I would like to respectfully disagree with the original post. I often comment for students to work hard AND to relax, do things that they like, so they can help learn about themselves. I’ll defend that.
High school is not pre-college. People naturally grow and develop from approximately from age 14 to 18. Compare first day of 9th grade photos with high school graduation photos. But the growth isn’t only physical. It’s intellectual, emotional, social, etc. as well. Young people are learning to grow from being concerned about what others think of them and the things they do, to what they enjoy, who they enjoy, what is best for them in their life. That’s a process that isn’t all about making A’s in pre-calculus, then calculus, then the next math class, though working hard and making good grades is a good idea.
Important growth can occur in relaxed situations with friends, doing things that a person might enjoy, or doing something that they had no idea they’d enjoy. Even just looking at academics, two of mine fell in love with fields they only discovered because circumstances forced them to a class that they had no intention of taking. A young person might also discover a life-long love of an activity by doing something with someone they enjoy. People can be very different, so the opportunity to explore who one is, is really a gift, and very important.
I certainly wouldn’t knock anyone for striving to go to Penn or Dartmouth or Chicago. These are great schools with great students, faculty, and staff. They have sterling reputations, and that’s certainly worth something. They do provide opportunities to establish great personal networks. I think that is also certainly worth something.
And, there is an unwarranted view out there that attending these schools is absolutely crucial, that those reputations and networking benefits outweigh everything else. Most “successful” people do not attend a Top 20 school. Some examples: I know an entrepreneur who started a business in a city with an Ivy. They initially hired interns from that Ivy. They found them lazy and entitled. They started hiring interns from another school in the city, which is also a very good school, admittedly, but not a Top 50. They found those students vastly more hard working, resilient, and willing to think outside the box to be creative in finding solutions to problems.
I know 3 people with wealth that reaches into 8 figures, in one case perhaps into 9 figures. They are also successful in their personal lives. None had more than a middle-class upbringing. Wow, where did they go to school? One attended a state flagship ranked probably just above the middle of state flagships; one attended a second-tier public university; and one attended a third-tier public in a state with a very poor reputation for higher education. Guess which one might be worth 9 figures? Two went to elite grad schools, one did not go to grad school.
I attended a very highly ranked public university. One of my roommates is a prof at a Top 20 LAC; another is a prof at a state flagship. The latter has published about a dozen books and essentially created their entire academic field. Another friend teaches at a Top 20 university, another is an extremely successful doctor who runs a major foundation that brings medical services to a population desperately in need of these services. One fellow student–who I met but did not really know–is an iconic television/film figure of our generation. I know dozens of doctors, lawyers, and executive officers. I had a lower middle-class background and have a very nice life.
And, this is significant, and troubling,
There are real costs in making attendance at elite private universities the goal, as is suggested in the original post. We just had dinner two nights ago with a college friend and their spouse, who are both profs at, let’s call it a near-elite LAC. They said overwhelmingly the biggest change since their own college years, and since they started teaching, is the emotional distress and fear of failure among their students. Students regularly talk about suicide. The number of students seeking counseling (which is great) has spiked enormously in recent years. I mean spiked. I’ve heard two presentations from health services at my own university. They showed a graph of the number of psychologically related visited to the health center. We are literally talking about 20x to 50x the number of visits per student since I was in college. Students are terrified to not make A’s. They are terrified to fail at anything. They absolutely do not know how to respond to a setback.
Or course, we all fail at things in life. We all meet unexpected setbacks. We need to learn to overcome challenges, to be resilient, not to crumble. This is best learned naturally as we lead our lives and do human things. It’s not learned in an expensive summer program. I’m all for academic enrichment, summer programs, etc. My kids have done lots of that. But it SHOULD be fun, it should be something they want to do because it is interesting. They are kids. They are learning to be adults, and need space to do that.
And think about this. What if our message is (and to a large extent it is), your goal should be to go to an elite school? Well, a pretty set number of people are going to do that? What about everyone else, the 99% who aren’t at a Top 20 or Top 30 school? Are we telling them they are just failures? It seems like more kids are viewing themselves that way, to their detriment and to our society’s detriment, and even students at those elite schools live in fear that they will lose their spot, or not be able to go on to a top grad school. I can tell you those 3 wealthy people I mentioned above who spent college at their public universities (and one not Top 500 school at that) did not spend their high school and college years fearing that they had failed life. They worked hard, yes definitely, but they also had fun with people, which is a big part of their success today.
So yes, students are well served to work hard. Of course. But they are well served just being people, learning who they are, what motivates them, what inspires them, who and what make the want to be a better person. And that’s how we are really most successful in the end. That’s my two cents.