This Can't Be True!

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Someone told me that parents are so obsessed with having their children go to an Ivy (term for all "elite") College that they are doing these things:</p>

<p>(1) Trying to get their children into top PRE-SCHOOLS AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS that will give their children an "Ivy edge."</p>

<p>(2) Moving across the country in order to have their children go to a high school that has a good "track record" of getting their grads into Ivies.</p>

<p>(3) Having their children take SAT's in 7th or 8th grade.</p>

<p>(4) Paying tens of thousands of dollars to hire "college counselors" who have inside knowledge of how to get their clients into an Ivy.</p>

<p>(5) Spending hundreds of dollars on SAT prep courses.</p>

<p>(6) Hiring "essay consultants" to help with college applications.</p>

<p>Is this stuff really true?</p>

2

<p>No, no one does those things!</p>

<p>Are you being facetious?</p>

3

<p>yes, this year when I took the ACT, during the break I started talking to a girl and I ask her, aren't you pretty young for the ACT and she said yes, I am a freshman in highschool. So I kept on talking to her and she told me that her dad wants her to go to yale, so they put her in the best all-girl private school in nyc(which is like $32,000 a yr and she been going there since middle school), her parents have a college counselor for the next 4 yrs and she take regular visits to yale. </p>

<p>But i guess it works because she almost got a perfect score on the ACT and she got a 2230 in the SAT.</p>

4

<p>I've heard of, or heard rumors of, each of these things having been done at one time or another by somone, somewhere. But I have never heard of any one parent doing <em>all</em> these things.</p>

5

<p><a href="1">quote</a> Trying to get their children into top PRE-SCHOOLS AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS that will give their children an "Ivy edge."

[/quote]

Yep...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/education/03preschool.html?ei=5090&en=6828f7391680a2de&ex=1299042000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/education/03preschool.html?ei=5090&en=6828f7391680a2de&ex=1299042000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=153274%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=153274&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="3">quote</a> Having their children take SAT's in 7th or 8th grade.

[/quote]

Yep...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.tip.duke.edu/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.tip.duke.edu/&lt;/a>
<a href="http://cty.jhu.edu/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://cty.jhu.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="4">quote</a> Paying tens of thousands of dollars to hire "college counselors" who have inside knowledge of how to get their clients into an Ivy.
(6) Hiring "essay consultants" to help with college applications.

[/quote]

Yep...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2005/05/31/boot%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2005/05/31/boot&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

6

<p>they are all true</p>

7

<p>Maybe I should become a college admissions counselor then. :D</p>

8

<p>the Duke TIP is common here in Columbia, South Carolina. Many students at the high school I go to, including me, took the SAT in 7th grade. (But the high school I go to is considered one of the best in the state, and the district is probably the best district in South Carolina). schools don't really count those scores as they would count ones taken in high school though</p>

9

<p>i took the SATs in 7th grade for Duke TiP.</p>

<p>And i'm really not suprised at all of this. Parents don't realize that shelling out 300,000 to prepare for Yale is much less than good grades and the 200,000 "donation" you have to make</p>

10

<p>If the stuff in my opening post is actually occuring, I believe that there should be a term for what Ivy-obsessed parents are doing to give their children the "Ivy edge."</p>

<p>I suggest that we call this condition "IVY-OBSESSIONITIS"
(pronounced eye-vee-ub-seh-shun-eye-tis)</p>

<p>This condition has been spreading rapidly, and there's no end in sight. Currently, there is no vaccination and no cure. It is believed to have begun in the suburbs, and it has spread to both urban and rural areas. It is most prevalent on the East and West coasts, but cases of Ivy-Obsessionitis have been found in all 50 states. Wealthy and highly educated parents are particularly prone to this condition. Parents with graduate degrees are at extreme risk.</p>

<p>There are two varieties of Ivy-Obsessionitis (I-O):</p>

<p>a) Early Onset Ivy-Obsessionitis (E-O-I-O):
Begins at the birth of first child....These parents enroll their one-year
old in a "Tier One" day-care center. To be considered "Tier One", 100%
the the day-care center's "grads" must have eventually gone on to
attend an Ivy League School. Under certain conditions, a day-care
center can be considered "Tier One", even if less than 100% of its
graduates eventually went on to attend Ivy League Schools.<br>
For instance: As long at 80% attended Ivies and the remaining 20%
attended Stanford or MIT, the day-care center would still be considered
"Tier One."</p>

<pre><code>"Tier Two" day-care centers would include those where at least 80%
of its grads have gone on to attend those college described in Tier
One, with the remaining 20% attending colleges such as Swarthmore,
Haverford, Rice, etc.

Once you get below "Tier Two", the chances of a parent's child getting
into an Ivy are greatly diminished. These children often end up at State
Colleges.

Ratings of various Day-Care Centers will appear in an upcoming issue
of a magazine that will be hitting the newsstands soon.
</code></pre>

<p>b) Regular Onset Ivy-Obsessionitis (R-O-I-O): Begins when child enters
7th grade. Since the obsession arose late in the game compared to
those parents with E-O-I-O. These parents spend excessive
amounts of money on the following: SAT prep, "college strategists"
who will provide their children with inside information to give them the
"Ivy edge," and on "consultants" who will edit college essays to
perfection.</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
Someone told me that parents are so obsessed with having their children go to an Ivy (term for all "elite") College that they are doing these things:</p>

<p>(1) Trying to get their children into top PRE-SCHOOLS AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS that will give their children an "Ivy edge."</p>

<p>(2) Moving across the country in order to have their children go to a high school that has a good "track record" of getting their grads into Ivies.</p>

<p>(3) Having their children take SAT's in 7th or 8th grade.</p>

<p>(4) Paying tens of thousands of dollars to hire "college counselors" who have inside knowledge of how to get their clients into an Ivy.</p>

<p>(5) Spending hundreds of dollars on SAT prep courses.</p>

<p>(6) Hiring "essay consultants" to help with college applications.</p>

<p>Is this stuff really true?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sounds like something typical Asian parents would do.</p>

12

<p>I've actually met Ms. Michele Hernandez. I told her about how my move from a middle-of-the-road public school X where about ~40% attend CC and ~2-3% attend top 20 schools to the elite public school Y next door, where ~30% attend top 20 schools was beneficial to me because the quality of education was incomparably better and, being a nerdtype, I fit in much better socially.</p>

<p>She clicked her tongue. "Everybody knows Y. You would have been much better off applying to schools from school X. Admissions officers like seeing some more diversity."</p>

<p>At the expense of my education and my social life?!?! No, sorry, getting into an elite college is not THAT important to me.</p>

13

<p>dhl3 -
[quote]
Sounds like something typical Asian parents would do.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Please - the vast majority of parents who do this are affluent suburban whites or the WASPY/Jewish urban elite (gee, I wonder who makes up the majority of the prep school classes and who makes up the majority of parents who are notorious for being overly aggressive in getting their children into the top private schools in NYC, LA, etc. - including pre-school).</p>

<p>Nice to see that you don't have any biases.</p>

14

<p>not a funny post, old but wise. sorry.</p>

15

<p>My college counselor told me that there was one mother who actually wanted to FAKE HER DEATH to increase her kid's chances at getting into college..no joke.</p>

16

<p>Yes, with college getting harder and harder to get accepted to in the first place, the Ivies are probably changing with the times as well.</p>

<p>Taking the SAT or ACT in 7th grade is not uncommon, however. I did it, as did most of my friends, through DukeTiP.</p>

<p>The IB program has also branched into elementary and middle schools in my area. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.</p>

17

<p>Yup, they are all true... </p>

<p>and this is the reason why evaluating students on merit alone is insufficient.... such evaluation is not fair, despite initial appearance of being so.</p>

<p>Few people have these opportunities afforded to them.</p>

18

<p>quirkily: I respect your comment about not finding my post funny. My satirical comments were meant be thought-provoking and to generate discussion. Actually, the issues being addressed are far from funny. In fact,
I find these things very disturbing.</p>

<p>Being from Princeton, I would very much like to hear your thoughts on the issues being discussed in this post. Your insights would be very valuable to those involved in this discussion.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

19

<p><a href="1">quote</a> children into top PRE-SCHOOLS (2) Moving across the country
(3) SAT's in 7th or 8th grade. (4) hire "college counselors"
(5) SAT prep courses. (6) "essay consultants"

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Many of these are quite rational for people who can afford it.
What is less rational is people who can't afford it, in the middle class,
taking out huge loans or second mortgages to pay overpriced tuition.</p>

<h1>3, 7-8th grade SAT, is rarely done for college admissions, it is a form of "giftedness" testing for talent searches such as CTY.</h1>