<p>This is a new thread to continue the discussion that started in the 2013 Acceptances thread about the stress of AP, ACT/SAT, etc and how high schools might be forced to change and how college admissions will treat alternatives to the traditional "Chance Me" line up of APs, ECs, test scores, etc.</p>
<p>I wanted to be part of this conversation. I teach at a very small (last year’s graduating class was 4 students), independent, private school. We are a member of NAIS.</p>
<p>With our small size we cannot (nor are we interested in) offer AP or IB. Instead we offer a very integrated, multi-age, and flexible college prep program. Our biggest advantage is that we are able to really get to know each student. We don’t really personalize the education as much as personalize our relationships with out students. We understand their interests, skills, strengths, weaknesses, passions and we try and meet them where they are at. We are pretty project-based and make efforts to integrate their education into our local community. This gives them opportunities to take on real world problems and learn from resources throughout our area. </p>
<p>Of course getting any of this to show up properly on a college application is difficult. Many college admissions counselors that I have spoken with about our school say that they try to judge students holistically and that measures like AP, GPA, Class rank, SAT/ACT are just a part of the equation. For my students essays, letters of recommendation, unique accomplishments, and passion are a much bigger part of their application.</p>
<p>musictechdad,
I am 100% with you when it comes to HS education. I live in a town filled with Ivy League graduates and first generation Asian families. Our public HS is intense. My 3 kids have all had unique learning and career paths because not only have they had to deal with this crazy intense HS climate that exists in our town but they all have had their share of struggles due to health issues and learning disabilities. </p>
<p>By the time my youngest was a Freshman I had the confidence to ignore guidance counselors and other parents and I told my son that his job was to get through high school mentally healthy, happy and knowing who he was and what he loved. He poured himself into music and with my support we regularly would cross off the placement in honors math and put him the college prep level below that. We didn’t pay for Kaplan or any SAT prep, although our son did spend some time getting cognitive therapy to help him with his learning disability so that, that did not hamper his ability to do the things he loved. </p>
<p>What is interesting is how my son’s friends reacted to this. My son’s friends are all very smart and attending top colleges. In the spring of his senior year one of them said to him, “I am so jealous of you. You managed to get through all of this doing what you love and not getting at all stressed and caught up in the mayhem around the college process.” </p>
<p>I could be this way with our youngest because of the path my older two paved. My daughter worked super hard and got into her dream school only to realize that she did not want to go on in theater. The girl who said she hated math and science decided to go into medicine and transferred out of her dream school to another school. My middle son spent much of his HS years quite ill. He barely graduated with any grades on his transcript. Acceptance to a top college was not even on the table because his SAT scores were horrible. He ended up at a small nurturing excellent liberal arts college. He is Phi Beta Kappa in Mathematics as a Junior. This is a child who not only did not take any AP classes but who repeatedly struggled to pass basic Algebra. </p>
<p>Once you have those sorts of stories in front of you it is hard to look at parents who are all “caught up” in the college admissions game and not feel pity for how misguided they are and how terrible it is that they are squandering some important developmental years by insisting their kids follow some crazy path. As I used to say to my youngest, your brain will probably benefit a lot more from you practicing than it will from you drilling for the SAT…so go ahead and practice guilt free.</p>
<p>Too many people look at college as an end point. But as one of my middle son’s teachers said to him, “College is not an end point it is a starting point.” And more than one professor from Harvard comforted our son by telling him that regardless of where he went, the material he would learn if he wanted to go to graduate school would be the same. What was important was for him to go to a place where he could learn most effectively.</p>
<p>And that is what our son discovered. At one point he and his cousin were comparing an advanced 300 level math class they were both taking. My nephew graduated this year from an Ivy League school. My son was comforted to know that not only were the courses similar but in some ways his class, which was smaller and more intimate was a bit more rigorous.</p>
<p>I don’t like the current high school trend either.</p>
<p>My three daughters were very fortunate to attend a very small public high school in a large metropolitan area where the parents are as stacJip described. Despite taking 9 APs and almost acing the SAT (except for math; she didn’t understand algebra), my eldest daughter decided to get her classical art training in a non-university setting in Italy. It was a smart move; at 25 she is a very successful professional freelance painter. My youngest, the musician, decided she would take no AP classes at all. She too did not understand algebra, and took it Pass/Fail both years. She felt all the requirements of high school really got in her way, as she spent most of her time on music outside of school. She did not take any SAT prep courses and reluctantly took the SAT I once; she got very average scores, and that was with extra time given for her learning disability. She was accepted everywhere she applied and will attend Peabody/Johns Hopkins University.</p>
<p>I think that the passion for something and accomplishment weighs a lot in the college admission process. As it should; many of the ECs students do are not heartfelt and the students are just going through the motions. We have a local, very popular youth orchestra full of these kinds of students. They do everything, which leaves them about 30 minutes of practice time per week. Half of them attend the top high school in the USA, so they are very bright. My daughter quit after the first concert; she couldn’t stand playing with so many non-musical students who were only there because their parents thought it was good for their resumes.</p>
<p>Thank you musictechdad.</p>
<p>No doubt this has been on the minds of a lot of people.</p>
<p>A few themes from several of my posts elsewhere, and a few more to add.</p>
<ol>
<li>I question the value of the AP system.</li>
<li>I question the value of the grind that is a high school schedule, with tons of AP courses and activities requiring 24/7 commitments.</li>
<li>The structure of high school has kids doing all this stuff for its, the system’s, i.e. the college admissions game, and not their own sake, their own development</li>
<li>Related to that are the notions of depth vs breadth, passion vs feeding the beast, pleasing the adults rather than finding passion and motivation within. </li>
<li>Educational reform in recent years can be described as shoving college curriculum into high school, high school curriculum into jr high, and jr high curriculum into elementary school, with what seems to be little attention to individual students’ readiness</li>
<li>I recommend a gap year for students, especially a music student, to get out of this grind.</li>
</ol>
<p>And may I suggest that then when the elementary school feels bad about all the No Child Left Behind testing, it will self-servingly make them feel better about themselves by breaking up the class into groups, and thinking that despite the lack of basic tools, given the wide gap in basic reading, writing and math within the average classroom, that a “group project” is by definition a “collaborative”, “problem solving” exercise.</p>
<p>An excerpt from my post on page 53 of Music School Acceptances of 2013, referring to my D’s path to Harvard-NEC </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1427644-master-list-music-school-acceptances-fall-2013-a-53.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1427644-master-list-music-school-acceptances-fall-2013-a-53.html</a></p>
<p>"By the way, she graduated early after her junior year (only needed to double up on English and History to do that). She took a gap year and got out of the grind that is high school these days…with all the crazy AP classes and marching band and musical theater programs, et al., that seem to demand 24/7 commitments…a gap year is a very good idea for a serious music student. </p>
<p>(I really think this whole AP thing is going to implode. The kids are sleep deprived, studying to pass a test, and it isn’t clear that the courses are inspiring any love of learning at all. Only creating another hurdle for kids to jump…How many AP classes in your school? How many did you take?.. and make money for the College Board. But that is I suppose a rant for another thread.)" </p>
<p>And another excerpt from Going to Community College Before Going to Music School</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1522746-going-community-college-before-going-music.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1522746-going-community-college-before-going-music.html</a></p>
<p>“Another thing is that the grind of high school schedules these days with all of the AP classes and after school activities like marching band, musical theater, jazz band, etc. leaves students sleep deprived and scrambling. Taking a gap year, or taking a year at a cc, and taking a lot of courses in your major can only help you focus and be prepared to do your best work at the audition. We have seen voice students in the midst of AP classes, musical theater productions and jazz choir festival season, then traveling to on-site auditions around the country in Jan, Feb and March, and just get sick and blow the audition. In some cases they didn’t get accepted, let alone get a scholarship.”</p>
<p>One more excerpt:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1427644-master-list-music-school-acceptances-fall-2013-a-53.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/1427644-master-list-music-school-acceptances-fall-2013-a-53.html</a></p>
<p>"I raised this issue [about AP testing and educational reform not serving the students] in an admissions group meeting at Princeton. While I was raising the issued, I noticed a lot of heads turning towards me and nodding agreement as well.</p>
<p>The rep basically said they understood the issue, did not want to be part of the problem, hoped that their review of applications tried to understand the whole person, but could not offer any solution. Skillful answer…expressed some empathy for whatever that is worth."</p>
<p>A few more kind of blue sky ideas. </p>
<p>Kids go to college with their various IQ’s and heads stuffed with AP test answers. But what about EQ’s, emotional intelligence? They leave the structure that is high school today, without having truly made decisions about what they like or don’t like, what they want to do or don’t want to do. I think that the work of creating your own structure, values and decisions can be such a shock that freshman year can be a tailspin and the party culture a refuge.</p>
<p>Another thing that I will bring up, without much comment at this point, but as food for thought is Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.<br>
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)</a></p>
<p>My four kids had maverick-style educations; the oldest left school at 11 because she wanted to be a self-directed learner. By 13 she was taking courses as a non-matriculated student at an Ivy League university. She took 14 of those, in humanities and social sciences and took science classes at a local community college. She had a Latin tutor and music lessons, but was otherwise an autodidact and became an part-time editor at a nationally known magazine (I think they didn’t know her age at first, as she came through the university as an intern) at 16. She never took an AP class. She went to college at 17 (she chose a highly competitive LAC.) I am convinced her home-made, unusual transcript caught the eye of adcoms in a way that kids with similar test scores and loads of APs would not-- not because she was smarter or more accomplished, but because she was different. </p>
<p>Each of the of the other three had a different kind of different education. The other three all started out a academic magnet schools in our city, and each transferred after a year or two-- one to a progressive private school and the others to a state cyber charter school. Only my youngest took any APs, and she took only two. Each got into her first-choice college or conservatory. Each had an unusual resume that stood out. The younger three all went to auditioned programs: an art conservatory; a music conservatory; an auditioned theater/playwriting program at a university.They all worked pretty hard in high school, but they did work that was meaningful to them, and they were masters of their own schedules. So the transition to college, where one must manage without much structure, was not difficult.</p>
<p>These are all great stories. What is obvious is that there isn’t a single best-way to educate teenagers and their isn’t a single best way to measure them afterwards. People are unique and complicated and constantly changing (and teenagers even more so). The standardized tests, GPA, # of AP classes, are all short hand ways of trying jump from the first pass “rejected” pile to the “maybe” pile in the admissions process. It is an attempt to get Apples vs Apples to make the measuring simpler. Glassharmonica shows that sometimes the better way to get attention is to buck the system all together. To stand out by being a mango instead of an apple. In my experience, many parents (and students) get really nervous by this approach. The mythology of the perfect ACT, National Merit Scholar student being the shining example is strong. </p>
<p>StacJip makes some great points about students who don’t quite fit the standard educational model or who take longer to figure themselves out or who run into bumps along the way. It is crazy to expect that all of the “best” students will have spent the ages 13-18 in perfect health, excelling in all classes across a wide-variety of disciplines (and taught by a wide variety of teachers), while also participating in a range of extra curriculars (including taking leadership roles), just for a shot at spending $60,000/yr. </p>
<p>Wow. What a racket. </p>
<p>I think we all know from living that many people take a circuitous route in life. Changing majors and careers and passions multiple times. In fact, it is probably the norm. I think Jazzvocals is spot-on. The system is broken. It is unhealthy. It doesn’t do a good job of preparing students or measuring them. I am not sure if it will implode, evolve, devolve, or what. I know there are a lot of people inside (and outside) the system who understand the flaws and are trying to make meaningful changes. But there are also corporate reformers and politicians on the outside of the system (and some inside it) who are pushing a different kind of reform. </p>
<p>Personally, I think there are many legitimate ways to be educated. I like Glassharmonica’s maverick approach but some students will do very well in a AP style classroom. We need to let go of the notion that there is a single, best system. There are a wide variety of kinds of businesses, ways of making a living, lifestyles, cultures, communities out there. There should be an equally wide variety of paths to learning.</p>
<p>musictechdad,
I don’t want to get political, but it is hard not to when talking about education because the reason why education in the US is the way it is is largely due to political choices. The idea that unregulated capitalism always results in an optimal solution is alive and well. </p>
<p>The issue is not that nobody knows how to educate students or what systems would result in the greatest number of students succeeding? We know the answer to this question. Research has told us how to solve the education problem and 30 years of experimentation and exploration around learning has given us plenty of data to use if we wanted to create a functioning education system that resulted in the greatest number of children succeeding. </p>
<p>The problem is political. Why does the college board even exist? It is a corporation, not a government entity and yet it has so much influence and basically all but dictates curriculum. I suspect they also spend quite a large amount of their income on lobbying in DC. If they did not surely somebody would go after them. </p>
<p>Why do colleges admissions run the way they do and let the college board control so much? Because colleges and universities are businesses and higher rankings on the private USNews and world report means they can recruit more students. More applicants means they are more likely to get students who can pay the full tuition. Diversity is not something colleges do because they are generous, it is a recruiting tool. Why do merit scholarships even exist when more often than not they just scratch the surface of what the full tuition is? Because they make for good marketing tools. </p>
<p>Also remember colleges are Corporations. What is the goal of a corporation? To grow. The main gola of a corporation is not to educate their students so they can become great thinkers and intellectuals. Corporations want to raise the next generation of big donors and supporters so the corporation can continue to grow and function. That is one reason why if you look at large Universities (and I know one ivy league school well) you would be shocked to learn that new faculty from the law and business school are given generous stipends to help them relocate and find housing, while new faculty in the college of Arts and Sciences are lucky if they are even making enough money to afford rent within a 60 mile radius of the University. Walk around that university at graduation and you can visibly see where the money is being spent. The lavish spreads and tents go to graduate programs that will give back to the corporation. </p>
<p>And, although I can not be sure of this, this might be one reason why some schools that have been super focused on creating the great thinkers of tomorrow such as cooper-union and antioch college have struggled in recent years.</p>
<p>Great post, StacJip.</p>
<p>I agree about the political and corporate piece. The Chomskyite in me says that the flawed and broken system is working exactly as it is designed to. It quietly identifies family commitment (both financial and other). Time, energy, and money committed to getting the right AP scores, SAT scores, and supplemental learning indicates a family that is willing and able to afford college. At the same time colleges can “truthfully” state that ability to pay (through more traditional financial disclosures like FAFSA) are not part of the admissions process. But I don’t believe in some grand conspiracy. The status quo tends to build systems that favor the status quo even if unintentionally.</p>
<p>Thank you for such an encouraging post. My daughter is also has learning disabilities and goes to a college prep school. She will be a senior this fall. Her friends get such high ACT scores that she often feels bad to just have a avg GPA and avg ACT score. However, she is bright, friendly, captain of color guard, cross-country team and class representative. She is looking at local colleges or small liberal arts that fit her personality and abilities.</p>
<p>musictechdad-It is not a grand conspiracy but it is what happens when corporate interests are politically more important than the interests of the individuals that the government supposedly governs. </p>
<p>Fifthinstructor- there are so many excellent colleges out there I am sure your daughter will find one where she can thrive. There is a great book with a cult following called, “Colleges that Change Lives”. You might want to check it out. Also check out the following schools that are not in that book but easily could be:
Wheaton College in Norton MA (not to be confused with Wheaton in IL)
University of Pittsburgh
Boston University College of General Studies
(BU’s program is a college within a college. There are many large universities that have programs like this but they are not often advertised. It can sometimes pay off to use a college counselor who is familiar with LD issues who can help you seek out a program that is a good match)</p>
<p>A scholarly work on some of these issues:</p>
<p>The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton</p>
<p>Jerome Karabel (c) 2005</p>
<p>From the Amazon review:</p>
<p>“A landmark work of social and cultural history, The Chosen vividly reveals the changing dynamics of power and privilege in America over the past century. Full of colorful characters (including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, James Bryant Conant, and Kingman Brewster), it shows how the ferocious battles over admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton shaped the American elite and bequeathed to us the peculiar system of college admissions that we have today. From the bitter anti-Semitism of the 1920s to the rise of the “meritocracy” at midcentury to the debate over affirmative action today, Jerome Karabel sheds surprising new light on the main events and social movements of the twentieth century. No one who reads this remarkable book will ever think about college admissions – or America – in the same way again.”</p>
<p>[The</a> Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton: Jerome Karabel: 9780618773558: Amazon.com: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355X]The”>http://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355X)</p>
<p>Jerome Karabel</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Karabel[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Karabel</a></p>
<p>I heard Sir Ken Robinson speak on KQED radio broadcast of the Commonwealth Club of California. Very entertaining, bordering on standup comedy really, but inspiring, thought provoking. </p>
<p>He doesn’t claim to be wholly original in his arguments. The arguments have been made before. The experiments have been made before. But I do think you can’t find a better messenger for making alternatives to education part of the mainstream, and conveying the sense of urgency to do so.</p>
<p>[Sir</a> Ken Robinson: Revolutionizing You | Commonwealth Club](<a href=“http://www.commonwealthclub.org/node/66176]Sir”>http://www.commonwealthclub.org/node/66176)
Can’t find the broadcast in the KQED archive yet, but it should get up.</p>
<p>In the meantime, his wiki bio:</p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_(educationalist[/url])”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_(educationalist)</a></p>
<p>His TED talk, “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity”, pretty much says it all.
17 million plus view
[Ken</a> Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com](<a href=“http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html]Ken”>http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)</p>
<p>Check out his books on is Amazon site:
[Amazon.com:</a> Ken Robinson: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Ken-Robinson/e/B001JS8ORS]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Ken-Robinson/e/B001JS8ORS)</p>
<p>A few points that I recall, perhaps not the most important but to just give you a flavor:</p>
<p>In an educational system designed for standardization is it surprising we get the results we do. The educational system is strip mining the minds of our children for certain forms of intelligence. </p>
<p>Academic achievement vs intelligence. An educational system predicated on the 19th century priority to meet the needs of industrialism or success in an academic system where success is getting into college and after that, from an insider’s view, on becoming a professor.</p>
<p>Every child is different. But for example, every child has the facility for language. If you grow up exposed to several, you can learn several. Not exposed, you don’t. What then are the implications for other subjects?</p>
<p>Sir Ken just loves to throw in stories that make you just stop and think about things. For example, what was Shakespeare like at age 7? Who was his father? Who was his English teacher? How did he discover his talent?</p>
<p>He makes the connection of population growth, consumption in the face of limited resources, the rapid changes in technology, that we need to break out of the mainstream forms of the educational status quo. Here is another brief example:</p>
<p>[Sir</a> Ken Robinson: Alternative Education is Good Education | MindShift](<a href=“http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/01/sir-ken-robinson-alternative-education-is-good-education/]Sir”>http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/01/sir-ken-robinson-alternative-education-is-good-education/)</p>
<p>Check the KQED Commonwealth Club broadcast page to see if they put his talk up as podcast. Google him. He is a great speaker.</p>
<p>Great advice StacJip</p>
<p>Thank you for the information Jazzvocals!</p>