Concerning families that are worried about student “caliber” or “quality” or “peer group” in college: I am wondering who some of these kids are hanging out with in high school.
I get finding people who are your match socially (sports or chess or knitting or LARPing or frats or whatever). I also get wanting to make sure that the education is good and targeted to the student’s academic needs.
I know my kid will find “his people” more easily at some schools than others. But I don’t see much correlation of who his “people” are with their academic prowess. I can’t imagine a scenario where my kid can’t find peers/friends as easily at a lower ranked school compared to a higher ranked school.
But, like, who are these kids hanging out with in high school? Are their high schools so elite that their friends are all superstars? If not, do they feel like their friends are somehow not meeting expectations? I get not fitting in with a crowd, but this seems like something different. Do they just lack friends in high school altogether?
Our high school is very good but nothing crazy. They only send 1 or 2 kids to HYPSM each year. But no one is lacking for “peers” there!
My kid has a couple of academic superstar friends. But while his friends are primarily other weird nerds, they span the gamut. Some are worried they might not graduate, some are headed to directional state U, some to tech school, some have been kicked out of their homes, some have parents with criminal records. Some have parents like those who frequent CC and are on college tours at fancy schools right now. They’re all delightful kids who love each other and have a blast and relate to each other just fine despite being in a variety of classes and activities. I just don’t see a strong correlation with academic performance and “his people”.
Sure he’ll make lots of friends in his college classes, and they’ll study and help each other in the trenches together. But he’s deliberately trying to branch out in college so that he can meet people from different majors and befriend a wide variety of folks. I dunno, it seems like YMMV here but I don’t understand the “high quality peers” thing at all.
I’m sorry, I’m confused about what we’re discussing. I was admitting you were right, talking about skill sets, and also in another message expressing concern for your son and telling you about mine. I don’t know which kids you are now referring to. I think I missed something.
He is very very good at combinatorics. He is happy that he is not the best combinatorist on campus his batch. There is a community. It is like going to a basketball obsessed school and finding kids to talk about March madness without having to call someone on the phone in a different city.
Yeah, it’s so hard. It’s possible that that club is where his people are, and it’s also very hard to enter into something like that when you don’t know anyone. I don’t know your kid at all, obviously, but even if one had a bike or a flying saucer or whatever, it would be hard to walk through the door where no one knows you yet.
That’s ok. Thanks for the understanding. My kid that is upset with the school was not the one visiting openAI. This is the problem with having two kids. It gets confusing. We should have stopped with one :-).
I’m in the Facebook group for S21’s school. It’s 80% nonsense, but some valuable info here and there.
What’s disheartening is when parents express that their kid is not thriving socially. My son can be introverted and I was worried about him especially since he went totally random for a roommate. I know he got really lucky. It could have gone totally the other way. A friend had a roommate who would stumble in drunk at 3am and vomit all over the room.
I think a lot goes into what makes a good fit and some of it is the luck of that initial experience.
I would suggest that any college with a number of students>N (and I don’t know what N is, but I strongly suspect it’s below 10k) will have a small but real community of students available to talk combinatorics with.
I guess it is not your field. Our local flagship public has excellent faculty.
Students – I honestly don’t know. I am told my son’s freshman fall standard math course is not fully covered at our flagship until senior fall.
I have friend who is a math prof at a small LAC that gets no love here on CC (non-selective, mostly draws regionally). She is a combinatorics nerd who always has a fun group of math nerd students who are totally into it. And I mean REALLY into it. Good lord, professors are the ultimate nerds. Get them going on their interests, and watch out. And every college has brilliant professors who would love to share their interests with their students, who share it with each other, and so on…
It’s not my field, but I picked it because I know about it—we have faculty at my institution who do combinatorics (whether as a primary or a secondary research strand), and I know from talking to them that they have no shortage of students to geek out about it with.
Oh, and the place I work is open access, and isn’t even one of USNWR’s national-reach institutions. Just sayin’.
Right?! I mean, head to any college and you will find overeducated, underpaid faculty studying such divine subjects as: astrobiology, permafrost, pollen tubes, zydeco, α4β2 nicotinic receptor subunits, cuneiform, and world’s foremost {insert obscure author} scholar.
I mean, combinatorics is not some super special branch of mathematics. It’s a commonly taught class. The hyper-specific things I mentioned for comedic effect aren’t the sole subject of classes at as many institutions. I imagine many schools have combinatorics experts that would love to hold court for interested students. I think a highly motivated student is likely to find a prof that would love to get into the nitty gritty about their interests with them. All the profs I know adore it when students get into stuff like that.
