MIT Admissions Dean warns About College Entrance Stress

Parents Forum
841

<p>GFG--I don't think that was called for. Actually, if you read all of Marite's posts, you will see that her older S had absolutely no interest in math, and didn't take calc in HS. So, yeah, it does seem like her younger S is a mathematical prodigy--certainly his parents weren't forcing him down that path.</p>

<p>The fact that you keep excluding kids of CC parents reads disengenously, because it has an air of sarcasm to it ("Yeah, right, your kids are all so brainy" comes off clearly in the end of your last post, and many times before that.)</p>

<p>Marite's point is, I believe, not that everyone is like her S, but that there are some times when advanced accomplishments are genuine, come from the student, and don't reflect an admissions arms race. And her S's math success comes under that category. I don't have a kid like that, but i think it's neat when I hear about someone like him. I don't need to look for the pushing behind him; it's clear that this is about the kid, not parental aspirations.</p>

<p>OTOH, when, which seems far more common, kids are pushed well beyond their natural proclivities and interests for the sake of college ambition, then the point that Marite, myself, and others have been making is that it is up to the parent to demand and maintain sanity in the process, step back, and let the child be him or herself. No matter where you live, you can do that. That's the basic and simple point here. Rather than rail against the party line, refuse to toe it.</p>

<p>I truly am thankful that I don't live in a destructively ambitious school system like you describe, so that I didn't have to swim upstream to avoid the excesses. More and more, I realize that staying in my little blue collar town was a better decision than i knew when we made it.</p>

842

<p>From what I have "learned" from my time on the board I'm willing to give marite's kid S2 a pass. Especially since the routes taken by S1 and S2 were so dramatically different. I also trust her (that doesn't mean we always agree or that I won't call her on something ;))</p>

<p>I do believe that there are rare individuals like marite's S2 who do things out of genuine interest. I also believe that they are very few and very far between. That does NOT mean that I think the level of intellectual discourse on math topics between father and son and the access to high quality mentors didn't fuel the fire. I think it's more than likely they did. </p>

<p>I can remember back to 7th and 8th grade , barely, and I remember it as I time my Dad could do no wrong. Moreso 7th than 8th. Maybe moreso boys than girls. His politics were my politics. His dreams were my dreams. That didn't last much longer but it was there then. I think for some kids parental influence at that age is in a real state of flux. I don't know and won't speculate on the dynamic at marite's house, and I'll only say that in my experience some kids values at that age are their parents values - but for most not for a lot longer. ;)</p>

<p>In my experience , kids are good at what they value. If a child values schoolwork, there is a good chance he'll be good at it. Sports? The same thing. One of our jobs as parents is to guide them to value important things. I can certainly see danger in having a kid value performance over caring, success over honesty, glory over teamwork. It happens all to often. </p>

<p>It's a tough job being a parent. When to push, when to pull, when to grab them and say whoa! We all need to do the best we can. (And I know I screwed this up many times.) I think some folks lose track of what's important. That's the origin of a lot of this "bad stuff" IMO. Parents bear their share of the responsibility.</p>

<p>And no GFG, I haven't changed my opinion of the great multitudes of parents who can't stand the fact that they don't have a kid like marite's S2 appears to be and so they pretend to have one by creating an elaborate artifice for admissions to satisfy their need. Sometimes from a young age, like birth. On that we still agree.</p>

843

<p>"So to rail against people meeting the needs of such children is just silly."</p>

<p>Who on here has done that? Not I, nor anyone else. I too have a gifted child. But what may be appropriate for the very few naturally gifted is now being expected as well of the average student in certain communities. This is partly fueled by the desire for admission to elite colleges by parents and by some school districts who want to boast about their admissions successess (and raise property values). What you may be failing to see is the point that the escalation has risen to the extent that children are negatively affected even if they are not at all interested in elite admissions. It is affected by pushing kids into ever higher levels of instruction for which they are not suited so the school can brag about how many children are in honors classes, it is affected by having no kids to play with after school because they're all at Kumon, it's affected because if the sign ups for a certain high school activity begin at 6:30AM Friday morning, a child will have to spend Thursday night camping out at the school to stand a chance of participation because they all need to have EC's for college, etc.</p>

<p>As we've established, my community is different from yours but I'm warning that this will spread.</p>

844

<p>Cur</p>

<p>
[quote]
It's a tough job being a parent. When to push when to pull when to grab them and say whoa! We all need to do the best we can.I think some folks lose track of what's important. That's the origin of a lot of this "bad stuff" IMO. Parents bear their share of the responsibility.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yes, yes, yes!</p>

845

<p>curmudgeon and marite</p>

<p>I couldn't agree more. If parents value their kids for being just who they are, the kids are likely to value themselves and do just fine in life. Nothing wrong with aspiring to HYP or AWS, (if it's the kid's aspiration, and sometimes it truly is), but they aren't necessities and being rejected from them is not a tragedy.</p>

<p>A UVM student is missing, possibly abducted. THAT'S a tragedy.</p>

846

<p>I can see both sides of the picture here. Like Marite, I also have two very different kids. I can attest to the fact that math oriented kids beg for more. We did send our kid out to the sand box on more than one occassion. We made him play soccer longer than he really wanted to. We sent him to normal camp - but he liked science camp and chess camp better. The year we sent him to computer camp (only one week because it was so pricey) - he was in heaven. I don't think we pushed him, but we did recognize his interest and encourage it. He got adult level math books because he read them. He got computer manuals because he asked for them. </p>

<p>My younger son meanwhile wants to spend his summers at an old fashioned camp and become a camp counselor. That's what's right for him.</p>

<p>I don't know how you can meet the needs of the highly gifted kids without other parents aspiring to have their kids be like yours. They think our kids got that way because of something we did, but the reality is that our kids were pulling us, not that we were pushing them. If I have any regrets it's that I didn't advocate for accelerating my kid in math as much as I should have.</p>

847

<p>


Students at my son's HS drive cars that H and I will probably never be able to afford. Many of these kids get cars before they get their license, but ours don't. So what? We don't think our kids need cars in HS, so we don't buy into that game. It's the same with admissions. You have a general point about the pressures experienced by kids in affluent suburbs, and I agree with that. After all, I live in a Boston suburb -- the people here are INTENSE. I'm not convinced that your community is all that different -- many of the students here target Phillips Andover, Exeter or another elite Prep school, so these families are right there with your neighbors.</p>

<p>Neither you nor Marilee Jones is going to change this situation. It is what it is. When parents recognize that attending an Ivy is not the end-all of existence, the tempo may slow down.</p>

<p>Mathmom, I understand your point about people assuming that you must have done something in particular to make your son a "math guy." DS was very successful in college admissions, and I have had people call me to ask me what we did to get him in. How do you explain to people that it's not one factor, and that other than encouraging him to try new things, we didn't do anything in particular. It's just who he is.</p>

848

<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."</p>

<p>Appearances are deceptive. The ones for whom the achievement is externally motivated (via family and/or peer influence) are not necessarily being accepted to elites, & this is first-hand. If it is not coming from within, chances are that other things are also not coming from within, which means that the student will <em>not</em> stand out to those colleges, and doesn't. They will not appear as an individual, and when they don't, they tend to be less often accepted by those elites. Admissions results really do bear this out. (And don't take at face value the student postings here, because they often state the statistical surface; when they post fully -- after results -- you see the breadth & depth of their accomplishment, & then you are not surprised.)</p>

<p>I've posted several times on this or other threads about the AP-mad students who pile up AP trophies (in my region) but have little else to show. Those students are not being accepted to elites if they are mere academic grinds & follow what they assume is some template for admission.</p>

849

<p>GFG-- I don't agree that the mania you describe will spread. In fact, from my corner of the hyper-competitive, Northeast, Ivy loving world, I believe that most parents of todays toddlers and elementary school kids are far too narcissitic, busy, consumption-crazed, whatever you want to call it, to buy into the need for one of these schools for the prolonged effort it requires to turn a designer baby into an Ivy-bound teenager. </p>

<p>My younger neighbors ask me what I "did' to raise my academically oriented kids (not gifted, not geniuses, not prodigies.... but interested in academics and did well in school without being pushed.) I tell them to take them to the library every week and they look at me like I'm nuts. Who has time for the library? I tell them that we were members of the local nature sanctuary and historical society which had great, free programs for parents and kids... their eyes glaze over.</p>

<p>They are looking for places to dump the kids, pay to have someone stuff something valuable inside their heads, so they can pick them up after a few hours of enrichment. The most valued parent/child activity is rooting on the sidelines at some team sport.... or berating the coach for not playing your kid more frequently. The notion that kids model their parents.... and if Dad thinks building a bridge with toothpicks is fun a kid will want to learn how to build a bridge with him.... just isn't part of their vocabulary. These parents are busy on weekends.... the moms with the leg waxing and the dads with golf and the endless hobbies which don't include the kids.... and they're not interested in the slow, sustained effort of introducing your kid to a big, fascinating world which might required parental supervision unless it involves hockey, of course.</p>

<p>NY Times just had an article on parents who are looking for Mandarin speaking nanny's.... for the Caucasian who has everything, right? A real live Asian making dinner and supervising homework so Mom and Dad can be somewhere else.</p>

<p>So GFG, no.... I don't think it will spread. I think our celebrity crazed, consumption-driven society which has hugely anti-elitist biases running through virtually every element of our culture, will go back to worrying about who is playing in the Superbowl and who won a Grammy. Do stuff with your kids on the weekend which doesn't involve someone winning and someone losing? Not a chance.</p>

850

<p>


That's what I meant to say!</p>

<p>When people ask how S1 got into such great schools, they want to know what the SAT has to be, how many AP's, what's the perfect EC. They look for the shortcuts, preferably something they can purchase. Like Blossom, H and I spent TIME with our kids. It wasn't always super academic, but we liked going to a bird sanctuary where we lived in Canada, for example. Money was tight when they were young, so we spend a lot of time at free things, like the library. (H STILL likes to go to the public library on weekends.)</p>

<p>So, unless it's for sale, many parents won't put in the effort to help their kids grow. They just want to buy the decal for the window.</p>

851

<p>Sj- agree. Money being tight was a gift which I now, quite belatedly, recognize. Pay for Gymboree when we could go the park for free? We couldn't afford it anyway so it wasn't on the radar screen....</p>

852

<p>blossom - "narcissistic, busy, consumption-crazed" parents are nothing new. Certainly not limited to "today's" parents of toddlers, and I'd bet that description fits many families of today's Ivy League students. Let's not idealize one generation and demonize another.</p>

853

<p>
[quote]
Money being tight was a gift which I now, quite belatedly, recognize.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Me too. And I mean no disrespect to the truly low income families--we always had enough to eat, and a roof over our heads. But, when you're living in a tiny apartment over a pizzeria, and dreading the days that they're closed, because the warmth from the ovens was helping cut down on the heating bill, you really get some perspective on what is necessary and what isn't.</p>

<p>Like Blossom and others, we spent hours every week at the library. We fingerpainted, we played in leaves, we took lots and lots of walks. A chair pulled up to the kitchen sink, some pans, running water and soap can be great entertainment for a three year old. We read books together for hours every day. And we talked, all the time. My poor kids had a very Socratic childhood; they still remark that we always answer a question with another question. Lots of playing with blocks, wooden trains, balls. No electric riding toys of any kind. Limited TV, none in their rooms, ever. </p>

<p>All of this was free, or close to it. And I think that it had more impact on the development of their minds than all the tutoring, extra classes, and overstuffed schedules we avoided possibly could have.</p>

854

<p>I haven't read this entire thread, but GFG has described a highly competitive area similiar to the one in which I live. I can't say if this culture is spreading, but there are certainly pockets of this unbelievable competition. Although there are plenty of luxury cars and homes where I live, people don't compete in terms of material goods. They compete in the college frenzy. They want to be able to say that their kid attends Harvard. (For a number of parents I know personally, it isn't good enough to have a child attend an ivy league school or other high caliber school. It has to be Harvard. As noted by someone above, Harvard has a cachet that other excellent schools don't have.) To this end, parents go to any length to give their kid an edge over the many many other highly qualified, highly competitive classmates. AFter all, Harvard isn't going to take any more than about 4 of the 25-50 similarly highly qualified classmates. And the kids go willingly along as all of the other kids are dong the same type of thing.</p>

<p>One example sticks in my mind. I know a group of girls whose parents arranged for them to study geometry the summer before they would be taking it in an accelerated middle school program, and similarly, the girls studied algebra the summer before taking algebra in the accelerated middle school program into which they were bright enough to gain entry. Perhaps these girls were just anxious to spend their summer studying math, but as it was the exact course they were about to enter, I believe it had to be in order to get the high grades deemed necessary to gain entry into the elite of the elite colleges. </p>

<p>I don't know that there is any way to lessen the pressure on the kids around here. Although I personally think that the US News rankings contributes to the frenzy. Are we really better off as a society since US News started to rank the colleges? </p>

<p>The only parents who have the so-called backbone to withstand the college frenzy mania are those of students who aren't as likely to apply to the elite of the elite schools. These sane parents do let their kids be kids and follow the activities in which they are interested.</p>

<p>And don't think that the competition ends once the kids enter college. Now the conversation drifts to whose freshman kid was tapped for a special mentorship program normally reserved for upper classman. Whose kid got a special research internship, etc. etc. One parent wondered whether her son should take a course of interest to him at Harvard but one in which he would more likely get a B instead of an A. I think she was trying to say that he had been a straight-A student. Needless to say, I have reduced my contact with this person and other similar parents to the absolute minimum necessary.</p>

855

<p>Thanks, Odyssey. My community cannot possibly be the only one or Marilee would not have begun this crusade. She must see this phenomenon in plenty of other places.</p>

<p>As for the math class example you gave, the same happens in our schools. A bright kid with no Ivy aspirations whose parents are also not cachet crazy, is nonetheless affected because children like these populate her classes. They begin the academic year having already studied the course material outside of school, such as in summer classes or outside tutoring. Hence, they are confident and knowledgeable. They already know how to do the work. The teacher responds to their cues by upping the ante, skipping introductory material, making tests more difficult, etc. Recently, our district responded to the trend by changing to more rigorous textbooks. D's math teacher said the book was so difficult that they would not even be completing 2 full chapters in the first marking period.</p>

<p>What happens? Soon the bright unprepared kids are faced with a choice of dropping out or getting tutoring themselves to keep up. The class should be for them, since they are intelligent and hard-working enough. Instead, they are relegated to a regular math class in middle school or freshman year, which then shuts them out of math and science AP's in future years because they lack the prerequisites. Apart from any consideration of college admissions, just from an educational point of view, the child whose parents reject the rat race pays a price. It is much easier to stay sane if your child wouldn't have had a shot at advanced courses and elite colleges anyway.</p>

856

<p>GFG, if I lived where you live, I think I'd be tempted to homeschool or use Stanford's EPGY courses. There must be a lot of unhappy teenagers in your town.</p>

857

<p>Marite, I have followed your posts for a long time, and I always seem to share your point of view. But a recent entry of yours induces me to pose the following question: if Harvey Mudd did, in fact, have snow, is there a chance your son would have picked it over Harvard? Would it be so terrible for a parent to admit on this forum that their child, and they, thought Harvard afforded greater opportunities for a math protegy, beyond the issue of weather? Or, if one admitted this, would they get flamed beyond recognition?</p>

858

<p>Is there a chance that he would have picked HMC over Harvard? No, but that's partly because we are from the NE and CA is unfamiliar territory. Had we been CA residents, I don't know what the answer would have been.
One factor I have not mentioned is that S dislikes air travel, so CA (HMC and Stanford) and Chicago were always going to be lower down his list than schools he could reach by other means. Which is why if we had been living in CA, the ranking might have been very different.
We originally looked into LACs as being a good size. HMC was the only non-university that seemed to have enough advanced courses on a regular basis. Williams' math department is said to be excellent, but too many courses are offered in alternate years only.</p>

859

<p>The teenagers where I live don't know a life other than doing whatever is necessary to get into the college with the highest prestige as is possible. </p>

<p>And almost no one here would turn down Harvard for any other school regardless of fit, availability of major, cold weather, etc. Because the wisdom here, among the professional and/or competitive parents, is that having a Harvard degree will open doors that any other school will not. Maybe that is true -- I'm not in the hiring or graduate school admissions business.</p>

860

<p>Odyssey:<br>
It's true that Harvard has been winning the battle of the cross-admits (see the research by Hoxby et al). But that's assuming that students apply to several schools, among them Harvard. I suspect that lots of CA residents apply to UCs as well as to Stanford and a few other private schools on the West Coast and don't look East.</p>