@phoenixmomof2 I would give your post 10 likes if I could!
Top schools with an average of 3.3 to 3.4? Where does this exist? Even UofC made changes six years ago.
Plenty of schools refuse to provide grade information.
CalTech and MIT will always be tough.
The Ivies? You get in and the pressure is over. My children have a significant number of peers in the Ivies, so I hear the chatter.
I can see that a student that came from a lower tier high school can feel overwhelmed, but this is why colleges offer bridge programs.
“The Ivies? You get in and the pressure is over.”
Yeah, engineering is a breeze there. It’s ridiculous to generalize.
We are open to counseling, medication, whatever will help with depression. As a Christian, I want to bring the conversation to both the church and Christian groups on campus. We need to be able to talk about mental illness a lot more than we are doing.
I don’t know what the wait time is for counseling sessions at Penn, but that’s a really good thing to find out. I also like the suggestion to have an off campus counselor set in place before a student with depression (or whatever) arrives on campus.
And ouch on the comment about how easy an Ivy League is. Engineering at Penn seems brutal. As I’ve said in other places, at MIT, a student can take four classes a semester and graduate in four years. Not so with Penn engineering. A student that comes in with no credit (my son won’t have any) would have to take five classes a semester in order to graduate in 4 years. Easy? Hardly.
“Top schools with an average of 3.3 to 3.4? Where does this exist? Even UofC made changes six years ago.”
Plenty of colleges and universities have an average GPA in this range. Many LACs and others although the trend in general has been more towards grade inflation than deflation.
http://www.gradeinflation.com/
Scroll to the bottom and click on individual schools. Some info hasn’t been updated for awhile but you can find other schools that have.
I’m curious @MaterS what you think most university average GPAs are?
I attempted suicide in middle school (not pressure/bullying related) and have struggled with depression and anxiety since then. From my experience, once you’ve made the decision that you legitimately die, it’s an all consuming thought and you have to be shocked out of it (generally by your attempt being thwarted). Recognizing that you are nearing the cliff side and getting yourself help is the best prevention. I don’t know how feasible it is, but a 24/7 center that isn’t a hospital or police department and doesn’t go in your medical records as suggested above would be awesome. I was in a deep depressive state last night and my close friend stayed up with me on Facebook until I went to bed at 10:30pm, despite the fact that said friend had work at 4am. He got 3 hours of sleep. Support is everything.
Very interesting link! Interesting to see which schools held steady on GPA.
I think the issue with pressure from grades lies less with college grading and more rampant grade inflation at the high school level, at least public high schools where weighted GPAs of 4.5 are not uncommon (didn’t 4.0 signify perfection, rarely obtained, in our own generation?) My kids who attended private high school saw their GPAs go up in college. Living in a world where everybody has to be perfect - grades, social media presence - where young people constantly hear they have to “create a brand” for themselves has to be both physically and emotional exhausting.
As I have already posted, I lost my 20-year-old nephew to suicide in August. He went to one of the most nurturing schools I have ever seen. He was SO loved. Just thriving. I know they say that in hindsight, people see clues the person left, but in this case, NOBODY had a clue. I even went to his campus and talked to friends and professors. He was active in church and played in the jazz band.
I told my sister and her husband that he had to have had a mental illness that went undetected. They had sent him to a counselor when he was a freshman, but he was not diagnosed with anything. He seemed happy and excited about his future.
After his death, I looked at his school’s website. They had all sorts of information for students on how to get help. The suicide hotline number was posted, too. Without going into detail, my nephew acted with a LOT of premeditation. This wasn’t an impulse. He had hours to think about what he was going to do. 
Anyway, I’m not sure it matters that much if a kid goes to a pressure cooker school or not. Something else is going on in his or her head, I think.
@PrivateConundrum it’s great that you have a friend like that. I would hope no one is afraid to reach out to friends (or family) feeling like they’re bothering them, but I fear that happens too often. I always tell friends that I don’t care if it’s 3:00 in the morning. If you need me, CALL ME, and that the only thing that would bother me is if they didn’t call.
@texaspg, I’m a suicide researcher, and some studies actually suggest that suicidality is higher in grad students than in undergrads. Being in grad school myself, I can see why that would be–it’s a heavy blend of academic and work pressure, and there’s a definite sense of “never enough.” You have one publication this year? Why not five? Your teaching evals were 4.0/5? Why not 4.8/5? I’ve often commented that academia is the only environment where you can send an email at 9 pm and be reasonably annoyed if you don’t get a response by 11 pm, because it’s expected that you are always working–or you should be. It’s not an environment filled with a lot of give or compassion, which could easily exacerbate mental health issues or other life stress, sometimes to the point of crisis.
@micmatt513 Thank you for that very thoughtful response in post #8.
@MaterS, Mudd graduates average between a 3.3 & 3.4 at graduation, I think. And it is closer to 3.0 in soph year when they are finishing the core.
@1Dreamer: depression for me is like walking through a thick forest. In the daytime (ie high functioning days), it’s hard to see ahead but the path is somewhat defined. When the sun starts setting, you start freaking out (anxiety) because you’re not out of the forest yet. Sometimes, you find a good place to camp, go to sleep, and trek on in the morning. Other times, you keep walking all night and leave the path. When it’s finally morning, you’re way off track and spend the day getting back to where you were. Or worse, the night never ends and you stumble through the darkness toward a cliff side (suicidal depression).
What I’m trying to say in this long winded metaphor is that the lines between “I can handle this —> I need help —> I want to die” can get blurry very quickly. It’s not always about not bothering someone, it’s about making the pain stop. When you finally get to that cliff side, after wandering in a darkness that never seems to end, some people stumble and say “this is bad. I need help.” Some people just jump. And some people are running so fast they don’t even realize they jumped. I guess what I’m saying is it’s not always as simple as “call me” or “call a hotline”.
Great explanation @PrivateConundrum.
I wonder how we can see or predict the need for help before the pain is so bad it is impossible to reach someone.
Maybe someday we will be able to interrupt that pain by turning off that pathway in the brain. Until that time we have limited ability to guess when someone is in immediate crisis.
@PrivateConundrum thanks for the great explanation. I don’t think anyone who has not been through it personally can truly and fully understand, but that was helpful in giving me a better understanding than I had.
I know it’s not simple, so my apologies if came across as an oversimplification. I didn’t mean it that way. I was just replying that I’m glad you have a friend who will stay up with you - on facebook or wherever as happened last night. He may not have gotten much sleep (as you mentioned – like maybe that was a burden?) but I doubt it was a burden. When I get a call at an odd hour of the night (and I have), the last thing I’m concerned about is how much sleep I’m going to get. Even if it’s not a huge crisis, I don’t care. Really. I’ve gone through things including loss that have put what’s really important in life and what’s not into perspective. “Being there” when needed will win out every time over sleep, work, or whatever.
My parents are going through some health issues right now that scare the heck out of me. I call all the time and tell them to call me if they need me. Sometimes I find out more from a relative than they’ve told me because “they don’t want to bother me.” I’ve resorted to flying there every few weeks to check on them and take care of things that need to be taken care of. I make sure they know they are my priority.
I think I just mean that I make more of an effort to let people know I’m here if they need me because sometimes we assume they know and it doesn’t need to be said. I think that happens too often in general. We make assumptions that people know how we feel, or should know. I’ve certainly been guilty of that, so I try express more now and assume less. And I hug a lot more.
I think clinical depression can be different, for different people. It can be like the forest, but sometimes it is like a teacup, slowly filling until it overtops. It’s not one particular thing or incident, sometimes, that triggers the overwhelmed and not coping feelings. Also, the world is full – just full – of people who want to help, but the help is always on their terms. The world could use better listeners, who are simply present to allow processing and accept the feelings without trying to fix or change the feelings. When we’re depressed, we already know we’re broken. Emphasizing all the ways to change it (that aren’t succeeding, usually) isn’t usually helpful.
This aired on our local NPR affiliate here in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Well worth the listen if this is a subject that weighs heavy on your heart or mind.
Although depression is definitely a major contributor to suicide and needs to be a big part of the conversation, I also think that it is somewhat of a mistake to cast suicide as only a “depression issue.” Some of my research is on the socio-demographic predictors of suicide, and we always control for depression, because it is hugely significant predictor, even at subclinical levels. However, depression itself doesn’t account for all variance in suicidality. There’s also a significant element of being/feeling “trapped” or hopeless–if the person is in a difficult situation they don’t think or can’t get out of, that really contributes to suicidality. That’s a large part of the reason that things like disability status, unemployment, being LGBT in a homophobic/transphobic environment, etc, are linked to suicidality even when we control for depression–the harder it is to see a situation ever being better, the more likely someone is to see suicide as the only option. Coping ability matters, of course, as does overall mental health (of course)*, but so do actual situational factors.
*Impulsivity is also a concern with suicidality, particularly moving from ideation (thoughts) to attempts.
I know this may seem crass, but…
is wholly untrue. My adult kid used to work at a top law firm. Failure to respond to a text, email, or voice message within 20 minutes was grounds for dismissal.