As college acceptance and rejection letters arrive and high
school seniors decide where they’ll spend the next four years, many
are stung from being turned down by a parent’s alma mater or a No.1
choice.
The teens rebound immediately, but some parents aren’t as resilient.
As college acceptance and rejection letters arrive and high school seniors decide where they’ll spend the next four years, many are stung from being turned down by a parent’s alma mater or a No.1 choice. But while parents can become more upset than students, local school counselors said they rarely see distraught parents in their offices after a college says no.
“We just get the students,” said Mary Conklin, senior class counselor at San Benito High School. “It’s very disappointing for some students, especially if you have a goal you’ve set for yourself. It’s really hard when they’ve done everything we told them and they still don’t get in.”
That’s what happened to SBHS senior Mohammad Huweih, who had his heart set on attending the University of California, Berkeley in the fall. Part of Huweih’s disappointment was because he participated in many extracurricular activities to be a well-rounded student.
“When I got rejected, I was extremely negative about it at first,” Huweih said. “Now I’m very optimistic about it.”
Despite his disappointment, Huweih’s parents weren’t upset at all. He said they were “very positive about it.” And Huweih has decided to appeal Berkeley’s decision.
When parents do get more upset than the students, it’s mostly because the students are the ones going through the application process and are more realistic about their chances, local counselors said.
The best way for students and parents to offset the trauma of the rejection letter is to cover all the bases ahead of time. Counselors recommend students submit a minimum of three applications – to a “dream” school, a realistic school and a “safety-net” school. That way, there is always a back-up in case the No. 1 choice says no.
“We tell them to always have a back-up plan,” Conklin said. “The trend is that acceptances are all over the place.”
Huweih said that if he knew he wasn’t going to get into Berkeley, he would have applied to more colleges. He was accepted by UC Santa Cruz and is waiting to hear from San Jose State University, but he said he would have looked at other colleges to back up his No. 1 choice.
Most Anzar High School seniors are accepted by their No. 1 choice, said senior class advisor Lynne Ellison. Part of this is because advisors steer students toward realistic colleges and those that are a good match for both the student and the college.
“We try to know our students well enough to guide them to where will work for them,” Ellison said.
Ellison said parents are more inclined to come in to advisors when their children are freshman to make sure their children are on track to go to a prestigious university such as Stanford.
“We tell them to be aware of early on that C’s their freshmen and sophomore years are not going to get them into exclusive schools,” Ellison said.
Anzar parent Wayne Norton pushed his daughter during the application process, and was not disappointed with the outcome. Casey Norton applied to six colleges and received four acceptance letters. Her father, who’s also Anzar’s site manager, said he made her apply to some UC’s for back-up, but Casey was lucky that her first choice accepted her – Knox College in Illinois.
Wayne said he wanted to be involved in the application process because he wanted his daughter to be informed.
“I wanted her to make informed decisions and understand what possibilities there were,” Wayne said. “Her sophomore year, she was looking at going to a big university, but in the end, wanted a school that was a closer match to her high-school experience.”
It’s rare that parents fear their children getting accepted to colleges that the parents don’t want them to go to.
Anzar senior Rose Lee applied to five colleges and was accepted to three. She has decided on UC Santa Cruz.
“My mom didn’t want me going far. … My mom was ecstatic (when Lee decided to go to UC Santa Cruz). I don’t know how she’ll handle me moving out,” Lee said.
