<p>momof threeboys …I will once again mention that kids at Cornell and all east coast schools get checked for vitamin D deficiency which causes a depression state. It is a simple blood test that I never thought could change a life. I knew there was something wrong when my otherwise very happy upbeat and full of life kid just wasn’t himself. One mega dose pill once a week was all he needed. He also went to a tanning salon once just to get a boost of the vitamin he needed.</p>
<p>Thanks, Modadunn, for actually reading my post. Pizzagirl, you might want to actually read my post (#47) before attempting to attack it.</p>
<p>^^I remember you mentioning that and think it is really interesting. I doubt my son will ever return to our state but if he does return, even as an adult, I will remind him of what happens to him in the winter and make some suggestions. The change in his personality the past three winters has been dramatic. As he was getting ready to go through TSA to the plane in January after visiting during the winter break he turned to me and said “mom do you realize the sun was out only one day the entire time I was home.” He was home for almost an entire month. We had never discussed in front of him or with him his “winter personality” 'while he was growing up but apparently he’s developed a self awareness about it.</p>
<p>Should a parent reconsider sending a child who has seriously battled depression to Cornell?</p>
<p>I’m not sure I buy the Vit D thing. Just about every person I know who has had a recent check-up (including me) has been diagnosed with Vit D deficiency and prescribed the 6 weeks of the mega-dose followed by over the counter Vit D. When I was diagnosed last year I was running very strongly and had no depression. I also had more sun exposure than many people. I noticed no change after taking the mega-dose and neither has anyone else I know. (all areas of the country) I am not disagreeing that many of us have this deficiency, I’m just not sure I believe it has all that much impact on one’s mental or physical state. Your report on your son is absolutely the first I have heard of anyone noticing a difference. Could something else have improved his mood? Maybe placebo effect???</p>
<p>I think going to ANY intense college environment could be a problem for a child who has seriously battled depression. I don’t know what the answer is. If the child is mature enough to know when (if) the depression is returning and take appropriate steps (change of meds, therapy), it might be OK.</p>
<p>Reading about these sad suicides makes me worry all the more about the daughter of a friend of mine, accepted early at Cornell and scheduled to be a freshman there. This girl is already battling depression and eating disorders; should she really be going off to Cornell of all places? Actually, I don’t think she should be going to any college; this girl is not stable right now, and Cornell sounds like a particularly bad choice in some ways.</p>
<p>(I wouldn’t be worried about a friend whose mentally healthy child was excited about going off to Cornell next year. I’d be happy that the kid was heading off to a great school in a beautiful location. But this kid? Scary.)</p>
<p>“Should a parent reconsider sending a child who has seriously battled depression to Cornell?”</p>
<p>IMO quite possibly yes, and more generally I agree with
“I think going to ANY intense college environment could be a problem for a child who has seriously battled depression.”</p>
<p>If someone is likely to react to disappointments by developing suicidal thoughts, well, such environments provide many opportunites for such disappointments to occur.</p>
<p>A lot of things that have been said about Cornell are true(I don’t go there, but I have a sibling who did). It is an intense and stressful environment with what feels like a never-ending grind. There never really is a moment where one feels like one can ‘relax’–there’s always <em>something</em> you need to be doing. However, this is true at most top colleges. I know from friends that this is true at MIT, Harvard, CalTech, Stanford, Brown, Cornell, etc. </p>
<p>However, most individuals at these universities can handle it and even thrive under the pressure. It’s important to keep in mind the element of depression. If an individual is suffering from depression, this kind of pressure can be debilitating. In fact, any sort of stressor can be debilitating when one is depressed. I’m a pretty motivated person, and I’m stressed, though not overwhelmed by the work at my university. </p>
<p>However, I can’t imagine being able to handle it if I were depressed. I’ve experienced medication-induced depression that lifted the moment I stopped taking it (hello, birth control from hell), and I remember during that brief time feelings of hopelessness, and how with every minor setback I felt like it was the end of the world, the end of my future, and how everything was ruined. Interestingly enough the moment I stopped taking the medication, the world seemed cheery again, I was full of optimism for the future, and setbacks on an even larger scale didn’t bother me or faze me. In my natural state, my work load is manageable. With depression, I could barely handle it. </p>
<p>When looking at the national rates of suicide in our age group, the suicide rate of individuals in college is actually <em>lower</em> than those out of college. --There are immense pressures out in the ‘real world’ as well. College has stress of a different nature. </p>
<p>The stress of Cornell or any intense university mixed in with untreated depression is a horrible concoction and efforts should be made to identify and help these individuals. </p>
<p>Re Cardinal Fang: Going off to Cornell while battling depression and an eating disorder sounds like a terrible idea.</p>
<p>One of the things my son considered hugely when looking at colleges was the degree of competition among students or more to the point, unhealthy competition. There are a lot of really rigorous schools that don’t put so much pressure on students to compete directly against one another and that practice a more cooperative learning environment. Yes, there are weeder courses and yes, I imagine there is competition to do well for doing well’s sake, but there were schools we visited where it was clear there were mad dashes to the library to hog research, a lack of sharing/comparing notes between classmates or conducting study groups. He just felt there was a better sense of community and certainly trust at some schools, especially when you can turn to your lab partner and know he isn’t out to sabotage you. It would be really hard for me personally to attend a school where I felt I had to worry about not only meeting my own high standards, but to worry about who might be trying to take me down a peg. I would get lonely really quickly. Is it paranoia if people really ARE out to get you?</p>
<p>I don’t see what would be so unique about Cornell in this regard, though. Workwise, is it REALLY that different from any other top tier school?</p>
<p>I don’t see how Cornell could be that different wrt work-load. At Rice my daughter said it was the pre-med students who exhibited incredible stress and were always freaking out. She thought the rest of Rice was pretty “chill”.</p>
<p>I agree, Pizzagirl. I don’t think it is really all that different. But sadly, the gorges seem to call out a little louder than perhaps what exists on other campuses and too, I really liked the piece in the Cornell Sun today that suggested that there needs to be more proactive and less reactive initiatives in place for students. If the sense of student competition is fiercer than normal (although, define normal please), who does a kid turn to really in that situation? </p>
<p>Son applied to Johns Hopkins. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why beyond the academic merit of it’s BME program. From everything I read and saw on blogs, etc… it is fiercely competitive among students. He didn’t end up there, but then he told me about his leaving his bio notes in the library two days before the exam and how it was returned to him, I can only think of what would have happened had he left those notes in JHU library. He would have been severely tested and who would have cared?</p>
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<p>You don’t know that. You are making assumptions without any facts. It’s the most rediculous generalization I have ever read.</p>
<p>It just so happens that my nephew is at JHU, and he is the most chill person I know. But he is just one student at JHU. Are all students at JHU chill? I don’t know.</p>
<p>If the gorges called out a little louder than perhaps what exists at other campuses then the long-term suicide rate would be higher than what exists at other campuses. But it isn’t. Though this group of cluster suicides will certainly elevate that average a bit.</p>
<p>FWIW during my years at Cornell I did not experience competition in the sense of “mad dashes to the library to hog research, a lack of sharing/comparing notes between classmates or conducting study groups.”
I did have a heck of a lot of work though, and found out that actually I was not the lord’s gift to science after all. I wish I came in with the study/ work habits I finally figured out there in the end. But these probably served me well afterwards.</p>
<p>I agree that there is no real historical data that suggested the Gorges are an attraction to suicide. That said, I do believe there are very real attitudes ingrained in various colleges regarding how students interact, degree of competitiveness etc. and how that manifests itself throughout the campus. It’s easy for parents and students to “dismiss” those types of attributes when for some students it might be a very negative attribute once in that environment. Also too, some majors universally lend themselves to group activity and comradery while other majors lend themselves to very solitary pursuit and other majors can be quite competitive (arts/communications, etc.). To me, this is why it is important to let our kids find their own path and not to “push” kids to a particular college or a particular major. We are not our children and what works for us might be an oppressive major or environment to them.</p>
<p>I wonder if the subtle pressure we as parents put on our kids to attend the highest usnews ranked school our kids get into regardless of whether or not it is a good, comfortable fit for our kid contributes to the problem. I saw alot of highly ranked schools that I was convinced my kid would have been miserable at.</p>
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<p>Really? It’s the MOST ridiculous generalization EVER? Wow… you must not read as much as me. 
(mostly just teasing you there but your reaction was a tad on the strong side). What I said was, I can only think what would have happened. Not that it would have or wouldn’t have happened. And frankly, it certainly could have happened where he is! But it didn’t. Still…I have definitely heard enough stories of notes disappearing while kids were IN the library at JHU and, for that matter Georgetown, let alone having forgotten them there that yes, it occurred to me. Talk about needing to chill a bit? If you are suggesting that there aren’t some schools that create more cut throat competition amid students than others is just plain wrong.</p>
<p>Edit: cross posted with momofthreeboys and sm74 who said what I was trying to say far more eloquently. And to be equally fair… some kids thrive amid cut throat competition. Mine just isn’t one of them.</p>
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<p>Yes.</p>
<p>But not just Cornell. I think that any large university may be a difficult environment for such a student. Large universities that are academically rigorous (such as Cornell) and those where many students live off-campus (such as Cornell) may be particularly challenging.</p>
<p>It’s easy to get lost in the crowd at a large university. Changes in behavior may not be noticed. Help will not seek out the student; the student has to seek help. Academic rigor may add to the pressure that students experience, and those who live off campus lack the support of residence hall staff (RAs and Residence Hall Directors). This may not be a good situation for a student who is at risk for recurrence of depression. Such a student may be better off at a smaller college, where signs of trouble such as absence from class or failure to turn in assignments would be noticed, or close to home, where family members might have frequent opportunities to observe the student’s behavior.</p>
<p>Re: post #69</p>
<p>I don’t want to bash Cornell and I really don’t have enough familiarity with it to comment on its strengths and weaknesses in the first place. However, I think it’s just plain silly to say that all top schools are equivlent in terms of the amounts of stress their students are under, the perceived degree of competition, and the extent to which there is a cut throat atmosphere. </p>
<p>While the book is old now, Green’s “The Select” or “Inside America’s Too Colleges” (same book, different edition) surveyed students at a group of top private and public colleges. One question he asked was “Do you consider your classmates cut throat?” If my memory is correct, about 40% of JHU students said yes. While that was still a minority of students, it was the highest percentage of all the colleges surveyed. Zero per cent of Wesleyan students said yes. One-half of one per cent of Brown students said yes. I think that means there really IS a difference between the atmosphere at JHU vs. Wesleyan or Brown. </p>
<p>Again, the book is pretty old now, but I think that college atmospheres evolve slowly. </p>
<p>To me, saying that the atomosphere at all elite colleges is the same is about as accurate as saying there’s no difference in drinking habits among colleges. Sure, over all, there are sober kids at all colleges and binge drinking at all colleges, but the “mix” differs. And while there are kids who freak out because of academic pressures at all top colleges and “chill” students at all top colleges, there ARE real differences too. </p>
<p>Again, I don’t claim to know enough to Cornell to comment on its atmosphere…just the idea that the elites are all the same in this respect.</p>