Amen. That’s why my kids don’t go to New Trier.
I agree with blossom.
In mainstream America, I think there is far more pressure on girls to be thin, dress well, have great hair, and be popular than there is to get into an elite college. Or for boys to excel at sports, date a hot girl, etc. The elite college obsessed, while sizable on CC, is a small subset of America. I worry more about the messages air-brushed anorexic models send to our daughters than I do about pressure to engage in too many ECs. We live in an affluent area with a public HS that sends a fair number of kids to Ivies and other elite schools each year. But most of the kids, including many top students, happily attend one of our in-state Us. I think it’s the social media/pressure that gets to kids more than competitive academics/admissions.
Last year, there was a cluster of suicides in our town. None were seemingly related to academic pressure.
“In 2013, men had a suicide rate of 20.2, and women had a rate of 5.5. Of those who died by suicide in 2013, 77.9% were male and 22.1% were female.” … “While males are 4 times more likely than females to die by suicide, females attempt suicide 3 times as often as males.”
https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures
@blossom @Overtheedge I think the scary thing is that both camps are right. In HS kids are pressured to be attractive, whether that is being thin and dress well for girls or atheltic and fit for guys. There is pressure to have social status, whether that is the football/cheerleader, the class president, the hottest couple. And while I would agree with the idea that the image of a gunner, striving for the 100% over a 99% is not popular or encouraged by mainstream culture, I think there is pressure to get A’s and maybe some B’s and generally be smart too. And even for the students that don’t live on the Harvard CC page, there is a lot of pressure in high school to go to a well known, prestigious place and shame associated with going somewhere “lesser”. It depends on the community, some high schools look down on you if you aren’t going to the Ivy League, some look down if you didn’t get in to or chose to attend the state flagship. But even with the perfectly good affordable state flagship so many parents on CC advocate for, there is not enough room for everyone at your school. There will be those that go to community college, somewhere local, somewhere religious, etc and all of that is judged. HS Seniors have internalized the idea that an ad com’s judgement of your worth is how they should judge each others worth. And with the advent of social media, that awkward moment of saying you are going to “lesser” college doesn’t end upon graduation. For the next 4 years, the “lesser” watch the perfectly planned and executed photos and posts of their old classmates now at Flagship or Ivy, each week showing the fantastic experience, friends, and classes they are supposedly enjoying. In the summers they post about their fantastic internships or research set up by FancyU. As rankings come out, they see facebook friends sharing links to articles declaring they are at the best school, with the best job placement, and highest earnings after graduation. It all compounds to make people that chose lower ranked schools be made to feel lower over and over and over again, every time they go home for break or log on to social media.
I would also argue that while most students do not participate in ECs at the high school I went to, those who do are keeping college apps in the back of their mind. I would say you’d be hard pressed to find any students who were involved in something that didn’t let how it would affect their college chances affect their behavior. While I totally believe that there are people in every organization who are passionate or at least moderately enjoy what they are doing, I also doubt that every officer position taken and every service hour was done for the pure passion for the subject. People are involved, but stay or get move involved for apps. Ergo why many HS have so many clubs that don’t actually do anything, so that people can be the president of something.
We tend to look at depression/suicide as within a vacuum, as if some event pushed them over the edge. The fact is many of these kids could’ve been severely depressed before they stepped foot in college. Hell i’ve been like that since 10th grade, but if you ask NYT and some of the armchair shrinks here, it must be the unbearable academic pressure combined with living on my own.
Far from it, having a purpose in life has helped me to cope if anything. If not for having college to look forward to, i probably would’ve offed myself back then.
I read one well-thought-out post after another on here, and while all make valid points, all fail to mention any responsibility on the parents’ part. Am I the only one that read the article? Then again, this is the parent’s section of college confidential – the epitome of the parent who pressures his children into this kind of behavior.
@carolinahbrah “Then again, this is the parent’s section of college confidential – the epitome of the parent who pressures his children into this kind of behavior.”
There are a wide range of parental approaches here, but some parents definitely contribute. Knowing when to challenge a high schooler to do better and when not can be difficult. Most parents definition of a parent that pushes too hard is any parent that is pushier than they are.
Then there are the uninvolved parents who don’t know their kids classes, friends or activities. If this student is becoming suicidal, they probably have no idea about it.
Being an involved and supportive parent who is connected to their kids and works to maintain that dialogue throughout high school and college can really avoid some big problems, but that is a limited percentage of parents. It is a lot of work.
To cmsjmt. I am a college student at a top university. I cannot express how much I COMPLETELY agree with you about the holistic admissions idea is stupid. It is for the following reasons:
- It leads students to feel that they cannot get into a med/law school unless they join a million and one clubs in college. Therefore, students just join a bunch of clubs to look good on an application. They don't invest very much effort in these clubs and overall it just means that college students must act super shallow. The students that aren't shallow and only maybe join one club that they are legitimately interested in are at a disadvantage. I quit NHS my senior year of HS simply because I thought it was so stupid how I had to do random community service to get into a good college.
- It is really easy for people to simply lie. It is unlikely that a grad school will attempt to or be able to verify that somebody actually participated in these activities.
- Doing a million clubs to look good on an application will take time away from actually studying and learning. I don't know about you, but I want a doctor that actually scored well on his MCAT and didm't just get into med school from planting a few trees to look like he cared about the environment. College admissions is a zero-sum game. They only have seats for so many students, so if somebody gets accepted to a med school who did a million bullshit clubs that he put on a resume (but got low test scores) it would take a spot away from somebody else who would have scored higher and actually understood science better.
Again I think holistic admissions is some new idea that is supposed to be fairer but it is really not and perpetuates stress. European schools simply use test scores for admissions. I think colleges should simply plug test scores into some kind of program and based on a formula they get accepted or rejected. I think that this would mean smarter students get go to top schools and become future doctors/lawyers, and that it would reduce stress in college students.
Do ECs matter for med school?
If so, things have really changed…
Yes they do.
All but a few law schools base 80% of admissions decisions on 2 numbers: GPA and LSAT… (The other 20% is made up of some things you don’t have much control over: development case, URM or legacy status, geography (especially at public Us, but also for diversity purposes.) A few count work experience. Only a few law schools consider ECs. ) So anyone who is letting his/her GPA suffer to participate in ECs to get into law school is going about things the wrong way.
Med school ECs are not “planting trees.” They usually involve doing things that have given you sufficient experience to know you want to be a physician, e.g., working or volunteering as an EMT, translator in a hospital, etc.
I sincerely doubt it’s easy to lie. Stretch things a bit, perhaps. But if you aren’t an EMT, you’d be outed pretty quickly if you lie and claim you are.
“And even for the students that don’t live on the Harvard CC page, there is a lot of pressure in high school to go to a well known, prestigious place and shame associated with going somewhere “lesser”. It depends on the community, some high schools look down on you if you aren’t going to the Ivy League, some look down if you didn’t get in to or chose to attend the state flagship.”
I think it’s important to note that these discussions always take the form of “well, if other people didn’t provide pressure on you to go to a place like X, then these kids wouldn’t be depressed.” Well, there are plenty of people who don’t really care about what the people around them think about anything, but who may be depressed just on their own merits / psychological makeup. IOW, depression wouldn’t magically go away if everyone just minded their own business. It’s a disease, people.
Nobody is getting a leg up in med school admissions for being a member of the environmental club. Nobody is getting a leg up in law school admissions for participating in student government on campus. Any kid who believes this suffers from an inability to look at a chart or graph and interpret data accurately.
Spending two years as an EMT is a significantly advantageous component of a med school application, all things being equal. It demonstrates a high degree of familiarity with the rigors of patient contact which is very different from acing organic chemistry. You cannot compare this “EC” to the run of the mill campus club or “officer”.
7ry- your friends at your “top university” are wrong.
Well at some pre-med heavy schools (like the one I went to), there are many clubs and opps that are healthcare or science related so naturally many (not all, don’t get wrong, but still a disturbing amount) pre-health students join those clubs (and honors societies) to slap them on their resumes. I have seen some people join them as seniors (they were applying a year later or re-applying after decisions came out) and would actually admit to joining some of these things because it made them “look good”. Often times, their involvement was minimal. You can play all types of games with college EC’s. So while those were bad examples by 7ry, I admit that I see where they are coming from after having witnessed it. Students seemed under pressure to treat the process as a very formulaic process both grade and EC (as in, I need the “right” EC’s even beyond the required/recommended shadowing/volunteer hours; which may be partially true- and is why some people can fake it until they make it, however, this is not unique to those on pre-professional tracks) wise.
The point of disagreement I have is that this results from “holistic admissions”. The fact is, things like med. school and elite colleges have too many statistically qualified applicants and so need other things to look for to distinguish students (the current SAT’s/MCATs and GPA’s they have now are already in the very high end of the possible range. Admitting only the statistically perfect will certainly have diminished returns and will make them miss out on the type of “outputs” they want because academic diversity or diversity of interests will likely decline). Medical Schools after all want doctors which are not the equivalent to robots that are smart and well-trained in the clinical sciences. The engagement with EC’s could in theory indicate both exploration of the healthcare field of interest while also displaying “human” qualities that are desirable in a doctor I suppose. I would argue that being involved in a club that focuses on saving the environment would perhaps be less stereotypical than some of the EC’s I allude to (as in beyond the ones that are required- which I also hear are sometimes fudged/embellished on resumes to some extent).
I just returned from my daughter’s college campus (well regarded state flagship in a large US city, but not an Ivy.) In the past week, there was a student suicide, a suicide attempt, a student in the ER with suicidal ideation, and a body found in student housing (presumed suicide.) None of these kids knew each other or knew of the other incidents.
We’ve been dealing with mental illness in my family for years now, and in my opinion, it’s often the flip side of the gift that is high intelligence. While involvement in an excessive number of activities cold send someone over the edge, certainly, I propose that the compulsion to stay so very busy can often be a symptom of an underlying disorder; the person is self-medicating with busyness, as another might with alcohol/smoking/shopping/excessive exercise/you name it. So it’s not terribly shocking to me that a large number of these sorts of people would end up at the prestigious schools, and perhaps feel a letdown once they are there and the “goal” of admission is achieved.
In addition, personal experience tells me that it is incredibly difficult to get a proper diagnosis/treatment for mental illness, even if one is so inclined. Even without the financial barrier (which is huge for the average person; insurance obstacles are formidable) for those willing to pay out of pocket, decent providers tend to have significant waiting lists. We just waited 6 months for a place in an outpatient program in a major urban area, and even with a bit of a crisis recently, the earliest our student could get in to see a psychiatrist, with whom there is a pre-existing relationship, was 3 weeks.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I consider this a public health emergency. We are losing many of our best and brightest to death and dysfunction.
I don’t think this follow-up “Well” column answering reader questions resulting from the original article has been posted here: http://nyti.ms/1KOoEgz
Glad they at least addressed this question:
Oh darn, don’t you hate it when data contradicts your belief that the pressure of getting into Harvard and Penn is what causes teenage suicide? And don’t you really hate it when data suggests that what might happen in your own town or community is not typical across the entire population of the US? Science stinks.
@blossom -
Mr Schwartz said that there is “no data indicating that suicide is more prevalent at elite institutions than at two-year or four year colleges.”
If, in fact, there is “no data”, then it is impossible for the data to contradict anyone’s belief, so there is no logical reason to hate anything,…
Science only stinks for those who don’t understand it…
@Mastadon why do you find it so hard to understand science? “no data indicating that suicide is more prevalent…” does not mean that there is no data. It means that there IS DATA and that the DATA shows that it IS contradictory to the belief that the suicide rate is higher. It is the same thing with there is no data to suggest that Pluto will magically grow wings and fly at the earth. That doesn’t mean we have no data on what Pluto is it means that in all of the information we have ever gathered on Pluto nothing suggests that it is a magical being capable of growing wings and is instead a mere celestial body. Before you make incorrect statements about other peoples’ posts try reading more than the first 2 words of something you decide to quote.
Mastadon- thanks for the statistics lesson. In return, I offer you free classes in reading comprehension.
" In fact, college of any kind seems to be a form of protection against suicide, according to Dr. Victor Schwartz, the medical director of The Jed Foundation, an advocacy group devoted to preventing suicide among college and university students. Several analyses have found that rates of completed suicide among noncollege students aged 18-24 are higher than those of college students."
this means that more kids who AREN’T in college successfully commit suicide vs. kids who ARE in college.
thanks for thinking of me.