College Admissions feels like Trick or Treating

The admissions Hunger Games and how kids are often more thougtful than parents when they post about it

You may be handing out candy tonight, or taking your kids trick or treating but there are a bunch of high school seniors who are finishing their early decision applications and hitting send tonight. From the way young people describe it, Hitting send feels like knocking on the door of a house where you haven’t trick or treated before.

1. Will the lights be off? —Denied.

2. Will you get something not great (raisins?) —Waitlist.

3. Or will you get that extra-large candy bar—Acceptance!
   Preferably with whatever financial aid package makes it possible for you to attend.

One of my favorite things I learned interviewing teens for Growing Up in Public, is that young people are often more sensitive and thoughtful about posting about the application process and admissions than their parents. I wanted to share a few things I learned from kids and there is so much to say, that I’ll probably write a Part 2 at some point!

Rejection Support Group

I interviewed one very sweet senior in high school, Bagdon, who was an exceptional student and had immigrated to the United States with his family as a ten-year-old. His close group of friends in high school had weathered the pandemic together playing masked basketball at the park and now they were applying to college and they met regularly to work at the coffee shop and to comfort one another through the rejections.

None of them would post on social media where they were accepted—they wanted to tell each other first, especially if they were applying to the same schools. While I was talking to Bagdon, he heard back from Northwestern….He spotted the email and said, “I can check later.” I told him to go ahead and check, knowing he’d otherwise be distracted. It was a no. But he was already accepted to Notre Dame and would later be accepted at Harvard, so…he got through it.

But at the time, I empathized with his experience—getting the denial from Northwestern. I found solace in knowing he was going to go out with supportive friends later. And unlike many of his US-born friends, his immigrant parents were NOT posting about the process. So he didn’t have the added pressure of second cousins knowing where he applied.

Acceptance and Rejection TikTok

This moment of getting emails seems so anticlimactic compared with waiting for the much-discussed “fat envelope” in my day. Maybe wanting to share that experience is why so many students post videos of receiving their acceptance and rejections on Tik Tok. After all, misery loves company, and (for some) it is also appealing to be celebrated by a bunch of friends and strangers especially if you grew up with social media!

In contrast, my own experience of applying to very few schools involved a solo train ride to Chicago, doing the “Immediate decision option” at the Art Institute, and then calling my parents from Union Station to let them know “I got in.” The Art Institute was way ahead of its time on the marketing front. As a teenager, “immediate decision” is genius. Why apply elsewhere, said my 18-year-old brain…

Blurred Screengrab of Seniors 2023 at ___HS Instagram Account

Grad Year Instagram Accounts

So if you search Instagram for Seniors 2023 at the high school your child attends, you might find an account where many members (but probably not ALL) are depicted, one by one, many wearing sweatshirts from the school the plan to attend in the fall. As I wrote in this article about “decision day social posts,” admissions season can be hard for parents who have young adults on a different path.

Maybe your son or daughter is considering trade school, an apprenticeship, community college or heading into the workforce. Maybe their gap year will be an epic year of service or maybe they are planning to work and save while they figure things out. These accounts can make your child and you feel like EVERYONE is off to a four year college. The pressure to conform is overwhelming and some schools seem to encourage this, viewing their students’ acceptance as a badge of the quality of their educations, and of their students. Don’t fall for this. Turn off social media if you have to. Take the Instagram app off your phone for April and May and come back in June when it is safe.

SnapMaps College Visit Spying

Of all the ways to find out where your friends are applying, Bagdon’s friend group’s plan where they tell each other sounds like the healthiest.

My least favorite way for teens to have this information get out there would be because mom or dad exposed their kids’ application plans via their social sharing. Another way I’m not wild about is young people finding out where their friends are going on school visits via Big Brother.

I mean….SnapMaps. Yup…You see your friend is in Palo Alto right now. Is there a college there? Hmmm….In highly competitive high schools where some students feel like their classmates are “the competition,” this level of knowledge can add stress. So many feelings.

And I haven’t even gotten to Naviance! If you’ve read Growing Up in Public, you know that the teens I spoke to had a lot to say about the college search and admissions software, Naviance, along with its competitors like MaiaLearning.

Try to encourage your child to not get too focused on what others are doing, and to find supportive friends to laugh and cry through the process with. For you…try to keep your eyes on your own paper online, and try to find some fellow parents to laugh and cry through the process with, too.