Family Invests $15 k to Try to Position Kid for Harvard

Parent Cafe
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<p>Two counter points, Xiggi, and cptofthehouse made the first one for me.

[quote]
I know many, many kids (and a number of them are at HPY) who would use their gift money to bask on a beach in the Caribbean or some other luxury vacation. Even more will take a trek through Europe. Know one who did go to Thailand but entirely on her schedule. To go somewhere to WORK, is a whole different story to me.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The second is that who is to say, based on this article, that she doesn't do signifcant community service in the area where she lives. It doesn't comment on that in the article.</p>

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<p>"I think my son came across as unique because he HATES community service!"</p>

<p>Hahaha!
My son also hates community service. He thought it would be hypocritical to even list it on his college applications.
He also rejected all my not-too-subtle suggestions about attending a summer academic program - he wanted instead, to pursue his real passions: i.e., going to the beach, camping and chasing girls.<br>
Also, no paid college counselor. (I couldn't afford one, anyhow...)
And no PSAT or SAT prep.
By the way, he just got accepted to Yale, scea.
(and yeah, he is a legacy, has 800+ SAT scores, grew up in Africa and speaks French fluently, etc., in case you wondered.)</p>

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<p>My kid hasn't done community service in a third world country. I am just saying she'd love such an experience. She is now in college and actually would like to build houses in a third world country. She is very interested in other cultures and also in learning about how houses are built first hand (she plans to become an architect). However, we cannot afford to PAY for her to do this (I don't pay for summer activities once in college). I was just saying that some kids truly want to do it for the experience, not to get a leg up to get into college. Like others said, for the same money, they can lay on the beach somewhere. </p>

<p>Also, it is an assumption that a kid who is interested in spending time in a third world country doesn't do community service locally. My kid has and still does community service. Even when she was studying abroad in Italy this past fall, she did some...she chose to as she enjoys those activities. Not everyone does extracurriculars, summer programs, travel, or community service as a leg up to get into something else. Many do these things because they just love doing them. They get something out of the experience for its own sake.</p>

<p>kubacloth...my kids have also never attended summer academic programs and never would have considered attending any, as good as they may be. They wanted their summers to pursue things they enjoy doing outside of academics. I don't frown upon those who really WANT to do academic programs in summer. However, until I found CC, I never realized how many kids did academics in summer and how many felt they needed to in order to get into college. They don't! If they love that sort of thing...great. Otherwise, it is unnecessary.</p>

<p>PS, I didn't see your edit/add before, but growing up in Africa makes your son rather unique! That is cool and he will add to the student body given that background. Also, being over there, I imagine he has seen a lot of places. My Vermont-bred kid loves to travel to other cultures, and that is why she has chosen to do that a few times now. Your son was lucky to have the experience of another culture right along.</p>

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<p>Coronax, please realize I was partially addressing your point that started with "Maybe I'm not cynical enough or not jaded from watching kids twist themselves into something that their not for a college acceptance."</p>

<p>My answer started with, "Doesn't the cynicism come from asking if the community where the student lives is so perfect that there isn't a big need for LOCAL community service?" </p>

<p>FWIW, my comments were generic in nature since we ONLY know what the article says -albeit there is a bit more in the full article, including a comment about flying to Thailand that echoes mine. </p>

<p>Further, my comments are not meant to criticize the student's or her family's decision but to express how the perception of outsiders might be different from the expected "positive positioning" for college admissions. While we will never know the true nature and intent of the planned trip to Thailand, the overall tone of the article intimates that it is part of the student's college application process. </p>

<p>Again, in the end, the presence or lack of supporting activities during the high school years is what will correctly identify the foreign travel.</p>

<p>PS Here's the excerpt from the full article that discusses the trip. I read it after posting my earlier comment.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Find cheaper paths to the same goal</p>

<p>Instead of paying thousands to send your kid to help the poor in Belize, let her serve closer to home at, say, the local children's hospital or soup kitchen. The point, after all, is for your child to do work that is personally meaningful to her, not for her to go on an exotic vacation with a bit of community service thrown in - *and admissions officers know the deal. *</p>

<p>Rachael Goldberg, for example, might be better off saving the $4,500 it will cost her to go to Thailand and focusing instead on the foundation that she's set up with her visually impaired brother Jacob. Called Together We See, it will raise money to help kids accompany a visually impaired sibling to camp.

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<p>"Rachael plans to spend $4,500 of her bat mitzvah money to go to Thailand this summer to perform community service."</p>

<p>I didn't receive 1/2 that amount as wedding gifts. Lets face it, it's easy to say "I want to spend my money to perform community service" when it's apparent there won't be financial difficulties for this student anywhere in the near future. Most kids will work during school and all summer and still not have enough money to cover even their most basic needs.</p>

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<p>Xiggi, I enjoy reading and discussing differing points of view in an nonargumentative manner, so I hope I didn't come across in an rude way and if I did, I'm sorry, it wasn't intentional.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I am just saying she'd love such an experience. She is now in college and actually would like to build houses in a third world country. She is very interested in other cultures...

[/quote]
Soovievt, I really can't think of a single kid to whom this wouldn't apply. It would be a great experience for anyone. But in actuality, the third world village would be much better served if trained, union carpenters were sent over to build houses. It's a nice thought and all, but when I see Jimmy Carter attempting to swing a hammer, I cringe. For these teen trips, it is the American kids who reap the benefit of absorbing another culture. It just seems a bit self-serving to classify the trips as acts of charity.</p>

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<p>Coronax, there was nothing argumentative or rude in your posts. In a public forum, it is not always easy to convey thoughts as one could in a face-to0-face discussion. I hope you understood my post was not meant to be argumentative.</p>

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<p>MomofWildChild and Kubakloth,</p>

<p>My daughter also HATED community service. Did the minimum required by her high school to graduate -40 hours (and always harped about the irony in those "mandatory" volunteer service hours!) She got into Harvard.</p>

<p>I think some people were born to do the work and some were born to write the checks, and I also think that is okay.</p>

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<p>I think it's clear that the article originally posted used "position to get into Harvard" as a figure of speech for "position for college applications", not Harvard specifically. </p>

<p>I have seen well-to-do kids participate in a number of organized Southeast Asia house-building projects. In every case, it was fairly cynical, private-counselor-induced resume buffing. Of course, the kids were all enthusiastic to spend 3-4 weeks in an exotic country without their parents doing something arguably meaningful, and being bright and engaged they got something out of it. But the origin was never the kids' passionate desire to build houses for tsunami victims. It was always someone saying, "Here's a good hook." </p>

<p>Sometimes a little more sophisticated than that. One kid went to Vietnam to build houses as part of a counselor-induced "passion" for learning about the Vietnam War (carefully co-ordinated with his APUSH term paper). It seemed pretty transparent to me, but then I was talking to the parents, not reading his application. (I certainly salute the savvy humanitarians who are making a buck or two out of shepherding rich 17-year-olds through very poor, very rural Asian areas and setting up at least somewhat credible "service" projects there. I'm sure some real economic benefits are accruing to the locals, too, even if it's not from the efforts of kids who have never built anything in their lives before.)</p>

<p>[Edit to make clear that not all building projects are scams. There is a group from a local church and synagogue -- mainly adults, some of them skilled contractors -- who have spent 2-4 weeks every summer for the last five years or so in the South rebuilding burned churches and houses for Katrina victims. They are good at what they do; they are not buffing resumes for anything. Some of them are even teenagers, who have gone along with their fathers or family friends several years running.]</p>

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<p>exactly why i don't want to go to harvard.
how narrow-minded that girl must be!</p>

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<p>StickerShock...my daughter isn't doing it, but I never classified it as charity. I was simply saying she would be interested, if she could afford to do so, but she can't....to build houses in a third world country. It combines two interests of hers. She truly is interested in other cultures and loves traveling to them and experiencing them. Her field is designing buildings and she thinks it would be very interesting to experience building them first hand. True that trained union carpenters would be best to send to such a site, but I'm simply saying she'd get something out of it (if she got to do it) and the locals would be helped as well. I wasn't saying that her pure motivation was charity. It simply is something she'd be interested in doing. If it helps others, all the better. That just isn't her only reason by far. She'd be getting something out of it for herself. It wouldn't be "to get into college" was my point. She is already IN college, LOL. She never picked an activity to get into college. She tends to pick things she is interested in doing for its own sake.</p>

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<p>Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I do wish that the article had left out the "bat mitzvah money". Am I the only one who saw the spectre of "rich Jewish family out to take over the world" type of anti-Semitism possibly being raised here (not necessarily by the author, but by some of the reading public)?</p>

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<p>I know someone who went on a "mission trip". I ask her what they helped build, she answered that they were not allowed to work. To work only took work away from locals who needed the money. I wondered what they did. She told me that they observed and spead good will. Told the natives about life in America. They also went sightseeing. </p>

<p>Are many "mission trips" like this or do the kids work and build things?</p>

<p>My kids have learned much more working with kids from other social economic backgrounds than them than they ever did doing volunteer service work. Quite an eye opener to find out that kids had to take the bus to work, work like dogs because they had to. Not to make money to blow on themselves or to help pay for school trips.</p>

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<p>I have a different take on community service. It would be nice if 15 year olds actually did something truly useful from the get-go. It most probably doesn't happen. But it inculcates habits of volunteer work and charitable contributions into young people that will last beyond the immediate event itself.</p>

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<p>This is sort of getting off topic, but about community service- I'm beginning to think that CS is emphasized sooo much, that kids get to the point that every little effort they make has to be documented and credited to their account. Example, teacher needs kids to stay after and help move some stuff from the class to the stadium: "How many community service hours will we get???" It's to the point that when I needed some students to help out over the weekend, it was suggested I tell them I'd give them "bonus hours" to get someone to show up. The focus is on quantity, not quality. I was actually embarrassed to be a group leader at a recent Habitat build, where we had about 12 kids show up and all but 3 stood around most of the day, acting like they were doing something. But at 3:00 they were huddled about to get their 7 hours of credit signed off. I think the emphasis on community service, and the subsequent resume padding and CS-based financial assistance, has hurt, rather than helped cultivate a sense of real altruism among youth.</p>

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<p>Xiggi:</p>

<p>Tell me more about this program your friend is attending for his last two years of high school. I would dearly love to send S2 to Africa, or even further, for the next two years. (Don't get me started.) </p>

<p>Is it through a private school or internet/independent study program that grants h.s. credit? Does he attend a school in Africa? Where does he live? Which country? Is there a community service component? How much does it cost?</p>

<p>Most likely, this kind of program is way out of our league financially. But I, like a lot of other parents, look for various (summer) enrichment programs not to "position" kids for particular colleges, but to try to spark an interest or passion or to just shake them out of their teenage ennui. Sometimes to get that hands-on or small-class size academic experience that is often lacking in a public h.s. (Class sizes average 33-35 students. I know, you get what you pay for). Every decision to spend money on a kid's summer experience is not a misguided or cynical attempt to get them placed in the "yes" pile at a given college. Sometimes it's a genuine desire to give them a way to find out something new about the world and about themselves.</p>

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<p>Deb922: Just read your post and that is an excellent point.</p>

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<p>Regarding community service...it wasn't until I found CC that I ever heard kids mention: "I have X number of hours of community service." I had never heard of that. I gather some kids' high schools have required community service. Ours does not. I can't imagine my kids mentioning their activity in terms of how many hours they racked up. One year, my daughter coached an elementary school soccer team. She wanted to. She loved it. The first time she ever had to count "hours" was on college apps where they ask you how many hours you participated in each activity. Until then, I can't imagine her talking of an activity in terms of how many hours she had accrued. But I see CC kids listing their "stats" (something I can't imagine her doing either, but I digress), and I often see a "number" of hours of community service. I would think someone would just mention which activities they've been involved in and what they had done. The only time I can think of recording hours is that apps ask you to list how many hours per week and weeks per year you did an activity. But I see people listing total number of hours of community service on their "stat profiles" in threads here. So, the idea of "getting hours" is a bit foreign from my experience. Doing activities because you want to no matter how many hours they are, is more what I have seen personally. Doing an activity to satisfy "hours" requirements doesn't have the same meaning for me. Pursuing an interest, which may include service to the community is quite different. Those type of people tend not to talk of experiences in terms of how many hours they have put in.</p>

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<p>soozviet,</p>

<p>Excellent point. Racking up CS hours becomes another "statistic" to add to the college app, just like SAT scores and GPAs. I think the truly passionate community activist will shine through, like the true intellectual, but most kids post that number probably because they feel it makes them look good.</p>