Colleges for the "Brilliant Underachiever"?

Parent Cafe
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<p>The issue isn’t requiring and grading homework, it’s the type of homework. The problem is when you have a dumbed-down history class reading a dumbed-down textbook with make-work assignments. Or even an AP history class plowing through a dull textbook taking endless practice tests, the only goal being squeezing out as many 3s as possible from the mediocre students in the class. </p>

<p>All this “praise” and “blame” talk isn’t constructive. A lot of very bright kids have real problems in school, for lots of reasons. American schools are NOT meeting their needs, in fact the trend is AWAY from special gifted educational programs. They should be nurtured to reach their full potential, just, as coolweather says, kids with learning disabilities are nurtured to reach theirs. </p>

<p>Being hardworking and diligent may be a virtue; being willing to do asinine schoolwork for the sake of grades may even be a virtue. Being very intelligent is not a virtue. It does not deserve “praise”, but it is a real talent that has special potential benefits to society as a whole. That is extra reason to help nurture it, even among kids (and let’s remember, we are talking about children here) who are not “disciplined” in the way newmassdad might want or expect all children to be.</p>

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<p>No one is “blaming the school,” we are discussing ways in which schools can be improved to better meet the needs of extremely bright kids. Last time I checked, we are the ones paying for the public schools, we have a right to express our view of how things should be, to agitate for change, etc.</p>

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<p>Einstein wrote about his school experiences: </p>

<p>[Nobel</a> Prize Winners Hate School (Learn in Freedom!)](<a href=“http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html]Nobel”>Nobel Prize Winners Hate School (Learn in Freedom))</p>

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<p>tokenadult - Thanks for showing us this Gifted 500 class material.
Now I can do my Gifted 101 homework assignment.</p>

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<p>Mythmom, I’m glad you found your niche; I found mine too, mostly through George of the Jungle’s secret weapon (dumb luck).</p>

<p>But I am convinced that all of this talk and sympathy for “brilliant” underachievers tends to obscure an important point. Preparation and tenacity beat raw intellectual firepower almost every time, so the success of all but a statistically insignificant number of these so-called brilliant children will depend on their ability to grind things out, even when they find those things boring. If they have that ability and inclination, their intellectual strengths will take care of themselves.</p>

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<p>I’m always suspicious when parents say “brilliant underachiever”…often, I get the feeling that the kid is simply an “underachiever” seen in Rose Colored glasses. Real brilliant underachievers will do well at most colleges. Are you asking for rigorous colleges with lower admissions standards than HYPS? The question isn’t really clear.</p>

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<p>More on Einstein - I certainly wouldn’t say that he saved himself, at least not until he was out of school (and actually, not even Dad was able to help him):</p>

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<p>[NOVA</a> | Einstein’s Big Idea | Einstein the Nobody | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/bodanis.html]NOVA”>NOVA | Einstein's Big Idea | Einstein the Nobody | PBS)</p>

<p>Sounds a bit like some of our modern - and undisciplined and lazy? - BU’s (or, our late blooming BU’s or BU’s with LD’s/asperger’s); fortunately, Einstein’s inherent abilities/passions/interests coincided with at least some of his required schooling, as well as being something that society recognized as valuable, and therefore he WAS able to achieve success/reach his potential, but again, not until well out of and certainly not as a result of, school. I suspect Al probably failed to complete/turn in a lot of homework too? Wonder how he’d make out today under NCLB? Or if he’d make it through college?</p>

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<p>I was annoyed when newmassdad made his first comment, and I’m getting more annoyed now.</p>

<p>The issue isn’t who is better or worse than whom. We ALL probably admire smart kids who buckle down and work hard – at something – more than smart kids who don’t. At least I do. We ALL believe non-genius kids who work their butts off to learn ought to get respect. We ALL think less of kids who do NOTHING but play by the rules to build resumes, and for kids who do NOTHING, period.</p>

<p>But all of that’s beside the point. Much as most of us would love to have children who were brilliant, creative, dilligent, and obedient AND individualistic (athletic and attractive, too) . . . well, some of our kids, at 17, come up short on some of those qualities. Maybe ALL of our kids, at 17, come up short on some of those qualities. (Apologies to curmudgeon’s daughter, or mammall’s, or any of the other nearly perfect children I read about here.)</p>

<p>Since I’m not ready to cast any 17-year-olds into the bowels of Hell because of their personal shortcomings to date, it interests me – and apparently others – to discuss which colleges are (a) good and (b) achievable for particular varieties of imperfect 17-year-olds. One of which is “bright underachievers”. </p>

<p>I wish they weren’t underachievers, I would respect them more if they achieved more, I find them exasperating sometimes. I wish their high schools had done a better job. So what? I know a bunch of them, and like or love them and their parents. I wish them well. I wish them chances. Everyone deserves that, even if they are DUMB and underachieving. I’m not suggesting that Harvard purge its walk-on-water kids to replace them with high-IQ slackers. But if you happen to have kids like that, you still get to wonder what will be best for them.</p>

<p>By the way, here’s whom I haven’t met: bright kids who do nothing but watch TV or play video games. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I don’t see it. I see lots of kids engaged in activities for which they will never get “credit”. I see some kids struggling with drugs, alchohol, or depression. I see a kid who was just beginning to get his act together when his mother was diagnosed with the cancer that killed her nine months later. </p>

<p>Where do they go? Lots seem to go to state Us. They tend to have high-ish SATs, and “good enough” grades. Or to honors programs at second-tier state colleges. Some wind up at second- or third-tier LACs of the “Colleges That Change Lives” variety. That seems to work very well. The state Us can work well, too, as long as the kid doesn’t get sucked into a party scene too much.</p>

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<p>"If I was in admissions, I’d choose the brilliant underachiever over the hardworking overachiever. The former has the potential to get his act together, work hard, and do something incredible. The second one isn’t gonna be able to do anymore than he’s already doing- he’s already “maxed out.'”</p>

<p>I’d definitely choose the hardworking “overachiever” (I hate that word because no one can achieve more than they are capable of doing. They may achieve more than others thought they could do, but that is because others didn’t predict correctly.).</p>

<p>The best predictor of freshmen year grades in college is h.s. gpa, not SAT scores, which are a very, very weak predictor of college performance.</p>

<p>I taught college for 6 years and saw many so-called overachievers who graduated magna, summa, even went on to get doctorates because they worked hard. They also were pleasures to work with because they were interested in their academics. Meanwhile, students with higher scores and more obvious talent flunked out because they weren’t willing to work. They also didn’t attend class, didn’t do assignments, weren’t open minded about new ideas and ways of doing things…</p>

<p>I also have seen that in my own family. Older S was the poster boy for being a brilliant underachiever. Sky high scores, 2.8 or so unweighted gpa in a rigorous h.s. program that he never bothered to study for. College freshman average was below a .96, something that’s darned hard to do, but very possible to do when one doesn’t go to class and doesn’t do one’s schoolwork. At 23, he hasn’t gone any further in school, yet h.s. classmates who were hard workers, but not as obviously intelligent, have gone on to law school and doctoral programs.</p>

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<p>Yep. Specific suggestions of colleges was what I thought would be interesting in a thread, to make more concrete the statement from another thread that I quoted to open this thread.</p>

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<p>"Since I’m not ready to cast any 17-year-olds into the bowels of Hell because of their personal shortcomings to date, it interests me – and apparently others – to discuss which colleges are (a) good and (b) achievable for particular varieties of imperfect 17-year-olds. One of which is “bright underachievers”. "</p>

<p>I think it’s important to realize that college isn’t suitable for everyone, including for some very bright people. IMO when it comes to extremely bright underachievers, if those students underachieved due to a lack of motivation, then they could best benefit by taking at the very least a productive gap year to learn more about themselves and the world.</p>

<p>Just because a person is very bright doesn’t mean that college ever would be appropriate for them Some very bright people don’t like school. Period. Perhaps some will grow out of this. Some won’t.</p>

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<p>OK. To address tokenadult’s request, I would push my kid to go to a smaller college, probably a LAC, perhaps where they still believe in faculty student interaction. The worst thing, IMHO, is a large university with all sorts of distractions, grades that depend on one or two exams etc. </p>

<p>In these smaller settings, one’s intellect might more likely show, and that can lead to some decently motivating faculty attention. There are a lot of schools like this, ones that will give these kids a chance, but more importantly, pay attention to them and help them succeed. </p>

<p>Another option may be a gap year?</p>

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<p>Or you could do what the husband of one of my friend’s did. He dropped out of college. He went to work, amassed a lot of experience, realized he needed his degree to get taken seriously. He applied to various colleges, but one college looked at his resume and said - you don’t need to finish your undergrad degree, we’ll admit you directly to a master’s program. He was happy to do so and got to finesse the whole part of school he didn’t like. Lucky guy!</p>

<p>I think for kids who figure out what they want to do (through a gap year or many gap years) going to a university with a more pre-professional type program, or co-ops may be a better route than your typical liberal arts education.</p>

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<p>JHS restates the points I tried to make, probably better.</p>

<p>Our society is way too competitive when we have to parse kids attributes with a micrometer. And again, the kids who don’t have the attributes to work hard enough to succeed, well as my mother said, “They’re more to be pitied than censured.”</p>

<p>I think our Puritan roots are showing.</p>

<p>And really, really smart people can sometimes succeed without working hard. Or put another way, doing something one loves doesn’t always feel like hard work.</p>

<p>And some of these “slacker” kids are brilliant. And have you ever read Richard Feynman railing because he couldn’t get higher than a B in English at MIT. He thinks literature and us English teachers the stupidest things in the world. Had he had to succeed at literary analysis no amount of hard work would have helped him. He just didn’t “see it.”</p>

<p>On the other hand, his descriptions of the thinking of QED watching a frisbee in the Cornell cafeteria, not hard work, though of course working it out was.</p>

<p>I think success is a combination of accepting ourselves, i.e. playing to our strengths, and correcting as many of our weaknesses as we can but not expending too much time and energy on “fixing” ourselves at the expense of developing our strengths.</p>

<p>Thank God no one tried to turn me into an accountant. And thank goodness not everyone agrees with Richard Feynman and some people, including my college president, still think English and literature worthwhile. And I think I am getting close enough to retirement age that if they ever decide di</p>

<p>fferently I won’t have to look for another job.</p>

<p>And some of these “hardworking students” who are so admired are selfish and working only for their own bottom line. Without morals and ethics the hardwork only benefits the individual in the most narrow way.</p>

<p>There are so many traits that comprise an admirable person.</p>

<p>My D has a close friend who has severe ADD and is also bi-polar. He was without a doubt the smartest kid in her graduating class, including the kids at ivies. </p>

<p>He tried CC twice; got A+'s with easy, free wheeling teachers, F’s with more exacting types. I know he really tried. He is holding down a job as a pizza delivery person, earning money with tips. I swear he can’t do more, and we are happy for him, very, that he is not killing himself with drugs. </p>

<p>I hate to have people judge him, which of course they do.</p>

<p>I repeat, some kids, hey adults too, are plagued by ADD, lack of focus, whatever, and can’t meet the description of diligent, conscientious hard worker. We don’t throw them on the scrap heap. And in a different kind of society, they might be fine. Or as house husbands, stay-at-home moms, so many ways for people to contribute to society. And if they are able to find teachers to work with them along the way, all the better, More for them to contribute.</p>

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<p>OT response:</p>

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<p>Okay, gotta defend Feynman here. He didn’t “see it” because of a lack; that’s for sure. One of the finest writers one can read–I used one of his essays as the foundation for the reading and writing we did in my last semester’s freshman English class. Perhaps it’s not what was worthwhile, but what is inane, theory-bound, and insular in English lit that drove him out, not his own “deficiencies.” And I say that as someone who loves lit and has a couple degrees in it but ultimately can’t stomach much of what passes for thought in its studies.</p>

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<p>I really enjoy Feynman’s writing. Have read all his books; that’s why I know so much about him. However, being a good writer does not make him an appreciator of poetry. I definitely think he had a deficiency in this area, but so what?</p>

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Not wanting to debate your substantive argument points here, Northstarmom, but this particular statement is, in fact, contradicted by the data IMHO - in particular, by the study usually used to support it. As I posted earlier in this thread: </p>

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<p>Feynman surely had to write scientific articles, and some of those are classics, but aren’t many of his most famous popular writings based on transcripts of his speech?</p>

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<p>“Back in the day”, I knew several people who topped out the SAT with indifferent high school records who attended the University of Chicago. Perhaps this was from the time that the U of C had a 70% plus admissions rate undergraduate. They would also start college early (like Watson). People who “rang the bell”.
I for one am sympathetic for those who feel unstimulated and even oppositional during high school. There are just too many people who feel alienated in high school (as I would be) to dismiss.
At one point I studied high achievers in the 20th century across many fields, from poetry to astrophysics. Most were very unhappy in school. Many were school “failures”.</p>

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<p>hmm what does “overachiever” mean? and if you’re brilliant, lazy, but still achieving more than what other ppl would expect, is that an overachiever or an underachiever?</p>

<p>and if someone calls me an overachiever should I be offended?</p>