I find it hard to believe a parent would actually discourage their own child from going to college, even the ones who believe “college isn’t for everyone.” Even if the child eventually goes into a trade or does art that doesn’t require a college degree, I think parents who can afford it are crazy to not insist on it.
Some kids simply do not belong in college. One of my brothers is like that. No way he was ever going to get through 4 years of college (in anything short of 20 anyway). He went to trade school. Is doing fine. Not sure what the purpose would have been in terms of forcing him to go to college. My guess is he would have been demoralized by college. May not have made it through trade school.
“I find it hard to believe a parent would actually discourage their own child from going to college, even the ones who believe “college isn’t for everyone.” Even if the child eventually goes into a trade or does art that doesn’t require a college degree, I think parents who can afford it are crazy to not insist on it.”
Why? I can afford college for my sons. But if either of them weren’t going to benefit from going or had a better plan, why would it make sense to insist they go? Your screen name is “PragmaticMom”, but your stance doesn’t appear very pragmatic.
@PragmaticMom I have never, and would never tell my girls that they should study to get good grades so they can go to a good school. They should work hard because it will help them achieve their goals in life, whatever they are. Working hard goes far beyond simply getting grades. They need to learn communication skills, networking skills, confidence, speaking skills, how to be leaders, how to be good team members. The list goes on and on. And working hard is itself an important skill. They need to learn that just because a task or assignment is difficult or boring, doesn’t mean they can shirk it. They need to learn to budget their time and work when they are tired. They have to learn to work with teachers and classmates they dislike because they will one day have to work with bosses and coworkers they may dislike. Again, these are life skills that have nothing to do with grades.
D1 has a passion for a field where grades are really unimportant, but talent, networking, follow through and personality are huge. There were many activities she pursued in high school that took time and attention from her academics, but helped her build the skills she actually needed. I whole-heartedly supported that choice. She is thriving now.
D2 desperately wants med school. I push her hard to get great grades because she will need a stellar GPA in college to get into med school. Grade getting is a skill that she needs to learn now. I dont care about her current GPA at all for its own sake, but I do care about the skills she needs to develop.
Personally, I hate the focus on grades to the exclusion of other things. I also hate the categorization of schools into “good” and “not good.” Its totally unecessary.
As I’ve stated earlier, Brown is the only Ivy I’ve visited that I think would be a good fit for my daughter, as an undergrad. I’m sure she could make the others work if she applied and was accepted but you want your kid to enjoy college as well as come out with a bit of paper after four years don’t you?
@gallentjill “I have never, and would never tell my girls that they should study to get good grades so they can go to a good school. They should work hard because it will help them achieve their goals in life, whatever they are.”
And by contrast, I’ve always told my girls that they should study hard so that they can go to good schools. It’s obvious to me, and to anyone who’s ever spent more than 3 minutes with them even back when they were in pre-k, that they should go to college and would benefit from it. Also, not every teenager has a “goal”. My dd2, while very focused, smart and hardworking, has no goals. For some, the point of college is to find a goal.
That said, I do agree with @saillakeerie that not every belongs in college. I think the national push to send everyone to college is misguided and wasteful for everyone involved.
@bestmom888 Here is a scenario. Your kid loves theater and participating in all the school plays. Those time consuming rehearsals and hours building sets take time away from his studies. He isn’t failing, but he is getting some B’s instead of all A’s. You don’t think he is slacking off, its just that the hours steal time from school work and he isn’t one of those kids who can easily juggle everything. You also don’t think he is destined to become a professional actor. Its just something he loves, gives him self esteem, a nice social experience and confidence. Do you stop him from doing theater?
No! Of course not. Let him do theater. Are you certain he would be getting As if he was less busy? I did not find that the kids in theater got Bs instead of As, if they were capable of getting As. Even if he gets As by ONLY doing schoolwork, the changes he gets into to a top school are not that good - since they get plenty of kids that get As AND are highly involved.
Same for sports. I don’t see the vast majority of parents putting sports over school or homework. What evidence do you have that the kids that aren’t on the sports field are home hitting the books? They may be playing video games or on snap chat. The HS kids I see that are not involved with school activities, be it sports or others, are not any better students and are often not very engaged with school.
By HS most families have begun to realize that their kid is not going to be the next big thing or be eligible for a college scholarship due to their athletic ability or musical talent.
“And by contrast, I’ve always told my girls that they should study hard so that they can go to good schools. It’s obvious to me, and to anyone who’s ever spent more than 3 minutes with them even back when they were in pre-k, that they should go to college and would benefit from it. Also, not every teenager has a “goal”. My dd2, while very focused, smart and hardworking, has no goals. For some, the point of college is to find a goal.”
Hm. Puzzling. So you’re implying that all intelligent kids should go to school - a “good” school - regardless of whether they even have a goal? Every parent gets to decide what’s best for their kids, but my intelligent kids will not be using $70k a year of my after tax money to figure out what their goal is.
Of course sometimes goals change as people go to college and get more information, but to send them off to an expensive school when they don’t have any direction or plan at all? Sounds like those kids on the “paying for the party” thread.
@blossom you’ve missed the point about my athletics comment. It was a bit of a dig about ALL of these gifted camps, music and sports lessons, etc that parents feel compelled to spend money on to get a resume built for their kids in hopes that it will help them get into an upper tier school. ALL of the extracurriculars have merit, when they aren’t on steroids. I am not sure why you have issues with sports. My children learned a lot from being on sports teams including how to deal with obnoxious sports parents (who are likely to be the same obnoxious parents at PTA meetings and back to school nights). Sports kept my kids in shape, out of trouble and unplugged for awhile. They also learned time management and team building skills. I also took them to the library, museums, parks and bike riding. We went to the pool and the beach. And they did their summer reading. So, in my view, being academic and sportsminded are not mutually exclusive things and both have merit.
@bhs1978 definitley an obsession here. In the real world, others seem to focus on what’s “elite”. And granted, that’'s only some people.
I have nothing against sports. My kids played sports- for fun, for exercise, in one specific case because a physician recommended a particular team, and because the school required/encouraged it.
My kids learned a lot from these experiences as well.
But I’m willing to bet that you know kids whose ONLY outlet is sports. They aren’t balancing library/museums/bike riding with sports, they are doing sports. I did a post-op round of PT not long ago at the physical therapy center closest to my work (it was called a center for sports medicine but they took my insurance and it was convenient which was all I cared about) and I was appalled by the number of kids and teenagers there. Not because they’d had life saving surgery and needed PT to get their mobility back. Not because they were born with XYZ and this was a regular part of their ongoing existence. But because of a fall off a balance beam, a rotator cuff tear, a knee injury, TONS of football related orthopedic issues, and a whole host of young tennis, soccer and gymnastic stars who needed intense rehab. A wrestler with the kind of injury (as he proudly told me) that most orthopedic surgeons rarely get to see in someone so young.
And was it rehab to get them out of pain and back to "normal " life? No. Rehab to get them back on the field, back in the gym, put the helmet back on.
This isn’t the fault of colleges who have made parents think that their kid is destined to get a full paid gymnastics scholarship to ABC university.
So the point that colleges have created the frenzy- no, I think we own the sports thing all ourselves. And the eating disorders among these young athletes? OMG. And since the Ivy League doesn’t give athletic scholarships anyway- my point was that the sports frenzy is its own (sometimes very pernicious) thing.
Again, I used sports as an example. You can use many other EC’s (on steroids) to get my point across. Parents create the frenzy and some colleges (knowingly or unknowingly) perpetuate it. And, I never said scholarship athlete. I said scholar athlete. Those are usually completely different animals.
I agree there are parents that are solely focused on athletic scholarships (which is really, really shortsighted and can be, as you noted, very dangerous). Sadly, that avenue is sometimes the only one available to get a kid out of a bad situation (and that’s an entirely different topic).
@gallentjill I am not sure why you are asking me… I don’t think I said anything about foregoing ECs… Anyway, I would never stop my kids from pursuing their ECs, as long as they keep up their grades. DD1 spends 20+ hrs/wk just on her sport. DD2 even more because in addition to her sport, she performs with two dance companies. But yes, they are students and their schoolwork come first. So if their grades start to drop, I will make them choose something to give up.
@milee30 Why puzzling?? I don’t know about “all intelligent kids”, but I know that MY intelligent kids are going to college, whether or not they have a “goal” when they are 17. To me, nothing is more worthy of investing in than my children’s education. They’ve demonstrated excellent work ethics by keeping straight A’s in the most rigorous courses their very competitive HS has to offer, while pursuing their ECs and working part-time. Honestly, I would judge them to be “solid investments” even if I were not their mother. I don’t know why you think they are “party girls”.
I think a lot of the obsession ties to unrealistic expectations (not that anyone “expects” to get in to HYPSM - or maybe they do). Let’s face it, the common app has made it so much easier to apply to a wide array of colleges. My guess is many wouldn’t apply to so many, including the Ivies, if they had to do all the individual applications. So that’s part of the problem. The majority I feel, however, is tied to a lack of honesty between parents / counselors and the kids. I’ll use my kid as an example. He was a rock star in HS. All everything (President, Varsity Captain, Mentor, Ambassador, all the honors societies there were. At the senior banquet he was honored so many times it was embarrassing.) Of course great grades and test scores. However, there was nothing “unusual or exceptional” about him from an objective point of view. All his accomplishments would be viewed as the normal stuff great kids do.
The Ivies are looking for much more than that. His bio is basically table stakes. It’s the rest of the unusual stuff that gets you in to H (start a non profit, volunteer and raise money for a hospital, create and monetize a useful app, be a national level award winner in debate or science, do research with a local professor, etc.)
We were up front with him and told him he would likely get accepted to several great schools, but they wouldn’t be the Ivies or Duke or Vandy. He didn’t want to put time in for those other things as he was very committed to baseball year round - not good enough to play D1 at a school he cared about academically.
Realistically you need to understand that the Ivies literally decline thousands of kids every yr with perfect scores and grades. They’re looking for the wow factor that is quite subjective. Be honest with your kids. My son is a great kid and will go on to do really well in business, but he’s not that “outside the box” kid and that’s fine.
@bestmom888 I phrased my question badly. You seem to be tying the need to work hard with getting into a “good” school. Now you are saying that its fine for your kids to enjoy their ECs as long as their grades don’t drop. But that’s what I’m asking. What if they did drop? What if your straight A kids started getting B’s instead. That would certainly hinder their ability to get into an elite school. Would that lead you to stop their extras?
Well…this seems to have changed from “how to change the narrative” to “how do I get in”. I guess that answers the question.
@bestmom888 - reread my posts and please don’t misquote me. You have directly quoted me as writing something I didn’t write. If you want to believe your girls are “party girls”, that’s your thought, not mine.
It’s reasonable to examine why we hold certain beliefs. I think we do ourselves and our children a disservice when we simply repeat what we’ve been told without figuring out if it applies in our situation. Like the idea that nothing is more worthy of investing in than a child’s education. Sounds like a sound bite, not a logical examination of what amount of money makes sense to spend for different situations.
Same issue with the idea that by interacting with a preschooler one can conclude that a good college is the only logical path. There are many potential paths to success, even for precocious or intelligent kids. My oldest son started one fairly successful business and talked his way into being a key player at another very successful existing business using some advanced concepts he researched independently. He wants to go to college and I agree he’ll benefit, so am paying full price for a top college. But if he instead wanted to work to gain experience, not go to college and instead use the $250k+ as stakes for his new business venture, that’s something I’d consider as well. Different paths. I think he’ll be OK on many of them, not just the one that leads to a good college.
Second son actually tests with about 10 higher IQ points than the older one, so he’s not deficient in the brain department but is a totally different kid. Not sure yet what his path will be. His interests haven’t bloomed yet, so we’re still helping him explore. Could end up at a top college or could end up at a local college that feeds into a good tech school or could end up being something totally different like a chef or restaurateur. (But given how many restaurants I’ve seen fail, it would be highly unlikely I’d invest six figures in any restaurant venture. If he wants an investing stake, he’ll need to be more creative about how he plans to monetize those skills.) Again, he’ll be fine. Multiple possible paths, not all leading to college. All good.
@rickle1 I never thought our kid had the “outside the box” or unusual ECs or accomplishments either because he never won any national awards in any area. He was just a kid with pretty high GPA of 3.9 – just a run of the mill smart kid – who skated by with more A minuses than high As or A pluses. At his HS awards ceremony, there were many kids who received more awards than our kid. I sat there thinking “Few kids who are not my kid are receiving 80% of the awards.” What was worse was most parents were not even clapping enthusiastically because their kids were not the ones who won the award. It sure was boring to sit through 1.5 hours of awards ceremony just to see your kid receive one award. I almost forgot to take a photo because I almost fell asleep. lol
His skills in 4 languages were due to his sort of unique life experienced, not due to some extraordinary self-motivation, although he was interested in learning languages and cultures. But he got into Stanford REA, and the Stanford adcom told us our kid had a good chance to get into other top schools also. Frankly, after this experience, I realized many ordinarily smart kids without any extraordinary achievements or motivation get into HYPSM all the time. Yes, there are some kids who are truly extraordinarily talented in some areas at some schools but for the most part, they are just smart and/or more motivated kids for whatever the reasons. It’s just that they might have presented themselves to adcoms more cogently than others.
@milee30 I have no idea what you are talking about then. Why am I “paying for the party”? Why would I be “paying for the party” if my girls are not “party girls”?
You think that the concept that “nothing is more worthy of investing in than my children’s education” is a “sound bite” that I am simply “repeating what we’ve been told without figuring out if it applies in our situation”? I honestly can’t think of anything more worthy of investing in. A close second would be my own retirement, but I would still put my children’s education first. I don’t know what else is there. Why don’t you tell me? What’s more important to you than your children’s education?
“Same issue with the idea that by interacting with a preschooler one can conclude that a good college is the only logical path.” What? “Conclude” based on interacting with a preschooler? Might I remind you my dds are high schoolers now. I’ve had 14+ years to conclude that they could use some college education, although there were indications since they were babies.
I absolutely agree that there are multiple paths to success. I’ve said that not everyone belongs in college in my first post.