@cobrat STEM grad programs are fully funded. Grad students get tuition remission and monthly stipend of more than $2,000 in general. The grad student probably got a tuition waiver for being enrolled in a grad program already and cover the living expense with the monthly stipend given by the STEM department practically getting an MBA for free.
D’s Russian friends’ parents think our high schools are too easy, and too many people in America are allowed to go to college. We can add them to the immigrant groups who have upped the ante locally.
TheGFG,
I’ve known and encountered plenty of native-born Americans who would agree with your D’s Russian friends’ parents regarding HS and accessibility to colleges. Granted, most of them tend to be of the depression/WWII/tweener generation(my parents’ generation if they grew up in the US).
In fact, I agree with it to some extent considering my own experiences as an academic tutor. One standout experience was tutoring an ex-GF of a friend who despite being allowed to take 9th grade level algebra/geometry to fulfill her math requirement as an elementary ED major at a NE directional public failed it twice and was on her way to failing it for the third time. A large part of it was an attitude which caused her to not take the course or academic courses she didn’t find interesting seriously enough along with being socially promoted in K-12 when she shouldn’t have been based on her actual skillset.
Someone like that wouldn’t have been considered “college material” here in the US back in the mid-'60s and earlier and would certainly be precluded from the academic college track or even many higher vocational HS/training/apprenticeship programs in several countries I know of.
And that that quote is connected to getting a degree in education to educate future generations…
“If college admissions can differenciate manufactured ability from genuine one, no one would be helicoptering.” And, “That “and” is also manufacturable.”
If you want to talk solely about admissions, experiences are experiences, no matter whether I suggest it to your kid or you do, or whether you demand it of him or he figures it out on his own or it’s dumb luck. Somehow, a host of CC adults lately think the baby should be thrown out with the bath water. Adcoms aren’t dumb. They know this age group and what goes on far better than any casual observer. That’s one reason why there is a whole app and supp for presenting yourself. And why I say, Mind Your App.
Many parents can’t predict their own kid’s trajectory; we have lots of threads about unexpected stumbles.
Imo, Stanford has some unique issues because its 4-year bar is set so high. The strongest kids can have their resilience tested. Few “places” to hide, academically.
“Affluent kids actually get mental health care rather than slipping into drug abuse, problem behavior, crime as teenagers.” IF ONLY that were so. Or that simple. Look around; wealthy kids are not immune from parents who aren’t watching.
Oh, and for me, at least, the expression “17th chair” is from affection, QM. Clearly you and she did lots right. Whether or not you can look back and see what that specifically was.
As an Asian-American parent educated outside the USA for K-12, I think there is way too much homework as well, and that Asian kids (in Asia) have a far easier time if you compare similar native intelligence levels. I would say that our kid has about the same native intelligence as my wife and I. Yet, we never, ever stayed up till 9:30 pm doing homework every day (bed time is 10 pm, sleep is very important to us) and never, ever had weekend homework. There seems to be an expectation that homework builds character or something. Since the final grade depends on that and there are quizzes every week, there’s really no alternative to continuous studying.
In our experience, we had a mid term and an end term, and that too over one year and not one each semester. So, we would study hard for a week before the exams and that, as they say, would be that. No so here. Plus, the grades in school didn’t matter when going to college, nor did the school-leaving examination, nor ECs. Every college had its own admissions test by major based solely on academics which we had to crack. That was a FAR, FAR easier system, as we could only study for 5-6 exams which were very similar in content and format, over say 1 year (12th grade), and get into a good college. That was a far relaxed environment.
I am not saying that it was the best environment for learning, as I have forgotten basically everything that I learned in high school by the time I got into college, outside of what was needed for my major. However, I am saying that it was an easy process, and I had a much more relaxed childhood than what I see my kid going through. Also, when it came to my major I had no problem competing with kids educated in the US system. In fact I felt that I was better prepared than them, because of the focus and the depth of the curriculum that I was taught.
GFG- my town is very diverse as well- but I suspect much lower average income than yours. And I see another dimension to the immigrant/native born dynamic you’ve observed.
Our public schools spend an enormous amount of money, time, and political clout on remediation, intervention with law enforcement, “working the system” trying to get kids help from social services, special ed, etc.
Although I agree with you that what you are describing sounds obnoxious and toxic-- it may help you to look at the other side of the coin. There are cities and towns in the Northeast which have an equally large (maybe more so) influx of immigrants of all types from all places- and many of those kids DON’T come with helicopter parents volunteering to sew costumes so the kid gets the lead in the school play, or begging to shlep and chaperone athletic events. These kids come with absentee parents for a variety of reasons- being raised by an Aunt who is also raising her own three kids plus three other family members. Or the family has failed to learn English even after many years in the US so the 15 year old (who is sharp and bright and hardworking and certainly should be on a college entrance track) takes days off from school to be interpreter when grandma has a medical appointment or when dad has to see a social worker. Or the guidance counselor at the HS- who happens to be pretty savvy about college admissions, doesn’t have time to counsel low income kids on various programs because she’s appearing in court yet again on behalf of a kid who needs emancipation from a dangerous home environment.
Your town has raised the stakes on college admissions for the “average” kid. Mine has lowered it- Gifted and Talented programs gutted to fund special ed. AP teachers retire and aren’t replaced because the school system needs more ESL teachers and it’s too hard to find someone who can teach AP Physics anyway. The late bus which used to make it possible for kids without a stay at home parent to participate in after school activities cut from the budget.
You may be seeing a very localized problem. I have friends who are teachers in the local schools and there are weeks where it’s miraculous that any kid in HS is reading Jane Eyre or learning sine/cosine/tangents with the overwhelming social service needs that walk through the door every morning. And I’m not demonizing the immigrant population in any way- many of them want to become good Americans and contribute out of gratitude for what this country is doing for them- and of course, we’ve got our own pathologies among the native born… this is not an immigration screed. But just an fyi- not every diverse community sees Tiger/Helicopter parenting.
I think we should draw a distinction between Tiger and Helicopter Parenting. The two can overlap, but are really very different in philosophy. Tiger parents don’t want to lower pressure on the kids. They want to raise it. They want the kids to have MORE challenges, not less. They are super competitive and want to have the hardest classes in school so that there is clear distinction between the kids instead of everyone getting an A+. They blame the kids first and not the school. They hardly care about ECs and sports teams (assuming that Tiger stands for Asian). They arrange for out of school academic lessons not to ensure that the kids pass the class, but to ensure that the kids are years advanced. They want to kids to skip grades and take AP courses in kindergarten. They don’t want to dilute the AP courses either.
I am personally not a fan of this. But I want to make the distinction clear. Tiger parents may qualify as a helicopter parent in that they don’t ask kids to do chores, will spend majority of their income on the kids’ education (and music, heaven knows why), and spend every single minute of their free time on the kids to enable them get a better education. But in fact they are putting MORE pressure on the kids as they do that. Their motto is, after all that I have done for you, is one Nobel prize too much to ask for?
I know, as I had Tiger parents.
Ha ha, this just in: Stanford Dean of Freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims is hosting a webcast on Nov. 5 from 7-8:30 PM based on her parenting book. It’s entitled “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.”
“Excellent Sheep” by William Deresiewicz, correct? That book made innumerable insinuations and generalizations, alongisde lobbying with a clear bias. He pontificated about liberal arts schooling, apparently having never actually attended one, and at the same time he never seems to have been acquainted with the “super people” who were creative and multi-faceted at the institutions he worked at for so many years. I think just like this “former Dean’s” article, his book was near-hyperbole and neither of them show the reality.
“Excellent Sheep” is just sour grapes IMO. As far as I can see the author was perfectly happy with the elite college world - until he was denied tenure at Yale.
Or the schools and/or coaches do not allow the parents to dictate the process. Our schools were careful not to have the PTO president’s kids always with the (arguably) best teachers. Do not cave to parent’s requests for teachers or parts.
My district is probably somewhere between yours and GFG’s. Somewhat above middle class (for the NE), a recent influx of Asian immigrants, high achieving kids. We spend a lot on Special Ed, less (but some) on GT, and little (but not 0) on security (although we now have a police officer assigned to the school) and minimal poverty. Most kids do something outside of the classroom. And a lot of the seniors have jobs (esp by second semester).
But we also see the “mission creep” of the college admissions process, which seems to feed into some amount of enhanced parental involvement. I am much more aware of what is going on with my kid’s and their schools and what it takes to get into college than my parents were. Mine were involved, coming to Back to School night, looking at report cards, being a brownie leader, but not much else. They did not even think about what I should do in the summer (before I was old enough to work) or whether I needed to be involved to boost my shot at a good college. There are still parents like that, but most that I know at least nudge their kids to do something besides sit in the classroom.
By the way Stones3, I don’t think anyone would argue that Rutgers is not the NJ flagship. TCNJ is a great school and many kids are happy there and successful after graduation, but so are many at Rutgers. One ranking that uses survey data, including student-reported data and penalizes a larger school does not make TCNJ a flagship.
First: Universities pull out every trick in the bag to lower acceptance rates, encourage as many people as possible (whether qualified or not) to apply to their University, hype their University as a once in a life time opportunity, market their campus as a heaven for students but also tell them that there is a very high standard to get in.
Next: Universities start complaining that the system is getting too competitive, and point their fingers at the parents.
It is true that every generation thinks the next generation is ruined. But the manner of ruination is not the same from generation to generation. When older folks in the '60s were complaining about hippies and their drugs and free love, they were not saying that the hippies lacked independence, couldn’t handle disappointment, and relied too much on mom and dad’s approval. That part is new. There’s more than a grain of truth to it, just as there was more than a grain of truth to the criticism that the hippies were frying their brains and smashing eggs without making omelets.
Everyone in every generation thinks their kids’ music is crap. Other than that, the criticisms change.
@ChangLa As an Asian(Indian), I don’t feel like I’ve been Tiger Parented at all. My parents did force me to study in middle school and get into double advanced math, so by the time I reached high school I was willing to start taking a hard curriculum of multiple AP classes along with my singular passion in swimming and medicine.
When I reached high school, my parents definitely checked on my grades , but that’s about it. I feel liberated in high school in that I feel am exploring my passions and taking AP classes because I am intellectually curious and getting good grades because it feels good, not to please my parents. But indeed, I have failed with a few B’s several and had downfalls to my swimming career. And my parents were completely fine with it. They understand failing will only help me grow and learn next time how to succeed.
Studying material that’s for upper grade levels isn’t always a bad thing, nor is skipping a grade. I personally was miserable in primary (grades 1-5 at my school) because instead of learning new and interesting things, my school wanted students to learn about “thinking caps” and “idea bridges” while moving at the pace of the slowest learners. Most of the “work” was busywork like “color in this picture” or “rewrite these 20 long questions and add a 1-word answer at the end of each.” There were no poor grades - just “excellent,” “good,” and “average.”
I spent most of my time reading anything I could get my hands on rather than listening to the teacher go through long division for the third year running, with the result that I arrived in secondary (grades 6-10) with some prior knowledge of subjects new to the class, like history. My reward for going out of my way to explore new knowledge and ideas was another 5 years of learning things I already knew from reading in my free time. Why didn’t I change schools? This school was (and is) among a mere handful of English-speaking schools in my area, and on the whole it’s the best of a bad bunch.
I advised my parents to let my brother stay at the local (French) public school through primary. He just entered my school one grade level above what his age would entail, and he’s found his current level to be suitably challenging, making him a lot happier than I was in an “age-appropriate” cohort. So skipping classes, and facing expectations beyond “A for effort,” is no bad thing.
There has to be a happy medium between “over-involved” and “do it all yourselves” kind of parents. Children definitely need to hone survival skills for their future, especially when they leave home for college. Otherwise the transition can be very hard! However, they also need the assurance that when things get unduly tough, their parents are the first people who will jump to their aid. And they should feel very comfortable to approach mom and dad for help. I feel that too much independence without monitoring at a very young age is the bane of American society. Kids need boundaries, but they also need to forge out on their own in activities that help develop decision-making and independent work skills. These are supremely important skills for their adult life.
A lot of discussion about what all the parents types are, but I can this describes the fundamental problem the Stanford Dean was trying to describe.
http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add.php?iid=116565
As a Senior in High School I mostly agree with this article. The children of parents like the ones described in the article usually do have perfect grades and damn good test scores but I cannot picture them achieving success in an environment in which they are completely on their own.
I just met a woman at a party who told me that they hired someone to help their daughter with her job! She went to grad school and landed some job in the city but the work takes up so much time that they have someone helping her “on the side” with spreadsheets, etc. I think my mouth was actually hanging open - and this was after she had already told me that she had her younger daughter’s college applications “professionally prepared.”