<p>I live a stone's throw away from Harvard; I know all about HYPS frenzy. But when S1 said he did not want to take AP-Calc or any AP-Science (despite repeated urgings by his GC and good grades in Precalc as well as in Honors Science classes, I fully supported him. He did get into several top 20 colleges anyway. But had he not, the sky would not have fallen.</p>
<p>Yes, there is peer pressure; Yes, there is relentless marketing. But we abdicate our own responsibilities as parents if we fall for the line that if our kids want it because their peers want it , then they must have it. </p>
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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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It makes me sad, too. And if my kids had done that, I would have made sure they stopped doing homework and went to bed.</p>
<p>GFG, no family is an island, but every parent gets to decide how to raise their kids. I have neighbors who are religious fundamentalists.... they don't own a TV although the kids are allowed to watch video's at friends houses with the parents prior approval of the content. Is this an easy way to raise children in our society, where it seems like every 8 year old watches MTV? Not easy.... but those are the parents values and they seem to be doing a fine job of setting limits and communicating what's important to them.</p>
<p>I don't know why an influx of Asians in your community means that someone else's Freshman kid feels the need to take AP physics. (my kids took it.... as seniors. It is a hard class for a kid who hasn't had calculus yet and I can only imagine that it's back-breaking for a kid in ninth grade-- assuming that the kid didn't beg to be allowed to take the class). I'm not trivializing how painful this must be as a parent to watch, but you (I don't mean you personally.... just all the you's out there who struggle with this) have to also accept responsiblity for buying into this mentality, especially if it's having a harmful impact on your kids.</p>
<p>Don't you ever ask yourself, "so what if she doesn't take physics. Will her life be unalterably ruined?"</p>
<p>Have we created such a winner takes all society that you seriously think your daughter's options are to take AP Physics now or to end up mopping floors at Burger King for the rest of her life? Do you not know dozens of happy, successful adults who did not attend an Ivy League university? That's the kind of perspective that an adult can bring to a kid's somewhat warped view of the world. There are successful people all over America who went to colleges few people have heard of.... U. Wisconsin is apparently the most successful incubator for Fortune 500 CEO's, etc.</p>
<p>I also think there's a difference between a kid aspiring high, and feeling like an abject failure if plan A doesn't materialize. Sorry to pick on you, GFG-- it's not personal, but it does push some buttons with me, since you echo much of what a family member is constantly complaining about.... and it's tough to look her in the eye at every family gathering and yell, "so move already". Interestingly enough.... her town sounds just like yours, but not in the Northeast!</p>
<p>I would not urge anyone to move. I would just tune out those who put pressure on our kids to strive for what I do not believe is the most admirable goals, or do what is not in our kids' best interest. It was not easy listening to the GC insinuating that my kid would not be competitive if he did not take AP-Calc. But I saw merit in his claim that he was not going to be a math/science major. Fortunately, when it came to helping him select colleges and writing recs, the GC did not hold it against him that he did not take her advice and enroll in AP-Calc.</p>
<p>As for S2, he had as many non-Ivies as Ivies on his list, including one I'd never heard of until we began discussing schools with good math programs.</p>
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[quote]
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.
[/quote]
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<p>If only I'd been thinking ahead when my husband got job offers in Shreveport, LA and Mobile, AL! </p>
<p>I don't think we pushed our son to a HYPMS mindset, but he knows where we went to school, he knows where the top kids in his high school go to school. However except for considering taking AP English he really hasn't been pushed into taking an inappropriate courseload and his ECs are all his. If they are good enough for top colleges great - if not well the next level down will be fine too. I'll feel a bit disappointed if a kid who is much brighter and more accomplished at an early age than either parent fails to get into the schools they got into. It doesn't seem fair.</p>
<p>Blossom, I think you've made some good points. I'm not immune to the competition about name schools, but it's a pretty recent phenomenon for us. Our kids attended elementary school in Minnesota, and I just don't remember the kind of angst that I see here in Massachusetts. But even there, I often felt like a salmon swimming upstream. In our case, it was about sports and popular culture.</p>
<p>Minnesota is big on team sports, and it was very important to most people we knew in our affluent suburb. But our kids, although they played whatever was in season through elementary school, were more interested in music. That was a huge time committment for us, with multiple lessons and theory classes each week. Most people didn't understand that.</p>
<p>As far as popular culture goes, H and I were always careful about what the kids were exposed to. We carefully monitored the movies they saw, and that was difficult when their peers were allowed to see things we thought were inappropriate. </p>
<p>From a HS perspective, it is very different in the NE. The kids seem to focus on elite colleges very early. We tried to downplay that for S1, but of course S2 now seems to feel some pressure about where he will get in. I just hate that!!! We are making a concerted effort to focus on the learning he's experiencing and downplaying the college admissions piece. I've always been a bit of a rebel, and I refuse to let this one aspect of life taint everything else.</p>
<p>As an adult I've lived in every part of the US except the south and can confidently say that nowhere is the push for 'name schools' stronger than in the northeast. Elesewhere, you see something like it in some exclusive privates, and in some especially academic/competitive publics. But the frezny for the Ivies, and state-school stigma of the northeast is, I think, pretty unique to the northeast.</p>
<p>Why do I feel I should defend myself? Look, I have and will continue to do what is necessary to protect the well-being of my own kids. And as I mentioned in another thread, despite the fact that my D was tracked into AP physics, she is NOT taking it. Furthermore, my own kid will be sent to bed if the hour gets too late before the homework is completed. But it is difficult swimming against the stream, and doing so can result in unfair, negative reactions from school personnel when you reject their suggested courses. (child is assumed to be lazy, etc.)</p>
<p>I fear for the children over whom I have no influence. The mom in me worries about my kids' friends and classmates, and sometimes my own children when they succumb to the pressure to achieve. If this were a problem only parents could solve, the original post wouldn't exist.</p>
<p>I've got cousins in LA and their 11 year old wants to get her hair done with some fancy chemical straightener process-- it costs $600 a pop. My sister-in-law in Chicago complains that her pre-teen wants a subscription to Jane-- she looked at it and its filled with instructions on how to perform various sexual acts. Neighbors of ours want to know if we let our college aged kids stay with their "significant others" in the same room when they came home for T-giving.</p>
<p>My point? parenting is all about figuring out what you're trying to transmit to your kids and then figuring out how the heck to do that, given the prevailing mores, tastes, values of society (or the lack thereof). The urge to stick your kid in Sylvan or Kumon at age 8 so they'll have a leg up in the college admissions process is no different from wanting your frizzy haired kid to have the straight hair her friends have.... you want it badly for them because you love them, you calm down, your realize how ridiculous it is, and you come up with plan B. </p>
<p>I live in the Northeast but not every town has this frenzy. Moreover, I'm sympathetic to kids and parents who feel trapped by the arms race, but I am still not convinced that participating is the only rational response. It is too easy to let go of your own common sense and go with the flow... but at what cost to your kid? Who else loves them enough to send them to bed at a decent hour, even if the homework isn't all done????</p>
<p>GFG-- I don't think you need to defend yourself-- I think we're trying to support you in your efforts to inject some sanity in your effort to raise your kids. You go girl (are you female?)!</p>
<p>To your point about school personnel... I have noticed an interesting phenomenon in today's K-12 Ed business. Every Child Must Have a Label. ADD, ADHD, Gifted, none of the above but Lazy, etc. In the good old days, teachers just tried to get through the curriculum. It's no longer PC to observe (without making a value judgement or attaching a label to it....) that kids grow in spurts, kids have unevenly distributed talents, some kids love math and others love history and it doesn't make the math loving kid a lazy bum if she doesn't also love history.</p>
<p>GFG-- you can do this. Swimming against the tide builds strong bodies (and character!)</p>
<p>TheGFG, I don't think you need to defend your point of view. I agree with you that the escalation continues, and it's difficult for a parent to step aside. We haven't fully managed to do that -- I was just saying that I don't like the current situation, but I don't know that there's a better way to do admissions, when elite colleges are a limited product.</p>
<p>sjmom, a suggestion made earlier in this thread by another poster is the only one that seems like it might help quell the frenzy. If colleges, led perhaps by MIT, were to start limiting what accolades and accomplishments they were willing to consider, then perhaps things will calm down. As one example, years ago even the best students used to take only one or two AP courses in their strongest subjects during senior year. College material was still taught largely in college, not high school. Next, students began filling their senior year with all AP's. Then the AP's crept into junior, sophomore, and even freshman year schedules. Actually, our district has middle schoolers in AP's now. They are bussed to the high school. In addition, students then began to study for AP tests on their own without even taking the actual classes. Presumably, this was to boost their desirability for college. After all, a bright student might study for fun, but take a test for fun? A less likely scenario except in the case of touseled CCer's kids.</p>
<p>For the benefit of kids' sanity, colleges could alllow for a strict maximum of 10 AP scores to be submitted and considered. The student could take as many extra ones as he liked, but the college would only look at 10. This concept is along the lines of Marilee's initiative of not printing quite so many lines on the application so that students don't read into their existence an expected quantity. The truly brilliant student with the inquiring mind, who only studies for his own edification (again, children of CCers), could continue to study to his heart's content. But the rat race might be stopped for all the others.</p>
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In addition, students then began to study for AP tests on their own without even taking the actual classes. Presumably, this was to boost their desirability for college. After all, a bright student might study for fun, but take a test for fun?
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</p>
<p>Since my took 2 APs as an 8th grader, I feel compelled to respond. He did so not to look good to colleges but because the teachers deemed him capable of doing so, and because he would have been bored ouf of his skull otherwise. Did he take the test for fun? No. But why should he not seek to validate his learning the materials? He studied AP-Calc on his own, after all, under the guidance of his dad and of a kind retired teacher who volunteered to help him prepare for the AP test. And he needed that score to get into the next level of math. There are plenty of kids like him who take APs early for their own sake rather than because it will look good on resumes.
S1 was not at all like S2. He did not even take AP-Calc as a 12th grader. But he still got into some great colleges.
The point remains that parents should do what is best for their individual child, not what others are doing, whether it means taking AP-Calc in 8th grade or not at all.
By the way, I have to laugh at the 10 AP scores maximum you suggest. I don't think you could take that many in our school without incurring major scheduling conflicts. I believe only 11 or 12 are offered, anyway.</p>
<p>I wonder if the problems you raise come from holistic admissions. If so, there is an easy answer: Go back to numbers-based admissions, e.g. SAT / GPA indexing with geographical diversity. Forget holistic admissions.</p>
<p>But I don't really want to do that, do you? So we are left with a pendulum that swings back and forth, one year favoring this EC, another year favoring that EC, and maybe the next year favoring a certain region, a specific URM, an athlete, whatever. With time, the pendulum will even out and most colleges will average a good group of diverse students. The fact that there may be arbitrary or unpredictable results is a side effect that we tolerate because the college profile is more important than any single student.</p>
<p>We live in the NE, but not mostly in a rat-race place. My husband and I went to college in the Midwest, so we value schools beyond our neighborhood. Most people we know, though, want their kids in NE schools (understandable for many reasons). Our son's teachers have always supported a good night's sleep and encouraged us to remove him from class to travel. Only 6 APs possible, no tracking and we didn't push college courses--too hard on the schedule--he read good books and wrote poetry and watched the Simpsons.</p>
<p>Life moves fast enough. I feel fortunate for our slower pace here. I don't think it will put our son at a disadvantage (I'll keep you posted, though; I'm not really sure yet). Still I wouldn't wish the higher pressure on him; the kids who want that, choose that. But if it's the parents who want it for the kids, that's another story imo. I've seen some pretty severe pushing toward Ivies and other schools that may be in the ballpark, but can't be assured. I don't judge people by where they went to college or their SAT scores. I'll bet most of us don't judge people that way either.</p>
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I don't judge people by where they went to college or their SAT scores. I'll bet most of us don't judge people that way either.
[/quote]
Well, how would anyone know where someone went to college unless they asked? This ties in to another thread about gifted kids going to college at 16. Unless a person wears their college sweatshirt to the office, or hands out a resume with their SATs listed or how old they were when they graduated from college, no one will ever know. Maybe if we, as parents, keep that in mind we can keep the arms race to a minimum.</p>
<p>Here we go again. Can we stop bringing up our own kids as examples? Haven't I already excluded the naturally brilliant children of CCers in my comments? Nobody is suggesting that highly intelligent children stop rising to the highest level they can attain! Is the 8th grader taking an AP because he's a junior Einstein who would be bored in regular math since he had already taught himself algebra and geometry? Fine. But is he taking the AP's because for every summer since he was 5 years old he was carted to classes and was being tutored every waking moment just so he would be at the top of his class? After all, taking AP's in middle school is a new way to stand out from among one's peers because taking AP's in high school is already passe. Kids who are self-motivated and highly intelligent will not feel pressured in their quest for achievement. No one is worrying about these children. It's just that people are no longer content for their children to not be brilliant and have resorted to forcing advanced learning and using artificial, externally-imposed means to achieve what the brilliant do naturally on their own. </p>
<p>In information sessions, we've heard elite school adcoms say they aren't looking for a student to cram his schedule full of AP's. No, they may not be looking for that, but the majority of accepted students have done just that. At least, that's what appears to be the case, if the accepted threads on CC and the kids we know around here are any indication. And besides, the Ivies most definitely do say they want to see that a student has taken the most rigorous schedule offered by his school. So, what's a kid/parent to think? The high school offers 15 AP's, the kid should take 15. Only problem is there's no way he can fit all 15 in his schedule since some of them are lab sciences which require 2 blocks. So, the student decides to take classes every summer to free up some space, and so begins the never-ending rat race.</p>
<p>And speaking of summer, colleges should be forbidden to ask what a student has done each summer. Before that question appeared on applications, most typical kids thought they could actually relax and do next to nothing. There would have always been the few children who would have chosen to study or do research or pursue an interest. That's super. But if the average kid is burnt out and is dying to relax but now feels pressured to come up with a summer research project, that's the sort of stress I'm concerned about.</p>
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It's just that people are no longer content for their children to not be brilliant and have resorted to forcing advanced learning and using artificial, externally-imposed means to achieve what the brilliant do naturally on their own.
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</p>
<p>Once again, with feeling: parents should develop some backbone. They don't have to play Mozart while their kids are still in the womb, flash spelling cards at kids who can't yet feed themselves, cart their kids to kumon every saturday since age 6; take them willy-nilly to music lessons because that's what the Jones' kids do; and they don't have to listen to the siren song of Ivies when there are dozens other great schools in this country.</p>
<p>Don't parents play a major role in shaping the values and goals of their own children? Or are they content to let other 17 year-olds, or the media or anybody but themselves dictate what their kids will aspire to?</p>
<p>Parents have only themselves to blame for making their kids feel that if they don't get into an Ivy their lives will be over or somehow diminished.</p>
<p>marite, honestly now: Did your s/d exit the womb already dreaming of studying calculus at an early age? Do you think your child's decision to pursue advanced math study was an accident of genetics? Clearly there was something about you and your spouse as parents, and the type of home and community environment your child grew up in which taught him/her that studying calculus in 8th grade would be a great thing to do. Somewhere along the line he was greatly affirmed by you and those around him for teaching himself math, seeking out a calculus tutor, and eventually learning to do college level math in middle school. It made you happy enough that you just decided to mention it to all of us, right? That was unnecessary because I had already excluded children of CCers/the naturally brilliant. So, I mean no offense, but give it a rest. I take it you never told him to go out and play instead? We're supposed to believe that the accomplishments of every child who parents are frequenting CC, for heaven's sake--the irony--just raised themselves, motivated themselves, and ended up at an elite school completely by accident. Curmudgeon, are you still here?</p>
<p>TheGFG, I think you are well intentioned, but are getting a little off track. Here are the facts, as I see them.</p>
<ol>
<li> Elite colleges are a limited good -- demand outstrips availability.</li>
<li> Many more kids are qualified to perform well at such colleges than there is space for.</li>
<li> Therefore, admissions is competitive.</li>
</ol>
<p>If you don't want to play the elite admissions game, that is your choice as a parent and/or a student. But you can't tell other people that they can't play the game to the best of their ability.</p>
<p>There really are kids out there who are driven to pursue a specific domain, usually in math, music or chess -- rule oriented disciplines. These are the really "gifted" kids who DO want to talk about math over breakfast, or who compose on the piano instead of going to bed like normal people. I think they are relatively rare, compared to the just very bright kids that many of us have.</p>
<p>So to rail against people meeting the needs of such children is just silly. And how else can we relate to this topic without anecdotal evidence? Few of us are admissions professionals (if any) so, of course, we talk about this on an OPINION forum while using our kids' experiences to illustrate a point.</p>
<p>It is still a CHOICE whether or not to pursue selective college admissions. I don't think it's a very fun game, and I choose not to let it dominate my younger son's life, but that's our choice.</p>
<p>There is a huge difference between supporting a child's interests and doing it to impress college adcoms, even nagging your child to develop interests they don't have for fear that said child won't have the required number of APs on his transcript or demonstrate leadership, character, extra-curricular achievements. If you don't know the difference, that's really too bad. Stay in the rat race. But don't complain that there is one.</p>
<p>For the record, S1 was clamoring for music at a very young age. At 3, he could actually sing (badly) the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute. So he wanted music lessons, we gave him music lessons. But we did not force him to take APs he did not want to take. S2 tried music for one year because big brother was taking lessons, decided it was not for him and that was it. But he was clamoring for math, so we bought him math books. None of that was done to impress adcoms. Had he chosen to attend Harvey Mudd College, we would have been quite happy. Even if it does not have the same cachet as Harvard. Because we know he would have gotten a great education there. But Harvey Mudd, like Stanford, does not have snow. And that was one of my kid's desiderata. </p>
<p>marite, with the 3-year old $60 dollar handbag.</p>