Sad commentary on student perfectionism and parent enabling of it

Parents Forum
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I don’t think these kinds of stereotypes are close to the truth. There are certainly families that do that level of support. They are probably a very small percentage of the school in any year, if at all. This doesn’t happen in what I’d call working class (people that need to work for a living, whatever that work be) private schools in the north east. Yeah maybe they do do some SAT prep – I don’t know. I am not even sure how many kids do SAT prep at school. Not most kids at the top of the class. They have no time. It is in fact embarrassing to admit that you are doing SAT prep if you are in the top 20% of the class. I can’t speak for Hollywood or some such place of extreme wealth and uneducated parents.

Here is an extreme example: David E. Shaw and the Ultimate College Hedge
Yes this guy is moving heaven and earth. But if things were that easy as you claim, he doesn’t have to move heaven and earth to make it happen. He can make it happen casually.

The price to directly pay a donation to a place like Harvard and have high confidence that your kid will get through, with you not having any ties to the university, I have heard is some unknown amount north of 25mm. Because I have heard that 5 years ago there was a Chinese billionaire that gave 25mm to Harvard and was disappointed by rejection for their kid. Went to Yale for 15mm.

At our school, I have seen examples of an exceptionally wealthy family (several hundred million) not manage to get their kid even into the research club at the school where a competent parent put in personal effort in preparing the application because the idea was not tenable – and the kid is pretty bright actually, although not top quintile of class. I was shocked that they were denied.

The idea that a college counselor can call a college and make it happen still works by the way, but only for a handful of the mid/low-ranked SLACs. The kid will still need to be within the parameters for the school, and the school trusts the counselors word that the kid is a good fit for them. That doesn’t work for any of the publics, and doesn’t work for all the high ranked privates like the T20.

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At the wealthier high schools in the Chicago area, New Trier for example, kids do the ACT three times on average. This is a public high school. So yes, this is a very typical pattern for wealthy schools. There is also the fact that far more students at these schools have time accommodations for SATs (sone schools in Chicagoland it’s 25% of the students)

I’m sorry, but just because you call somebody who is making $300,000 a year “working class” because he has a job doesn’t make that person "working class’ by any other definition in the world.

Thank you for proving my point

These are students in an affluent school with affluent parents, and, in your own words, “they have no time”. Sounds to me that they are being pressured by their parents and/or their high school to do well enough to be accepted to an “elite” college. the kids whos parents and school are stressing them out to the point that they have no time are indeed, the affluent families.

Thank you again for proving my point.

By your own admission, your school serves super wealthy families AND your kids are being stressed to do great so that they can attend an “elite” college.

Again, that’s EXACTLY what I wrote. Wealth no longer buys direct access to the most “elite” colleges, unless it’s extreme wealth, but the kids of the wealthy are still expected to attend “elite” colleges.

In short, you are agreeing with me that the kids who are under the most pressure from their parents and schools are kids from wealthy families who are attending high schools who serve mostly wealthy families. You are agreeing with me that the very wealthy really want their kid to attend an “elite” college.

PS. My kid grew up in an area of mixed middle class/affluent families, and none of the families in our high school had “several hundred million”. Your school serves the super wealthy.

PPS. What do you mean “mid/low-ranked SLACs”? Places like Denison or Lafayette are “elite” colleges by any definition. The ability to place a kid in a college with acceptance rates of under 50% with just a phone call is the epitome of the privilege of wealth and class.

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Don’t put words in my mouth.
You have no idea whether someone puts pressure or not. It is unsupported conjecture.

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While there may be a couple of high school kids who are so driven that they work all the time to keep A averages, as well as have true passion for three different ECs, this is not likely to be true of a full 20% of a high school class.

That’s not how it works for most kids.

A kid can invest intensely in one or two thing thst are really important to them or interest them. But kids whose passion is getting only As and doing multiple unrelated ECs is almost nonexistent.

If that many kids were like that naturally, the acceptance rates for these colleges would have been this low decades ago. Boomers and Gen-Xers’ parents, and even those of older Millenials, were much less involved in their kids’ college application process That is an important reason that these were much less driven to put that much effort into being accepted to an “elite” college back in the day.

The parents of kids nowadays, especially affluent parents, are highly involved in their kids’ HS education and in their kids’ college plans. There is simply no way that these kids are putting that much stress on themselves without their parents being aware, if not adding to the stress.

One kid being like that naturally? OK. Three kids? Still possible. 20% of every class? Nope. Those are the parents.

And you don’t find 20% of the class taking 15 APs and engaging in 5 ECs in highschools serving lower and mid income families.

Bottom line, though, is that every one of the studies on high school kids being under enormous pressure to do well amd to attend an “elite” college has been in high schools serving affluent families. You want to argue with these facts, feel free.

I’m not going to try to convince you any more.

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I think the more success a kid has the more pressure to maintain that same success from all sides. It is an easy trap to fall into especially given how competitive the landscape is now.
We were those parents… did not see how skewed our thinking was until our second started college. He did not have an easy landing. All A’s mostly in high school but college wow made some of the lowest grades we had seen. Then about junior year we realized let’s just not worry about the grades and make sure he graduates. He graduated has a fantastic job and it all worked out. Wish I had a crystal ball and could realize that things eventually do work out.
Third kid going to college… we are off the grade merry-go-round.

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delete

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This is my experience. I have a friend who works as a CC at a top 5 New England BS. She likes her job and the kids - the one down side is the number of phone calls she has to field from crazy parents who demand to know why junior isn’t headed to HYPSM. There is also a certain cohort of kids at our public HS (affluent suburban) whose parents have applied a lot of pressure to perform - starting in grade school with programs like RSM, summer academic enrichment etc. (because, god forbid your kid just relaxes in the summer like . . . a kid). I have stayed off that train myself . . . S24 is a phenomenal student but has no interest in spending his free time doing more academics and I’ve never pushed him in that direction. I don’t see HS as a dress rehearsal for college admissions. I expect(ed) my kids to put in effort academically and to do something (anything, really) outside of class but that is it. The rest is up to them.

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When I was in high school (1980s, a different world) even the ‘smartest’ kids tended to take only the AP classes that interested them. Almost no one took ALL of them, because not every kid who loves English is also keen to do physics. Some, sure, but not most. Now it seems like ‘successful’ kids are expected to take every AP offered, and more in the summer. My bet is that most of these students are not truly interested in all these subjects—they are taking them for the resume and GPA. That’s just one example of how high school, for certain subsets, is just prep for college admissions (not necessarily college itself).

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It is also possible that due to a general dumbing down of education, students need to take AP level courses to find any degree of rigor in their high school.

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I think you need to poll anonymously before you can come to that conclusion. There is no way of knowing this off hand.
My son took 12 APs and a whole bunch of post AP courses in HS. He never consulted us when signing up for courses. I asked him what the load was for high school as a whole after he finished up at the end of 12th grade. He told me work at home was 7-8 hours per week.
A different kid had a different experience with a different set of courses. Same parents.
Load varies by kid. What they choose to do varies. Parental input varies. Often by kid. How they react to outcomes varies.

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I think this is definitely playing a role. In my high school days there were good honors level and even some general classes that were solid. Maybe that’s not true anymore.

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Also '80s and my high school limited students to three APs, and then only senior year. We were one of the best public high schools in the state at the time supposedly - as per Regents test results.

Times have definitely changed!

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I went to a top high school back in the day(early 90’s). Public school where many of the graduates went to IVY, Duke, etc. our town had a lot of engineers. Anyway, I took a rigorous course-load but the material my kids were expected to know and be tested on is WAY more difficult than any honors course I ever took. At my high school “honors” math was algebra I as a freshman. Most kids started in pre-algebra. Is pre-algebra still offered in high school?

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In our high school, AP/IB classes are taught by the better teachers too.

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Incidentally perfectionism (in the topic sentence for this thread) and load from AP classes are different issues. Curious how many AP classes do people think are a normal load, and how many are excessive.

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Interesting. In my public high school (early 80s) top kids started Alg 1 in 8th grade. We regularly sent kids to top colleges too. Most kids started Alg 1 in 9th grade.

And yes, Pre-Alg is still offered in high school - along with lower level math classes for those unable to handle Alg. Most start Alg 1 in 8th grade now.

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I do think it is interesting that depending on the thread, either children today are smarter and learning more than we ever did ‘back in the day’ (in high school) or children are stupider than ever and no one can even read The Scarlet Letter to even find nouns and verbs in sentences (at Harvard).

Why can’t it be that children are children and students are students as they ever were? And there aren’t really huge changes in what they are capable of - except when a point needs to be proved?

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Perhaps both are true. The top 5% of students ( or whatever percentage) are working at a very high level. The middle 50% may be less competent than before. I think everyone acknowledges children’s reading skills have plummeted in the last 10 years. I do not think student achievement levels are constant, nor, alas, potential. Missing out on fundamental skills limits potential likely permanently.

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I didn’t realize the middle 50% of students were at Harvard (where the Scarlet Letter comment was made), not that I necessarily agree with your overall assessments.

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They arent. One can agree with the Harvard dean that historical reading ability of students has decreased dramatically and still find the students there highly capable in other fields. Maybe they code