Everyday, there are millions of high schoolers awake until 4 am, or even later studying for that APUSH test, or trying to finish piled assignments. We’ve all done it, before and we all know how it feels to wake up the next morning. Many of us pile extracurriculars, sports, along with 3 or 4 APs hoping to get into the college of their dreams. Is it really worth it? I mean everything we do in high school isn’t because we WANT to learn it. Be honest. Everything we do is FOR college. But are all those classes, all those all nighters, worth for a CHANCE to get into an ivy school or UCLA?
I say no. For a chance to get into that dream school, students go through many problems. Here are a few:
Lack of sleep
Social life: how are you going to have a social life if you have 10000 tests to study for?
Depression
I honestly dont know where im going with this: im just pissed off. Im pissed off at the american education. This needs to be changed. it NEEDS to be.
Maybe you can change it once you become older and dean of Yale College. However, I don’t find balancing 4 APs, a sport, and some extracurriculars to be that hard. I do everything in high school because I want to. I didn’t take AP Bio because I didn’t like it, and nobody forced me to do so. I took AP Chem because I thought Chemistry was interesting. I took AP Computer Science because I was interested in computers at first.
In addition, you’re going to have to learn to manage your time at college. If you can’t do that at high school, what makes you think the college you want to go to is going to accept you?
You don't have to do what you complain about to go to college. Your subject is college but your post is Ivy or UCLA. No, jump off the Ivy want-to-be treadmill and life will go on.
I couldn’t agree with you more. IMHO, teens need to be teens. They need to grow, need to find and explore their interests, become solid individuals and to do this does not involve living the life you describe above. In our family, we are not encouraging our children to get involved in this race to the “top.” I put top in quotes because success has do with many, many factors, not just going to a name college. I also want my children growing up to be happy, well adjusted individuals. I think that is most important of all and for me, this means taking care of yourself and enjoying living in the present rather than doing nothing but work toward the future. My (junior) son is an Eagle scout because he loves scouting and all of the adventure trips he has been on. Not for a college application… He takes an A.P. class because he is very interested in the topic, not because he is seeking the college credit. He is also taking it because this year he transferred to a new school and he thought it might be a way to meet some nice kids. And gasp, he is taking a “metals” class because he loves to build and create and thought he would enjoy the class. He is now at a very large high school and most of the college bound kids won’t take classes in the amazing Industrial Arts program because you will be in class with “those” kinds of kids. Guess what? He has met some really nice kids there too. One of the most successful and quality adults I know is a partner at a law firm. He tells the story how he was essentially flunking out of high school, joined the Vo-tech program and graduated with culinary training. A few years later he started college, found his path and eventually to Albany Law School. Another person I know (now 80) was a successful and talented Engineer. He nearly flunked high school (had Dyslexia) but went to Lafayette back in the day and found his niche. With today’s standards he could never get into Lafayette What concerns me about the Common Core and today’s American educational system that has been created, and people have bought in to, is that it is closing doors to people who aren’t “in the box” or don’t play the game. The fact that we are defining people’s futures by age 17 is absurd. There is much more to people, success and life than checking all the boxes to get into a name school. This name school is often to be taught by T.A’s and in huge classes where nobody even knows who you are.
The problem isn’t “American education”, @mistabeanzz, the problem is thinking that only “dream school” is acceptable. Not everyone can go to an Ivy or UCLA. Even well qualified applicants are turned away every year by that precious handful of institutions. So what? There are thousands of colleges and millions of happy successful people who didn’t go to prestigious colleges but still managed to create the lives they wanted. You can re-frame your situation by thinking beyond college to the adult you want to become. Do you want to be a person who defines success so narrowly, and complains because that path is difficult?
This isn’t the fault of the elite colleges either. There are a fixed number of spots and there has to be a process. This is the subculture of elite or bust.
Students should challenge themselves in college but I’ve not heard a single admissions brief say do activities you don’t enjoy to attend our school. Take a challenging course load but not one that breaks you. Pick an EC that you are passionate about. Find a college that fits your personality, abilities, and budget.
Exactly @Sportsman88. My S is surrounded by people who are taking the same six-AP course load that he is, and on top of that are doing the “cure cancer” type ECs (literally, in some cases) because they are passionate about that. Those are kids who will thrive at MIT or similar if they get in, but the best don’t actually seem to care about that. They’re doing what they WANT to do. My S has comparatively much weaker ECs but he’s happy with his choices. He knows he’s unlikely to get into an extremely selective school but he’s got a good list of schools where he will thrive.
Elite colleges don’t even WANT that. Stanford had to go and say it put aloud because so many kids weren’t getting it: "this isn’t a game of whoever has the most AP 's, win. "
You should have 6-8 AP’s by the end of high school, or dual enrollment, or AICE or whatever is recognized as rigorous. They want quality and evidence of leadership in your activities, not ten or fifteen clubs. You don’t need tons of AP and cutting sleep. Mist of all, they want students who learn because they genuinely find that more interesting than looking for Pokemon.
HS is where you learn to budget your time and work efficiently. I don’t think I stayed up past 2am, let alone pull an all-nighter, for any HS assignment (though college was a different story) - I was in several clubs and other activities as well.
The difference between “is college worth it” (the title of this thread) and “is an elite college worth it” (what the body of the post contains) is humongous, to the point where it’s just apples and oranges with regards to pro-con arguments.
My kids could say the same thing and they took plenty of AP courses. They probably took more than “necessary” but they did it because they wanted the challenge and felt they would be too bored in regular classes.
Lack of sleep damages your cognitive function, which makes it take longer to learn, which causes you to forego more sleep, which damages your cognitive function, which makes it take longer to learn, which cause you to forego more sleep, etc, etc, etc.
In my opinion, the trick is to do less, sleep more, but do what you do well and above all, be happy!
This may not lead to the ivy league, but it leads to a healthy, happy and productive life.