<p>One way to get a feel for the Caltech students is to watch the movie, Quantum Leap. Quantum</a> Hoops</p>
<p>The director watched the team play many times, and interviewed players and the coach. He was present when the team did win, as well as the Pres and his wife (& lowly me). For the most part, kids play for the joy, and the coach lets everyone have the chance.</p>
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xiggi, of course I was making a rhetorical point to show that high standards are not always all bad. Thank god I mentioned habits of excellence else you would have slaughtered me.</p>
<p>"Nothing is more destructive to a child than the unlived lives of his parents", Carl Gustav Jung.</p>
<p>I come from a culture that emphasizes both the drivenness and the social climbing and I have seen the destruction close at hand; on the other hand, American families seem to go to the other extreme.
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<p>Oh, my comment had no intent to "slaughter" you. It was a simple rebuttal. </p>
<p>I agree with your last statement. Also, if we were to place extremes on a straight line, they'd be 180 degrees apart. However, if we were to mold the line into a circle to represent negative behavior, both excessive expectations of high standards and complete abdication of parental duties would be nudged very closely.</p>
<p>xiggi, is there some tactic in statistics that performs this origami in order to reveal the proximity of opposites or are you creating a visual image to illustrate the eerie nearness of apparently opposite parental obsessions, in the sense that east is very far west? In grade school I never realized just how near them dang soviets really were since the world as rectangle places the US and Them on distant ends of the court. Yes, uberinvolvement is a type of negligence but I ask whether graphic representations sometimes 'curve the flat' in order to bypass the often too tidy linguistic placement of players in mutually exclusive camps? It's interesting in the same way libertarians are difficult to characterize as either right or left, in the way Kerouac or any proponent of freedom in his youth is said to have become mournfully 'conservative' in later years whereas a careful reader sees consistency across that span of time.</p>
<p>or do my fatty tissues retain/betray the cannabis traces of an obviously well-spent youth?</p>
<p>Rorose, that is indeed a very fine observation. </p>
<p>My theory is that, while the negligence of parents (be it through unwillingness or mere inability) is often very visible and tangible, the over-involvement is harder to measure but even more pernicious. </p>
<p>In cases where the results *might *be viewed as positive (as in multiple acceptances at schools that fit the parental quest for prestige) one might downplay the insidious impact on the children. After all, the rewards ought to dwarf the price they paid when growing up! On the other hand, I don't think that the toxicity of uber-involvement or the related quasi-impossible to meet expectations can be downplayed in cases where the scenario does not unfold as planned. And, for good measure, we ought to remember that we are *not *talking about reasonable parental guidance (even in its extremely supportive and attentive modes) but about extreme behavior such as quitting a job to focus on college applications for years on end. </p>
<p>At the end, exceptional children are deemed failures for being a few minuscule notches removed from perfection, and are forced to embark on what should be the most exciting part of their life with the heavy baggage of having failed the people who love them the most. Most seem able to erase the scars, but not all do -- as the non-trivial number of suicides of "golden children" confirms.</p>
<p>And all of this for ...? The HYPS decal, the bragging rights at the block party, the illusion of riches or social improvement?</p>
<p>true, but once you resolve to free yourself from forging an identity gleaned from common entities –</p>
<p>sports teams, nations, occupations, biceps, follicle density, piercings, collegiate affiliations whether through offspring or alumnical ontology, musical preferences, ritual tv attendance, thick crust or thin,...
you get the idea–</p>
<p>then you are left rather nakedly in the great arena of refusal, invited to parties rarely, at pains to describe to inquiring strangers how exactly to define you, that is, if you see through one label, you see through them all,...while true some are easier to attain, say for instance, glutton, you would not expect to see such a decal displayed on the window of an audi, whereas the defining ivy brotherhoods do signal their elitist caliber not so secretly as a handshake for all the drooling world of fools to behold and envy,..and perhaps see an image of themselves reflected in the admiring gazes of others that they would like so unnakedly to be,...</p>
<p>However, since we are each alone such puny worms, defenseless against the beak of nature, it stands to reason we wish to align ourselves with larger bodies, social armies, padding the poor inner freak with a luxurious lining of affirmation and egoistic suckle. </p>
<p>If all such affiliations are a pretense, let us gloat all the way to disillusion,..</p>
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But the biggest disappointment came from Harvard University, which Ghosh had chosen as his "dream school" based on the course offerings
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<p>Yeah, right! Try "because it's Harvard"</p>
<p>Xiggi, excellent post #334. I'm copying the language for future reference.</p>
<p>It can be worse than that--kids who feel bad because they missed the brass ring of HPY. There are too many very unhappy families who are just disappointed in their kids. Instead of having their home be a haven from the pressures and onslaughts of life, it too becomes a battlefield. Though it is the job of parents to raise kids who have work ethics, goals, etc, this safe haven can be the most important thing of all. Where else can we go when things are not working out as we wished?</p>
<p>This teaches us-- beware of being an Asian male and appearing too "perfect." It'll come back to eat you. Or if you're going to be perfect, be perfect in humanities :)</p>
<p>You know it seems inconceivable to you that his father quit his job to get him into a top colleges, but it's really just a cultural difference. Certain cultures VASTLY overestimate the importance of highly selective colleges based on how it is back in their native country...</p>
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Certain cultures VASTLY overestimate the importance of highly selective colleges based on how it is back in their native country...
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<p>While that is true....the other issue is their definition of "highly selective colleges" and not recognizing and accepting that there are many HIGHLY selective colleges in the US that do not have the Ivy label and where most others would consider it a HIGH achievement to have been admitted.</p>
<p>Example, even the boy in the article got into Caltech, Rice, and Duke. Not exactly peanuts.</p>
<p>I'll bet you dollars to donuts that one of his recommendation letters said something along these lines: "Ghosh is a nice young man, who faces a good deal of pressure from his parents. He has confided in me that at times he feels this pressure to succeed academically is overwhelming. He has done a good job of handling the pressure, but I often worry if he has yet had the opportunity to discover his true interests and passions." or maybe something like this: "Ghosh is puts in many long hours of studying in an effort to earn the best grades possible. As a teacher, I sometimes wish that Ghosh showed a bit more creativity in his approach to intellectual challenges. His parents play an important role in Ghosh's academic and extracurricular successes, and their dedication to his success is admirable..."</p>
<p>In short, it is likely that a parent who goes to the length of quitting his job to help his son get into the best college possible likely did not go unnoticed by teachers and counselors, and not in a positive way. While those teachers and counselors may have commented positively on Ghosh in a public forum such as a newspaper interview (come on folks, what teacher is going to tell a NEWSPAPER REPORTER the truth about a student, especially a student whose parents are nutty enough to dedicate their lives to perfecting their son's academic and extracurricular record?), it is likely that somewhere in the recommendation letters their praise was carefully couched enough to raise sensors in those "ivy" admissions offices. As Northstarmom so astutely pointed out, college admissions people can read subtle signals in a student's application quite well. (Somehow, I am visualizing his father having to be forced out of the room when Ghosh did his college interviews.)</p>
<p>Finally, the most important quality, the strongest hook, the big kahuna in college admissions these days is this: authenticity. Admissions people are increasingly wary of students who appear to have been "packaged" by what a parent or bad counselor <em>think</em> top colleges want. Authenticity can't be packaged, it can't be bought, and a parent sure as heck can't create it, even if they quit their jobs at the moment of conception to dedicate themselves to getting their kid into an ivy. Authenticity comes from within. You either got it, or you don't. It can't be faked.</p>
<p>By the way, does any one but me wonder if Ghosh's father will be returning to the workforce any time soon? Or will he and his wife perhaps be renting an apartment close to whichever university Ghosh is headed to in the fall? After all, grad school is only four years away. Better start making sure Ghosh has a ride to the "right" extracurriculars to get into the "Best" grad school.</p>
<p>Quote:
Or maybe Harvard takes [gasp] people ranked second in their class. </p>
<p>Or even 8! >></p>
<p>You know, I recently sat in on a presentation for prospective students given by a current Harvard junior. He admitted that he was ranked somewhere below the 20th percentile in high school. Gasp.</p>
<p>carolyn- Excellent post. I completely agree. Authenticity, even authenticity that shows some flaws, is worth more than a perfectly packaged candidate with high stats.</p>
<p>"Authenticity comes from within. You either got it, or you don't. It can't be faked."</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I felt that Ghosh was authentic. It sounded like to me from some of his teacher's comments that he was a true academic star at that magnet school, and he made the training camp for the US chemistry team. There is clearly real passion and talent there. His only mistake was that he felt that it would translate to admission at HYP. </p>
<p>And besides, the kid got into Caltech. Unlike what Northstarmom has asserted, they are not impressed by stats and test scores. They do expect and demand near-perfect scores and grades, but it takes so much more than that. However, Caltech doesn't care whether an applicant will start and run an extracurricular activity in college as Harvard might. They don't care about athletic talent either or leadership.</p>
<p>Most people do not have as much admiration for scientists and scholars. I feel there is some bias here and some marginalization of those that are oriented in that direction.</p>
<p>So if you're rich and have parents who care, you're not 'authentic'?</p>
<p>that kid reminds me a LOT of me</p>
<p>I HATE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS. and half the people on this thread.</p>
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Most people do not have as much admiration for scientists and scholars. I feel there is some bias here and some marginalization of those that are oriented in that direction.
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awww, I have the outmost respect for scientists and scholars, they are the 'purest' ones, imo. Though I'm not one of them, although I had always aspired to be one when I was young.</p>
<p>"I HATE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS. and half the people on this thread."</p>
<p>Then stop punishing yourself and get off of CC. (Because mostly, the topic is college admissions.)</p>
<p>"Most people do not have as much admiration for scientists and scholars."</p>
<p>A data-empty statement with absolutely no support. </p>
<p>Correct, There are no scholars or scientists at Elite U's, and further "most people" do not admire such people.</p>
<p>(Brilliant.)</p>
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Teachers and counselors can also use all sorts of code words in their rec letters to distinguish between a student who's shown a real love of learning vs one who has been primarily concerned with grades.
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<p>Immigrants should not waive confidentiality. They cannot predict the new culture well enough to guess who might say what. They need a review. </p>
<p>My son read five recommendations before choosing four to send. The best one? The one that probably did the trick? It had to be the one the male teacher wrote; the one with blunt criticisms about my son's worst academic faults--alongside high-flying speculation about his potential.</p>
<p>The one that wasn't sent? Syrupy and vague, no real feeling for the student , one way or the other.</p>