<p>I agree with you, Donemom. I just wanted to present a different reason for being negative about dream schools. The more selective the school, the greater the likelihood of disappointment. But it's hard to strike the right balance between finding a school with good fit and having a dream school. It can be just as difficult having a student who has no idea what his/her desiderata in colleges are.</p>
<p>The reason that the "dream school" idea rubs many of us the wrong way is because only a child from an affluent family (or a family that has saved very prudently for college) can harbor such a dream. For the rest of us, the getting in part is not sufficient; it is the financial aid part that is determinitive.</p>
<p>My daughter's first choice was not Barnard. It was NYU. She got in; the gave her zip; she couldn't go. Same story with Chicago - she got in, but they didn't offer her enough money to make it possible for ehr to attend. My son also had a first choiced college that admitted him, but offered no aid, and so he had to turn them down. </p>
<p>If you'll pay close attention, you'll notice that the discussion over the course of the year for parents and students who need financial assistance is very different. You don't see much talk about dream schools -- you see talk about financial aid strategies and applying to multiple schools in order to be able to compare or negotiate aid awards. You see kids turning down spots at Ivies and attending their in state publics or colleges that are safeties for them which have offered substantial merit aid. In the end, the parents often have to make decisions that they know will disappoint their kids -- that is why we work so hard to make sure that our kids do not get too attached to the idea of a school we know we probably won't be able to afford.</p>
<p>
[quote]
There used to be a statement: capitalism= unequal distribution of wealth; communism= equal distribution of poverty. I know which I prefer.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Good poit, Marite. I find both you & calmom come from diffeent points of view on the raising the bar discussion & both make sense. I don't begrudge kids their advantages. In fact, I'll do what I can to provide enrichment activities for mine. And in the case of my science-loving son (only 9), having an engineer dad who builds engines with him, chats about principles of physics on a 9-year old level, watches Discovery Channel with him, and takes him to science museums, he already has a huge advantage before we spend a single penny. You can't provide level playing fields, even if you were seeking to do so. </p>
<p>What my h will NOT do is pave the way for Intel or another science award for my son by spoonfeeding him projects, reasearch, and insights he has gained over a 25 year career. I would find my h negligent if he didn't nuture my son's love of science. Even bring him along to work from time to time or call a contact for a summer job in the future. Explore, encourage, & nuture away. Just don't seek the validation, prestige, and press that Intel type awards bring if the work being honored is not really the child's.</p>
<p>What I find suspicious about the kid in the story is that his board scores were so low for a person who had recieved a major award for a science project. That simply doesn't make sense to me because the people who do well in such projects are extremely bright, and their scores reflect that. It's hard for me to imagine that someone could do on their own such a project and not have very high verbal skills (they'd have to be able to comprehend professional journals in order to do the research) and math skills.</p>
<p>My older S did remarkable things in a field that happens to be my husband and mine. People used to assume that we were forcing him to do those things, but that wasn't true. From the age of 2, the kid was doing things in our field -- indeed he was pushing us to provide him with information and opportunities. The exact aspect of our fields that he was most driven to be involved with was an aspect that I find boring. It ended up that kid was so into this that the family used to take weekend trips to help him get opportunities. Both my younger S and I had no interest in what we ended up doing on those trips.</p>
<p>Anyway, the field related to verbal skills, and S's verbal SAT was a 750, so there was a strong correlation. S also completely on his own got involved in a related field. Husband and I had no idea S was doing this until in Feb. of senior year, he got a call asking him to provide a portfolio of info to a specialized program at a college he'd applied to. To our surprise, S had been spending months combing the internet to learn this skill, and had produced something that was far more than what the college required. He had had no idea that the college would ask for this info. The college accepted him to that program, which is very hard to gain admission to.</p>
<p>Those are the kinds of things that make me think that the young man's father was giving him lots of help. I also am wondering whether the rejections came because of things that didn't jibe in alum interviews.</p>
<p>Calmom:</p>
<p>I don't know how many students have said that they have dreamed since they were little kids of attending Harvard. It's usually Harvard because that't the one school they knew at that age. Nothing wrong with that. Other students have wanted to go to NYU, because the Olsen twins go there, or because it's in NYC and we all know NYC is really hip; and so on and so forth. The only reason to mention that Princeton was his dream school is because he got rejected by P; he got over his disappointment and is now happily looking toward attending Duke. </p>
<p>Many times, I and other posters have pointed to the story of Evil Robot who had a hard time letting go of his dream of attending Yale (to which he was admitted but could not attend because of financial considerations) but was kind enough to post again later to say how happy he was at Vanderbilt. Frankly, I see the Cross story in the same light at Evil Robot's: it's possible to be happy at more than one school in the US.</p>
<p>northstar,</p>
<p>The subject's SAT scores may not be what you think they are. If I recall, the results were from a single sitting. Knowing: (a) how SAT scores rise with repeat takings and (b) the measurement error of the test, his quant and verbal skills can well be competitive with the best. That's why it amazes me that top schools tend to seek the highest scores possible (see the link to Brown, for example, and please don't tell me it's just accidental that the admissions rate for scores 750+ is as high as it is.)</p>
<p>I do fully support the suspicion of unusual parental involvement when one finds a project and patent application in the EXACT same area as the father does work in. To me, that's the sad part. </p>
<p>It is especially sad when I think of the cases I know where kids consciously chose differing career fields in order to avoid competing iwth parents. IMHO, it is mentally healthier to have interests in areas BEYOND the parents. It could be a related field, but the same? The fact that the kid is young is to me no excuse, and leads me to find more fault with the parents.</p>
<p>Yea, flamers, I'm being harsh, critical and acting on limited information. So be it. My experience set causes too many red flags to pop up in situations like this. With Xiggi's contribution (and shame on those that criticize additional information gathering) it starts to smell badly.</p>
<p>Marite, experience has shown that kids are popular at just about any school!</p>
<p>But then again, the bar is low: anything is better than four more years at home with parents.</p>
<p>Stickershock:</p>
<p>I agree with you. But it's not easy to draw a bright line between providing advantages and spoonfeeding. A lot of scientists, including those who do no teaching for a living, are born teachers/demonstrators. And often, it's their kids who are the targets of their urge to communicate.
Yesterday's dinner time conversation started with the unoriginal question:"So what did you do today?" which S took to mean the green light to discuss Bayesian statistics and the Poincare conjecture (it was raining so planned outdoors activities did not pan out).</p>
<p>
Yeppers. That sounds just like my house.;)</p>
<p>NMD:</p>
<p>You mean happy? I agree! And that is one of the points of the story. </p>
<p>I posted earlier that both skepticism and acceptance of the rightness of the award are valid. To me, it's a case of the glass being half full or half empty. Some people prefer to focus on the close connection with the dad's lab and area of expertise, others prefer to see lack of evidence that dad was actually involved. </p>
<p>But I don't buy the idea that we should be upset when very high achievers raise the bar for others. That is a recipe for general mediocrity.</p>
<p>Cur:</p>
<p>Well, we don't have goats or steers, so cannot use them as topics of conversation (I objected to discussing a movie about fried worms at dinner time). I can tell you that there is such a thing as the Poincare conjecture; beyond that, nothing much. I am a captive audience at mealtimes math monologues. But S only needs to have an audience, even one with glazed eyes, to start talking math.</p>
<p>"What I find suspicious about the kid in the story is that his board scores were so low for a person who had recieved a major award for a science project."</p>
<p>Do we actually know what his individual SAT scores were? I work with many engineers / scientists who probably didn't score that well on the verbal section. They are still good scientists and engineers. :)</p>
<p>I also think that I would rather see a kid take the SAT once, and score close to 1400 (?), than for a kid to take the test numerous times and score maybe 100 points higher!</p>
<p>NSM,</p>
<p>It seems like you view a 1380 as an unusually low score yet it is in the 95th percentile. Additionally, we do not understand how the scores were skewed (Math 800, CR 580?). Or whether he had good scores on his AP or SATII tests.</p>
<p>To me it looks like the kid/student had a lot of activities . . . but was not a kid. I suspect his parents may have helped him on his research projects because of the number of activities he listed, which happen to coincide with his parents areas of expertise, not because of his scores.</p>
<p>At the end of the day I am not surprised that he did not get in to Princeton and that he got a scholarship to Duke. As much as we like to think that the process is rational I believe that it isn't always the case. As Curmudgeon has said, he didn't seem to flip the switch with the readers at Princeton.</p>
<p>Calmom, I can understand the reaction you describe in your last post. And you are right, being able to simply worry about the student's merits and not the finances is a luxury that most do not have. But to somehow blame the student who does have that luxury for having that dream and for being disappointed when it doesn't pan out isn't fair either. People respond within the context of their own experience. Someone battling a life threatening disease would understandably feel that any concerns about college admissions
is a total luxury.</p>
<p>
[quote]
he had a staggering record of activities and accomplishments, ranging from fuel cell research, which led to a patent application and a trip to Japan to meet the royal family, to starting a fencing team and also serving as president of the school orchestra and National Honor Society. An Eagle Scout, he was a mentor to special-needs children for six years. He served on the student advisory board to the State Board of Education and later was a student advisory member of the Fairfax County School Board.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Surely, some of his ECs had nothing to do with his parent's area of expertise? And he started tutoring well before high school--and well before students start thinking about resumes.</p>
<p>matite, by mentioning Poincare you just dredged up fond memories. A significant area in my early research involved dynamic fluid flow which brought me face to face with the Poincare map. This brilliant mathematician was the first to understand that in nonlinear, dynamic systems small errors in the initial conditions produce enormous errors in the final condition, with the result that pprediction becomes impossible. It was just this fact that Ed Lorenz accidently stumbled upon many years later in his MIT meterology lab as he was mathematiclly modeling convection rolls in three dimensional space and time.</p>
<p>The logical conclusion? Don't blame the weatherman, blame Poincare's observation!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Yes. Marite. I made the same observation about Jonathan Cross in my one earlier post. He seems like a very able young man aside from the fuel cell work.</p>
<p>Originaloog: We were discussing the Poincare conjecture because it's been in the news lately and S is interested in topology. Did you read that this unemployed mathematician (who lives with his mother) not only turned down job offers at Stanford and other places, but also the Fields medal and the Clay Institute $1 million millennium prize because he feels awards focus too much on the discoverer and not enough on the discovery? </p>
<p>I'll show your post to S, thanks.</p>
<p>I like his EC's. Looking at his record in context I have two areas of concern - the fuel cell research and the 1380. I have discussed those enough.;)</p>
<p>Talking about EC's I'll open myself up for a knock-out blow and tell you that D put down Tutoring, and then further divided it into "Tutoring" and "Tutoring At Risk and Hearing-Impaired" . "Developed Success and Study Plans, implemented the plans with great success with kids at my high school." Sounds pretty fancy and organized, huh? Well guess again. Did we embellish, color, game the EC ? You be the judge. </p>
<p>She in good faith approximated the hours spent doing the tasks. Was it done with a view toward college admissions? Hardly. It only came up when we started trying to put together a brag sheet. </p>
<p>Conversation between me and D after her first draft brag sheet:</p>
<p>Tutoring? What all did that entail? Oh, Mr. Blank (my mentor) asked me to work with Blank and Blank's government provided aide in pre calc and calc ab. What did you do? Well, I'd rewrite my notes every day and meet with them after school give them the notes and teach the aide how to teach Blank and then answer questions. Every day? Yeah, except football game nights. I did it with so and so, too. And what was the at risk thing? Oh, the teachers, coaches, band director, or counselors would just come up to me in the hall and give me a kid who was failing and say, "if she doesn't pass this test, she won't be playing the flute this week at the game." I'd come up with a plan to pass and then we'd work on it and they'd pass. How often did that happen? Oh, maybe 10-15 times. A year. Since 7th grade. Sometimes it would be 3-4 kids at the same time. </p>
<p>Whose kid are you?</p>
<p>EC's don't have to be world class. They don't have to be official. They don't have to come with National Newspaper coverage. They don't even have to be something you know is going on (or so it appears. LOL) . </p>
<p>As I've said many, many times on this board - what the most selective schools are looking for IMO is a kid who "did" rather than thought about it, or prepared to do it. See a problem, fix a problem. </p>
<p>These paid for summer programs are a dime a dozen, but if you have a kid who has stuck their thumb in a leaky dike without a lot of parental involvement, and your kid can be convinced that they should talk about it (not that easy), at some schools you may have an app that is reviewed more favorably than an app full of Intel's and Newspaper Awards. At least that was our experience.</p>
<p>I think the college she ended up at knew who she is, The first official day off after the orientation she spent a little time at the Midtown Outreach Program (Day? ) with some kids in some sort of need and pronounced it "the best two hours of her life".</p>
<p>Marite, yes I did read about G Perelman, though I missed the part about living with his mom!</p>
<p>Also, Stephen Smale won the Fields Medal in 1966 for his work on the generalized Poincare conjecture. What a giant of a mathmaticial he must have been, Poincare that is.</p>
<p>Correction: In my post above I may have erroneously left the impression that I felt intel and Newspaper Awrds were "paid for summer programs". That was not my intent, and not what I believe. I was just trying to say - sometimes in college admissions , the most impressive things can be the simple things. Just like life.</p>
<p>Gosh I hate the time out feature. In addition to sounding illiterate , I never know if my last additions get read . :(</p>
<p>I think the college she's attending knows who she is. The first official day off after the orientation (Saturday) she spent a little time at the Midtown Outreach Program (Day? ) with some kids in some sort of need and pronounced it "the best two hours of her life".</p>