Being a class brain isn't all it's cracked up to be!

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>NOTE: Yes, I posted this in the "What Are My Chances?" board, but I decided to post this here as well.</p>

<p>I graduated from high school in 1992 as salutatorian. I was a National Merit Finalist, and I took Honors/AP classes to the hilt. I vied for admission to Stanford and MIT. I was the equivalent of a typical CCer back then. But compared to today's students on this board, I was Ferris Bueller or Zack Morris. No, I didn't grow up on the backroads of Mississippi.</p>

<p>I am disturbed by the rise of the Academic Performance Cult, and the irony is that this mania has bubbled up years after I defected from this cult. (I didn't get into Stanford or MIT. I also noticed in college that NOBODY cared about my previous academic background.) I would not have survived undergraduate school if I had continued my intense attitude from high school, because I would have been up all night every night instead of sleeping at least 7 hours per night most nights like I actually did (and this was in electrical engineering at UIUC). The same applies for graduate school, where I earned my Master's Degree in electrical engineering at George Mason University.</p>

<p>I have (by CC standards) skeletons in my closet. Some "lowlights":
1. I was the first casualty of AP US History in the 1991-1992 school year at my school. The workload was TORRENTIAL. The class had more assigned work than all my other classes combined, and I was taking Honors/AP classes to the hilt. This forced me into the regular US History class. Of course, nobody in college cared which US History class I took.
2. As an undergraduate student, I was in the bottom of my class for a few classes. I wasn't firing on all cylinders (GPA of "only" 4.13 on a 5-point scale, or the equivalent of 3.13 on a 4-point scale). Nobody at work cared.
3. I just barely earned my MSEE (GPA of 3.03) and graduated at or near the bottom of the class. (This was because I studied a different area than my undergraduate electrical engineering specialty and also because I did a time-consuming independent study project and an even more time-consuming research project when it would have been easier to simply take two classes.) Nobody at my workplace today cares about this.</p>

<p>So in the long run, whether or not you were a perfect student won't matter.</p>

<p>Some things I've read on these forums are really disturbing. Some examples:
1. Hypercompetitive pre-schools: This is CHILD ABUSE!
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=187035&highlight=pre-school%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=187035&highlight=pre-school&lt;/a>
2. Someone who hates math is considering skipping AP Calculus AB and thus going from Pre-Calculus to AP Calculus BC: I was the math whiz at my school, Calculus BC wasn't available, and the idea of skipping AB would never have occurred even to me.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=203572%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=203572&lt;/a>
3. A high school frosh with a BLACK belt in karate thinks she has an inferior EC record
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=203451%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=203451&lt;/a>
4. Some students SKIP LUNCH in order to take more AP classes: NOBODY at my high school ever considered this.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=42900%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=42900&lt;/a>
5. An 8th grader is concerned about the SAT: Come on, even I never thought about the SAT when I was in 8th grade, and I was probably the only student at my high school who knew about the Princeton Review. By the way, preparing for the SAT is MUCH easier than doing well in school.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=44526%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=44526&lt;/a>
6. A student in a position most students would kill to be in feels SO LOST:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=45299%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=45299&lt;/a>
7. Pre-Calculus REQUIRES summer homework: I took Honors Pre-Calculus during my junior year of high school. We didn't have to do homework during the summer. I aced AP Calculus, earned a 5 on the Calculus AB AP exam, and went on to earn my Master's Degree in electrical engineering. If I could learn Pre-Calculus without having to do summer homework for it, why can't today's students do the same or simply not take the class if they don't belong in it?
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=28615%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=28615&lt;/a>
8. A student with an SAT score of 730 verbal, 800 math, and 770 writing retakes the test: I responded, but I felt like I was among Unintelligent Design kooks from Kansas or right-wing fascists from Saudi Dakota.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=147273%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=147273&lt;/a>
9. There was a long thread about tricks for getting up in the morning on time. I was the first one to suggest going to bed earlier and getting at least 7 hours of sleep in the first place. Many people seemed to dismiss this as a kooky concept.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=147696&page=1&pp=15%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=147696&page=1&pp=15&lt;/a>
10. There are students who feel the need to drug themselves up to study more, as if being a drugged-up A student is better than being a healthy B student.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=201245&highlight=ritalin%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=201245&highlight=ritalin&lt;/a>
11. Some students think that cheating and getting away with it is OK but earning a lower grade is the mark of a scumbag.
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=161071%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=161071&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>All this makes NO SENSE. Just sit back, relax, and be content to be one of the top 10% of students in the nation. Even if you are the PERFECT student, Ivy-type colleges can still reject you. College admissions is a 2-tiered system: There's the normal tier where having sufficiently high stats gets you in automatically, and there's the crapshoot tier where having sufficiently high stats merely gets you considered, and most of those considered don't get in. None of the colleges in the normal tier have Ivy-level stats. The obvious conclusion is that once your stats meet a certain level, doing better doesn't really open up additional options. This is the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns at work.</p>

2

<p>Mind correcting the links you posted?</p>

<p>I definitely disagree with you about the lunch part. As long as you eat a healthy breakfast, and eat as soon as you get home (because home food >>>> school food in taste and nutrition), I think skipping lunch is perfectly fine, especially since school food is so unappealing. Oh, and eating in class is an excellent idea. Trust me on this one. </p>

<p>Cheating is incredibly standard, among every type of student, especially when you can get away with it fairly easily. Incredibly +EV. It's often a good idea, though a 0 tends to hurt your grade a ton more than normal failing. It's a terrible idea on essays, a bad idea on tests the teacher sees, a very good idea on homework (that you already know how to do and sucks) and take home tests (if only to save work). Trust me, only the most unscrupulous of students does not cheat. Slackers and perfectionists all cheat, a lot. </p>

<p>And college really isn't two tiered. The difference between an unweighted 3.7 and 3.9 or 2100 and 2300 is fairly significant across the board (in top 25 colleges at least). Of course, the law of diminishing returns is very important though. A 2.5-3.0 student can and should improve more than a 3.5+ student.</p>

3

<p>THANK YOU!!!</p>

<p>You've said the theme I wanted to say but never had the guts to.</p>

4

<p>OK, I've fixed the links now. Copy-and-paste doesn't seem to work for URLs.</p>

5

<p>you're WRONG!!! Perfect students will be richer/more succesful than stupid students...</p>

6

<p>< I definitely disagree with you about the lunch part. As long as you eat a healthy breakfast, and eat as soon as you get home (because home food >>>> school food in taste and nutrition), I think skipping lunch is perfectly fine, especially since school food is so unappealing. Oh, and eating in class is an excellent idea. Trust me on this one.></p>

<p>Unless you go to a strange high school where the class day ends at noon, I can't imagine how it can be a good idea to skip lunch. The Paris Hilton diet isn't healthy.</p>

<p>< Cheating is incredibly standard, among every type of student, especially when you can get away with it fairly.></p>

<p>It's incredibly wrong, too. An environment where everyone cheats is a toxic environment.</p>

<p>< And college really isn't two tiered. The difference between an unweighted 3.7 and 3.9 or 2100 and 2300 is fairly significant across the board (in top 25 colleges at least). >
The key words: in top 25 colleges. At the top 25-ranked colleges, admissions is a crapshoot. Not ONE college in this tier guarantees admissions for those with high stats. Each of these colleges is a long shot for even the perfect student.</p>

7

<p>< Perfect students will be richer/more succesful than stupid students...>
I'll grant you this one. But the perfect students won't do significantly better than the others in the top 10% nationwide and may well be indistinguishable from the rest of the top 10% (or even 25%) in the long run.</p>

8

<p>Hands down the best post i've read on CC. I've often thought I was way out of the loop when I couldn't relate to the lengths some people went to for a grade. I am proud not to be apart of the "Academic Performane Cult"</p>

<p>THANKS!</p>

9

<p>I'm so glad I live in Canada. The university scene can be competetive here, but nothing like what I've been reading on CC. People are just grinding there lives away and they don't even realize it.</p>

10

<p>Wow that was kinda insightful. The people here were starting to scare me too. I felt like I was not doing enough compared to these kids, but I don't really care. Some of the problems kids have here are funny to me. </p>

<p>Oh yeah, cheating is wrong. My parents would kill me if I ever cheated and it just hurts you in the long run. Just because everyone is doing it does not make it right. And like some great thinker person said, when you are trying to make something you know is morally wrong sound right, you know you have a problem.</p>

11

<p>Hmmm. This post is a first that I've seen on CC...</p>

<p>I'd love to follow your philosophy, if not for my parents and my pride.</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
And like some great thinker person said, when you are trying to make something you know is morally wrong sound right, you know you have a problem.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>i agree with you, cheating definitely should not happen.
however, cheating has been in the past and will always in the future represent the way the world works.
businesses steal ideas off each other to make more profit and save the money they would have to do to create new ideas and products. nations copy the systems from other nations that work so that they can run governent better.
sports teams copy successful strategies so that they can stay neck and neck with the competition.</p>

<p>it's part of the capitalist system. the way students cheat works the same. either it is to reduce work required, or to keep up/get ahead of the competition.</p>

<p>schools really bring it upon themselves. the more work (notably busywork) they assign, they more likely students will copy from others. and a significant increase in workload (mostly associated with collegiate pressure to take more AP and IB classes) encourages cheating.</p>

13

<p>A follow up to item #8 by the OP.</p>

<p>My DS did not, and will not, retake the SAT. He had to take the ACT for a scholarship at his high school and did (35). From a purely admissions strategy point of view, I think there is something to be said for taking the test once and saying "I did my best and I'll stand by it".</p>

<p>His current debate is whether or not he wants to take any SAT II's or just pass on applying to those schools that REQUIRE SAT II's.</p>

<p>Interesting post jhsu. I, for one, hear loud and clear what you were saying in the #8 thread.</p>

14

<p>Sadly, the thing about cheating is true. =/</p>

15

<p>Dude. I used to be like you and I still was till last year. This year I got a 4.0 UW as a Sophomore but was disapointed that I didn't take AP US History and ended up having a low 4.xxx W.</p>

<p>I would never be happy with just attending a school like UIUC even though it definitely isn't a bad school.</p>

<p>Last year I was more normal like you just happy having a 3.5 but not anymore. Something just tells me that I won't be happy unless I attend a top Uni not because I won't get a good education elsewhere but because people will lack the interestest in knowledge that I have elsewhere.</p>

16

<p>"Not ONE college in this tier guarantees admissions for those with high stats. Each of these colleges is a long shot for even the perfect student."</p>

<p>There are lots of things that students can do to get into top 25 colleges. University of Chicago has about a 40% acceptance rate which is pretty high given that it is #15. Students who have good SAT scores, nice extracurriculars, and a high GPA shouldn't have that much of a problem getting into a high caliber school. I think its an exaggeration to say that each of the top 25 schools is a long for the perfect student.</p>

17

<p>you make me consider what hs and college will be like 10 years from now.</p>

<p>i cannot BEGIN to imagine that. thank goodness i wont have to be a part of that nightmare (seriously, it will be a nightmare consisting of intense competition where kids who get 4.0s and 2400 SAT/36 ACT scores with a list of ECs longer than your arm wont have a chance at getting into top tier schools)</p>

<p>i think somethings got to change (not sure what tho).</p>

18

<p>You know not everyone treats high school as a huge competition and not everyone is dying to get into the said top schools. I doubt EVERYONE will be in tens years as well, it sucks for the rest though.</p>

19

<p>the "real world' is competitive as well. all the top students in the top colleges will be vying for the same jobs at the top firms or hospitals; competition doesn't just end at high school or college.</p>

20

<p>
[quote]
There are lots of things that students can do to get into top 25 colleges. University of Chicago has about a 40% acceptance rate which is pretty high given that it is #15.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Um, the University of Chicago has a higher acceptance rate, because the people who apply are more self-selective.</p>