<p>Maybe the problem comes in when nobody wants to accept that their kid is not a round hole college kid. </p>
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<p>Touche, Curmudgeon, Touche.</p>
<p>The CC mods wont allow me to link to it directly and I can't post it here for copyright reasons, but I just posted something on my blog that talks about this ("The parents guide to college admissions stress") very thing. Anyone who wants to read it can click on my name to the left, then hit the link for my homepage.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it does look like there are a lot of kids at Harvard whose parents did browbeat them into narrow definitions of high school success.>></p>
<p>I disagree. The kids that I see getting into Harvard and other top schools are the ones who didn't do what they did because of parental browbeating, but because they were internally driven to do so. And, admissions officers CAN tell the difference. :)</p>
<p>I have seen lots who were following the parent's dream. Don't know whether admissions can tell the difference. </p>
<p>Don't know whether they care. If the kid keeps punching designated tickets as told, in college and beyond, then their inner bliss is not the ad com's problem.</p>