<p>My child has brought good grades and good test scores over the years. We thought that he is a very high caliber college prospect. That is until I found CC. My child look so average all of sudden. He will be applying many reach schools and according to CC, maybe true in reality too, he will get pile of rejection or WL letters. </p>
<p>There are many academically spoiled students on CC. But, I know there are academically spoiled parents too. I know we are. </p>
<p>We still have some time left until the first rejection letter arrives. So why dont we have some fun by sharing some light (?) moments.</p>
<p>H: He failed a freaking history exam.
I: What? How did he do?
H: He got 86 on the exam.
I: Is it out of 87?
H: No, it is out of 100.
I: What? Are you sure it is his exam?</p>
<hr>
<p>I: The subject scores are in. He got 780 on one of them.
H: .
H: Cancel his AP exam on the subject. He will fail.
H: ..
H: Also, make sure that nobody knows his score. It is so embarrassing.</p>
<p>PS: We were having fun. So, please dont slam us.</p>
<p>It’s just not even funny, because the thing is, it’s painfully evident from CC that there are indeed parents who believe / speak that way in their households (an 86 is a failure, oh-no-what-will-other-people-think) and it’s not funny, it’s sad. Very sad.</p>
<p>I’m a student, but my parents have a tendency to do things like that, though I don’t think they really think of a B as horrible, necessarily (for example) - they’re just used to me having great grades/scores. For example, a week or so ago, I received my AP scores, so I told my dad:</p>
<p>Me: "So I got my AP scores - I got a 5 on AP Computer Science, a 5 on AP Calc, a 5 on AP English Lit, and a 4 on AP Physics C.</p>
<p>Dad: “Oh, a 4 on AP Physics?” </p>
<p>As though that were the only thing I said :p</p>
<p>I do that too, and most of the time I am unconscious of it. On the other hand, sometimes I don’t know what to say. </p>
<p>One time D1 said to me that she got a 94 on a math test. I said, “Oh, that’s great, congratulations.” She took my head off, "Why did you say that? You know I studied really hard for it, and the only reason I got a 94 was because this stupid mistake I made.</p>
<p>Another time she would get a 93 and I would say, “93?” She would tell me that I was expecting too much from her.</p>
<p>Now, I ask first if a score is good or bad before I say anything.</p>
<p>I only get concerned when the test scores are below 80… Which they sometimes are… And mostly because it means she is having trouble mastering the material and less about it’s effect on her gpa!</p>
<p>I am sorry, but for what it is worth, I agree there is no humor in the OP’s post. I am a RN who works in the school system. One of my schools is a HS. I work very closely with the social worker, school psychologist and the counselors. 90% of the students I get refered to see have nothig to do with physical health, but all to do with mental health. There is so much anxiety and panic in these kids. Much of it is brought on by parents expectations and academic demands to be the best. To say that an 86 on an AP exam is failing or that a 780 on a SAT subject score is not good enough is terrible. This is why your kid comes to see me in tears (yes, and he’s a 17 yo senior) and is scared to go home for fear of what mom and dad will say and/or do because he got a B on a test. Listen up people, this is the reality in HS.</p>
<p>I used to say that I live in a bubble. I have 2 great sons, with terrific academic grades and good attitudes. I have one child at Amherst and the other headed in the same direction. Did they fail an occasional quiz/test? Did they forget an assignment? Where they disappointed when they got a 4 on an AP exam? YES, but I always told them to learn from it and move on. Life is full of choices. Kids need to learn how to fail and pick themselves up. They need to learn that home is a place of comfort and understanding. </p>
<p>Please don’t tell your student they will amount to nothing because they got a 4 on an AP exam or a B in AP calc? Good grief. If you continue to do that I can tell you your kid is going to come to resent you. Therapy is expensive.</p>
<p>Just my not so humble opinion based on my job experience of 7 years.</p>
<p>Same thing here! I usually start with, “… and what does that mean to you?” or some such light hearted comment. To go in with some random expectation is to invite teenage semi-meltdown.</p>
<p>But here’s a tip for the OP. I didn’t find CC until all of son’s applications were in the oven, so to speak. I got a lot of flack on his list and that there were no safeties on it. 10 schools, 1 rejection (ivy) and 1 waitlist later, he got into a great school. I really trusted what our guidance counselor told us and our schools’ history of results. I suggest you do the same. Some high schools will require perfection to get into the top colleges, whereas others have a reputation for such rigor that perfection is impossible to achieve unless academics is all the kid does.</p>
<p>I will say however that son’s first C of his life came freshman year of college and it freaked him out far more than it did us!!</p>
<p>Please tell me you’re joking when you thing 87/100 is “failing” and someone with 780 o a subject test shouldn’t take the AP exam? Please…say this is some kind of JOKE…which (by the way) I don’t find particularly amusing.</p>
<p>I think many parents here hold their kids a high expectation but most are also realistic. One 87/100 is NOT a death sentence for college. Nobody is perfect…well…that shouldn’t be the expectation (in my opinion).</p>
<p>Both of my kids got their first C in college. You know what…it wasn’t the end of the world. At orientation at both schools, parents and kids were told “if you got all A’s in high school…you MIGHT get A’s here in college but don’t be shocked or surprised if you don’t”. </p>
<p>My top high 5% of her class daughter found that everything in college wasn’t a walk in the park…she had to work hard for the grades she got (and my guess is most folks here have similarly hard working kiddos).</p>
<p>So…please tell me the OP is kidding with us. I too find little amusing or “light” about the examples posted.</p>
<p>The only pressure I’ve ever had is from myself thank goodness! Neither of my parents went to college and neither really care about my grades. But, I’ve seen sooo many kids on the brink of tears for a 85 on an AP Calc test, because “my mom’s gonna kill me”…Seriously? An 85 is a B, which is ABOVE AVERAGE…calm down</p>
<p>I can’t imagine living in a household where my parents saw every last test score and asked me/talked to me about it. It’d be way too much pressure</p>
<p>my son is headed to college this fall. one of my (secret) concerns is that he’ll end up dorming with someone who grew up in a household like the original poster and rjm1120 referenced in their comments… somebody who will invariably receive a ‘B’ or ‘C’ on an exam or two, then decide to take it out on other kids on campus because their parent(s) dropped the ball and inadequately prepared them for ‘failure’. </p>
<p>it may be piling on at this point, but NO, this ‘joke’ isn’t funny! it’s inappropriate. i comfort myself by knowing that the majority of households don’t place such rigid, spirit-killing pressure on their children, and so the odds of my fairly well-adjusted child winding up rooming with someone like that are slim. thank god that most of us can appreciate the value of balance in life!</p>
<p>^r6l - agreed! When it comes to test grades, I usually only tell my parents about the good grades, simply because I know that one B on a test will not affect my overall grade, and therefore they’ll never know about it. I would only tell them about a bad test if it was so bad that I knew a teacher would mention it in the progress report comments they gave us. I think that happened once in my high school career. </p>
<p>Modadunn - that is so, so true about the rigor of different high schools. I came from a very rigorous high school, and it definitely takes a lot less in terms of GPA from my school to get into top schools. Some people on CC did not agree at all with the way my college counselor split up my list into safeties, matches, and reaches - however, I got accepted to all my safeties (merit aid at 2 out of 3), accepted to all my low matches, accepted at one match/rejected at the other, WLed at 2 of my reaches and rejected at one, I would say my counselor literally couldn’t have done a better job in predicting.</p>
<p>One of my closest HS friends has 2 very high powered parents. (I didn’t realize this until I was older). Back in the 70s she applied to 10 colleges when the rest of us were applying to 3-4. </p>
<p>I tranfered to the same university she was attending my Jr year. I didn’t realize how much of a grip her parents still had on her until midway through my first semester. She was very unhappy that she was getting a B in a class and told me her father told her to drop the class, which she did. She then went to a very good (not Ivy) law school and graduated with good grades. </p>
<p>Fast forward to a year out of law school…she is a mess that she can’t figure out how to balance her checkbook and quits her job because it’s too hard. Three years later I visit her on a business trip and her apartment is a disaster area. I spend a few hours cleaning the kitchen because she doesn’t know where to start. A few months later, she’s admitted to a psych hospital for bi-polar disorder. Now in her late 40s she still has not held a job more than a year and is living off her inheritance from grandma.</p>
<p>Morale of the story is we need to let our kids fend for themselves at an early age. I stopped doing my daughter’s laundry when she was 14. After the last college road trip this September I will try to keep my mouth shut on the college ap process except to let her know I don’t plan to pay for more than 6 application fees.</p>
<p>My Ds took care of this issue for me. D1 is a kid who thinks lickety-split and has a terrific memory, so all through elementary school she blasted through with 100s on everything. In middle school, she started getting distracted, and got a couple of Bs as quarter grades. One day I said something about how I was surprised she’d get a B on anything, that she so easily could have all As … probably said that she should, I’ll admit. She retorted: “You just think nothing is good enough unless it’s an A+!” That really caught me up short - I just thought I was being objective, but I absolutely never wanted her to think I had some kind of expectation, or that I’d ever think lower of her because of a grade. I apologized sincerely, and I watched how I said things after that. </p>
<p>In HS she decided on her own to get all As (in some ways kind of a game for her, and a matter of pride, because now it “counted”). We took that very casually, although I did have a feeling as every quarter passed that it would get harder and harder to see that first B (we never did, though). Part of this is that our school district is NOT the most rigorous; we never expected or even hoped that she’d get extraordinary scores on national tests (although she did score perfectly on one section of the ACT, which satisfied her very much). And she challenges herself in college, does not expect all As at all - but has managed Dean’s List almost every semester. But we just smile and nod, and leave it to her.</p>
<p>D2 is NOT the all-A type, a much more unconventional thinker and non-quantitative. Plus she follows the #1 in class, 4.0 sister. So we learned VERY FAST to ask the “how do you feel it’s going?” and “are you happy with it?” kinds of questions, and for the first 2 years of HS we NEVER referred to a letter grade. She’s only gotten one C, and she’s fundamentally proud of her very-good-not-superior record. Again, we smile and nod.</p>
<p>I agree that we would only get concerned below an 80; but even then, we’d ask the same questions, not go ballistic or see it as “failure” … and we’d also talk about losing car privileges, etc. until things improved. But really it’s all about ownership. I think one of the most important jobs in HS is learning how to run their game without us.</p>
<p>That one day long ago being accused of being “Momzilla” was enough to stop me from even wanting to joke about this. So maybe this thread won’t be so “funny” after all, but it’s a good topic to chat about here on CC.</p>
<p>I’d go further. Please don’t tell your student they will amount to nothing because they got a 1/2/3/4 on an AP exam or an F/D/C/B in AP calc. Or in any other class, for that matter.</p>
<p>Getting a lot of F’s and D’s is of course another matter. I still wouldn’t be telling the kid that they won’t amount to anything. </p>
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<p>It’s the kind of sarcastic remark that the spouse and I would make to each other, but unfortunately it’s deadly serious in some households.</p>
<p>My kids have never had one. Guess I’m one of those academically spoiled parents. We’re in for a rude awakening when S1 (rising junior) applies to colleges.</p>