<p>What you say is true. But the upside is that many schools have improved in quality as a result of this whole process. I've always said that faculty at many many schools are recruited from the same pool of Ph.D.s. With students who do not get into HYPS or who are attracted by large merit aid packages by other schools, the quality of the student body has improved greatly. Duke, WashU and others are not the same schools as they were 15, 20 years ago. I was talking to one parent whose child is applying to colleges. He told me that his child was attracted by WashU's excellent psych department. This is a kid who has major hooks at several Ivies.</p>
<p>GFG, as Marite pointed out-- the issue has always existed, except that parental income, religion, and social status were the sifting mechanisms-- hardly a meritocratic system by anyone's measure. The smartest girl in my HS class went to a third tier college which was accessible via public transportation.... so she could live at home. The notion that she was "Ivy material" wouldn't have crossed her parents mind- she was first generation college, and they were thrilled and proud.</p>
<p>The top schools (however you define them) haven't expanded the number of classroom seats by any meaningful measure in 40 years despite baby booms, busts, echos, etc. I still maintain that raising healthy kids is more important than getting into some college which is perceived as more desireable than another. If there are crazy parents out there who disagree with me then more power to them-- and their sleep deprived kids. If you've got a kid who will excel at Princeton, that same kid will excel at Connecticut college, U Chicago, U Michigan, Wellesley (depending on gender of course), Trinity, Rice, Skidmore, or GW, all of which are statistically easier to get into. Will Princeton provide advantages that the others don't? Many people would say yes... but if your kid is going to require therapy for the next ten years to figure out why he/she was cheated out of a childhood, why bragging rights were more important to mom and dad than the kids self-confidence; why the kid was sacrificed on the altar of social status... these are issues that many children of overbearing parents have to face during their adulthood, and I'd argue that your kid is better off being a high achiever at podunk U than being a neurotic mess at Princeton.</p>
<p>Just my POV-- and GFG-- as I've said a few other times... you really ought to move. Your experience is not universal, even in the Northeast.</p>
<p>What we need to do is take garland's and GFG's school districts, toss them in a bag & mix them well. You'd probably come out with the perfect balance of challenge and sanity.</p>
<p>NJ sure is a crazy state. No matter where you are, drive a few miles in any direction and you can enter a different world.</p>
<p>But once I move, will the over-achievement frenzy find me there too? For now, what I describe may be the case in some parts of the NE and Calif. I predict the phenomenon will spread like wildfire unless folks like Marilee work to stop it. For one thing, economically and educationally outdone white middle class people are seeking refuge (and sleep) outside of NJ (see a recent Star Ledger series on this topic), and they will be taking at least a toned-down version of competitive frenzy with them to the popular relocations destinations like North Carolina, lol!</p>
<p>I recommend that posters read the thread just started by the parent of a 7 year old who wants to know ho to prepare his/her 7 year old for admission into an Ivy. Food for thought there aplenty.</p>
<p>"I totally agree with this. But the intensity has little to do with transparency."</p>
<p>Marite, I have never equated these two. Nor have I ever argued that "transparency" is as possible as many parents insist it is.</p>
<p>"It has to do with the limited availability of a particular commodity, in this instance education at certain schools. This aura of exclusivity is what makes it so desirable. In the case of Louis Vuitton bags, exclusivity is deliberately cultivated for the sole purpose of driving up sales by limiting the number of bags available even if the company could double or triple production. In the case of specific colleges, it is not possible to increase spots available owing to space constraints and because expansing the size of the student body would drastically alter the quality of the college experience for these students. It is true nonetheless that colleges do their share to whip up frenzy through their marketing."</p>
<p>(And I hope you know I've also said this maybe 100 times on CC.) Not that it's not worth repeating. And there's no question that the "Qualified" Students Should Get Admitted crowd do not see that to admit every "qualified" student would exponentially increase the sizes of the Universities whose relative small size is one of the main aspects of their character & the level of service to & opportunities for the student.</p>
<p>Your point about the democratization of higher education is also an excellent one, one made I think by JHS, too, & I could not agree more that this has changed the face of admissions, not to mention marketing.</p>
<p>GFG--I can guarantee you can move to my town, right here in ol' NJ, and the insanity will not follow you. (STickershock knows what town, and she can concur.) The tradeoff will be that many of the ECs that might be available in your town will not be here, that the classes will be diverse in many ways including aspirationally, that APs will be highly curtailed, the level of instruction will be uneven. </p>
<p>OTOH, the kids are very supportive of each other. The twins who did hire a college counselor were viewed as a strange but harmless anomaly. There's someone to hang out with on summer afternoons because everyone hasn't left on expensive programs. there's no big prestige competition.</p>
<p>Two stories: First, my S was taking a college prep but not honors sociology class as a senior. The teacher was talking about different social levels, and made the point that "kids from this town don't go to Ivy League schools." Well, S had just gotten his ED acceptance, and the whole class broke into delighted laughter, quick to point out he was wrong. There was no sense of jealousy, more like collective umbrage that the teacher had dissed all of them by his blanket statement. Again, that feeling of mutual support was strong.</p>
<p>Second--neighbor and mother of a classmate asked me where S was going to college. Mind you, this is NE NJ, twenty miles from Manhattan. I told her, and she said, "Oh, isn't that a teacher's college in the city?" Nope, we don't do prestige here :).</p>
<p>You get caught up in the frenzy only if YOU choose to be part of it. You don't have to get your name put on a 6-month waitlist for a Louis Vuitton bag if you decide that another bag (costing far less, usually) will serve your purposes well. Of course, the purpose has to be having a receptacle for your belongings, not keeping up with the Jones. </p>
<p>People who bemoan being caught up in a frenzy underplay their own role in creating and sustaining this frenzy; they also abdicate free will. We do not have to act as lemmings.</p>
<p>fortunately, all this handwringing about the need for students to be uberachievers apply to only the most selective 20-30 universities and LAC colleges. Very "normal" students are good candidates for the remaining 3000 4 year colleges and I suspect that most are quite happy that they chose that route early on in their hs careers.</p>
<p>Just spending time with friends which will last a lifetime trumps hours of violin lessons or hours of summer enrichment programs for most students.</p>
<p>marite, I could not agree more with your last point on post #808. This is such an unspoken subtext on CC, which is rarely directly addressed. It is certainly one way out of the "frenzy": don't participate. Another way out is to have been honest with oneself & one's surroundings several yrs. ago, when these admissions trends began to intensify & were hardly a secret. Families so hell-bent on admission to a fine university -- not that they don't have every right to be! -- could have used a fall-back strategy 2-5 years ago, although it could have entailed great family compromises, sacrifices: they could have moved to Michigan, Virginia, or California, to establish residency for the great public colleges there. Choices have to be made. If you want to stay in the Northeast or mid-Atlantic, I am telling you, and colleges have been showing you, that your chances for the same private university -- against equally qualified students from a diff. region -- are diminished. Of course I'm talking about the really high-profile ones. And I'm not addressing this to one poster, but to all those from a competitive region applying to selective privates.</p>
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I am telling you, and colleges have been showing you, that your chances for the same private university -- against equally qualified students from a diff. region -- are diminished. Of course I'm talking about the really high-profile ones.
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<p>That is very true. But the number of excellent private universities is far greater than the ones which provoke the frenzy. How many students from the NE and Mid-Atlantic region apply to Carleton, Grinnell, Occidental, Kenyon and scores of other terrific schools?</p>
<p>Epiphany, I disagree with your generalization about the Northeast. Kids in HS in Bridgeport CT don't get compared to kids in Greenwich... even though the towns are 25 miles (and several solar systems) apart.</p>
<p>I think many of us are saying that you can't have your cake and eat it too (as in so many things in life). Don't move to a town which attracts McMansion-living yuppies and then bemoan the fact that all of them are hell bent on their kids going to Harvard. If you've placed your kid on the conveyor belt of hyper-competitive childrearing (Waiter, I'll have Baby Einstein as an appetizer followed by private soccer coaching at age 6) it's tough to then complain that everyone else in your area wants what you want.</p>
<p>In a country where so many HS seniors are reading at an 8th grade level, it's hard to muster too much passion over the problems of kids in Winnetka or Great Neck who have a lot of competition for top colleges.</p>
<p>blossom, I stand corrected & apologize for the generalization -- which actually I did not intend, but my post did not make that clear. I implicitly meant the more competitive/edgy areas of the N'East, which are heavily impacted by the similarities of applicants from those areas. And I completely agree with your last paragraph: it's so easy to lose perspective when you're in the eye of the "hurricane."</p>
<p>And I also agree with marite's point about excellent alternatives. </p>
<p>These two thoughts together reinforce the notion of expectations, based on history. Historically, there are corners of this country which have enjoyed, if not a monopoly, certainly a heavy representation in particular U's & colleges. Many families in those areas are having significant difficulty adjusting to a reconfigured map of admissions. It is not the responsibility of the colleges to adjust their admissions priorities to continue the same level of geographic representation, so that family expectations can be supported. It is up to the families to change their expectations, change their location, or both.</p>
<p>It would be of great interest to hear Merilee Jones response to a quote by her in a recent book ' Price of Admission - How America's Ruling class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges-By Daniel Golden-. I draw attention to Chapter titled "Asian Americans - The New Jews ". The selection process reflect decline of meritocracy .Only CalTech seems to be an exception.</p>
<p>Just to play devil's advocate, as we're bemoaning how our kids have to be perfect to get into the top schools, there is an option -- one I'm suggesting to my 14-year-old daughter. Spend the next four years however you want, take APs or don't, start a club or don't, do a summer internship or don't, study your butt off and give up your free time or don't -- knowing that whatever choices you make will effect your chances of getting into the top 10-25 schools. But, it will not prevent you from going to ANY college that might still be great for you. This competition and obsession with perfection (that, believe me, I instilled in my first born) is a choice. You don't have to aspire to an Ivy League school. As my son (a senior) said, it's too late for him now to not care what school he gets into -- he did everything he was supposed to in order to get into HYP and he will be disappointed if it turns out not to be enough because of the sheer numbers of applicants. But for my daughter, I'm giving her the information that she doesn't have to play the game if she doesn't want to. I want her to aspire to having a great four years of high school and at the end finding a school where she'll be happy.
*Just noticed garland's post, #790, and marite, so I may not be the only one thinking this.</p>
<p>cheesehead, There have been at least 2 long threads recently on this book and this topic, specifically addressing the so-called "new Jews" and the so-called "decline" of meritocracy. Many of us (though not all of us) do not buy these labels or these conclusions.</p>
<h1>1 - Only the admissions committee really knows the "merits" of the particular candidates; only they have seen their complete files.</h1>
<h1>2 - The concept of merit has been modernized to include much more than GPA's and scores. Those two factors have not been trivialized, merely contextualized -- big difference.</h1>
<p>If anything, <em>more</em> merit is expected of applicants these days, not less so. It is just that such merit is less formulaic than in the past. The upper tiers do not believe that they are choosing to compromise on the quality of the candidate receiving admissions offers, not at all.</p>
<p>However, I definitely think it's healthier & more positive to choose a college with a narrow merit focus, if that's where a candidate prefers to attend & respects more. CalTech isn't the only such institution, but certainly one. And there are the Canadian and overseas options, as well. All that is a much better use of energy than trying to get the U.S. colleges to change their policies (reverting to policies of 2 & more decades ago). And there is the additional option of high-stat students getting practically free rides, Honors status, & special privileges at some U.S. colleges because of their stats.</p>
<p>epiphany, looking at the credentials of rejected students posted thruout this website on various threads one can clearly see the double standards . Similar fate of rejection is handed to average white Male students as well. My objection is to the thinking and statement "yet another typical asian" I doubt yet another 'typical African American 'would ever be uttered or tolerated by a public Official or Dean ( look at the fate of Mr. Summers safter the women and science speech!</p>
<p>epiphany, looking at the credentials of rejected students posted thruout this website on various threads one can clearly see the double standards . Similar fate of rejection is handed to average white Male students as well. My objection is to the thinking and statement "yet another typical asian" I doubt yet another 'typical African American 'would ever be uttered or tolerated by a public Official or Dean ( look at the fate of Mr. Summers safter the women and science speech!</p>
<p>The people making comments about "typical" Asian applicants are not adcoms. What you think are "the credentials" of rejected students are only a part of the overall picture.
You and I are not privy to the decision-making process at colleges, nor do we know everything there is in an applicant's folder. I do not know what the GC and teachers decided to write about my kids, let alone any other of their classmates. How can you or I possibly conclude that some students were more deserving of admission at certain schools than others without ALL the information upon which adcoms base their decision?</p>
<p>I'm not going to fully respond to many of the recent posts, because I've already contributed to similar discussions on other threads. But please, let's not be so flippant about just moving or "opting out." Life isn't that simple unless one is independently wealthy or in a profession that can be transplanted anywhere. The fact that the NE is an educational hotbed is not separate from the existence of an abundance of professional jobs in many industries. The two feed into each other. In addition, these facts also contribute to a large influx of Asian immigrants, whose presence and mindset have dramatically changed our schools over the last 10 years. We had long set down roots for ourselves and our children before we completely realized the extent of the new dynamic, such as that our freshmen would be expected to take AP physics. </p>
<p>And burnthis makes an important point saying: "As my son (a senior) said, it's too late for him now to not care what school he gets into -- he did everything he was supposed to in order to get into HYP and he will be disappointed if it turns out not to be enough because of the sheer numbers of applicants." Families are not islands. We live in a larger community and culture which inculcates our children with ideas of what they should want and need, despite our efforts to counter many of those ideas. As marite points out, the solution is to stop wanting a designer education. Regrettably, teenagers do tend to desire designer items before they reach our level of maturity and can appreciate that no handbag is worth more than $60. But it is adults who are marketing Coach bags to them, isn't it? So when I hear about 14 year olds falling asleep in class because they've been staying up too late doing homework, it makes me very sad. The fact that we may have decided that what they are seeking isn't worth it, doesn't mean they will stop desiring it. Coach and Abercrombie aren't in danger of bankruptcy, and neither is Harvard.</p>