@Pizzagirl Your kids experience would be very unusual here. This is a very connected community. For example Incredibly politically connected people on both sides of the aisle both locally and nationally. If you have any kind of impressive political internship people here would likely know about it. Not saying impossible. But it doesn’t happen often. And it’s not just the moms who gossip about this. Take the commuter trains downtown and you hear it from many dads , grandpas too. A few months ago I heard “Ooh Mikey Goldberg ( we don’t have a lot of Smiths or Jones here lol) I saw him at the DNC offices in DC, you know hes Sy Goldbergs grandson…got a good internship. Smart kid. Heard he has a 35 on the ACT and wants to go to Georgetown”
People in this town often have lived here for all their lives. They went to good schools and moved back. Everyone seems to know everyone else. And if you are in all the top classes and people don’t know you they are trying to find out about you. I think this is all kind of weird but it’s the way it is.
In about 10 years of working with the counseling office as a volunteer ( no access to resumes or info just helped arrange for visits from colleges, obtain and track where people applied, got in and debrief our alums…but it made me pay attention plus I’m a someone who just holds onto this info when I hear or read about it…like some people do sports stats) there was never a surprise “wow never heard of that kid being at the top and she’s into an elite school” experience when the annual map of where everyone was going came out in the last issue of the school paper a long standing tradition.
I can promise you that the local newspapers had no interest in any of my kids. They weren’t jocks, they weren’t in marching band, they weren’t on an “honor roll” or honor society, and nothing they did was remotely “newsworthy” either in or outside of school. Nobody founded a charity or got their picture taken with the mayor.
It would be so easy to look at the group of “high achievers” that you might have observed among the kids friends or at their high school and conclude that you were looking at the entire group.
Guess what- you aren’t. The Eagle Scout (who really did something remarkable with his project- not parent enabled or financed) was solid B student-- but he zoomed through college, med school, and is now in a tough, competitive residency. He never made it onto anyone’s “most likely to succeed” list. The former Supreme Court clerk (yes, an honest to goodness Supreme Court clerk) was neither Val nor Sal. Maybe won a good citizenship award but who can remember? A year after my youngest graduated, a kid got admitted to one of the mega impressive colleges and nobody could figure out why until it was revealed that said kid actually held a patent on a scientific invention (cooked up in the proverbial garage- by himself, not with parental help since the parents are clueless beyond belief) and had already incorporated and hired a CEO to market the thing. Nice kid btw- but I’d have said, “nothing special” if you had asked me. I might have also thought “not in AP Physics so probably not a science kid”. See how wrong you can be?
EVEN when it’s in the newspaper- not taking anything away from the kids winning stuff and getting noticed and getting articles written about them… you cannot assume that there isn’t a kid JUST as “newsworthy” quietly leaving school every afternoon to go god-knows-where where he or she is doing something REALLY remarkable that doesn’t attract anyone’s attention.
“If someone made the honor roll, or won a tennis match, or won a prize for a poem, why shouldn’t I be happy for them rather than just ignore the notice on the bulletin board because my child’s name wasn’t on the list?”
Who said not to be happy for them? You smile and say congratulations, and then it passes out of your head. It’s the mental tabulation that is the issue here.
Gotta love the extrovert parents who gossip with one another and believe they know “everybody.” No - you just know those who like to engage in the same gossipy chit chat as you. That’s not “everybody.”
maya, you’re from the North Shore, right? By your comment about “lots of Goldbergs” I’m guessing HIghland Park or Deerfield?
@Pizzagirl I can see why you’d think that the mental tabulation is an issue. But the number of people who do it is large. And here people have heard the family name because very very often they knew the kids parents, siblings,cousins and grandparents. We have several families where there are probably 12-20 cousins in the same school and it’s the school their parents and grandparents attended. In those situations one is more likely to remember this information.
Knowing that Mikey Goldberg has an internship in DC and got a 35 ACT does NOT give one iota of insight as to whether …
A) his acceptance to Georgetown was more “deserved” than anyone else’s or
B) his denial at Georgetown was a travesty of justice which proves that the adcoms there are just blithering idiots.
But go on, pretend small talk on the commuter train or at Starbucks passes for deep insight.
“there was never a surprise “wow never heard of that kid being at the top and she’s into an elite school” experience when the annual map of where everyone was going came out in the last issue of the school paper a long standing tradition.”
You are not getting what we are saying.
What if there WERE a surprise? That the kid you thought was nothing special got into an elite school and the mavens were shocked, shocked, shocked? what would happen? Would you all crow about it and be upset that she had dared to have accomplishments she didn’t bother to share with all the nosy neighbors?
@Pizzagirl I definitely agree with you that no one knows why anyone was accepted or rejected at schools with holistic review. My point was in no way to contest that. My point was that n my rather insular community people are pretty aware say in 99 out of 100 cases who is on track for an elite school. I’d say there are more surprise denials then acceptances. It is very rare for a kid on no ones radar to get an acceptance at an elite school. I’m in no way saying that this is a good thing. Just that this is a community very in each other’s business so it’s very hard ( not impossible but very very hard) to fly under the radar.
You can choose to believe that you know every talented, high potential kid in your neighborhood. You can choose to believe that anyone who got into a college which your kid got denied from did it by manipulating the system, cheating or lying. You can choose to believe that the kid who won the fellowship or the grant or got the internship or the job or the residency that yours did not was a sneak, a cheat, a low-life, or somehow played a rigged game.
But this looking over your shoulder never ends. Take it from an old-timer here. The stakes get HIGHER not lower once they get into college. The parent whose kid got into med school first try ends up sitting on the train next to the parent whose kid had to take a year off after undergrad to prep and prep and prep again for the MCAT. The parent whose kid got a Federal Clerkship after law school (and was editor of law review) ends up in line at CVS behind the parent whose kid is struggling to find a job doing document review as a temp… and who had to take the bar twice before passing. The parent whose kid is on the advance team for the next Olympics and is doing deals with big companies for huge endorsements lives next door to the kid who works at the local minor league ball stadium planning “key ring” promotions and updating the website to include “buy two sodas get one free” day. The parent whose kid just won a Pulitzer works out at the same gym as the parent whose kid was editor of the school newspaper, majored in journalism, and won an award in college for opinion-writing but is still living in the basement trying to make it as a writer.
Come back in a decade and you’ll have lots more grudges to nurture!!!
“And if you are in all the top classes and people don’t know you they are trying to find out about you. I think this is all kind of weird but it’s the way it is.”
Ick… How intrusive.
Dont people in that town have anything else to do with their time?
“What if there WERE a surprise? That the kid you thought was nothing special got into an elite school and the mavens were shocked, shocked, shocked? what would happen? Would you all crow about it and be upset that she had dared to have accomplishments she didn’t bother to share with all the nosy neighbors”
I can think of one instance at a neighboring school many years ago. The kid wasn’t a stellar student and was accepted at Harvard. I happened to know about his achievement because I) I worked with the mom and ii) the fact that he was at the very top of the National Chemistry Exam which is amazing was mentioned in a trade magazine my mom (who happens to be a chemist) gets. She knew it was probably my workfriends son and told me. She said the smartest person she ever knew was like 100 th on the exam. She couldn’t imagine the intellectual depth of a kid who was in the top few.
I’d say people were pretty shocked but so delighted for the kid. There is a certain pride (perhaps misplaced) when someone from the community does well. There little jealousy because though we send a lot of kids to great schools HYPS seldom happens and few are really gunning for it.
"I’d say people were pretty shocked but so delighted for the kid. There is a certain pride (perhaps misplaced) when someone from the community does well. "
I get being delighted for someone else’s good fortune - hey, we all wish people success in their endeavors. I don’t get “pride” though.
To be honest, I find so much of this “everybody who is anybody just knows everybody’s business” so utterly fake and insincere.
“It’s supremely easy to stay out of all this neighborhood gossip. It’s called a J-O-B. Lol.” You are right there. Lol. Well mostly. I do still here some of this stuff on the commuter train and I think most of those people work. But the non-working spouses certainly add to the atmosphere.
How much one knows is always a hot button on CC, it seems.
Also seems we spend as much time fussing about the next person’s approach (whether nosiness or just knowing) as we claim not to be interested in doing about their kids. Sorry.
if people want to know all those details about every kid in their kid’s class (not just close friends) - hey, whatever, it’s a free country. Just leave me and my kids out of the inane gossip as to who was “deserving” and who was a “surprise.”
When you are integrated into a community is hard not to “know” the talents of other children. My son played ice hockey since second grade - I never missed a game. You know who the better players are and thus know who will get the awards at the end of the year. He is now on varsity high school team that has a rule that you cannot have below a C average in more than 2 courses to qualify for every game. So again, you can’t help notice if some of the better players are sitting on the bench - if they are not out for an injury, you know why they are there. I think the difference lies in those who make that fact a topic of discussion and those who refrain from dong so.
And then of course you tend to become somewhat friendly with the families of the children that are in your child’s social circle. Some become more than acquaintances - 2 of my closest GF’s are women I met when my son started pre-k. You share your children’s successes and failures with each other, that’s what friends do. I never sought out information about other students, but when you have been in a community for a long time, your normal interactions with other people often result in your “knowing” about their children.
Exactly why my daughter thought those kids were a bit nutty and best avoided. She was in several of these classes and those kids could figure her out. (why did she know the answers in class but still get B’s and why wasn’t she upset? The answer is simply she chose sleep and her mental health over the chance for an A - staying up late didn’t ensure an A, just sleep deprivation)
