It has not necessarily been my kid’s experience that ap courses = college courses, at least not in the two she’s repeating because her school doesn’t accept them for placement. She says her intro chem course left ap chem behind after the third week and everything from then on was new to her.
I agree that children of the wealthy, famous and influential do not NEED to attend top schools , but they do. And honestly I don’t see what they bring to a school (except possibly large donations) that is so special. Both of my kids as well as H attended very selective schools and had classmates who fit that description. Other than an initial “that kid in my whatever class is so-and-so’s kid” there was no impact on their classmates. Most of them actually tried to downplay the well known part.
Even at my non competitive regional university I knew two students quite well who fit this.(there was a third I didn’t know). One of them has a last name you would all know instantly and he other you would know if you live/lived in the midwest. And yes they were from THOSE families. They were nice people, I was friendly with them , but it was like attending school with anyone else. .
Agreed. An in-law who attended a HYP in the late '80s/early '90s recounted being good friends with a classmate who appeared no different than other college students and mixed well with students of all backgrounds, especially those on full FA.
It was only at graduation that she found his father was one of the wealthiest shipping magnates and corporate tycoons in Hong Kong/East Asia who has had a history of donating generously including to that particular HYP in question.
My public magnet had a child actor, a child of a nationally known New York criminal defense lawyer, and children of politicians during my HS years. None of that made a difference or mattered in the classroom/student social experiences even for classmates who knew them well…especially considering from all accounts…they didn’t make a big deal about their fame/connections.
One major difference between elite colleges and my HS example was that having such prominent fame/connections played no part in their being admitted to my HS as none of it would have made a difference if they failed to meet/exceed the minimum cut-off score on the admissions exam whereas elite college admissions do give some consideration in the form of legacy/developmental admission consideration if their academic stats/ECs/essay were on the borderline compared with an unhooked candidate.
- He hated the prevailing pretentiousness and snobbery against the middle and lower SES among the upper/upper-middle class students who dominated a few college residential/social organizations when they attended.
An inlaw? Thought you had to be married to have inlaws.
Well you can have married siblings to get in-laws.
Cobrat- do you have siblings? Only recall hearing about cousins.
Almost every college (including schools like Princeton) admits some students who need remedial course work (see Princeton’s MAT 100 at https://www.math.princeton.edu/undergraduate/course/mat100/ ).
@nynance49 – can’t believe your guidance counselor said that (post #582). I don’t believe that for a second. Sounds to me like your daughter will do well where ever she chooses to go, and that she’ll have plenty of options.
I think the number one thing they should do is cut the admissions department budget. There is no such thing as the perfect freshman class. If the recruiting department didn’t have time to read all these perfect essays then the kids wouldn’t have to waste so much time creating them.
Re 606–remedial is not the same as refresher.
There are remedial reading and math courses being taught at college for college credit because it wasn’t properly learned the first time in HS.
Princeton MAT 100 is for students who need to relearn the math that they should have learned in high school. How is that not a remedial course?
What does anyone care, though? If Princeton or whoever wants to admit students who they think would benefit from a refresher or remedial class, why do you care? Or is this just more whining that your little academic superstars didn’t get in?
Not necessarily.
There’s some who are of the opinion that if a student needs remedial courses covering material he/she should have demonstrated proficiency during high school or earlier, then he/she shouldn’t be considered qualified for admission period as colleges/universities shouldn’t be in the business of providing remedial education.
However, most of those who hold such opinions that I’ve met wouldn’t consider pre-calculus alone to be remedial as they’d consider that a legitimate first-year college math course.
Instead, they’re focused more on cases like a friend’s ex-GF who was allowed by her 4-year NE public college to use a remedial course covering 9th grade level algebra to fulfill her college’s math requirement as an elementary education major. Did I mention I came to know of her case because my friend and her both asked me to provide tutoring for her as she already failed it twice and was on her way to failing it for the third time IN COLLEGE?
Just a quick point of fact: At most colleges, remedial (as in truly remedial) courses do not count for college credit.
This actually feeds into the fact that if students start college out on the remedial track, they’re much less likely to actually graduate—it’s not just that they’re less prepared, it’s that (even once you factor out the lack of preparedness) the extra time and expense involved in taking remedial courses makes it more difficult to get to graduation.
This, of course, has led to a lot of discussion of the value and place of remedial courses. Some argue they should count for college credit, some argue students should be placed in non-remedial courses but be given extra academic support, some argue colleges simply shouldn’t accept students who would need remediation, and so on.
It’s a big deal, though. First of all, and often the biggest part of the conversation (though not necessarily of the numbers of students affected), some schools and school districts are producing graduates who could be successful in college, but weren’t trained appropriately. There’s also the issue of returning students (and first-time non-traditional-age students), who may have been appropriately prepared but have forgotten some of the basics. And then there’s perhaps the most difficult group, the students who would utterly clearly be successful in college but for some specific lack (consider, say, somebody who’s a brilliant writer and thinker, but also has dyscalculia, or, on the flip side, a brilliant mathematician with dyslexia).
Really, really hard questions all around—and, unfortunately for all those affected, questions that are unlikely to be fully solved in our lifetimes.
@cobrat “There’s some who are of the opinion that if a student needs remedial courses covering material he/she should have demonstrated proficiency during high school or earlier, then he/she shouldn’t be considered qualified for admission period as colleges/universities shouldn’t be in the business of providing remedial education.”
True, but it doesn’t make any sense.
Top schools are focused on what applicants do well. However, that same amazing applicant may have other subject areas where they are not the strongest and need to catch up a bit. Many students aren’t equally strong in every subject.
should be “there are some who are…”
should be “she and my friend both asked” (or she and my friend asked)
Glad it was assistance with tutoring math and not grammar %-(
No to both.
Yes, what you suggested fits usage manual norms, but usage manuals don’t describe English, they describe certain individuals’ or committees’ idealizations of what they think English is—but these idealizations (yes, these, since they widely disagree with each other) are often different enough from what English actually is that it should really be called “English”, including the scare quotes, at best.
First of all, there is for plural referents has been a part of English for centuries. In fact, there’s good evidence that expletive constructions like that have never been subject to number agreement rules between the expletive and the referent—and therefore the verb and the referent—throughout the history of English, not least because expletives have no inherent number in English (or most any of the Germanic languages, really). The construction you prefer seems to have made it into usage manuals due to some misplaced idea that English should act like Latin.
Second, “objective” case subject pronouns aren’t actually objective case at all, but a nominative construction that has existed for the entirety of the history of English. The construction you prefer appears to have made it into usage manuals in an attempt at imposing a consistency on the English language that has never actually been there.
(At least you didn’t insist on a non-split infinitive or they only having a plural referent, so there’s that, I suppose…)
“There is some”?? You are saying the correct usage is “some is”? There is some who are is mixing singular and plural. That is like nails on a blackboard. It hurts my ears just to read it.
Nor is it correct to say “her …asked”. Oh my ears!
Oh, and FWIW, I dislike split infinitives and dangling participles, but they have made it into the vernacular.
On there is/are, you’re making two errors: First, thinking that if you have a construction of the sort X {BE verb} Y that the X and Y must have the same number. Second, thinking that the object of a verb (whether a BE verb or not) has any bearing on subject-verb number agreement in English.
In actual fact, the there in there {BE verb} constructions is underspecified for number, and therefore the verb can be marked either plural or (more often, in actual practice) singular, because there is no number specified by the expletive itself. As for whether some Z is… is actually English, that has no bearing at all on whether there is some Z is part of English, because in the latter sentence some Z is the object of the verb, not the subject. (Interesting sidebar: German works different than English on this—but still not the way usage manuals for English claim is the case for their supposed “Englishes”.)
Whether it feels like nails on a chalkboard to your ears is a matter of preference (and, most likely, training), and has no bearing on whether it’s actually a part of English grammar or not.
Well ouch and double ouch. It hurts my ears to hear mixing singular and plural, just as it hurts to hear mixing tenses. But ok… I believe you. I nominate you to be the one who edits/corrects those appeal letters students post asking for reconsideration of their academic suspension. Some of those are really painful to read from a grammar/basic sentence structure standpoint.