<p>I experienced, for the first time today, perhaps a bit of the ugly side of this process. And I'm brand new at it as my daughter is a junior. This afternoon, her school held its Cum Laude Society initiation. For those of you who aren't aware, the Cum Laude Society was founded in 1909 as a Phi Beta Kappa model for high schools. No more than the top 10% of the junior class and 20% of the senior class can be admitted, but usually the schools keep to 5 to 7%. Only 4 schools in Michigan have received a charter from the national organization to have a chapter. Selection is kept secret until the kids see their parents at the assembly at school. My daughter and 5 other juniors were initiated today and all the parents were there. Now these are parents we've known for years. Our kids played softball together, are in the choir together, are in Honor's and AP classes together, etc. We've laughed and shared and talked. Well, the reception turned into a cagey interrogation session with each parent trying to figure out where the other's kids were applying (i.e., who's the competition applying early to Yale, etc), especially EA or ED, and what their kid's "hook" is...so and so has a Hispanic surname so is a shoe-in, so and so's an athlete, etc. I just wanted out of there. Initially I was more than willing to share my daughter's experiences, but then I just quit. Has anyone else had experiences like this? What to do?</p>
<p>Expect it and smile through it. It's only natural, given the competition these kids are in.
What most parents don't get, is that their "competition" is not just those at their own school, but can include an entire geographical region. Parents and kids can't game this thing - it's out of thier control. If talking about it makes people feel more "in" control, so be it.
After a ceremony crowning the school's "winners" can you really expect a non-competitive environment? Hardly.</p>
<p>Or you can give up completely on your old friends and spend lots of time here with all your new virtual friends. :)</p>
<p>Similar conversations have gone on among parents at my son's school for the past year (he is now a graduating senior) but they are honest, curious information exchanges, not cagey interrogation sessions. We've been fascinated to learn who's applying where, who received early nods, and now as we near the "finish line" (or more like the actual starting line for the rest of life! :) ), we all love to learn where the students are choosing between, and where they will ultimately end up. In a class of remarkable young people, the parents have been fantastic about supporting each other and each others' kids, and learning what we can from each other. Perhaps it was <em>not</em> really as negative a conversation as you thought? Perhaps the parents were trying to lessen their anxieties by sharing what they felt was important concerns common to many high-achieving juniors?</p>
<p>People get excited about this stuff: just roll with it and rise above it if it gets too uncomfortable. (PS: Come talk to us more if the local parents get too weird. :) )</p>
<p>Oh, and congratulations to your daughter on her Cum Laude initiation! Our school was just chartered on Tues. this week, and my son was inducted as a senior. :) I share your pride.</p>
<p>Or, switch to Podunk HS where your kid is the only one actually applying to competitive, out of state schools. This year, anyway:-)</p>
<p>My Ds junior high has kind of an opposite problem. There is much competition to get into certain High Schools. During the process, everyone is talking and hoping their kid gets into the most "popular" one, but of course not everyone can. People say, well your child will get in their sib is already there (which is NO guarantee). The kids are all hopeful.</p>
<p>Then the letters come, and not everyone is happy. And parents of kids who got into the schools they wanted to are very excited, but try to keep it low key because their friends kids are going to their second choice, which is a GREAT school. My D was lucky and got into her choice and was talking to crying friends all weekend. After about a week, everyone settled into where they were going and all is well.</p>
<p>I was at a school event, and this dad, all proud and bragging came in and said "so where did everyone get in" and started sharing his good news, meanwhile parents of waitlisted kids just wanted to cry or slug him. I wanted to kick him in the shins. The decisions were still fresh and a little raw. I pulled him aside and said that not everyone had such good news and he needed to chill just a bit. After a couple of days, everyone was fine.</p>
<p>He learned something, and the other kids ending up be really happy in highschool, once the "dream" was let go of...</p>
<p>I don't mind those kind of conversations because I get (and give) a lot of good information including learning about colleges that I would not have previously considered for S. I also have given people info about colleges that might be great fits for their kids. These include colleges where S is planning to apply, too.</p>
<p>I do know that the competition is world-wide when it comes to top colleges. S really isn't competing against his classmates. </p>
<p>Disclaimer: S is definitely not headed to HPYS, but, frankly, even if he were planning on applying, I wouldn't have a prob with sharing that info. As an alum interviewer for an Ivy, I have seen the evidence that students in S's high school truly are not competing against each other for spots at places like Ivies.</p>
<p>We had the National Honor Society induction last night at S's large suburban public HS. The principal fueled all that type of discussion by giving the junior parents a rundown on all the "prestigious" admittances and awards of the current senior class.I've heard him give the rundown at senior events in the past (like award nights) but this is the first time I've heard him "trickle it down" to the junior level.</p>
<p>This was definitely not the case with the parents we know. The subject of college seldom came up except that for all of us, the local state university would be just fine. Our kids had some different notions and applied to some of the elite colleges & universities, all of them managed to get accepted to most of their choices. We are all happy for each other, and also spend time commiserating over the cost (even with merit aid). We still like the state u.</p>
<p>The competitive edge on this will die down a little as people firm up their lists. My DD was on the bad end of this - she was one of the top kids in her class, and for several reasons, the one most likely to go far away to school. She left at the end of junior year with Yale as her number one choice, and came back beginning of senior year planning to apply to Dartmouth, possibly early, and Yale was just about on the trash heap. this put her in direct competition with a young man who really wanted Dartmouth, but didn't have her grades, scores and class standing.</p>
<p>The really hard to deal with stuff is money related - merit scholarships. DD's school is a private school, but at $7000/ year tuition, lots of kids attend who aren't at all wealthy - these kids are looking for merit aid. Vandy is a popular choice, and the competition for spots and merit aid there was fierce this year, I think everyone is fairly happy, but a couple of families will have to dig deep to pay for it, and one young man who I know would have been a shoe-in 4 years ago, is going elsewhere - it is a jungle out there, even in our relatively low competiton state. The fact that those merit scholarships make the difference in attendance or not for some families vs other families that could afford the tuition anyway, made for some difficult times - we tried to NOT talk about it!</p>
<p>The other area that was difficult at our house was competition for merit scholarships that required nomination by the school. DD's favored foundation school gives a prestigious full ride scholarship, and many of the highest merit winners were in the competiton for this scholarship. We wanted her to seek nomination from her school. The moral problem to her was that she would not be attending if she got into her ED school -she didn't want to ruin it for anyone else. A number of kids apply to this school and usually a few attend. After some family discussion, we agreed that she would take the form to her college counselor and ask to be nominated if that seemed appropriate - it would be her decision who of this year's applicants had the best shot.</p>
<p>i was proud of my daughter for being concerned about her friends and the school, I wish she had been equally concerned about our pocketbook.</p>
<p>At my school, parents didn't one-up each other with college acceptances too much; it was more about how big and elaborate a bar/bat mitzvah you could throw at what 5-star venue.</p>
<p>" The principal fueled all that type of discussion by giving the junior parents a rundown on all the "prestigious" admittances and awards of the current senior class."</p>
<p>I wish that S's school kept track of that kind of info and announced it. It really helps to learn about what kind of opportunities are out there, and exactly who gets them. That can help younger students and their parents know what may be available for them.</p>
<p>I see lots of students at S's school settle for colleges that are second and third tier, but cheap, because the students and their parents don't know about other options that would fit those particular students better and also would be affordable.</p>
<p>I agree with NSM. I wish that the high school posted the names of colleges students had gotten into, though not with the students'names. See the thread about the GC steering students toward community colleges.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of conversations about college apps are to find information that might be useful for one's kid, not necessarily to one-up others or to undermine others. It's the equivalent of CC in real life. I learned a lot from CC, precisely because parents and kids don't talk much about colleges, ECs, GPAs, SATs, etc...</p>
<p>I see no problem with posting the colleges with the kids names. At least post what college each student has chosen to go to. That's a nice way, too, for people to know how to stay in touch. It also can provide useful contacts for younger students.</p>
<p>That could be a separate list from one that showed all of the colleges where students were accepted, but that didn't list each individual individual acceptances. One wouldn't want to fuel the application frenzy by posting names of students with long lists of each students' acceptances.</p>
<p>My kids' school <em>does</em> post a list (on their website!) of the colleges students were accepted to (with the number of accepted students shown, not names), and lists in bold the names of colleges where graduates are currently attending. They've got a comparison chart for the last 3 years, it really is an interesting read, I'm glad they do it. (One thing I'd like to see at the end of the year is a list of all the seniors and which school they will be attending. But of course that would not go on the website!)</p>
<p>[Ah! Apparently NSM and I had similar thoughts and crossed posts. :) ]</p>
<p>Most of my sons friends were in the top 5-10% of the class and I cannot recall having any such conversations. We were invited to attend the NHS induction, MuAlphaTau math HS induction, several guidance office college admissions programs and nary a peep of one upmanship. In fact the discussion rarely included college plans until the spring of senior year when decisions had been made. And yes, we are a suburban district in a county where the per household income is in the top 30 in the country though the municipalities in our district are below the county average.</p>
<p>Our school newspaper does an end of year list of the colleges students are attending, and a list of all college and outside scholarships each student received. It's great information if you have younger kids.</p>
<p>The conflicting feeling of every-family-for-itself versus were-all-in-this-together are well known to parents of seniors aspiring to selective colleges and its a difficult balance to maintain. As much as you dont want to give out too much help to your childs competitors, their information is helpful too so you need to establish a fair degree of give and take. </p>
<p>Since my nature tends to be trusting, I probably shared more than I should have, but if I got the sense that it was a one-way-street I clammed up fast. Im sure you know the type, pumps for information about grades and scores, but in return gives breezy and non-committal answers? Since I was the one most obsessed with reading the books and researching the web, I was happy to throw a lifeline to those that were swimming in the alphabet soup of the whole process, but I have to admit I couldnt bring myself to throw it in the direction of my sons first choice (at least until he was safely admitted ED). </p>
<p>The most valuable information that I learned from other parents was not so much about the schools, but about the college counselors what schools they were emphasizing, which students they favored, what strategies they recommended. I firmly believe that we need to be our childs advocates both realistic and encouraging. The guidance counselors can be alternately too optimistic (Youre headed for Harvard) and too pessimistic (Have you considered the Marines?) and both are dangerous. Since like you, Id known these kids for years and years; I had a pretty good idea how they stacked up against my son, academically and intellectually and it was enlightening to learn how the GCs viewed them.</p>
<p>As Cangel says, money was a potentially abrasive issue. We knew we were going to have to pay fullfreight and other families who were in the finaid sweepstakes saw this as an unfair advantage. (Hows that for an Alice in Wonderland world: the privilege of shelling out $160,000 for the same service that that someone else gets for free?)</p>
<p>The whole college admission process is an extremely emotional time for parents. It combines two of our worst anxieties fear of rejection and fear of separation. Once we overcome the first, we get hit by the second. So dont be surprised if your feelers are buzzing occasionally!</p>
<p>I think the one reason the college thing never got blown out of proportion was that early on we circulated a series of articles that quite clearly demonstrated that where one goes to college has little, if any affect on future success. We simply assumed that whatever college accepted our kids would be fine. I myself began at a community college, got a degree from a third tier state university, and ended up in Ph.D. program at a so-called "elite" private research university that turned down several Ivy league applicants. Further, at no time did I feel I was at any educational disadvantage, on the contrary, I was continually amazed at to what my fellow students had not been (academically) exposed.</p>
<p>Echo,</p>
<p>Wait until one of the kids gets accepted at HYP or whatever and another kid gets deferred or rejected. You will see a side of people that you can't believe. Makes your recent incident seem tame. Good luck as you will truly know your friends in 12 months. Idad, it doesn't matter if it is real advantage or not, a lot of people become name obsessed.</p>