This discussion seems apt to the conversation about using social media to declare that your button is larger than rival buttons.
As a psychiatrist who works with adolescents I am just pleased when the kids have not posted naked pictures of themselves on social media. And yes, some of these exhibitionists attend/will attend elite colleges. Sigh. Their parents would probably love to see pics of their kids in a college t shirt as opposed to what images are sometimes circulated.
@SevenDad - my impression is that the kids who run the table with Ivy admits and get profiled in those articles tend to be recent immigrants, come from disadvantaged backgrounds or have some unique attribute or skill that makes them desirable everywhere. As such, I view their accomplishment as more personal to them and not gained by competing directly against their friends and people who are similarly situated, so the crowing and trophy-hunting don’t bother me so much.
Exactly. The same goes for statements like “kids who have attended elite private schools with the same group of wealthy peers since kindergarten seem unlikely to be chock full of resilience and grit”.
@VickiSoCal - why do you think kids who attend private schools would lack resilience? I’m truly curious. My kids attended what is an elite private around here (not nationally known). Most of the kids have some outside interest, often competitive, where they have learned to fail and move on. Nobody wins all the time. Even champions lose at times. This applies to sports but also to music, theater, and academic competitions.
At my kid’s school, a good proportion of the kids are on free school lunches. ROTC is very active. Most of the kids who have educational plans after school will go to community college. Some of the better ones get a full tuition offer at the local directional state institution. Some few of the kids in the magnet program have family money and will go to a ranked 100-50 institution. The guidance counselor tells me that none of the kids from this school has been accepted to an Ivy in the 12 years she’s worked there.
Mostly because few of them apply to Ivy or similar level schools. There’s a self-defeating mindset.
If my kid is accepted to a top program, you can bet I’m going to advertise it to the people at school, at PTA and boosters meetings and rehearsals. But I’m not going to say anything on social media until the decision is made, because my friend group is largely alumni of the various places my kid is applying, and I don’t want to hurt my friends’ feelings when my kid picks another school over their alma mater. So I have a bit of a different situation from your private school kids.
@porcupine98 The reason I brought up other life events is that if people are trying to dictate which aspects of the college process are acceptable to post about–it is likely that they will feel the same way about other life events on fb as well.
How many pictures of children is it acceptable for someone to post from the lens of someone struggling to conceive? Or to someone who is looking for love, but hasn’t found it yet? At annual birthdays? Every month, posed with a cute number? Or daily, with constant updates with every milestone?
Either you glance at these updates and move on, or you curtail your FB/ social media activity–knowing that you can’t control what others do and you understand that other people won’t/ can’t be mindful of everyone else’s take on what’s acceptable.
isn’t it sad @chzbrgr that your comment is true and for so many exhausting reasons to elaborate on? I’m hoping all kids get an equal chance to receive a quality education. I think it’s Exceptional and exciting to see those “lower class” people tell the world that they were accepted to a nice school. Sometimes it’s all that they have to look forward to 
You can argue that not winning the lacrosse tournament builds resilience but I question whether it is equivalent to actual hardship. (and I am parenting kids more akin to the not as resilient lacrosse kids)
Yes, resilience has absolutely nothing to do with this even though posters keep trying to make it seem like only “snowflakes” would find social media boasting to be off-putting. The members of The Greatest Generation would have called this “blowing your own horn”.
For all the talk about teaching your children “grit” and resilience, no one seems to value teaching them humility and grace which is IMO, sad. I realize that current culture is full of braggadocio about great wealth, having the “best brain” and so forth so those who are so inclined feel liberated to flash every single accomplishment as a signal of how worthy they are as people and parents (and imply that if you don’t it’s because you just aren’t as proud of your children as they are of theirs).
I do hope that the pendulum will begin to swing back the other way, though, and that humility will once again be valued as a sign of true greatness.
I get being proud of one’s kids. I can understand maybe posting a final decision, although I’d argue those closest to you either already know or could be told through other means. Explain to me, however, why that necessitates sharing the blow by blow of the college process on social media? Each acceptance? Tell your kid you are proud of them face to face. Why do folks even feel the need to share with facebook “friends”? Why the need for external validation through “likes”?
I am not on social media. I had a Facebook account for several months a long while back because I thought my kids would get on it and I wanted to understand it. Deleting my account was the happiest day I had on Facebook. Annoying way outweighed the good. Haven’t looked back at all. Kids never got on Facebook back then. I think they both now have accounts though I am not sure how much they actually use them (or any other social media for that matter). And they are adults now so I don’t feel any need to follow/monitor what they are doing.
Unless things have changed (and given human nature hasn’t, I suspect they haven’t), many of the people posting about their kids college process are doing so to brag. Its why a lot of social media exists. Good number of posts here are for the same reasons.
Had I been on social media, I wouldn’t have posted anything about the college process. That is for them not me. I am very proud of my kids but I do not feel a reason to go around telling the world about it. As a general matter, I am against the increased sharing that we see. That you can share something doesn’t mean you should. Doesn’t mean that anyone cares either. Much of our own lives are something that no one else cares about. Nothing wrong with that.
I see a lot of posts with kids wearing their new schools’ sweatshirts as a way of announcing where their child will go to college.
Some people just share a bit of their daily life on Facebook, some don’t. Today I posted about my daughter getting her wisdom teeth out. Every day is going to be different in terms of what the most important thing that happened that day is. Many days it is a picture of my cat.
What I share on social media does not teach my children anything aboit humilty or boastong or whatever because they are not on Facebook in high school nor are their friends.
I’m going to say this one more time because it’s not getting through to some people then I’m out of this thread. My kid’s friends will not be upset by what I post on Facebook because my high schooler and her friends do not see my Facebook!
“This discussion seems apt to the conversation about using social media to declare that your button is larger than rival buttons.”
Agree that posting all the acceptances is a “button” measuring contest.
Agree 100% with @doschicos (#351)
@joblue stated
What your point highlights is the difference between raising good students and raising good people. Good students work hard to win. They focus on their relative position in the class, and revel in making sure others know how successful they are.
Good people work to be more intelligent. They care about others and their emotions, and often go out of their way to hide their successes.
I am unwaveringly proud of my children, and don’t need anyone else’s approval to know they are good people. Some may be unsure, and look for feedback to assess and guide their students. Anyone else who posts is doing so as a way to bask in the reflective glow of anothers accomplishments. Posting when decisions about their children have been made is sharing; listing the options available before decisions are made regarding an issue facing all of their friends and parents is boastful.
Grit and resilience are learned in pre-school and elementary school. Humility and grace are qualities nurtured over time. Kindness is a quality your children observe, and if they aren’t exposed to it they can’t learn to recognize and appreciate it. Adults who never learned expose their limitations through aggression (see: Snowflake). There are millions of justifications for posting college acceptances, but the few good reasons not to remain more valuable…at least to me.
I post the blow by blow because, in my community, the whole college admissions is often either poorly understood and/or treated like a competition, so no one shares any info.
Our large public HS guidance counselors are overworked and, at times, clueless to college admissions beyond our instate choices or some neighboring state’s flagship. Our high school has only had 5 graduated classes and back when my eldest was in the admissions process only 3; our Naviance data is sparse and not particularly accurate. I explained in an earlier post on this thred that a FB post I had made, about one of the schools where my DD was accepted, sparked a friend/parent to look up the school, she had never heard of it, and her DD matriculated. there in 2017. That parent credits that FB post with alerting them to that unknown college.
So yeah, I post the blow by blow; college visits and impressions, admissions deadlines, ACT/SAT test dates (no I don’t post my kids scores but I would be happy to let anyone who asks know what they are), common data set statistics, bumps and brick walls we have faced in the process, information that I have gleened here on CC (probably even some gems that I learned from you!). Friends and family have contacted me for information on the admissions process at times. I once even got a call in the middle of the school day, in class, from one of my kiddos friends who needed help with an admissions question. I will continue to post the blow by blow (acceptances AND rejections), if I can pull back the curtain on this process, even just a little bit, and it is useful to just one person, then you betcha I am gonna keep “boasting”, “basking in the glow of my kid’s accomplishment” and being “crass”.
“I post the blow by blow because, in my community, the whole college admissions is often either poorly understood and/or treated like a competition, so no one shares any info.”
Sorry but I think 1) that is of limited use unless others know the stats, have kids like your kid, etc. and 2) do you really think most people posting are posting for the reasons you state, to be a substitute for the dismal counseling office? I’m not sure I buy that. Kudos to you if you do share the good and the bad but that definitely is not the norm (and I sure hope you have your children’s permission). Do you see that trend among your circle? Sharing of rejections by parents on facebook? At least it isn’t true for the sharers I’ve bumped into on social media (thankfully few). I don’t think you are the norm. If you really want to help your friends/family you can share info one on one with those families that have kids a year or two from the college process. You could point them to CC for info. Or recommend some books.
After an info session at a top 3 LAC my D introduced herself and told the AD what school she goes to. The first words out of the AD’s mouth were “Just know we are aware of how INCREDIBLY hard you all work”.
PS
No Lacrosse at our private!
But Yes - many scholarship and Prep for Prep kids: children of policemen, firemen, building superintendents, teachers, artists!
Your view of private school is really outdated and sounds more like an upper class suburban public high school to me. The difference between (D’s) private school and the suburban public schools in our area is the diversity of types of people. This is because - just like colleges - many private HS’s actively pursue creating a diverse class and have the money to fund students that can’t afford the tuition. Public schools are often much more homogenious because they are based on the local area they pull from, which tends to be uniform in its affluence. However, to be perfectly clear, even if it is a suburban public with those pesky lacrosse teams you cite that you are thinking of the kids work extraordinarily hard to get their grades and scores. The pressure to perform at top standards in these schools is intense and relentless.
and @EyeVeee 1000% agree!
Neither of my sons wanted to post about The List or acceptances on social media and asked us not to do so. Fine with me – I didn’t want the implied humblebrag. Most of my FB friends are not in my community, but in other places I have lived. While we share friendship, we may not share the same priorities or perspectives. I learn from everyone’s POV.
Neither kid publicized his list. Both my kids dropped schools from their lists after getting some of their top choices in EA. Didn’t share that info, either. They didn’t want to imply that those other schools weren’t good enough, esp. since they had friends applying to the same places and who desperately wanted to attend. If it improved the odds by eliminating one applicant from their HS, so much the better. They were both pretty vocal about not collecting acceptances for bragging rights. (They knew kids who did so.) They kept enough schools on their lists so we could compare FA and scholarship offers.
There were some people we told IRL, but not many. Grandparents and my sibs did not know the entire list. I shared here on CC instead. 
My sons discussed things to some degree with their cousins, because said nieces and nephews (and their parents) came to talk to me about selecting schools and the FA process when it was their turn the year after S2 went to college. I was glad to help with that.
S1’s HS STEM program had a bulletin board in the magnet office where the kids posted rejections, which I thought was brilliant. It normalized rejections at the tippy-top schools when you could see that Alex, the Intel finalist, and Chris, with a perfect SAT and 4.0 UW, didn’t get into every school to which they applied.
I went back on my FB history and noticed that I never posted where they decided to attend, though I did have pics of when we moved them into the dorms. That felt less braggy to me and more like a transitional event.
@labegg, right on! And not everyone will be interested in that information, but some will. The rest can pass on by. It’s like anything posted on social media. Not everything is valuable or of interest to all.