Fed up with uncompetitive high school enviornment

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

Unfortunately, my parents don’t see eye-to-eye with me on all-things college admissions. They embrace my efforts of trying to get into a good college, and respect me for earning high marks etc, so in as far as to praise me for doing well in my high school enviornment. But in the larger picture, they’ve failed to put their “money where their mouth is” so-to-speak and take actionable steps towards helping me in the process.

When it was time to commit to a high school in 8th grade, my parents practically forced me to attend our local high school (which would be the easiest to travel to and from due to district-wide busing).To the average high schooler interested in community college or our public options, there’s really nothing wrong with going there. But what I underestimated at first, and which has since become apparent with ever-brighter clarity, is the lack of opportunities both in terms of academics and in reference to the availability of extracurriculars. For one, there simply is not a culture of prestige typically beholden to a sufficiently large high school. With over 2,400 students, you’d be surprised that our valedictorian and salutatorian both attended local state schools with acceptance rates above 95%.

There’s come to a point where our school reputation has been repeatedly tarnished by shooting incidents and high drop-out rates. I’m beginning to feel a bit frustrated with my parents in particular for their lack of understanding. In conversations with friends and family, they’ll openly flaunt that, “oh well Nick goes to the hood.” Sure, there’s a slightly bit of sarcasm in their tone, but it’s really starting to bother me when they make fun of me for going to the school they insisted I attend.

I deeply care about my future, and am looking to set myself up for the best opportunities possible (whether that means attending our local state college or not). It just seems plainly inconsiderate though to poke fun at the school I go to, while at the same neglecting to acknowledge the fact that I’m not happy there either. Their patronizing done belies the sense that A) I don’t care about college admissions and B) it was a conscious choice on my behalf to attend the school.

Is there some other way I could approach thinking about this situation? My parents’ attitude is really starting to get on my nerves. Granted that transferring high schools isn’t an option (now that I’m entering Junior year), I need to come to settle a different dynamic between my parents and I about how to go about applying to college.

2

Is the limitation due to financial reasons? Or is it due to a lack of knowledge of how bad the school system is? I feel for you, it sounds similar to my situation 35+ years ago.

You can perhaps try taking online advanced classes perhaps? The stuff you do on your own could be a really good topic for an essay, on overcoming your situation.

3

Your writing is so flowery it is hard to follow. But in general, if your high school is too easy, then knock it out of the park gradewise. Study for your standardized tests. With the internet, you have almost unlimited resources to get homework help, take MOOCs to exoand your knowledge, etc. Stop blaming your parents and feeling sorry for yourself.

4

Also talk to your GC if there are opportunities to take classes at your local community college (aka Dual Enrollment), or AP classes on line.

5

You have a real opportunity to shine. As others recommended, seek out additional challenges. Just because past valedictorians have gone to your state school, doesn’t mean you have to!

6

I went to a rather mediocre public high school, and then went to a very highly ranked university. When I was at the highly ranked university, the other students came from a very wide range of high schools. My roommate freshman year was from a very economically depressed area with a lousy high school – even worse than mine. We both did fine anyway and found that we were academically well prepared for university. I had to take one class freshman year that most of the other students had AP’d out of, but one class over 4 years is not a big deal at all.

Do as well as you possibly can in high school. When the time comes to apply to university, the schools will appreciate how well you did compared to other students in the same school.

Life throws road blocks in the way of all of us. One of the most important things in life is how you negotiate your path around and through the roadblocks.

Finances will constrain the choices available for almost all students. No parents are perfect, not even me.

7

@nick3162 : Use the internet for more advanced courses that are of interest to you. Also, consider attending summer programs which match your intellectual level & interests.

8

From what I could tell from your other posts, your school offers plenty of AP classes so what’s with the “lack of opportunities in terms of academics”?

I’m trying hard to find a way to say this without being snarky: you seem to complain a lot. A LOT. I mean, you were worrying in another post about being relatively wealthy in a school district where many are not, and how that might adversely effect you in college admissions. Maybe be grateful for what you have, take full advantage of all of your opportunities, and quit blaming your parents for choosing a public high school for you. Many many students do just fine coming from public schools.

9

Yes, it’s good to learn that we can’t control a lot of what happens to us, but we CAN control our reactions to what happens. You have to play the cards you’re dealt. Complaining about your hand doesn’t help at all.

10

If “complaining” is viewed as a request for suggestions, then it can be productive.

11

Dear @nick3162 has is occurred to you that…

  1. Perhaps you parents have "failed to put their money where their mouth is" because they need to be able to afford to send you to college at all?
  2. Perhaps your val/sal choose the state schools because they were offered significant merit money, they are in a really great honors program, the school offered a specific program they are interested in, they have personal reasons for choosing it? So no, I am not "surprised" that they elected to attend the school of their choice. Which, btw, has absolutely no bearing on your ability or opportunity to seek admissions to wherever you choose.
  3. Your parents see that your entitlement attitude doesn't warrant being reinforced by kowtowing to your demands?

The only thing holding you back…is you! Good Luck!

12

In your wordy post, you made no mention of any academic quality deficiency in the courses at your high school.

Nor is there anything to suggest that the counselors and teachers will not support you applying to more selective colleges if you are a top student.

It just seems like you are more prestige focused than you should be, especially for the name of your high school.

In terms of your parents putting money where their mouth is, the important time that comes up is when you and they talk about college budget * before * you make your college application list.

13

@ProfessorPlum168

The poverty rate at my high school is pretty staggering, but my parents make a good enough living to the point that I qualify for minimal financial aid. Seems like a really terrible situation to be in, given the fact that I’m an odd-duck in my school enviornment. It’s like this: I won’t be able to reap the benefits of a good-quality high school education, but at the same time, I can’t exactly be labeled as “disadvantaged” by admission officers.

I skipped Algebra II and Spanish 5/6 through self-study and found that approach to really resonate with my learning style. The reason I hesitate with online classes is that I feel like it sounds a bit sketchier on paper.

Lately, I’ve really been trying to dig deeper when it comes to what my available options are. I was possibly thinking about an early graduation, which would entail doubling up on English classes my Junior year to graduate in 18-19. I would need to find out if I could still get into our local state flagship (CU Boulder) or my top choice (Colorado School of Mines), both will fairly reasonable acceptance rates (80%+ and 35% respectively). I feel like that’s the best scenario for me since I’m overall just fed up with high school and want to turn a new page in my life.

14

@intparent

You’ve made your dislike towards my writing style expressively clear in past posts. I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the question, but okay, duly noted.

So the solution as you suggest is to man up and take ownership over my situation? I definitely think there is some value in what you’re saying, but your post does come across with a lack of empathy. I will be very explicit in saying that I am not happy at my current hs. Sure I have friends, and I’m grateful that my teachers care about each students’ success, but if I’m being 100% honest, I can’t plausibly see myself continuing on this path for another 2 years. I’m not sure if anyone can relate to this, but I probably learn 5 times more at home everyday than I do during class. I have some qualified teachers, who earnestly try to go out of their way to help students learn. On the other side of the token, however, there are other adjunct instructors who don’t even know the curriculum. My CS teacher, for instance, openly admits that she doesn’t understand CS in the slightest and has no qualifications to administer the class. It’s come to a point where I hardly have to try to earn top marks in my classes due to severe grade inflation (my current grades are 97, 99, 104, 100, 101, 98 in all honors/AP). I’m pretty sure AO will be able to see past the BS.

But fine, realistically what harm does it do to “knock it out of the park gradewise.” That use to be my perspective until really a culmination of different factors hit me.

One of which is a research project, through a grant I’ll keep redacted for the sake of confidentiality. I put together a group of my closest friends from engineering and computer science, and we spent roughly 30 hours planning out a research project through a grant program. Then at last, we tied up our loose ends on the application and asked our engineering teacher to send in the letter of recommendation required. There’s a few things I should note about this in particular: (1) we are very close to this teacher, who we’ve spent hundreds of hours with in robotics, and (2) we asked him repeatedly over the course of around 4 weeks to work on the recommendation letter. But at last, the application deadline came around, and he waited until 3 hours before the portal closed to type one up, which happened to be about 100 words long and riddled with typos.

Not all of my teachers are so careless to some of these finer details like the importance of LOR, but the fact that it happened to begin with is alarming. All that time went to waste because he was unwilling to devote a solid half hour to writing a thoughtful application. Mind you I’m sure he was busy, but there would be moments in his class when he would just be scrolling through facebook or passing time watching March Madness.

The other real appifany I’ve had over the course of Sophomore year is the inability for students at my high school to even get into top 50 colleges. Seeing as how our class is over 600 in size, you’d be surprised to hear that only 2 seniors got into top 50 colleges. The majority of others have ended up at community college, the military, or our local state school.

Through this process, I’ve watched some of the most respected seniors, who’ve taken higher level math beyond Calculus III and scored perfectly on standardized testing, choose our local community college. I’m sure some of it is financially related, but on the whole, there simply isn’t a culture of devotion to extracurriculars, and I have the intimation that the administration isn’t paying their part to their fullest ability. My brother, for example, had his transcript sent in almost a month late, which would have been a major problem if he had not chosen community college.

In some ways, the isolation of my school environment brings a sense of security in my life. It’s just reached a point when I desperately need to vent to a community who sees eye-to-eye on some of the long-term goals I care most deeply about, and when no one in my school is willing to provide that outlet for me- not my parents, GC, or friends- I need to explore other options.

15

e·piph·a·ny^^^^ is a sudden moment of insight; not one that occurs “over the course of a year”. You would be better served using the word realization.

ad·junct , to·ken, ex·press·ly, ear·nest·ly :)>-

16

You want your parents to pony up for private school or boarding school, or pay for a more expensive neighborhood with higher property taxes. I stand by my thoughts that you are spending too much time feeling sorry for yourself, and need to figure out how to get the most out of your current environment. I don’t think you are going to get a lot of sympathy here.

17

My dad grew up very poor, in a tiny town in southwest Texas. His high school class had 25 kids in it. I’m pretty sure they didn’t teach calculus, ha. He attended UT. He went on to grad school on a full fellowship and had a tenure track job back at Texas waiting for him. He became known world-wide in his field and still lectures to different groups all over the world at the age of 81. So my point is I’m 100% positive he wasn’t challenged in high school and he still did OK. Again, you have to play with the cards you’re dealt.

18

@suzy100

I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to more comprehensively look into my situation to gain a fuller understanding of what I’m up to. There’s a few different pointers to clarify here, however:

  • Number 1: I have nothing what-so-ever against public schools. I think that a majority of private schools (for-profit charters as an example) are not worth the value, and that top public schools tend to provide the best opportunities.
  • Number 2: We offer a large amount of AP classes, most of which ties back to the size of the school. But there's a real difference between offering an advanced placement course, and teaching it to its fullest potential. Take AP Spanish, for example. There's 3/25 students in there who don't speak natively (the rest are immigrants or mostly poor URM's). I think it's great that these students are trying to challenge themselves, but it's become really clear to me that natives and non-natives learn in an entirely different manner, and mixing them in one class is not the best option. Alternatively, there's AP Chem, who's practice test results got back last week. I was speaking with one of my friends in Robotics, and apparently, the highest mark just barely approached a 3 (the rest being 2s and 1s). That's coming from a class of roughly 25 students. There's mostly no teacher for AP CSP, and so it's entirely self-guided. All but 2-3 of the students in that class (of which there are about 30) use the time to study. The rest mostly play games or chat. And finally, AP USH. My impressions of this class are higher than the rest, as I think we have a solid teacher who's truly passionate about his job. But he's still gone out in saying that we have around a 40% AP pass rate. That doesn't sound all-too-bad at first. It's difficult to a score a 4 or 5 in this environment, however, as the instruction is more tailored to the standard 2/3 to which students are expected to receive. And that's of students actually taking the exam, which is roughly 60% in our class. So imagine trying to use your time to study at a top-level when half the class is messing around (couldn't care less about studying because they have no exam to prepare for) and another portion just decide not to try. There's certainly still good students, I just wish there were more to collaborate with.

Many students do fine coming from public schools. I think you’d be surprised by the disparity between a top public education and middling to low one. The points I’ve brought up relating to academics are just one facet of this same problem, and extracurriculars are another story entirely.

So you did make a point about my complaining a lot. There’s probably some truth to it, but you need to bear in mind the fact that what you see online and who I actually am are two different people. I consider myself a fairly level-headed person; instead, I use sites like CC for when I do need guidance, seeing as how most community members aren’t there to provide that. My father works in the military, meaning he only comes home a few days a month. My mother works a low-end retail job. Most of the time I’m at home by myself with no one to talk to about this.

19

@MaineLonghorn

You don’t diagnose someone with depression to buckle up and deal with their problems. That’s not how to resolve inhibition in your life.

I apologize if my tone came off as complaining. I’m just looking for guidance from parents who have more wisdom on this topic and whose children have likely gone through similar experiences. If you don’t have any other guidance beside just advising me to “deal with it,” so be it, but I want you to know that isn’t helping to solve the very real problem in my life. I’m not going to walk away from these feelings and lock them up; that won’t do any good.

20

If you have depression, nobody here is qualified to help you with that.