<p>Pizzagirl, in response to #378, I would guess that most of us do believe that a number of “normal bright” intriguing students are admitted to top schools. </p>
<p>The question at hand–I think–is how “normal bright” intriguing students do, if they attend school with Johnny, Inc., Consolidated Cassandra, Peter PC, and Gertrude Gesellschaft-mit-begrenzter-Haftung. About this, I am not so sure. </p>
<p>While I agree with MiamiDAP that there is no need to attend an “elite” school (and in fact, I attended a public university that many on CC would not consider), I view it as an inefficient allocation of resources if bright students are not well matched with universities–if the students would like to attend a top-ranked school and if the finances are workable–when the mis-match is due to others’ gaming the system.</p>
<p>Someone earlier raised the issue of a first-grader being tutored due to reading at grade level. No joke, a friend of mine had a conversation with a teacher who wanted to have the friend’s child tested for a possible learning disability, because the child was only reading at second-grade level. This was mentioned at an early parent-teacher conference. Friend replied, “Well, duh, this IS second grade!”</p>
<p>Hi all - new guy here, just enjoying this thread. I didn’t intend to post, but it’s mind-boggling to learn that USN&WR is actually rating high schools! So of course, now I’ll need to go check out our school.</p>
<p>But first, on the topic of the thread: My wife and I decided that given we’d need to pay property taxes, we might as well pony up to live in a place where we liked the schools. So we wound up in a well-regarded school district, suburban, mostly upper-middle class, but with a nice socio-economic mixture. It has all the course offerings that a highly motivated student would need, plenty of advanced material, APs and such. There’s certainly a highly ambitious, and perhaps competitive subgroup; some kids definitely get into the top schools each year. But the main focus seems to be on challenging the collective student body to perform at that 85th percentile, probably for rankings/test results. The percentage of students that attend college is reasonably high - perhaps 90%. </p>
<p>With that background, I can honestly say that it never occurred to me that folks might be using private tutors simply to compete/excel; if it’s happening, it’s just not on my radar, although naturally we’ve all heard of SAT classes. Lots of folks seem to go that route.</p>
<p>Our approach has just been to value education as a family. We’ve been involved in the school life, kept abreast of class work, and we help out when there are questions. Occasionally things slip a bit, and then we’ll apply some gentle pressure. Since the kids are quite capable of A’s, we expect them to take tough classes, and we expect to see reasonable effort when necessary. For stuff like the SATs, a week with a practice book should be more than enough. So we’ll see how things work out; S is a junior, D in 8th grade.</p>
<p>OK, time to look up my school with USN&WR …</p>
<p>^^^^^^^^
Ahh too bad. Either I’m a bozo, or there’s no way to search for an individual school on the magazine’s web site. I did learn that we’re not in the top 100 - Gee, those schools have names that sound like universities!</p>
<p>I too have been thinking about this thread for days…we have many Johnny Incs, Johnny Sports in our area. In fact, this year the senior class is the most academically proficient class that our high school has ever had. The competitiveness in D1 sports requires kids to play their sport year round even if they are not going to be collegiate athletes…there are private batting coaches and special fitness programs that are more or less required for the kid to remain competitive year-to-year. And then there is the AP course. Kids scrambling to take them at an early age and their parents tutoring then or hiring tutors for them…all to get a leg up during the college admissions process. The stacking of APs are allowing 17 and 18 year old kids to enter college as a junior when the kid doesn’t even know how to get himself out of the rain - but he can proof the most difficult calculus problems.</p>
<p>Many of these kids are expecting top paying and interesting jobs when they graduate college…but most of the entry level positions are low paying and boring compared to what they have already acomplished. Is this setting them up for huge disillusionment? It has been my experience that in the commercial business world, Big State U undergraduates fair just as well Ivy…in fact sometimes better…until your each the executive level and then it is really having an MBA from a well respected business school.</p>
<p>As a parent I have to wonder if these kids will succeed without their entourages…success after college can mean many things and many factors come into play that are not necessarily coachable…luck, common sense, tenacity, etc.</p>
<p>Full disclosure, both of my kids have had tutors to get them thorugh some rough patches, review topics and concepts that they were struggling with…but not to pre-learn AP material. </p>
<p>So, my question is - is it all worth it at the end of the day? Is Johnny Inc/sports going to make more money and be more successful or are we going to see a rise in suicides when he/she can’t achieve what is expected given all the opportunities handed to him/her early in life?</p>
<p>Many students who have lived that system in high school here report that college is easier for them than high school.
They think they have to live a certain way in HS, with the most demanding classes across the board, intense sports involvement and a long list of ECs. Then they get to college and take classes that interest them, ECs just for fun and many drop their year-round sport.</p>
<p>As quantmech already responded to #378, yes, I do believe colleges when they say they evaluate kids within the students’ particular school. Teachers do that sort of comparison too when they write their LORs; they compare the child to his current and recent peers. That is exactly why this is a problem for those of us who have kids in the SAME schools as Johnny Inc.s.</p>
<p>For the umpteenth time, normal, bright, intriguing kids without the pre-gaming have a very tough time even getting into the track in elementary or middle school which will allow them to eventually take AP classes in high school, or even be slated to take Algebra 2 in time to do well on SAT’s junior year, or to get in the top music groups, the varsity teams, etc. You can start your kid on private violin lessons at age 6 or group lessons in 3rd grade in school like the completely unenlightened, but the Johnny Inc.'s have started lessons with some Russian master at age 3. You can spend the time and money to do the town travel soccer team (coached by John’s dad) with your child, but the Johnny Inc.'s are doing the elite club team trained by European professional players, and so on. The Johnny Inc.'s are in every arena, and have the edge in achieving the types of accomplishments colleges are looking for due to money, connections, and yes, the willingness to go to extremes.</p>
<p>Sure, your child can go out into the community to find activities which make him unique and intriguing and that can sometimes work, but around here things are such that for example there’s a 2-year wait list for a kid to volunteer in the hospital, that gets longer each time a Johnny Inc with money and connections jumps to the top of the list. This is why we are now seeing more and more kids take flying lessons to get their pilot’s license and things of that nature in a desperate attempt to find some area not already dominated where they can excel. But out of town, out of school things are often very expensive. Maybe it has always been this way in wealthy communities in your towns, but where I grew up there was no noticeable difference in the upbringing of the children of average income versus those of higher income and greater connections, except maybe a few more trips to the ski slopes and a better summer job. </p>
<p>No sour grapes here, btw. My older kids did very well, but they were an exception in our school being non-Asian, not Sat. and summer schooled and non-Inc… (One mother got really angry at me once because she kept asking me where I sent my kids for math classes. I kept telling her nowhere, and she accused me of lying, ha ha.) But I see things continuing to escalate.</p>
<p>GFG, I understand your concern but… My D is a normal bright kid, I think. She didn’t do any of those you mention and she is in track and in all AP courses. She didn’t particularly work hard. She was diligent and did all the hoemwork on time but that was about it. She used to spend 5 minutes when she had a test to study. Now she spends half an hour to prepare for a test and she think she is turning into a workoholic. You talk about a russian master teaching a 3 year old violin. Do you think that the 3 year old will turn into violin masterette automatically? Believe me, it’s not that simple.</p>
<p>I agree it is escalating. Many elite-college-alum parents of college age kids have told me that their kids would not have a prayer of getting into their alma mater with their old stats and EC’s. Top colleges are saying on their websites every year that “this year’s class is the most selective, most competitive, has the highest average SAT, and with most number of valedictorians.” </p>
<p>S1 who did an order of magnitude better than me in high school was not even waitlisted by my alma mater.</p>
<p>Through my Highschool Career (which still hasn’t ended) I’m up to 3 SAT/ACT tutors that I’ve had over time and 1 math tutor which I’ve used every year of highschool.</p>
<p>It will end if we end offering college level classes to HS students. When we stop offering AP, dual enrollment etc. But I don’t see it ending as it is a very lucrative business ;)</p>
<p>Kelowna, I wish we would stop with the APs. There is no way they are college level classes unless college has been dumbed down a lot since I attended. But that’s a whole other thread.</p>
<p>it’ll end when the universe is no longer a competitive environment, so it’ll never end:)</p>
<p>it’s the nature of things to be competitive, to try and get an “advantage” over others. or as my college econ prof would say, it’s a zero sum game, there are winners and there are losers…it’s just the way the way it is</p>
<p>queen: the hs classes (AP and non AP) are often harder (requiring more homework, more in-depth analysis, and more difficult grading) at our hs than many similar college classes. this has been reported back by dozens and dozens of students over the years.</p>
<p>At least in our community the hs has become the new college. hs is a lot harder than it was 20 or 30 years ago. the kids feel relieved to go to college, where things will be easier!</p>
<p>We have some AP classes like you describe pacheight which is why my younger daughter is not taking more than one per year.</p>
<p>Scarscdale NY no longer offers AP classes, they found them too restrictive as the goal is to get a “5” on the exam, not to learn and discuss interesting issues. I don’t think it’s hurt their students any!</p>
<p>Tell them not to bother. I got my pilot’s license a week after my driver’s license and I worked at the local flight school/airport to pay for it. It didn’t get me into my first choice school :). And that was in 1974.</p>
<p>12th gr dau went & sat in on a freshman philos class at her first choice school last week. To her amazement they were being assigned the reading of Plato’s Cave. She has read it twice in h.s., once in 10th gr World Hist & this year in AP Euro Hist. </p>
<p>H.S. has just become too demanding & I don’t see the benefit to them. 14 year old minds are not able to grasp a lot of this material — I know, math is math, but in subjects like lit & philosophy, a more mature brain that actually has made its connections is going to get more out of the readings.</p>
<p>Abusing tutoring to get ahead is still better than abusing drugs imo. Who knows maybe one of those Johnys will start a successful business that will hire our kids at a good pay?</p>
<p>I agree with pacheight and SVmom: The same phenomenon is in our area, and similarly has been for years, with very fine U’s being reported as “easier” than h.s. Excellent h.s.'s are either prepping students quite well for college, or in many cases “over”-prepping them. Then again, that can be a matter of contrast. D2’s college roommates, who attended suburban public h.s.‘s with A’s, were unprepared for a very reachy U; by contrast, she declared to me back from the airport for first Thanksgiving home, “I’ve never had to work so little in my life.” The work was “easy” only by comparison, of course. Which side of the coin do you want to view? That my D had to work “too hard” in h.s. (their requirements, not any add’l requirements from me), or that her roommates had to work so little? CC’ers tend to blame the roommates’ situation on grade inflation, but those students very well might have earned A’s according to the standards set by the teacher/school.</p>
<p>When will it all end, Queen’s Mom? (Or the rat-race, GFG?) It will end when experiences change. It will reduce (if not end) within a generation, when today’s college students who did not get admitted to a tiny portion of the country’s universities, and had to “settle” for alternative fine institutions, meet similarly brilliant (or prepared) students who are also “rejects” with fine minds – many of whom were not Incorporated–, end up with wonderful careers (and perhaps even less debt!) and divulge this secret to their own children. (And when, as one parent just said, they see that a Harvard education is no guarantee of a great future, immediately or eventually.) When they experience that the combination of alternative fine U’s and the timing of opportunities in careers – much of which is out of one’s control – is what can make the difference for success, they will pull back on their own children. In fact, this may happen sooner than later. What characterizes all the Corporation Parents is a passion for control and an assumption that their children’s futures can be controlled. That is less and less true in the contemporary economy, local and global.</p>
<p>Or, it will happen when Elite U’s radically change the terms and elements of admission (such as unpreppable admissions tests, such as academic interviews, such as personal essays written in the high school English class & collected & sent by the h.s., such as the University Consortia Match with EDI and EDII which I suggested several years ago here, etc.)</p>
- Gee, those schools have names that sound like universities!</p>
But that’s a whole other thread.</p>