Anyone read it? Love to hear opinions as it pertains to BS and beyond.
Used the search and found lots of previous discussions for you to peruse while you wait for BS specific answers.
Center,
It didn’t ring a bell, so I googled a 2014 review in the NY Times, Reading the review, it seemed really familiar. Then I realized I had read the same quotes not so long ago from an article in the New Republic. You may want to look at that piece, since it was quite long, and the NYT reviewer felt that the actual book was padded anyway. I saw no points raised in the book review that I’d not read in the article, fwiw.
I think it is worth being mindful of the points made. But the issue is whether education should be primarily vocational or if it serves some higher purpose. In the US, for the last few generations, education has been a means of upward mobility. Prior to that it was more akin to a past time for the moneyed class. If education is a means of upward mobility (or a means to stave of downward mobility), who can blame kids for studying finance instead of poetry? Degrees in non-vocational fields are luxury goods few can afford.
Moreover, rising income inequality has made the implied cost of NOT following the bucks far more expensive. Maybe for my grandparents, being a school teacher would have meant making only 1/3rd of what a banker made. Today, it might mean earning <1/50th. And then they won’t earn enough to pay for THEIR kids’ BS and college.
One line from the article that I did not see in the review, that has bothered me. In the NR article the author says something about parents “feeding their kids into the maw of the admissions machine”. Ouch, that hurt. And he is right. But I don’t know the answer. One thing I always tell my kids is that, the less they value material goods, the more freedom they will have in their lives. I say that. I do not model it. You know then how that works!
Funny, we spend all our energy and time on M10. So we get great results on M10, revel in in for about 30 days, and then start to question just what we are pursuing and why! Human nature!
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I read it and author just came to speak at my kids day school. I think he is likely a big believer of boarding schools as students develop greater independence and parents are not around hovering. I also think boarding school students have a much broader and holistic view over the college precess than students living in affluent cities.
You can get the sense of the book by reading the first 60 pages or so, but it does a great job of explaining first how the system got to be the way it is (focus on scores, ECs, etc.) But one of the key points is that what kids get good at is “winning” competitions that involve high selectivity. So you get yourself into Exeter (for example), figure out how the game is played and get yourself into Yale. The high selectivity exit there is consulting, so that’s what you try to do. To win, you avoid taking risks. (Just read the “OMG, I just got a B+ and will never get into the school of my choice” posts on CC, and you get a sense of that!) While you feel like Yale may give you more options in life, it’s an environment in which your self-worth is defined by winning these competitions of selectivity, so you also eliminate possibilities. (As an example, he says, “who goes to Yale to become a social worker?”)
Sending your child to BS may get YOU (as the parent driving this) out of the picture, but that environment is likely to be filled with excellent sheep.
I found myself agreeing with a lot of this – recognizing more than a little wooliness on me and many of my friends – but also realizing that there are real, practical implications to not doing so well, especially if means are an issue (which they are for many.)
Envious, @karen0 , that you got to hear him. The pressure to be a certain kind of applicant (for college, grad school, job) robs young people of the chance to find their authentic selves, and the long term impact of that cannot be good for them or those around them. Totally recommend the book, especially if you have a high-achieving kid. Even without your help, he/she may find the herd, and this is an interesting perspective to be aware of.
“As an example, he says, “who goes to Yale to become a social worker?””
We see that expressed here. I’m not going to pay my kid to go to a private BS or college, to not get into an Ivy or to be a teacher, etc…
Well, not all kids at BS are excellent sheep. Mine aren’t especially one of them. Wouldn’t study a lick for SATs, for example, because of zero interest in packaging oneself for college admissions. I can’t even imagine either one wanting to work in consulting or anything close to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both follow an entrepreneurial route. I would describe them as authentic people but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy to guide them along the way. And I do sometimes worry about the real, practical implications as mentioned by @gardenstategal. 
Sounds to me that the people who might best benefit from reading the book might not even see themselves or their children in it, as they are so wrapped up being “excellent sheep” themselves.
The majority of the population are “sheep”, if “sheep” means they conform to expectations of people around them including parents, teachers, family and friends, and they choose a low risk life style instead of pursuing their dreams or a high order ideal at all cost. The current social structure needs such a mojority to operate. Sheep is not an elite college thing. “Excellent” sheep may be. It is a fair point to say that elite college should produce more out of box thinkers, more scholars and more high impact figures in areas other than business, but it’s misleading to portray elite colleges as THE place and the cause of excellent sheep. If you have worked in corporate America recently, you’d know that they need a LOT of excellent sheep. Elite colleges have always been the place to educate the more affluent and to enhance or otherwise raise their " clients" social and economic status. It so happens that in our times, “excellent sheep” is what the “elite society” is demanding. Nonetheless, there are still those who don’t comply. Technically even from the most elite colleges, graduates going into finance and management consulting are the minority. Then of course, many others want to but cannot get in elite college or elite industry, which doesn’t make them any less “sheep”. So we should look at this phenomenon in a bigger context instead of blaming elite colleges as the author does.
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@panpacific agreed. We are a sheep society. Who but the well off who won’t graduate with mountains of debt and an elite education can afford to do something for intellectual stimulation or good of society. Who but the wealthy can afford to go “against the grain”? If you are not wealthy by birth why shouldnt you want more financial means aka stability and safety? I find it as hypocritical as the notion that kids need to have done community servicesand volunteer work to look well rounded for BS or college apps? What about kids who need jobs to earn money and don’t have the luxury of volunteering? There is a huge inherent elitism in the authors arguments, even while many are valid on their face.
" hypocritical as the notion that kids need to have done community servicesand volunteer work to look well rounded for BS or college apps" – there is nothing that bothers me more on college applications than this!
Our family believes in community service. My wife and I volunteer in a lot of different capacities and have “encourage” our children to do also. But I absolutely loathe having that information on a college app. It should be like religion best kept to yourself
Interesting thread. Doesn’t the author put prep schools in the same category as Ivy league? If you have a wool coat on, are you a sheep or just very warm?
I don’t think the author blames the schools, and at a level, it’s more a reflection on what the process is doing to kids. He points out is that roughly 25% of the kids at Yale are being treated for anxiety and/or depression. (I have heard similar numbers from faculty friends at top BS, btw.) This can’t be good! He also notes that almost none of the kids starting at Yale said they wanted to be consultants when they graduated, yet by senior year, something like 40% of them want those jobs! Yale isn’t telling them that – their peer group is!
He suggests that for many kids, avoiding schools that are filled with kids who were in the top 10% of their high school classes would be a good thing – maybe the treadmill would move a little less swiftly and/or they’d realize that what they see as failure in fact is not so horrible. In his case, failure is taking a class outside your comfort zone out of curiosity and not doing well in it. Not sleeping in the gutter.
I suspect that one of the challenges for the kids at top schools is that to get in, they’ve done EVERYTHING well, which means that it may not be so easy to decide what to pursue. If you’re that kid who has always had a knack for one thing and has not particularly excelled at the others, the way forward is much clearer. For a kid who’s multi-talented and who’s gotten a lot of positive reinforcement for being in the 5% who get into that highly selective school, for example, being the 5% (the outcome) may be more exciting than what’s involved in getting there (journey).
@laenen, I am someone who fundamentally agrees with his thesis, yet wanted my kid to be with a more ambitious herd so moved him to a prep school, so yeah, I’m guilty as charged! What to do isn’t clear. You want your kid to have options, but to do so, you may be putting him/her into a situation in which you’re setting him/her up so that it’s difficult to pursue other, more suitable options for them. I think this is a great read, though, because awareness may be a huge step toward finding the right balance for you and your kid.
Someone already provided links to some early discussions about this book on CC. Here are a couple on Parents Forum of college side. We are “reinventing the wheels” so to speak…
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1676656-new-book-excellent-sheep-the-lower-ambitions-of-higher-education.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1682659-kids-who-sound-good-on-paper-but.html
@gardenstategal I was speaking to a counselor at one of the top BS who said that they employed three counselors and that they were all busy and that many of the students were familiar with therapy prior to attending. The same counselor was critical of another school of lesser pedigree for only having one counselor. It occurred to me that maybe the students at the less competitive school had fewer anxieties and thus there just wasn’t the same demand.