I came across this video this morning, and it really struck a chord. As the parent of a student who puts way too much pressure on themselves, I’ve always looked for ways to break the cycle of stess/anxiety and over achievement. Many of us joined CC looking for college guidance on our high stat kids; there have been so many great threads over the years that have given me insights into issues I hadn’t considered. There have, however, been many threads and comments that truthfully have just made me sad. The focus on rank, prestige, perfect scores and carefully crafted ECs…students submitting dozens of apps or genuinely worried about college admittance as middle schoolers, and on and on. I realize this is a self-selecting group focused on college, but what message are we sending other parents and more importantly students? DH and I both graduated college, went on to advanced degrees and successful careers to spite the fact that our grades were just ok, or that our schools weren’t T10, T20… Do these things truly matter, or do they only matter in a skewed view of reality? Most of our friends have had successful corporate careers and graduated from schools further down the USNWR. I understand there a few careers where prestige/perfection has a significant impact, but these are the exception not the rule. Social media has become a huge contributing factor, and I don’t know how you put that genie back in the bottle. My question is how are we on CC contributing to the mental health of these students? When we respond are we including more than our experiences? Are we inadvertently passing along our own anxieties and fears to students? I guess you could say I’m concerned. Watch and let me know your thoughts.
Well it had mixed messages. Parents should be proud but yet that is not important. I totally get where he is coming from. Watching the olympics and figure skating is an example of impossible goals and disappointment.
D graduated from the very tippity top science institute. She took a very different pathway in grad school but almost all of her classmates went science. She went to her 10 year reunion for the institute and her 5 yr reunion for grad school. She said that the grad school friends were happy and seemed to be living a happy, good enough life and career. Her 10 yr reunion at her college was depressing. She said that they felt that they had not achieved all that they wanted ( appointments as professors at top institutes) and were not happy. She had had several classmates commit suicide in college and in a science grad school. It was really shocking. They were top of their class and doing exceptionally well. There was clearly something wrong.
I know that it is hard not to want the best for your kids. But, I agree, the best should include mental health of the kid. I used to say do your best and ‘have fun’ partly as sarcasm as they were about to take a major test or exam. Totally ignoring them is also not an option. There needs to be a middle ground, but that may be an American view. Good time to discuss how to do the middle ground. I have no answers but will be interested in others views.
I am not somewhere where I can watch a video right now, but did want to say that the lower-ranked school is an okay first choice in our family, if it results in better mental health.
A high-achieving kid is generally driven, often has a competitive streak, and may have tendencies toward anxiety. Uber-competitiveness and anxiety can be exacerbated within the culture at many highly-ranked schools.
A particular high-achieving student might feel more relaxed and confident and better able to fulfill their potential at a lower-tier school where the student perceives there to be less pressure.
We pointedly celebrate all acceptances equally in our house, whether easily achieved or rare. All the options are valued and no choice means a student “settled” for less.
Thank you for starting this thread. This is something I have been concerned about with our country’s youth. I think that the pressure to outperform others started with the top 1-2% of students and then has been making its way further and further down through far too large a percentage of the student population.
With our child we have always tried to talk about trying one’s best, not comparing ourselves to others, and focusing on improvement rather than an absolute standard. We try to praise the process rather than the results (i.e. persisting when something is difficult, or studying for a test…not getting an A or winning a race). And even still, getting a “B” or not placing at an athletic event frequently results in dejection and hopelessness. The focus on being at the top, the best, etc. is happening to more and more students and at younger and younger ages. And although I think that social media has been a big factor in promoting this competitive mindset, I think it has now permeated so much of our school systems that even students with limited access to social media still feel the effects.
So, what can we do here at CC to stem those effects? I think part of it is talking up institutions that are not T50 or state flagships. Someone mentioned in a thread somewhere that 80% of alumni are happy with their college experience, and the survey was inclusive of students from elite colleges as well as colleges which people 200 miles away may never have heard of. So that tells me that most colleges are doing good things and therefore most colleges should be able to have positive things mentioned about them. At the very least, mention them as options to students who are asking for help in drawing up a list of schools. But when only the same few schools are mentioned in thread after thread, I think that can reinforce the perception that there are only a few quality schools and that superhuman achievement is necessary to receive admission to them.
ETA: Perhaps renaming the category of “safeties”, or talking about safeties in a joyful and positive way would also help. Oftentimes a “safety” is perceived as an option of last resort when it could be that a student’s top choice happens to be a virtual guarantee for admission and affordability. Also, I think that focusing so much on “reach” schools means that’s where most attention is going (and thus perpetuating the problem). Perhaps suggest curating a more narrow list of applications with only 1-2 reaches. Students have more time to focus on their essays, and their expectation is that a reach is unlikely, rather than if they apply to enough “reaches” that they’ll get in somewhere, and that not getting a “reach” school means that there’s something wrong with them.
I deliberately avoid telling high achieving kids to "just do your best or “just try your hardest.” For these kids they know that doing their best is 100%/A+ and trying their hardest means staying up all night studying. That’s a lot of pressure. For perfectionistic people, the skill they need to learn is how to deliberately do their 3rd best in certain situations and then be ok with the outcome. To be the boss of their intensity, not have their intensity be the boss of them.
Absolutely; you could tell he didn’t have kids, but was fighting the battle from the student perspective. It actually took us years to teach our own the skill of half-"a$$"ing; we felt it was important because it wasn’t coming naturally, and we knew perceived perfection wasn’t sustainable.
I found the video thought provoking and it aligns with some of the concerns I’ve had about the pressure kids feel today. Unfortunately there is a premium on achievement and perfection (often to the detriment of learning) which leads to risk aversion and, sometimes, to unethical behavior like cheating - all for fear of losing that perfect gpa. I wish more people talked about the adults they’d like their kids to become instead of what high paying job they’ll get or what elite school they’ll be admitted to. To me it is sad that some teenagers spend their HS years grooming themselves into the perfect college applicant instead of enjoying the last of childhood, spending time with friends and exploring their interests. I think it would be healthy if more kids realized that where they go isn’t who’ll they be (to borrow Frank Bruni’s words).
Yes to all of this. We do need better terminology for the selection of colleges kids are applying to and perhaps different criteria.
There have been times when I suggested options outside of the T50 realm on CC and someone will come out of the woodwork utterly disgusted by the mere mention of a “lesser” school on an elite focused thread. Based on how admissions is playing out again this year everyone needs a range of colleges to apply to where they can pursue their interests and grow as a human. Many of those colleges may be outside of the T100 because of a ranking system that does not account for the vastly different options out there.
Take care of each other.
I think most of the adult posters and some younger ones too. do their best on CC to counteract these pressures for those who come online-parents or students- who are stressed about “getting in.”
The conversations here on CC don’t align with my real world experience at all. My kid went to a competitive entry HS but the message was about being true to yourself and while there were a lot of very high stat kids, NMFs, etc…it was a collaborative culture and the kids did not compete with each other all. It was a lets raise us all up vs tearing each other down to get a leg up. D wanted a college with the same vibe which is why a lot of “top schools” came off her list after visiting.
I will also say that she has friends that landed at all kinds of schools (most chased merit). They range from T10s to regional schools that no one talks about outside the state. Everyone has managed to find meaningful internships and coops, and those that are graduating this year are all happily employed. At least from where I’m sitting, the outcomes aren’t noticeably different, at least for the first destination post graduation.
We can definitely be doing a better job as parents and society!
I agree. I’m always stressing that life is not a race. If a young person needs to take a gap year, or even 2 1/2 years as my middle son did, it’s OK. And if a kid doesn’t graduate from college, that’s OK, too! Mental health is more important. You realize that more fully when you have a child with serious mental illness.
I don’t understand the video. He says he is not the product of tiger parents, and that his parents were telling him to slow down, but his message was for parents to focus on mental health. Are we to infer that his parents needed to focus on his mental health in a different way than just telling him to slow down?
I don’t think you have to have tiger parents yourself to be aware of the pressures that are prevalent in our society and the focus on achievement. That being said, my sense is that these pressures are most acute in middle class/upper middle class/affluent communities where parents are laser focused on their kids’ achievements. In other communities challenges might be different but they are still there. And, of course, social media feeds the beast.
When I was in high school, my mom told me she was considering paying me if I ever made a B instead of an A. She never had the chance to decide whether to actually do it. In retrospect, I wish I’d been a little less stressed and made some Bs.
My kids said they felt pressure. That surprised me because we really tried not to pressure them. When I mentioned that to the kids’ psychiatrist, he said the pressure they felt was implied. They had two parents who were engineers, one grandparent who was an accomplished engineering professor, and two grandparents who were physicians. Well, I couldn’t do anything to change that!!
“To me it is sad that some teenagers spend their HS years grooming themselves into the perfect college applicant instead of enjoying the last of childhood, spending time with friends and exploring their interests”
I agree with this. I admit I started reading the BS/MD thread and initially felt amazed at how much these students had packed into their high school years- yet were mostly seeing rejections. But I very quickly just became sad. There is no way a person could do all the things that were in these “stats” and have any time for a balanced social life, personal reflection, emotional growth etc etc. I also sometimes have the feeling reading these “stats” or “chance me” threads that kids are either exaggerating or perhaps in rare cases outright making some of this up. I don’t know which scenario I find more depressing. I also was actually saddened by the thought that almost all of them had started EMT or nursing training around age 15 or so. As a person who has worked as a physician, it makes me grieve for their lost innocence. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare will know exactly what I mean. These are emotionally taxing endeavors that can be psychologically challenging even for adults!
One can never get back youth and these applicants seemed to have turned over the entirety of their high school years to the beast of being “good enough”. I know this is a small group, but geez - this is not a path I would encourage.
Not to mention the use of terms like “tippy tops”, “best schools”, etc, as though acceptance rates and name recognition are absolute, unbiased, and objective measures of quality.
@fiftyfifty1, you raise a good point, and there are definitely students (many of whom suffer from the pressure and anxieties to be the best) who think that doing their best needs means needing to have unhealthy habits to accomplish their best (i.e. staying up to all hours working, etc). Although I don’t know if I would term it half-a$$ing, perhaps thinking of it as good enough. Perhaps giving the students who are dealing with these issues a time limit and say do the best you can within one hour or by 8:30, or whatever distinction is going to help draw a boundary for the student to retain some healthy limits.
What do people think of the terms below with respect to college list categorization?
• Extremely Likely (90+% chance of acceptance and affordability…what has been called safeties)
• Likely (60-90% chance of acceptance)
• Possible (25-55% chance of acceptance)
• Unlikely (less than 25% chance of acceptance…what has been called reaches)
My rationale for changing reaches to unlikely is that reaches imply that if a person stretches enough, tries enough, that they can get in. Whereas unlikely places the emphasis more on the odds that have nothing to do with an applicant. For instance, no matter how deserving I think I am and how I’ve studied the history of lotto numbers and what numbers have been picked lately, I am highly unlikely to win the lottery. It has nothing to do with me, it’s just the odds. If someone else is selected for College X and I’m not, they got lucky and it has nothing to do with the quality of my application. (I’m saying this as the majority of the students we’re talking about here are not turning in applications that reflect mediocre effort and grades…these are top candidates.)
I think that in presenting the categories with respect to odds of admission (and/or affordability) that people are going to start placing more emphasis on finding schools where they are extremely likely or likely to be accepted that they’re going to enjoy and spend less time on ones where their efforts are unlikely to come to fruition.
I am happy to hear other perspectives or suggestions and see if there is anything else we can do here at CC help provide a calmer, healthier attitude toward college for the students and families who visit this site.
One of my kids didn’t have a dream. In terms of school, major or career. Eventually found a path but there wasn’t much stress involved because there were always options. Other kid had specific career goal in mind since a young child. Involves specific and competitive educational process. If not successful, only options (other than giving up on dream) is trying again. More stress along the way.
The less you can narrow your kid’s path to success (in terms of specific schools, grades, majors, careers, etc) the less stress will result. But even if you succeed with that, friends will also play a big role in stress levels. If you send your kids to a very competitive school, the stress level will likely be high. There is a balance though because you want your kids to go to good schools. I think there is a balance be had but its more difficult if the focus is on “best.”
And on balance, I think if there are concerns about mental health resulting from competitive stress/rank/prestige/etc, the less time spent on this site the better. To be sure there is good info here to help with that but there is too much that will just make it worse and a tendency for young kids/high school kids who will gravitate to that which will make it worse.
I like it. Even “sure thing” instead of “extremely likely” would be good, I think.
I also propose that we should stop advising students to “apply higher” as though a college with a 50% acceptance rate is “too lowly” for a students with high stats.
I mean of they seem the type for which specific colleges with lower acceptance rates would be good fits, recommend those colleges by all means. However, telling every highly accomplished students who comes here “why are you ‘only’ applying to your State Flagship and to (for example) CWRU? With your profile, you should be applying to T20s!” is exactly the thing that supports the idea that the lower the acceptance rates, more “worthy” a college is for high-achieving students.
That sort of attitude feeds into the reasoning that, since only the highest ranking/lowest acceptance rate colleges are good for “smart” students, that these students will only ever be happy in such colleges. Ergo, unless they attend a college with low acceptance rates, they are condemned to an inferior “experience” at best, and a friendless, boring, and intellectually dead four years at worst.
I like your use of Possible rather than Match. “Match” gives the impression of deciding who someone IS based on the school, what school “matches” who they are (and then if you don’t get in, maybe you were wrong to see that school as a match for yourself!) Possible puts the emphasis back where it belongs- on the probability of acceptance. And it reminds us that it is also possible to get denied.