If you want this to happen to your student, populate their list with elite colleges. Apply ED to one of them and sit back and wait for the disappointment. It will most surely happen. If you want a different result, take a different course of action.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy, a college and financial aid expert, agrees and lays it all out for parents in her recent article: Getting Rejected From Elite Universities. Do yourself (and your student) a favor and read it. Do this before fall of senior year. Follow her advice (and mine) and expand your college list. Do the research. Choose the colleges that offer the best aid, the best education, and might not be on anyone’s radar. Employers don’t care where you went to college. They care that you got an education that prepares you for the work force.

admissions, college planning, college prep

How to Handle College Rejections

 

 

college rejections

College preparation can be stressful. A student can have his or her future all planned out, with standardized test dates scheduled, a study plan in place, college tours planned, college applications ready to send out, etc. 

It will soon be time to send out the college applications to the student’s pick of colleges and universities. One day, when the mail arrives, the student receives a letter. Excited, she tears it open, waiting for the best news of her day — and life in general. To her dismay, the letter says she wasn’t accepted to the school of her choice. In tears, she doesn’t know how to handle the news.

Sometimes, the best laid plans do not work out. As a student, you could feel like your world is ending because you didn’t get in your dream college. As a parent, you want to help your child feel better and realize that even this situation has a reason behind it and its own silver lining.

If your student is rejected from her first choice college or any other college on her list, here are some tips to keep in mind when dealing with those college rejections.

Realize that you have other options.

One rejection letter or email is not the end of your college career before it has even begun. Make sure you apply to other schools and to other programs that suit your career aspirations. Look at the pros and cons of each. You may not have gotten into the school you wanted, but you could end up being where you need to be — somewhere that is a better fit for you. Focus on your other “yes” and “maybe” letters and aim for those universities. Realize that your self worth does not come from the college you attend (although it may seem like it right now).

Let yourself get angry — and then get over it.

Get mad for a little bit. Work through all of the stages of rejection. Don’t suppress your anger and associated depression after the anger subsides. Get it all out. Talk with friends and family. Manage your stress. If it gets to be too much, talk with a mental health professional near you or on BetterHelp. They will help you work though your college-preparation and rejection stress. Letting the feelings come to you naturally will help you get past the situation more quickly.

Don’t give up.

While it could be easier to just give up, if you have a dream school in mind, and you feel like the representatives didn’t make an adequate choice, then you have the right to appeal. While some schools do not have appeal processes, see if your school of choice does, and then go through the process. If you have received a better SAT or ACT score or submitted something in error, you could be eligible for a second review of your application. You can also decide to try again next year if you didn’t make the cut this time around. You could always transfer after you have a year at another university under your belt.

 

admissions, mom approved tips

Mom-Approved Tips: Stop stressing about college rejections

 

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college rejectionsIt’s that time of year. As the New Year approaches and regular admission dates loom in the very close future, parents begin stressing about college rejection. Although not as much as their kids do. Probably the most stressful time of senior year is waiting to hear from the colleges and dreading the wrong response. Why does this happen and what has caused everyone to be so stressed?

College elitism

Colleges have increased their marketing efforts toward parents and students. They use words like “elite”, “prestigious”,“top-tiered”, “Ivy League”, and “America’s Best Colleges” to lure students to apply. Many colleges are struggling financially and their goal is to acquire the best students with the deepest pockets. They promise results after graduation in the form of job offers from companies who promise high salaries and benefits. It’s no wonder the pressure is on to get offers of acceptance from these colleges.

Parent competition

The parent competition these days is fierce. It’s become almost insane the way some parents will do just about anything to get their student into one of these colleges. They will plop down huge amounts of cash, offer endowments, hire expensive college coaches, hire test tutors, and even go so far as to hire a professional writer to author their kid’s college essay. It’s often not about their kid’s future, but more about their bragging rights.

Student competition

The competition to get into college is greater than it ever has been. Education has such great value in the marketplace. Years ago, a bachelor’s degree was enough to put you at the top of the applicant pool. In today’s job market, the college degree is almost crucial to even be considered for employment. More and more students are applying to college and it’s become somewhat of a status symbol to brag about the colleges they are accepted to.

Stop stressing

Stop stressing about college rejections. In the bigger picture, which school your student attends has less to do with success than you might think. In a recent article by Jay Matthews, an education blogger for the Washington Post, college selectivity has little to do with success after graduation:

A 1999 paper by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and Mathematica Policy research scholar Stacy Berg Dale reported that, except for low-income students, the selectivity of students’ colleges did not correlate with their success in life, as measured by income. More influential were what the researchers called “unobserved characteristics,” such as persistence, humor and warmth.

It’s interesting that students usually develop these character traits long before they get to college. If you want to succeed, worry less about what college you get into and more about doing your homework, taking care of your chores and being nice to other people, as mothers have been saying for a long time. Whatever college accepts you, see it as a treasure trove of people and ideas that will lead you to a great life, maybe even a governorship, if that’s your dream. It is a very American story sometimes forgotten in our fashionable yearning for colleges that reject the most applicants.

Read the rest of his article to see some interesting statistics.

Additionally, sometimes those roads less traveled make all the difference. You never know in the grand scheme of things if a smaller, less prestigious college could be the perfect place for you student. Considering only 27 percent of students who enroll in college graduate, all the stressing in the world isn’t going to guarantee success. You can get a good, if not better, education from some of the less known or less popular colleges. It’s not about which college your student attends, but more about the fact that they do attend college.