How to Get Off the Wait List and Into College
Reader Comments
Nmalcrpb
lniyKt
Re: Paying
Honestly, parents are typically the ones who push their children to enter these $40,000+ a year schools. Of course they are raiding their retirement funds, nothing like bragging about how little Johnny went to Harvard. If you really want to teach your kids something, let them go to the college of THEIR choice, then let them pay for it.
Paying for College
I worked myself through college and none of my family even remotely thought of contributing to paying for my education. These days parents are raiding their retirement funds to pay for their children's college education. Children are too spoiled. If the parents cannot afford to pay for their children's education, let the kids go to work and put themselves through college or take out loan and pay it back themselves. Don't burden your parents with it. They do not owe their kids an education. Besides, not everyone has to attend college. There are many other venues for a decent education where they can earn an honest living.
An old poem - modified (and corrected!)
There's one little school that loves me
and one little school that don't;
and why can't I long for the school that love's me
instead of the one that don’t!
An old poem - modified
There one little school and loves me
and one little school that don't;
and why can't I long for the school that love's me
instead of the one that don’t!
Could this article be anymore duh
Here are three of the five suggestions from the article "How to Get Off the Wait List and Into College" and some important anti-duh observations on them.
1) Choose among the colleges at which you have been accepted. This is obviouslyf or those waitlisted students who don't understand that the waitlist is a waitlist. What more than duh can we say?
2) Don't automatically ask to stay on wait lists. This is sometimes also called the Woody Allen reverse psychology ploy. Woody, way back when he was funny, didn't want to be a member of any club that would accept him. Waitlisted students can escape this conundrum by removing themselves from the waitlist of the schools that they really want to go to. If the reverse psychology works, and the spurned school quickly calls back with an offer, teach them a lesson: turn them down and go that fourth or fifth choice school. What we call duh to the highest power.
3) Be eager and creative but not scary or desperate. No comment needed. Not even another duh. It's there between each phrase. (Be eager, dugh, and creative but not, duh, scary or desperate). Hear that kids. Don't be scary in trying to get off the wait list.
Top schools are very proud of and protective of their reputations and want students who are excited about getting in. After weeding out applicants by HS classes, grades and test scores, there are still many times as many applicants as openings. What sets students apart is how good a "fit" the student is for the particular school compared to another top school.
Wanting to go to "an ivy league school" won't get you into any of them no matter what your grades are. You need to be excited about a specific school and explain why you are a good fit and why having a graduate such as yourself can be an asset to the school's reputation for years to come. If you'd as soon go to Yale as to Harvard then don't blame Yale or Harvard if they'd as soon admit John Doe as you.
...and MIT... better love using science and technology to build stuff and be able to drink math through a fire hose!
