[Grim Tuesday]

I think it serves underscoring that college admissions at the highest level is a crapshoot. Your son got unlucky, pure and simple.

I have friends who have perfect GPA's, extra curriculars up the wazoo, and fantastic essays but still don't get into their college of choice. There is literally no way I could tell them they could improve their application and they still didn't get in. Maybe the admissions counselor was having a bad day or your child violated one of the unspoken rules (a counselor from Cornell came down to our school and told us that he has a colleague who circles every time a student writes 'plethora' in their essay and dislikes their application more as the number goes up).

So maybe Dean is misrepresenting how much colleges care about Deans List. I just don't think it's reasonable to expect anything to be worth as much to colleges as some have claimed Deans List to be.