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conulyI didn’t get into any of my top high school choices. Then I learned to love my safety school.
On the one hand, I want to spam that around a whole lot of parents. If your child gets into High School #3 or 4 on their list, it is the epitome of unhelpful to go cry all over the place about how your child feels like "a failure" and the system is "mean" and it's "unfair" that high-performing students don't get into their top school. (Nobody seems to think that it's unfair that students with average or bad grades don't have a chance of getting into their darling's top school. "Good" schools apparently are only for smart children.) There's no way the kids don't know their parents feel that way, and it only makes things worse. Yes, 8th grade is an emotional time, but the correct thing to do is remind your child that school #3 is a perfectly good school, that they'll make new friends there and also be able to keep in touch with their old friends from middle school, and that they can always switch next year if they really hate it. (And meanwhile, try to encourage them to stop looking for outside validation. All these parents get snippy with me when I tell them that, but it's good advice.)
On the other, more pragmatic hand, it sounds like this student only put three schools on her application, plus LaGuardia (which is applied to in a separate process), and only one of them was likely. Her friends' classist/racist assumptions aside (not to mention their shitty attitudes), there are more than three good schools in Manhattan. Very few students who apply to LaGuardia, Millennium, Bard, and Beacon get in. It doesn't matter how smart they are - there just aren't enough seats at those schools for all the smart and talented students who want to go there, and shame on her teachers for not making that clear. This girl could have picked out several good arts-related schools that were within a 75-minute commute window from her home, and then she would not have been quite so disappointed at the start. If I'm reading this correctly and she really did only put those schools on her list, she's lucky she didn't end up doing second-round admissions. There are twelve slots. Unless you're guaranteed a seat at private school, fill 'em up.
On the one hand, I want to spam that around a whole lot of parents. If your child gets into High School #3 or 4 on their list, it is the epitome of unhelpful to go cry all over the place about how your child feels like "a failure" and the system is "mean" and it's "unfair" that high-performing students don't get into their top school. (Nobody seems to think that it's unfair that students with average or bad grades don't have a chance of getting into their darling's top school. "Good" schools apparently are only for smart children.) There's no way the kids don't know their parents feel that way, and it only makes things worse. Yes, 8th grade is an emotional time, but the correct thing to do is remind your child that school #3 is a perfectly good school, that they'll make new friends there and also be able to keep in touch with their old friends from middle school, and that they can always switch next year if they really hate it. (And meanwhile, try to encourage them to stop looking for outside validation. All these parents get snippy with me when I tell them that, but it's good advice.)
On the other, more pragmatic hand, it sounds like this student only put three schools on her application, plus LaGuardia (which is applied to in a separate process), and only one of them was likely. Her friends' classist/racist assumptions aside (not to mention their shitty attitudes), there are more than three good schools in Manhattan. Very few students who apply to LaGuardia, Millennium, Bard, and Beacon get in. It doesn't matter how smart they are - there just aren't enough seats at those schools for all the smart and talented students who want to go there, and shame on her teachers for not making that clear. This girl could have picked out several good arts-related schools that were within a 75-minute commute window from her home, and then she would not have been quite so disappointed at the start. If I'm reading this correctly and she really did only put those schools on her list, she's lucky she didn't end up doing second-round admissions. There are twelve slots. Unless you're guaranteed a seat at private school, fill 'em up.
