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<p>It’s not just us that think that. I remember that for years when I would visit my parents after I left home, my mother would insist that I come into the kitchen with her. She felt guilty that she never taught me kitchen skills and how to cook Japanese food. Too late–I’d rather go out to a restaurant…</p>
<p>OP - Well look at it this way … if you’re right then life’s a breeze once you finish HS. However, it’s doubtful you’ll find any adult that thinks you’re right.</p>
<p>My daughter is a high school junior who would like to attend a very competitive college. As a result, like all of her friends and millions (?) of other high school students, she works very hard attending classes, completing homework and participating in extracurricular activities. Contrary to what others have stated, if you want to get into one of the highest rated colleges engaging in extracurricular activities is not voluntary and to say otherwise is ignoring reality.</p>
<p>I have noticed for the past few years that my daughter works much harder than I do and I sometimes feel guilty late in the evening when I’m relaxing and she is still trying to complete work for her classes. I also know that my daughter works much harder than most of the adults I know. Personally I don’t like it, but since she wants to get into a good school she has little choice but to play the game along with everyone else. Fortunately, she only has a year and a half left of high school.</p>
<p>Contrary to what others have stated, if you want to get into one of the highest rated colleges engaging in extracurricular activities is not voluntary and to say otherwise is ignoring reality.</p>
<p>And by making it sound like your choice to take that path has been forced upon you takes away your power.</p>
<p>My kids both attend/ed very good colleges, one much more “elite” & $$$$$ than the other, but both fine schools.</p>
<p>Neither did any summer academic programs in high school, both spent a great deal of time in community service since middle school, both participated in EC’s- Sport teams, musicals, traveled abroad- ya know the usual ;)</p>
<p>If their EC’s were a burden to them, I would have been the first to insist they pare it down- but EC’s were actually a social & fun time- it shouldn’t be " work".</p>
<p>I would agree that a huge problem with this generation is the feeling that you are putting in long hours when really you are just on facebook or on a computer or something else. </p>
<p>I will graduate from a top private school with 9 AP classes. I used to work until midnight or later each night and still not have most of my homework finished. This year I finally learned the joy of time management. I almost never have any homework because I work so judiciously before school, during homeroom, during study halls, and in little breaks here and there. If I do have any work, it never goes past 5. I got a 4.0 this semester. </p>
<p>It’s very possible to increase efficiency and thus cut down the amount of time spent working while not sacrificing quality. </p>
<p>However, whichever poster said that students don’t do service that won’t go on a college app is wrong. I go grocery shopping for my family, I pack lunches every day, I get my siblings ready for school each morning, I clean up the house, shuttle people to and from practice, and wake up at 6 am to take my dog for walks. Kids do do quite a bit. Some more than others, some less than others.</p>
<p>emeraldkity4,</p>
<p>I do not understand your point. I wrote “if you want to get into one of the highest rated colleges engaging in extracurricular activities is not voluntary and to say otherwise is ignoring reality.” Of course you do not have to try to get into one of the highest rated colleges. That is why I wrote “if you want to get into one of the highest rated colleges”. </p>
<p>You then go on to state that your children engaged in many extracurricular activities and got into good schools. You simply seem to be providing support for my point. It is great that your children enjoyed their activities and the truth is that my daughter only engages in activities that she enjoys, orchestra, outside chamber group, outside county orchestra, and various honor orchestras. But, my point is that regardless of whether the activities are enjoyed, they are not voluntary “if you want to get into one of the highest rated colleges”. </p>
<p>If you know of any top rated colleges that do not consider extracurricular activities when making admission decisions I would be interested in hearing about them.</p>
<p>If by “extracurricular activities” you mean significant time commitments that take up several hours a day–and from the way you are talking I suspect you do–then, no, it is not mandatory. I was in a couple clubs where we would basically sit around and talk about stuff for an hour once a week, and I played piano, not very seriously. That was the extent of my extracurricular commitments; it didn’t stop me from getting into one of the “highest-rated colleges.”</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting that every kid can forgo ECs, but I’ve long suspected they aren’t always as vital as people seem to think they are, and the idea that you have to juggle six or eight different activities to get into the Elitist Institution of Higher Learning of your dreams is pure bunk.</p>
<p>I don’t think hs kids work as hard as their parents in our community. and in our house my d did have the grades/test scores to get in to 2 of these; hyps, had a 30 hour a week sport, and still had time to fb and watch tv. </p>
<p>I think it’s partly IQ but also knowing what to focus on, what to study, in order to get good grades…and learn something as well, hopefully:)</p>
<p>I love generic declarative statements. Which kids? The kid who has to raise his younger siblings all by himself because of either absent / incompetent parents or ones who have to work all the time, all while trying to stay in school and hold down a part-time job to meet bills? The super-stressed middle-class kid who tries to balance the presidency on three clubs, a student council seat, and a sport while completing her college applications? </p>
<p>And which adults? A servicemember stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq? A single mother holding down two jobs to support her kids while worrying about her hours being cut back? A high-powered attorney who regularly puts in 12 hour days? A stay-at-home parent who gets all the fun of irregular hours without the benefit of regular adult-to-adult communication? Or someone like Paris Hilton?</p>
<p>And how are we defining work? Is it just based on time? Physical / mental effort? Productivity? Does it matter if the work is compulsory (like a job) or voluntary (like a school activity). Who defines voluntary? If your college plans revolve around Ivy Leagues, are extracurricular activities really “voluntary”? What about things relating to children, for adults? Isn’t having children to take care voluntary? Couldn’t you pare down your hours at work by giving up certain luxury items? If you rented, you probably wouldn’t have to deal with home maintenance either, saving up some time that way.</p>
<p>The idea that high school students work more than adults is silly, yet you can’t turn it around and say that all high school students are lazy do-nothings either. Those categories are so broad that they’re almost not even worth using in this particular context, I think.</p>
<p>Well said Gardna.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why parents help their kids with homework when the kid is in high school. Seriously, why are they taking AP classes if they’re running to their parents for help? It’s so hypocritical, mommy isn’t going to hold the kid’s hand in college. If you can’t take the heat then get out of the kitchen.</p>
<p>This is a topic which has confused me quite a bit. Years ago, when I looked at the EC lists of Ivy-accepted kids in newspaper articles about top students, I would marvel that anyone could have accomplished all that at such a young age. I assumed the students were highly efficient and academically brilliant. No doubt many were.</p>
<p>However, when my own intelligent, disciplined, and hard-working kids got to be that age, I began to seriously question those EC lists I saw, and now see on CC. Previous posters are correct. High school students like mine are up at 6:15, on the bus by 7, in school until 2:30 PM, at sports practice until 5:15, then are showering, eating dinner, and doing homework until 12:30 AM or later (as late as 2 or 3 some nights). While my kids did occasionally read news online, I didn’t see that they spent hours on FB, or in the old days IMing, like their less academic peers did. And they NEVER watched TV. Smug parents of kids with enough free time on their hands for xbox, FB, and 8 hours of sleep would imply to me that students who need to work longer hours on school assignments are probably inefficient or less intelligent that their litte darlings.</p>
<p>Well, my son was considered brilliant by many of his hs peers. My D less so, but was definitely seen as very smart. But when they started high school, there was just no way that either of them could have managed the number of EC’s, or intensity of EC’s, I’d see on those lists of other students. I began to worry they just weren’t as smart as I had thought, because they needed to spend so much time on their homework. Other parents talked of all the activities and social things their kids were doing, and I felt bad because mine could barely handle the lesser schedule they had.</p>
<p>But eventually the chickens come home to roost, and the proof is in the pudding. Rushing through homework, writing any old thing on the paper, might still get you a decent grade in the early years or in some classes, because sometimes only completion counts. And in the early years and some classes, a student can get an A with a lot less study than your kid put into it. But your kid learned a heck of a lot more and this difference eventually catches up to people in the form of course placement, SAT test, and AP tests. When the dust settled, my children and the students like them were the ones with the great academic records and nice admission results.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing: no matter your IQ, focus, or efficiency, AP classes at our high school assign a lot of homework that takes ooodles of time to finish, especially to do it well. So frankly, I still doubt those EC lists. Either those kids go to much easier schools with teachers who give little homework, or there’s something fishy going on.</p>
<p>So now with my youngest, who is not brilliant at all, the pattern has a new twist. Like her siblings, she spends hours on homework. Other students in the same classes seem never to have anything much to do. In fact, their parents looked at me like I had two heads when I commented on the heavy homework load. But here’s something interesting: my D outscores their kids on tests and projects. It’s true she needs more time to do the work because of her limitations. Still, from what I can infer from teachers’ comments, there is a noticeable difference in quality between her work and theirs. The same was true for the older kids and in the end it makes a difference.</p>
<p>So, the moral of this long ramble is that in our experience, there are no shortcuts to academic success for today’s kids. High achievement requires long hours with your nose to the grindstone. The same is true for EC success. For your EC involvement to stand up to any close scrutiny of its depth and value, a great time investment is required.</p>
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I don’t understand your objection or your comment that it’s hypocritical either. If kids are taking AP classes it doesn’t mean that they automatically are smart enough to comprehend every single thing without any extra help or questioning. And if their parents can answer those questions or clarify things, then what is hypocritical about that?</p>
<p>Just read on the Stanford forum that the university will begin to audit the applications of randomly-selected accepted students. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, and I hope other elite schools will start doing this as well. And when they do, I hope they actually verify student reporting of the number of hours spent on their EC’s!</p>
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<p>I’m not sure why getting help to learn something you’re having trouble understanding is seen as hypocritical. At college, students are encouraged to go to help sessions run by teaching assistants or to see their professors during office hours if they are having trouble understanding a concept.</p>
<p>One of the reasons some people have trouble in college is because they think that getting help is a sign of weakness and so they soldier on ineffectively. Actually, that is one of the reasons some people have trouble with LIFE–ask any woman who has had to deal with a husband who wouldn’t ask for directions. :)</p>
<p>yes they are overworked, at least ones like my daughter</p>
<p>WRT to EC’s A. many of them need them to get into the RIGHT schools for them (some kids need an intellectually challenging environment to thrive) B. In many places, not doing EC’s cuts you off from the opporunity to socialize which is so important to development, and to mental health. We had our DD do no ECs 1st semester freshman year of HS - it was a disaster. C. Physical EC’s like sports, dance, etc are important to health, sleep, and mental well being</p>
<p>WRT to Facebook - well we had TV in our time. I got distracted by books. There are always distractions. My DD often used FB to commiserate with her friends about homework - cutting off an outlet is not always a good strategy</p>
<p>AP’s - in 1977, I got into a VERY highly ranked college with ONE AP. Thats the way it was then. Its not like that anymore. </p>
<p>Doing their schoolwork is about THEM - well yeah, in some sense. But its a very long term payback - it probably doesnt feel to most of them like a grade is something that directly benefits them, even if they know it intellectually. </p>
<p>My DD’s sleep suffered through HS. That was true for most kids at her HS. I am so sorry for teens today. Well for the dedicated, intellectual, smart teens at any rate (I cannot speak for the ones who take no APs, plan to go to community college, attend schools they can breeze through). ESPECIALLY for those 2E kids who are ALSO ADHD or LD. I dont nit pick them. What they need is love and support.</p>
<p>“I think it’s partly IQ but also knowing what to focus on, what to study, in order to get good grades…and learn something as well, hopefully”</p>
<p>“sweetie, you need to study X, the next test in that will effect the grade, in Y youre going to get a B anyway, you can blow that off”</p>
<p>“but daddy, its important to LEARN Y”</p>
<p>The heart breaks.</p>
<p>I truly think highschool kids have more work but all for what? It seems it is more about college resume padding than growth and intellectual development. The superficial over the deep. Programmed and hoop jumping over fluidity and unstructured. Where is the data to suggest the current crop of highschool kids is brighter, more creative, or more advanced in any way than our prior generation? </p>
<p>I think there is something fundamentally flawed with the US college admissions process. Maybe no one agrees with me on this, but frankly I think the teenage years should include things like actual boredom and downtime, actually reading books just for fun (look at the list of favorite books on CC: the kids only know the classic curriculum assigned ones), socializing and dating, deep pondering while hiking in the woods, dinner with your family every night, adequate SLEEP which typically requires 9 hours for teens, and a myriad of other equally, if not MORE, important things as studying for another AP exam or making it to a music lesson.</p>
<p>Starbright…I completely agree. Many kids are missing out on truly “living” and for what?..to maybe get into a slightly higher ranked college? Many parents are to blame for this IMO.
EC are so overrated. Typical example, my son instead of attending some resume padding EC this winter has been playing pond hockey with his friends practically every day after school. Can he put this on his college application? Nope, but he is having fun, living life, being healthy. You only live once, and what college you go to for 4 years out of your life will have minimal effect on your happiness the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Homework to 2-3 in the morning?..absolutely crazy and NOT healthy.</p>
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<p>I was commenting on this post</p>
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<p>You seem to feel that preparing for college is a “game” that has been forced upon your daughter & that she is working harder than most adults & you don’t like that, that is required to get into a “good” school.</p>
<p>My point was that EC’s should be chosen because they are fun/interesting/worthwhile- & that you don’t have to kill yourself to get into a good school- on the contrary , in our experience schools are looking for students who pursue their own interests, not those who are trying to jump through the hoops in hopes it will get them some advantage.</p>
<p>It is pretty transparent when that is what is being done.</p>
<p>I don’t like rankings, but for arguments sake lets talk about schools where the admission rate is almost as difficult as D’s elementary school.
:o…
OK- kids that go to Princeton will probably have amazing EC’s.
However, they will not consider them to be a " game" they had to play, but something they enjoyed & learnt a great deal from.
They will not regret the time spent, even if they weren’t admitted to Princeton- because they liked what they were doing.</p>
<p>However there are hundreds of very wonderful schools, that accept students who may choose not even* to apply* to Princeton.</p>
<p>Boy that’s a thought.
;)</p>