Sorry! The quoting process around here is more cumbersome than in most forums, and I mess up a lot!
Glad you mentioned all of this. Many people are not aware of toxic charity.
Iâm in the camp of NOT envying parents whose kids get a free college education at the expense of having to recognize that theyâve raised a âbrilliant sociopathâ AND have to deal with the legal fall out of a kid being emancipated.
Sometimes you have to look at the big picture. What kind of life are these people going to have?
"Whenever I see lavish spending on trips like this, I think of what a fraction of that money could accomplish without the âvolunteering tourists.â If a fraction of the six-figure budget was used to hire a local construction firm, they could build a brand-new school and have money left over. "
Well, yeah, but the same could be said of any expenditure of money. It could always go to " better," more charitable uses. I mean, no one on CC really NEEDS an iPad, or private music lessons for oneâs kids, or private SAT coaching, or a college that costs $60k a year, or a plane ticket when you could use Greyhound to go long distances, or a new kitchen, or a special bottle of wine, or all the many things we talk about on this board. I dislike trying to pass too much judgment on how people spend their money. Everyone on here could also easily cut their standard of living and donate a lot more to charity.
This.
Iâm also in the camp of neighbors not really knowing what they think they know. In college admissions, my D placed above what others might have expected and certainly above her rank (she was only top 5%, not top 20 in the class or anything and had a weakness straight through in one subject). Her success was griped about by people who didnât know that she had a package that told a very compelling and unique story about what she wanted to do. It was a four-year long story involving ECs, class choices and research, and it wasnât the usual thing; she also wrote an epically spectacular essay (I know because EVERY one of her schools mentioned that it was the best essay they had read that year) that wove the tale of her application with mystery, humor, insight and humility. Totally, totally unique and totally her. People who didnât read her essay would never have understood how it all fit together and, since no neighbors/classmates/parents read the essay, they didnât understand how she got from here to there. There was a lot of speculation and misinformation spread because we were trying to get above ourselves.
I think sometimes those charities which look a certain way from the outside can actually be real. I know of one. Someone I work with (an adult) had a grandfather who left his modest fortune in a third world country to support education of girls there. The entire extended family has worked toward that goal for years, including the kids from a very young age. They âvacationâ to the home country and are very comfortably off now, so a distant acquaintance might look at this and see something different, but it is a deeply-held passion and commitment made by the entire family and when the time comes, if the kids add it to the applications it wonât be fake at all.
Reality check- no Adcom looks at the kids activity handing out mosquito netting in the Third World and says, âWow, this kid cured malariaâ. Some of the biggest and most expert and most well endowed organizations in the world have been trying to kick malaria for twenty years now. Adcomâs are educated people who understand that most of these well meaning efforts are a drop in the bucket.
To the OP- you need to take it on faith that this charitable endeavor is not what got this other kid into college. Unless sheâs Mother Theresa, her charitable activities go into the same bucket as all the other more or less generic stuff that HS kids do. Some work at an animal shelter- some raise money for pediatric cancer- some perfect their serve.
blah blah blah. Thatâs not what gets you into college despite what your neighbors may think.
Yes, but I am assuming that the other personâs GPA/SAT puts them in the range of acceptees.
Is it really a thing to know someone elseâs childâs test scores? I never did except one Dâs boyfriend. Also GPA. Is knowing THAT a thing? At all of my kidsâ schools, honor/merit roll students were posted, but no GPA numbers and it would have taken real skill over the years to truly assess where each child stood in relation to others. How would you know what classes were weighted, which supported the applicationâs narrative, what trends appeared? Really. How would anyone know that about someone elseâs kid without seeing the transcript?
I asked the Princeton admissions officer what essay topic he would like to NEVER read again and he responded âyour mission trip to some third world country.â
I was very surprised that my daughter knew all her fri3ndâs scores and grades. They were all quite open about them when I thought a little privacy would have been better. I have friends who tell me the IQ scores of their kids. My sister was bragging about her sonâs grades in college and I said nothing about my daughterâs until she directly asked me and when I told her, that was the end of the conversation since my daughterâs were higher (and then I got to hear how her sonâs school is harder).
But yes, people do know all the scores and grades and class rank and amounts of scholarships.
While I agree that volunteering overseas is really summer camp for privileged kids, it seems to me that for those kids it is better to do something with their summer than sit around and play video games or watch TV. In my area it is very difficult for a 15 or 16 yo to get a job or even a volunteer gig (too many kids and too few opportunities for those under 18 and those who do not drive). My kid did a program that included a service component and a homestay. It wasnât about notching volunteer hours, but about getting him to go somewhere and live with a family in a completely different environment than his suburban bubble. He did not write about how it changed his life, but certainly offered him perspective and a lot of fun. Not every experience is about building the college resume.
As with other service or achievements, some Eagle scouts are dragged over the finish line by their parents and the projects vary in complexity and the amount of work required. Not saying it is not a great achievement: it is. But like many other âachievementsâ, there are ways to make what was done look like it took much more effort by the kid than it actually did.
How do you know theyâre all accurate?
@zoosermom, Iâm as stunned as you are about peopleâs knowledge of other peopleâs stats. Not part of the conversation where I live, or at least Iâve managed to dodge it. But Iâm also stunned to hear that you and your daughter were subject to griping about her success. Again, thankfully not exposed to any of that, but seriously? Wow.
As for overseas service trips, I agree that theyâre wildly overrated. At the same time, the opportunity to do one affordably came my kidâs way, and it was a great experience for him. No delusions about how much service he, personally, was able to provide but it was an eye-opening experience for him, and the more kids who have that, the more hope I have for the future. So long as everyone keeps it real about whatâs really going on there.
Sorry, I simply donât care enough about any kid other than my own to concern myself with their GPA, SAT, activities, etc. other than in the most generic sense (âshe plays soccerâ or âhe is into computersâ). And my kidsâ friends were THEIR friends - not objects for me to study and memorize details about. To me, knowing my kidsâ friendsâ SATs (etc) would be akin to my parents knowing how much my friends make for a living. An odd detail thatâs none of their business.
When an honor roll or similar list is posted, all the names that are not-my-kid are of no importance to me. In one ear and out the other.
I am so glad I worked full time when my kids were in school and didnât have to deal with any of this nosy-mommy-gossip. If people âgossipedâ about me or my kids, let 'em. No time to care.
For all the MYOB advice givers here I have a question for you.
Since MYOB is such a great idea, assuming you apply for a job, you probably donât care about the other applicants padding their resumes with fake and made up stuff. Since it really isnât your business and since the hiring organizations will see right through all that and hire the best person for the job.
It is the same thing as the OPâs issue. The liars and cheaters get ahead at the expense of the honest and diligent. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Itâs lovely actually.
Same here with a couple of exceptions. One of my sonâs best friends since third grade had a terrible tragedy befall his family last year, and I did look and was thrilled to see his name on the honor roll because it was great to see he was on his feet academically. But that was a special situation and the tragedy was very public, so I couldnât miss knowing about it. Other than that, I have no idea how any other kid has done over the four years, no sense of where they fit in, no idea of their ECs or passions or challenges. I can barely keep up with my own three. I would never be able to assess another kidâs admissions decisions or choices. I canât imagine knowing about anyone elseâs kid in such detail as to think I could make an informed assessment of his or her results.
Exactly. I know that my daughter was gossiped about in her acceptances because people asked me. I gave no information. When my son was accepted into a prep school from our NYC public middle school, it unleashed a firestorm of gossip. Someone who I had considered a good friend was dispatched to ask me about finances because the mom group had read the schoolâs website and couldnât understand how we could afford it based on information provided. These people had no idea, based on middle school band, how good of a musician my son is so I explained about a music scholarship and they still gossiped. Just for spite, I posted a publicity shot of my son receiving the scholarship on my Facebook to shut them all up. But it annoyed me massively.
The kids in my sonsâ high school did share a lot of info, and many did know each others scores and grades. Sometimes this got lost in translation when the parents thought they also knew the data. I had one parent come up to me after my younger son was accepted ED and say âYou know, Northwestern is a very hard school. Do you think [son] can handle it?â She said something else that made it clear that in her eyes he had much lower stats than he did; she clearly had no idea what classes he was taking. I was astonished, but replied that I thought he would do just fine.
Around here (almost) everyone knows( almost) everyone elseâs scores. In fact the local paper has a story every year on the kids with 36âs on the ACT. When my daughter got accepted to her school, one where our high school hadnât had a lot of success getting people in, everybody seemed to know about it immediately. Like I went to the local sporting good store an hour after she got in and two people I barely knew came up to me and congratulated me. And then when I was checking out with her newly purchased college sweatshirt, the woman at the counter ( who I had never met) said âOh is you daughter the one who got in today? Everyone has been talking about itâ Iâm not very private so I didnât really care but it was weird.