<p>Let's also remember that other emotional qualities, such as sensitivity and compassion (as evinced by essays or community service,) are also assessed, and nobody freaks out over that.</p>
<p>Given the MIT environment, it would be irresponsible for them NOT to consider the effect of that environment on each student they admit. I hope Caltech does the same thing.</p>
<p>I would not lump Caltech and MIT in with "the Ivies". If you go to CIT or MIT, you should expect your work to overwhelm your life. That level of intensity is available at the Ivies for those who seek it, but it is hardly the normative experience. For most students, the Ivies are a regular college environment, with football games, lots of extracurriculars, parties, etc. Hard work and smart classmates to be sure, but not "boot camp for your brain" unless you want it that way.</p>
<p>By the way, medication and illness histories are private, and the only person who can tell the schools about it are the applicants. I agree that they should not do this. Not only likely bad as an admissions strategy, but more importantly, it is none of their business. There are elaborate protections for your medical records, but if you send private information to the college in your application, that privacy evaporates.</p>
<p>im actually giving a presentation on this very subject at a conference next week. my thoughts: there is a horrible stigma to depression. most people think that its something you should be able to just snap out of. therefore, the one suffering is usually very reluctant and embarrassed to get help and/or meds. people dont realize how common, how pervasive, and how debilitating that depression can be.
colleges make a huge deal about drugs/alcohol prevention and treatment during orientation, yet most completely ignore mental illness.</p>
<p>I think that some of the blame falls on the parents of students with stress related mental health problems and the ways in which we are encouraged to raise our children from Mozart in the womb to summer enrichment programs. For too many, our children are unable to be just kids and left on their own imaginations and devices, ie normal child development.</p>
<p>Does anyone think the positive self-esteem movement does our children any good in the long run??</p>
<p>Does anyone think that participation in adult supervised sports programs is preferrable to a pick-up baseball or street hockey game??</p>
<p>Does anyone think that the serial dance practice-music lesson-sport camp-soccer practice lifestyle is a normal one and preferrable to playing in the park with friends??</p>
<p>Does anyone think that summer enrichment programs year after year are preferrable to a job lifeguarding at the lake and games of beach volleyball??</p>
<p>Does anyone really believe that students filling their free time with activities which will look good to adcoms is preferrable to "merely" hanging out with friends and joking around after school??</p>
<p>Does anyone think that stressing out over SAT test scores and feeling a need to devote hours and money to test prep courses is preferrable to spending a few hours in self-prep and letting the chips fall where they may based on their natural ability??</p>
<p>Does anyone think that a hs schedule chocked full of AP and honors classes, the pressure to get straight A's and the 6 hours of homework a nite is preferrable to a more "normal" schedule of 2 or 3 AP/honors classes and a study hall to get some homework done??</p>
<p>How would we adults fare if we were required to work from 8am to 11pm 9 months a year?? Well that is what some of our CHILDREN feel they must do to get into that dream college!!</p>
<p>No, many of our children have anything approaching a normal childhood. And yet we wring our hands at the problems they encounter when the are left to their own devices. And even then their parents are hovering about via cell phone, IM and text messaging.</p>
<p>The elite colleges are implicit in this by expecting hyper-achieving students as the norm. But they are the norm in quite an abnormal sense. They are the outlyers and the question is what psychological damage was incurred in getting there. If the concern of Harvard and MIT are valid indicators, I surmise that the answer is quite a bit.</p>
<p>"I would not lump Caltech and MIT in with "the Ivies". "</p>
<p>The pressure to <strong>get in</strong> to an MIT or an Ivy is the same. The need for perfection doesn't go down if you decide to skip MIT and just shoot for Harvard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
colleges make a huge deal about drugs/alcohol prevention and treatment during orientation, yet most completely ignore mental illness.
[/quote]
Yes, they make a huge deal about it, but they don't weed out applicants on the basis of their being involved in drugs and alcohol in high school unless perhaps the student has gotten into legal trouble as a result. I do not understand weeding out on the basis of one and just "looking the other way" on the basis of the other. Both can lead to problems down the line, but perhaps it is more of a liability issue with the mental illness. ~berurah</p>
<p>Lack of knowledge and stigma. Many kids come to college with impaired psychological development and skill. Disruptive home life, histories of neglect and abuse........these are all contributing factors for mental heath problems. It seems clear to me that kids arrive at college impaired, don't know that they are impaired and thus don't identify the depression/anxiety for a long time. Change of circumstance & environment are stressful for healthy folks and also for susceptible ones. Many kids don't have the support they need.....parents think that the kids are adults now and thus don't want to hear the bad stuff. Many parents only want to hear the happy, successful, life is good report.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone think the positive self-esteem movement does our children any good in the long run??
[/quote]
Actually, NO.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone think that participation in adult supervised sports programs is preferrable to a pick-up baseball or street hockey game??
[/quote]
In many, many cases, I think it is LESS preferable.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone think that the serial dance practice-music lesson-sport camp-soccer practice lifestyle is a normal one and preferrable to playing in the park with friends??
[/quote]
No, and "luckily" we can't afford that for six kids! :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone think that summer enrichment programs year after year are preferrable to a job lifeguarding at the lake and games of beach volleyball??
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Nope, and we couldn't afford that either, though looking at the glossy brochures was both fun and motivating to my son.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone really believe that students filling their free time with activities which will look good to adcoms is preferrable to "merely" hanging out with friends and joking around after school??
[/quote]
We live in Kansas. We didn't know what an "adcom" was until I posted on CC at the beginning of my son's senior year. <em>lol</em></p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone think that stressing out over SAT test scores and feeling a need to devote hours and money to test prep courses is preferrable to spending a few hours in self-prep and letting the chips fall where they may based on their natural ability??
[/quote]
No test prep here, though my son does wish now that he hadn't walked into the PSAT completely sight unseen, as he missed the NMSF cutoff by two points <em>lol</em></p>
<p>
[quote]
Does anyone think that a hs schedule chocked full of AP and honors classes, the pressure to get straight A's and the 6 hours of homework a nite is preferrable to a more "normal" schedule of 2 or 3 AP/honors classes and a study hall to get some homework done??
[/quote]
Not if it requires the sacrifice of a "normal" life, which it didn't for my oldest, but would for probably the rest of mine.</p>
<p>
[quote]
How would we adults fare if we were required to work from 8am to 11pm 9 months a year?? Well that is what some of our CHILDREN feel they must do to get into that dream college!!
[/quote]
Really turns a "dream" college into a "nightmare" college, doesn't it??</p>
<p>
[quote]
No, many of our children have anything approaching a normal childhood. And yet we wring our hands at the problems they encounter when the are left to their own devices. And even then their parents are hovering about via cell phone, IM and text messaging.
[/quote]
ITA</p>
<p>Could it possibly be that my son did it on his own with just his natural interests/abilities successfully highlighted on his college apps. and some nice essays and letters of recommendation? Wow....</p>
<p>Good points, originaloog</p>
<p>
[quote]
It seems clear to me that kids arrive at college impaired, don't know that they are impaired and thus don't identify the depression/anxiety for a long time.
[/quote]
<em>Excellent</em> point! I had NO idea how very dysfunctional my own birth family was until I emerged from the "family system". I didn't know WHAT had hit me when I became seriously depressed my freshman year of college. Of course, back then, NO ONE talked about depression...I don't think I'd ever heard the term in its clinical sense.
~berurah</p>
<p>Yep Berurah, that it what our job is as parents, to allow our children to do it on their own according to their natural abilities and interests. And of course some will be what I describe as hyper-achievers totally on their own, which is fine. Based on your prior posts, I would put your son in that category and I am certain he will do exceedingly well at Duke and totally enjoy himself in the process.</p>
<p>I think that your story is very common. Kids leave a system that caused damage.......ie retarded development/lack of responsibillity.....the list is long. Kids don't even know what normal is. Kids are lost and without a resource. I personally think every student needs to locate the mental health center on campus and walk in......get that part out of the way. When/IF a need arises you will know just where to go. Also send your kid a hotline....there are many. Free and someone to talk to for sorting out the first desperate problems. Most newby kids don't want to share their weaknesses w/ kids they don't know well OR kids they know well from home.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yep Berurah, that it what our job is as parents, to allow our children to do it on their own according to their natural abilities and interests. And of course some will be what I describe as hyper-achievers totally on their own, which is fine. Based on your prior posts, I would put your son in that category and I am certain he will do exceedingly well at Duke and totally enjoy himself in the process.
[/quote]
I am in total agreement with you, originaloog. And I appreciate the kind words about my son...so far, so good at Duke. He is doing very well academically and seems to be enjoying himself a great deal!</p>
<p>
[quote]
I personally think every student needs to locate the mental health center on campus and walk in......get that part out of the way. When/IF a need arises you will know just where to go. Also send your kid a hotline....there are many. Free and someone to talk to for sorting out the first desperate problems. Most newby kids don't want to share their weaknesses w/ kids they don't know well OR kids they know well from home.
[/quote]
hazmat, I wish every student felt the way you do about this...you are very astute! </p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Originaloog, I couldn't agree with you more. </p>
<p>I don't like this idea of "packaging" children for college adcoms and signing their childhoods away to a multitude of programmed activities that may or may not speak to anything inside their heads or hearts. Many don't have enough time left in their days to even look inside their heads and hearts to see what's there.</p>
<p>My oldest steadfastly refused to subscribe to this. He pursued what interested him and ignored everything else. His dream school was Stanford and I worried that his relatively short list of EC's would stand between him and his dream. After hassling him one time too many, he told me to knock it off once and for all. He said if what Stanford <em>really</em> wanted was a group of people who spent thousands of busy beaver hours being busy little beavers, then he won't get into Stanford and that will be fine with him because he did not want to spend four years living with 5,000 busy beavers. He did get in, he made lots of friends--none of whom were busy beavers but all of whom had at least one true passion--graduated, and still teases me about hassling him to dig latrines in Honduras in the summer.</p>
<p>originaloog--couldn't have said it any better. While doing well and getting into good schools is a laudable goal, many parents are way too restricted in their views of what constitutes a good, or even acceptable, college, and, as a result, steer kids into the cycle of which you speak. There are hundreds of good colleges in this country, public and private, large state university and small LAC--the notion that really bright kids must go to "very selective" schools is one that sometimes fits the parents' need for ego gratification more than it fits the kids' needs. As an example, I live in Illinois, and kids can pretty much be sure of whether they will get into UIUC or not based on grades and tests--why this makes UIUC (or numerous other schools with rigidly defined admission criteria) a less "desirable" school than another escapes me. For some kids, it's not right; for others it is. </p>
<p>My kids seem to be leading normal lives, even in a suburb where the streses you talk about are very prevelant. They're also doing well in school. Both matter, but given a choice, the first matters more.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The number of college students who said they had ever received a diagnosis of depression has increased by 4.6 percentage points over the last four years, according to a survey released last month by the American College Health Association.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Chronicle of Higher Education December 10, 2004 citing the American College Health Association. Highlights of their report can be found at: <a href="http://www.acha.org/projects_programs/assessment.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.acha.org/projects_programs/assessment.cfm</a>.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The good news is that the most common problems students experience -- depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, sleep disorders, and difficulties in relationships -- are all treatable.</p>
<p>The bad news is that many students don't recognize that they have problems, don't seek help, and end up falling between the cracks. They consider what they are experiencing a weakness and don't realize that they can't just will themselves to be better, any more than diabetics can will themselves to produce more insulin.</p>
<p>The ugly news is that a significant number of colleges and universities don't feel that fostering the emotional development and well-being of their students is part of their mission. As a result, responses to common problems like substance abuse, eating concerns, and depression vary widely. And many institutions have not increased their counseling staffs to cope with rising student needs.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Article from the Chronicle, December 10 by Richard D. Kadison, chief of mental health at Harvard University Health Services. He and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo are the authors of College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What to Do About It (Jossey-Bass, 2
004).</p>
<p>(This is a bit off the depression topic, so please feel free to ignore this post as an aside...)</p>
<p>I feel as if I should mention a possibly small class of "over-achievers" here: those who are truly driven and who ask for activities and challenges that aren't available in lifeguarding and games of beach volleyball.</p>
<p>I watched such a kid grow up under my eyes. He wanted to soak up everything he could learn from life, and more. He would clamor to go to a 3-week summer class so he could learn more about some aspect of math or physics than he'd been able to get from any books we could find. He took 12 AP courses (and half a dozen post-AP courses) in HS because he was bored otherwise: these were the classes where he felt challenged and educated. (He declined a teacher's strong recommendation to take AP Chemistry because he wasn't that interested in the subject.) And although I'd started dropping him off at what became his community service project on Sat. mornings at age 13 because I felt he needed to learn what it was like to give back to others, in the last few years he was devoting over 20 hours a week (and 40 in the summer) to what he considered "his" project, because he saw the impact it had. He'd made a commitment and was dedicated to the people and the work being done. He didn't do any of these things so they would look good on college applications (although we're not stupid and could not ignore the fact that they couldn't have looked <em>bad</em>). He did them because of the young person he is and the young man he is becoming. I just watched and stood aside and enabled him to launch himself forward where he wanted to go, offering guidance if it seemed he was asking too much of himself at times. Although I'm sure most of you would think of him as an over-achiever, he actually led an otherwise pretty normal teen life (going on hikes with friends, playing pool, doing robotics, taking photographs, listening to music...)</p>
<p>There <em>are</em> other students like him: I know several. Assuming that every "over-achiever" is doing it for some ulterior purpose like college apps would not be doing justice to their commitment and drive. Of course, time will tell whether they feel it was worth it in the long run. It's as 1Down2togo said, what matters is what's inside their heads and hearts. If there's really so much there trying to get out, it would be a shame not to enable it, if possible, regardless of how it looks to the rest of the world.</p>
<p><steps off="" soapbox=""></steps></p>
<p>Agree orig...
Nevermind college, mine almost didn't get into private school kindergarten because they hadn't been to pre-school. I let them hang out with two elderly Chinese people instead.</p>
<p>Then, the kindergarten teachers weren't happy because the elderly Chinese man carried the boys to school on his shoulders, covered by an umbrella. I never asked him to do that. He took it upon himself.</p>
<p>Then the teachers weren't happy because the elderly Chinese man would sit down next to the boys in the mornings, along with the other parents--but he would 'correct' their 'Whole Language' writings. The teachers wanted me to stop him from telling the boys that a backwards "k" was not correct.</p>
<p>This man literally walked across China trying to escape the Japanese. I told them if they wanted him to stop, they would have to try to explain Whole Language to him. Idiots. They actually tried to explain it to him. He carried on with his correcting. "I come from 5000 years of Chinese history! This is a baby country! Those teachers are crazy!" ;)</p>
<p>Early success is completely overrated. That's been my observation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There <em>are</em> other students like him
[/quote]
mootmom~</p>
<p>I know! I HAVE one...but only one out of six. I think the thing that originaloog was trying to say was that whereas these kids DO exist and would function the way they do, pressure or no pressure, there is an increasing effort to, for lack of a better word, "artificially" produce these kids by micromanagement of just the right activities/sports/ECs by ambitious parents. THAT type of "pushing" is what can prove to be emotionally damaging. If anything, I have only tried to talk my son OUT of extra classes, ECs, etc. that he CHOSE to do. It never worked, but I tried because it was important to me that he have the time to "just be kid". Luckily, he always managed to do both and in very good style. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I let them hang out with two elderly Chinese people instead.
[/quote]
Dang, I WISH my kids had been able to receive the education that your sons did!!!!!!!! Lucky them! <em>I</em> got to hang out with two elderly Cajun people when I was very young, and that may have been what saved my psyche in the face of my dysfunctional family....~berurah</p>
<p>I find Ms. Jones highly hypocritical. She expects perfect students yet with the struggle for perfection comes stress. Just from psych 101 we know that extreme stress triggers mental disorders and the most prevalent is depression. This woman needs to do some major work with her counseling staff not reject students at any sign of failure.</p>
<p>I'd suggest you get to know a lot more about Marilee Jones and her counseling and admissions staff before making statements like the above.</p>