One of my bicycle racing friends used to say: “Some people like to win. Some people hate to lose.”
The latter is more about perceived personal failure. It’s powered by fear, not joy. It can be driven by over self consciousness…if I don’t win, people will think I’m bad. It’s different than a healthy competitive drive to win.
Cue me thinking that why do we allow our kids to work themselves up to the point of mental illness to attempt “perfection” only to be have a 95% chance of rejection to elite colleges.
I think we as parents need to do better at focusing on the learning experiences gained along the journey versus some unobtainable single goal.
Luckily, D22’s school only lists GCSE results and predicted A Level grades on students’ transcripts. No internal marks or reports to parents are made available to US universities.
The cost differential is a substantial issue - the default is UK, unless things really go pear shaped on this side or there’s a truly compelling US offer (not just prestige of school but the program she’s interested in).
I agree. We tend to underestimate the importance of good luck in our accomplishments and overestimate bad luck in our failures.
As far as what do we do as parents…I have tried (and keep trying) to push back against the prevailing culture in our community but I feel like a salmon swimming upstream. In her sophomore year, my daughter’s English teacher had one of her old students that was studying at Harvard (she never invited an old student from Chico State or UC Davis BTW) to give her students advice on their high school studies. This young adult told these 14 and 15 year olds to take as many APs as they can and stay up till 2:00-3:00 in the morning studying. It’s doable she said and since she was at Harvard it obviously worked. I bring this up as an example of the culture many of our kids find themselves in. And the kids don’t seem particularly interested in education to me. They are mostly interested in GPA and will fight valiantly for every point on every test and for every grade in their high school career. I can tell you what I do but I don’t think I was successful in countering the culture. I insist on going to concerts, lectures, museums, hikes, on playing board games, on visiting our elderly neighbors, on playing a game of pickup basketball, on taking classes and extracurriculars that have nothing to do with your (perceived) future major and figuring stuff out for one’s self. Basically on doing things that you can’t fit into a college application.
But I think I have made it doubly hard on my kids by prioritizing things that their peers don’t. I guess it’s a tale as old as time…I wish you and your daughter all the best OP!
Thanks for sharing your experience.
It’s been quite a dilemma for us. My wife and I are not the most conformist of people and, until the US-equivalent of 6th grade, enrolled D22 in alternative schools where students are largely free to spend time on whatever strikes their fancy. But then the prospect of secondary school loomed and we had her apply to a range of schools (in terms of academic rigor). To our surprise, D22 got into all of them and, even more surprising, D22’s elementary school teachers supported her attending the most academically rigorous school that admitted her, believing that she would enjoy the intellectual stimulation/challenge.
To make a long story short, D22 has done well in secondary school but, in a sea of so many high-achieving students (some of whom are truly, truly exceptional), her self-confidence has taken a hit. It’s quite sad to see (and, from our vantage point, unexpected). Even though D22 has made great strides academically, expanded her worldview and developed in other ways, we sometimes wonder whether we made a mistake on the choice of school (it is a fabulous school in many ways, but perhaps not such a great fit for D22).
On a lighter note, a couple of years ago, D22’s school invited a couple of alum to speak about careers. One worked at GS and the other was a Guardian journalist. The I-banker was a bit listless and admitted that she was doing it mostly for the money while the journalist talked enthusiastically about stories she worked on, the difference she felt she was making, etc. I think that was quite an eye-opener for D22 and her classmates (given the idolizing of finance in the UK).
Thanks, sincerely, for your concern. We know this is a trying time for a lot of teens and we do have our radar on.
It is interesting to me that the UK is much more focused on academic/intellectual hierarchy compared to the US. In US high schools it seems that the top athletes and class president etc get much more attention relative to the smartest students.
That also appears to continue into US colleges where internships, jobs, sports, ECs etc all seem to attract more attention than your GPA. On the UK side, my brother and SIL still complain 30 years later that they were intellectually overmatched at Cambridge and would have been better off somewhere else. In contrast in the US, S doesn’t even know what his roommate’s GPA is, while we knew exactly who had a first, 2:1 etc and still remember that years later (of course class lists were all posted publicly back then).
Perhaps something to consider in choice of college location.
We DIDN’T obsess over which preschool, etc. We didn’t pressure. We always told our kids knowledge was the most important thing (not grades).
We did expect them to pay attention, do the work (and turn it in) and try their best. But that did not mean BE the best/get straight As, etc.
I have one DC who did place pressure on themself. And I wasn’t quite sure why (maybe just born that way? Must skip a generation though 
). After they graduated from HS, they said they never felt pressure from us, but put it on themself.
I realized that spouse and I weren’t the only ones who had influence over DC (shocker!). It’s all around them. So while we may not have been pressuring, they feel it at school, from others, etc.
I feel like our county public school system has pushed kids where they did not belong so they could boats “X% of 8th graders have successfully passed Algebra 1” (a HS level class). Hey, why don’t we put the kids where they actually belong whether that be on grade level, above, or below. Let’s put them where they belong and give them confidence and knowledge, and not make them feel like idiots because they got a D in a class 2 grade levels above theirs?
That said, we saw parents push the school to put their kid in a class 2 grad levels ahead even when the kids didn’t belong there.
Rant over.
It’s really hard for students at academically selective schools to remember that they are swimming in the deep end of the pool! One of our moves was motivated in part by our desire to get a very able Collegekid out of a school system in which she could (in the US equivalent of G7) slip on through not doing a lick of work, getting top marks and having teachers swoon over what a great student she was. That’s all fine & well- but we knew the blow to confidence that could happen when she actually hit challenging work- which was inevitable. We wanted her to develop the muscles, the resiliency that it takes to keep going past the hard part. So, we put her in a very academic school, where some incredibly supportive teachers pushed her to develop the muscles needed for the upper level work. There was some bruised ego, and there was a bunch of the anxiety you are talking about (not helped by an older sister who headed to Oxford). She did not apply to any tippy top universities b/c she didn’t want head on competition with her classmates. Instead, she landed at a “match” level school, which turned out to be just the right rounding out for her: she met students & faculty that valued learning as a good in and of itself. Although a physics major, she also reveled in classes in Art History, French Cinema, Einstein’s political & social activism, IR of the Third World and much more. Her self-confidence bloomed, she graduated PBK, and got into a top-tier grad school. Although there were tricky moments all the way through- it is gutting to see your objectively able child being so hard on themselves and being so anxious about being “as good as” or “good enough”, it has been wonderful to watch her growing into such a strong, accomplished young woman who is happy in her own skin (well, most days- grad school isn’t a cake walk!). Hang in there, be as patient as you can be. The Dean of Students at the super-academic secondary school had a sign on her desk that said “Be Kinder Than Necessary”. It faced the door so that she- and everybody else who came in the room- couldn’t miss it.
Thanks, @collegemom3717. Really helpful. I think D22 is gradually starting to be at peace with her limits (which I feel is a sign of maturity) and is focusing on schools and programs where a broader set of skills (rather than pure intellectual brilliance) are emphasized.
Our goal all along has been to raise a daughter who is happy in her own skin. Not giving a crap about what others think (or at least having the ability to discern what’s helpful to take in and what to ignore) is such a gift in life.