<p>I was thinking the same thing. :)</p>
<p>On this cold October night here in Chicago, I rather enjoy basking in the heat coming off my computer screenā¦ ;)</p>
<p>Iām going to venture a comment about the issue of family members being those spouting elite school stereotypes and false information. Letās remember that parents of college aged children and are, hopefully, mature adults with years of experience dealing with annoying people and meddlesome relatives. As to the latter, perhaps any āhandlingā of said relatives the parent has done has occurred behind the scenes and out of earshot of the kid. </p>
<p>Enter the newly minted āadultā high-schooler or brand new college student. S/he has likely never had a real conflict with a grandparent or aunt or uncle, and has always been polite and obedient. But the college choice is his first really big, adult-level decision and here comes Grandmom or Uncle Bernie, asking why on earth heās going to that snobby school, yada yada. Student is polite, as taught, but that relative keeps poking at him. Maybe the Thanksgiving game is boring, so other relatives pile on. Maybe the kid has already put up with plenty of rude comments from peers or other adults and just isnāt expecting it from those he loves. Heās hurt, angry. Maybe heās not as polite or deferential as heās expected to be. Maybe he outright blows up and the older relatives are shocked and disapproving and chaos ensues. Maybe the kid now for the first time recognizes Uncle Bernie as the jerk heās always been, but isnāt mature enough to keep the disdain off his face and Uncle Bernie get his nose out of joint. Or maybe the kid follows his anti-bullying training and just ignores Uncle Bernie, so Uncle Bernie thinks heās too big for his britches and tells off the kidās parents for bringing him up wrong, or tolerating his rude behavior. People starting throwing sweet potatoes.</p>
<p>Not the end of the world and no problem at all for the super-evolved, ever unflappable CCerās, but I can see how this sort of thing could be hurtful.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, Uncle Bernie! He has <em>always</em> been like that! And I just hate cleaning sweet potatoes off the wallpaper!</p>
<p>I can see how thatās problematic and hurtful, and FAR harder to ignore than some random parent at a cocktail party who shoots her mouth off.</p>
<p>One issue several of my kidsā friends had with family, was they had chosen to attend colleges as opposed to universities. In some parts of the world, the word ācollegeā has a different meaning than here. Furthermore, even if the relatives have been made to understand the distinction between colleges here and elsewhere, their view of schools is still colored by their particular cultural experience in which all things outside of a major city are of worse quality. So they canāt see how any college in a small town in NH or Mass. can possibly be as good as a university, ANY university, in a big city. Some kids had to work pretty hard to convince their immigrant parents that Dartmouth and Williams are good schools, but there was no convincing extended family members.</p>
<p>For what itās worth, my kids were high achievers in school and ECsābut my son played lots of video games, and my daughter watched plenty of āPretty Little Liarsā and other dreck. I feel a bit odd bragging about that.</p>
<p>One note: it seems to me that some people just have more energy than others. Some of these people can pack an awful lot of activity into the day, including both work and play. That doesnāt mean the less energetic people are ālazy.ā</p>
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<p>Yes, we can see the remnants of that thinking all over CC. Those are students who live in a culture in which extended family membersā approval, etc. is very important to them. But thatās what their culture demands of them, right or wrong. </p>
<p>Do you think that mainstream American culture ādemandsā that your kidsā college choices be approved of by hs classmatesā parents and people at cocktail parties, the way these studentsā culture ādemandsā that college choices be approved by extended family members? IOW, do you think itās an equivalent level of social pressure in these two scenarios for outside approval?</p>
<p>Very interesting question, PG. Iāve wondered if in my case itās a function of a striving middle class mentality. In my social milieu, the goal for many people is that their kids will do better than theyāve done. They donāt express that as directly as previous generations did, but I believe they think it. However, since middle class life is pretty good already for lots of suburbanites (they have a McMansion, nice cars, can take nice vacations and perhaps own a second home), their sights for their kids have to be set rather high. Therefore, maybe they think a top school is required for their kids to achieve a higher status than they have. In contrast, in lower socio-economic circles the concerns and priorities are different and likely less focused on education as THE path to success, much less on elite education being THE path. And then in upper socio-economic circles where parents have already āmade it,ā Jr. doesnāt have to worry because he will inherit the money and/or the business, or at the very least they can pave his way with resources and connections regardless of his admissions results.</p>
<p>So then if oneās friends and neighbors approve of Jr.'s college choice, that is the equivalent of saying youāve done well, parents, and he is on his way toward surpassing you.</p>
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<p>Then thereās the flip side, where Grandmom and Uncle Bernie ask, āYouāre going to [honors college at State School]? But youāre a valedictorian! Why arenāt you going to Harvard? When I was a kid anyone with a brain went to Harvard and only the dummies went to [State School]!ā</p>
<p>We dealt with a kinder gentler version of that in our own family.</p>
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<p>My family, not poor, has gone to our state university for more than 100 years. It is the norm to have MDs, JDs, or advanced engineering degrees from the same school. My children, not raised in my home state, did not attend and some cousins probably feel I have deprived them of part of their heritage. They may be right. At a family reunion, when a cousin heard where my kids go to college she blurted out āwhy?ā before she could stop herself. Then she immediately said, āwell that is a very nice school from all I read and hearā 
Then she paused, and asked if I thought I was ever āmoving back home?ā I think it was the first time it had really occurred to either of us how very far from āhomeā my life had become. It had all seemed just rather temporary up to that point.</p>
<p>You arenāt going to find people like my cousins reading or posting on a board like this.</p>
<p>The only palce that is good for a specific student is the one that matches his/her personality and very wide of current and potential future interests. No other place outside of this condition will work. We are talking about very important transitional 4 years in young person life. We really have to treat the decision making much more seriously than checking rankings, prestige and chasing certain ātalkingā rights. In the same effort of making the best possible decision which may affect the enite future of your kid, we also should ignore others with various ācuriosityā levels.
None of thier buz.<br>
Well, going forward, if the other set of grandparents will want my grandD. to go to Harvard (one of other grandparents is an alumni), I will have no problem with that. I will be completely neutral. I will have one question to my GrandD. if she personally likes going there or maybe not. I will be completely supportive of any decision. It might not be the case with my S., her father. however, he will have no problem with her getting acccepted or not. They have already gone thru very competitive situation of getting into selective HS in NYC. It could be even more competitive than Ivy. It was 30 applicants to one spot. Nobody in a world would make my grandD feel bad if she did not get in, not family, not friends.</p>
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<p>Wouldnāt this have been building for years? </p>
<p>I mean, Iāve had in-laws comment to me āyouāre not as snobby as I thought you would be.ā (uh, thanks?) and āwell, I never thought about xxxx going to those colleges; theyāre for rich people and I didnāt grow up richā (neither did I). My MIL wondered why I had so much education especially since I wasnāt earning the big money. (curiosity?)</p>
<p>I (and my kids) pretty much know how relatives may react to anything beyond a local state university (although for these relatives the local state university is UNC-CH, so I donāt know what that means in the grand scheme of things). Actually for some relatives on this side, just going to college is a feat; itās just not on the parentsā radar.</p>
<p>Now on the other side of the family, I got pressure to test my children so they could qualify for CTY at JHU (uh, I donāt think theyāre advanced?) while they were struggling in school. By now, this side knows Iām not pushing my children to attend the Ivies and we are not looking at top tier schools where their children went.</p>
<p>In other words, Iām being squeezed on both sides. But by now both sides know enough NOT to say āwell, you can always go to grad school to [xxx]ā - especially the second side.</p>
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<p>Yes. In France for example a ācollegeā is what we would call a middle school. Even Dartmouth which at home, for historical reasons, fiercely clings to the name Dartmouth College even though it functionally is a small university, in France proudly bills itself as āDartmouth Universiteā so that people will know what kind of school they are talking about.</p>
<p>All of this begets the point. The reasons not to go to an elite school primarily has to do with the cost of doing so for those who will be required to go full pay, which I suspect is most of us here. Most of our kids are smart but not brilliant, so they wonāt be getting lots of merit aid nor need based aid from these private elite schools. If you think its worthwhile paying 60-70K per year for tuition, books and living expenses so your child can attend typical elite school, its your choice. But donāt act all surprised when people in your family donāt understand your reasoning when they know that Flagship State or maybe even Regional State would have been perfectly adequate and far less expensive. Not everybody is taken in by the āeliteā named schools.</p>
<p>And let me add to this ālazinessā discussion that the things that make life sometimes worthwhile is doing ānothingā but reading a good book at the beach. Not everybody needs to constantly be on the up and go to feel they are leading a worthwhile life. And not everybody needs to have that high paying high status job to feel like worthwhile adults.</p>
<p>Let me quote from Carl Sagan when reviewing our globe from the vantage of billions of miles away in a photo taken by Voyager, which I think puts in context this ridiculous stuff about how important elite educations. In the end it just doesnāt matter a whit: </p>
<p>"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, itās different. Consider again that dot. Thatās here. Thatās home. Thatās us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every āsuperstar,ā every āsupreme leader,ā every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there ā on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.</p>
<p>The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity ā in all this vastness ā there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.</p>
<p>The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home weāve ever known."</p>
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Thanks again, skiblack. You are following in the noble path of a number of other CC posters of the past.</p>
<p>Hunt, thatās what makes for a message board. Different opinions. I know some think that an elite education is the be all and end all, the anchor of their entire lives. Others happen to think thatās a foolish viewpoint.</p>
<p>In our family it didnāt build for years because DHās relatives live all over the world. Theyāve attended schools in Central America, South America and Europe, so there were no expectations about US choices expressed on that side, with one exception. My family is quite small. There were no cousins older than Sājust one the same age who, though a strong student, got pregnant in high school. So we figured just GOING to college was going to be good enough for my side, LOL. </p>
<p>But I was surprised at the comments we still got for both kids. They mostly fell into the category of saying the schools in our home state were good enough for us, why isnāt one of them good enough for D and S? They took it personally, as if were dissing the schools my mom and sisters and I attended as beneath us now.</p>
<p>When expressing a great interest in something, Iāve never really appreciated being reminded that nothing matters in the grand scheme of things, or that somewhere someone is dying and therefore my concerns are petty by comparison. Sure, nothing matters compared to dying. But rating everything on a scale relative to terminal illness seems morbid. Further, we donāt live in outer space, looking down on earth. In the meantime, down below, we dust motes still need to eat, sleep, study, and work, unless of course weāre the lazy sorts who also want to play video games and watch TV, lol.</p>
<p>Well GFG, my point of course in quoting Sagan was to justify why it is absurd to think those who are not as āambitiousā as your children are somehow to be sneered at, as you implicitly do on various threads. So what if a child is ālazyā and so only attends a State School vs. an Elite School. Not only does it not matter a whit in the large scheme of things, it doesnāt matter a whit in the small scheme of things either. That State School graduate has just as great a chance or more so of being a well adjusted, happy, productive member of society than any elite graduate could ever hope to be. Even if the Elite Graduate has a higher status job or makes more money or has more high status friends . . . who in the end really gives a damn?</p>