So you assumed that all of the other parents felt that way? I’m sure there are a good number of parents who might agree with you, but I am not sure where you came up with the “vast vast vast majority” declaration. Projection maybe? Who knows, perhaps you are right.
Well, I do know that a state school like UVa does not have an 80 % admission rate. “I’m sure you know” the admission rates for all applicants , are much less than that, particularly for OOS students. But, it is not elite though, and you seem very intent on going on about “top schools.” Good luck with that in your personal and work life. Lots of students and lots of their parents in many states are happy with their public options. If not, they look elsewhere. It’s a free country.
Nrd most parents do feel that way. I have had four children attend the most elite colleges and have attended numerous parent events. I have probably met 200-300 parents over the years. Never once have I heard a single parent hope their child would end up a HS teacher or any similar job. If your child chooses that then you accept it but why in the world with so many better options would any parent want them to be a HS teacher. An academic, museum curator, work for a non-profit yes but not a HS teacher.
sevmom are you suggesting the admission process to UVA is not extremely competitive? Your post doesn’t make sense. UVA is probably the best public university in the country and is among the most competitive public schools in the country. It is most certainly in the elite column along with UCB and UCLA for public schools.
Oh please! Why is being a museum curator or working for a nonprofit preferable to being a teacher? Why is being an “academic” somehow on a higher plane than being a high school teacher? And before you mention salary, I checked what my daughter’s favorite HS teacher/NU grad made last year. $110.000. She’s 28. I can guarantee she’s not living in her parents’ basement.
Again, I was responding to your post that you edited. UVA admsissions is extremely competitive, both for instate and out of state students. I have no intention of changing my name to Rip Van sevmom or retracting anything I said about the percentage of students and parents engaging in “ferocious competition” for elite schools. The percentage is not large but certainly exists, in some areas more than others.
Glad your four kids ended up at the “most elite colleges.” It must give you great peace of mind.
Ellie yes it is possible in Palo Alto and a few other locations with extremely high costs of living but incomes like that are not common. But she certainly can’t live in PA on 110k. Please tell me the location so the 110k can be put in context. I can assure you if they make 110k the cost of living is extremely high such that the relative purchasing power remains on the low end requiring long commutes.
sev it’s a free country so you can post whatever you like. However you do yourself no favors to claim that anything involving elite admissions is not extremely competitive. It’s hard to believe anyone posting on this site can make such a statement.
Large suburban midwestern school district known for good salaries…and sending lots of kids to NU. 
Ellie please name the town so we can understand the context. That will reveal nothing private.
Ummm, I’d rather not name the specific town or District. It could be any of several similar suburbs of Chicago, like Buffalo Grove, Hoffman Estates, Barrington. (None of those, though.)
Wow, I never said anything revolving around elite admissions is not extremely competitive. It is obvious that it would be extremely competitive.
It remains a very small percentage and Chicago is not a good example since the city and state are broke. Nationwide very few teachers earn 100k. But yes in a few locations the pay can be better.
The Tribune examined salary information for nearly 132,000 full-time Illinois teachers who worked a traditional nine- or 10-month school year in 2008-09. Salaries provided by the Illinois State Board of Education encompass all earnings, including extra stipends for coaching and sponsoring school clubs as well as retirement perks.
Among the findings:
—About 4 percent of teachers statewide earned $100,000 or more — 5,457 teachers — but the vast majority worked in the Chicago suburbs, with heavy concentrations in north Cook, DuPage and Lake counties. In all, 32 Chicago-area districts paid at least 20 percent of their teachers six figures — five times the state average.
—Districts used taxpayer dollars to pay $100,000 salaries even as they struggled with red ink. A third of districts with unusually high concentrations of teachers making six figures — at least 10 percent of teachers — posted operating deficits in 2008-09, according to state financial data.
sevmom then please clarify what you mean when you say only a small percentage of parents and students are engaged in a ferocious competition for admissions to top colleges.
Who cares ? If a kid wants to be a teacher, so be it. It is an honorable profession. I could have seen my younger kid as a teacher before he settled on engineering in college. Teaching AP Physics (which he loved) and coaching boys volleyball (which he loved). Nothing wrong with that if that is what had happened. I could see it in my mind when he struggled some with his direction in high school and would have been very proud if that would have been the kind of thing he settled on.
Right…our state is nothing if not fiscally challenged. And not all teachers are as highly compensated as those in our area. But $110,000 is a living wage in our town, and that’s what she makes. So, again, what’s disappointing in that as an outcome for a graduate of an elite university? (BTW, there are 400 undergraduates in NU’s SESP which includes the secondary teaching program, so obviously there are those at NU who do not see any shame in becoming a high school teacher upon graduation.)
It may surprise you, but the median household income in Palo Alto, CA is $126,771, so $110,000 is within the range of what a large portion of Palo Alto residents live on. (Note: the part of the Stanford campus with the student housing is not in Palo Alto, so the Stanford students are not pulling the median down significantly.)
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/0655282
Elite grads teaching at HS are not unheard of – they do it because they love it. My S has an extraordinary, award-winning teacher who has a Ph D. from Harvard, and next year will have a science teacher with one from Yale. Yes we are lucky in our suburban public HS, but I guarantee you these teachers are there because they want to be doing exactly this. They are highly admired in our community and I bet the ranch their parents (if still living) are rightly proud of them.
I don’t need to clarify it to your satisfaction. It is obvious that most kids these days, as always, are still going to community college and their state schools. Generous need based aid and merit aid has expanded where kids are going, Alot of those kids tend to come from high schools with good guidance or have parents who are savvy enough to look for those kinds of opportunities. Or have parents where money is no object, or the kids have hooks. Same as it ever was.
I can’t speak for @sevmom, but they’re correct on this.
Harvard had 39,041 applicants last year. There were about 3.5 million high school graduates last year. Now, even recognizing that not everybody competing for elite admissions applies to Harvard, hopefully you can agree that even 10 times the number of applicants to Harvard is a pretty small fraction of the total number of high school graduates, @SAY.
This holds even if you argue that we should only include college-bound seniors—yes, that’s a smaller group, but still large, at approximately 2.4 million. Even if 400,000 students are competing for elite admissions—more than ten times the number applying to Harvard, which I will suggest would be quite inflated—that’s only a sixth of the total. (Well, a good bit less than that, actually, when you consider there are a number of non-US applicants, and the populations of high school seniors I’m mentioning here are limited to US students.)