<p>I’ll answer you “nicely” :). What I mean by “valuable” is in relation to the admission process, not to the kids themselves. It is of course of great value to the kids to experience these programs. </p>
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<p>It is not conceptually different. I don’t think I was implying otherwise in my previous posts. However, there is a subtle difference in how they may be viewed. Btw, I’m not gloating here, just trying to honestly present my opinion. An internship that is very specific indicates a targeted deep pursuit as opposed to a general one. People may also attach more weight to the significance of the internship by the prestige of the institution or lab. Kids in this situation may be viewed as more than just learners, but as contributors to breakthrough works. Of course, you and I both know most of them are just learners, but appearance becomes reality sometimes. </p>
<p>Similarly, if a kid in humanities authors/co-authors a book, a paper or a magazine article, then in the eyes of many the kid is no longer just a learner, but a contributor. This is not to say there is nothing valuable to the adcoms if the kid hasn’t come up with a new idea or an invention. I think the adcoms care about how much you know so they can gauge your readiness for college, but they care even more about what you did with what you know. As you pointed out upthread, as a learner, it is hard to show how much you’ve attained in your discipline without an award or recognition or some sort of demonstrable application. If time is too short to enter in a contest to get an award, then the last one is where you may still have time to do something about.</p>
<p>DS1’s breakdancing was an activity that mom and I were having a tough time dealing with initially. We felt the activity took away valuable time he could use to improve his grades (actually, I know it is true), but I was very happy when he applied his breakdancing to charity work and organized a group of kids with similar minds to do the same. He started this work just a few weeks ago. This is an example of demonstrable application.</p>
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<p>I agree. Privilege is a relative thing and it has to be looked at in context. So I said earlier that I don’t think my kids are privileged. I said this in that particular context. Compare to the inner city kids who get bussed to the suburb schools, of course my kids are privileged.</p>
<p>I think where the socioeconomic advantage for internships at Fermilab, NIH, etc., is whether a student is getting paid. Students who need summer earnings to pay for SAT exams, college apps, etc. often have to make different decisions than kids whose families feel they can forego the summer income.</p>
<p>Of course, there are exceptions – I am working with a young woman who was paid for her internship at NIH (and she is paying for all her apps, tests, summer school health course, etc.). One has to be a very strong applicant to get paid for those kinds of positions. S1’s hourly pay rate, as expressed by the $$ amount of scholarships he won for his summer research, will probably never be that high again, given that he wants to be in academia! </p>
<p>S1 was able to commute on public transit to his mentor at the flagship. He did the bulk of his actual work at home.</p>
<p>I never felt my son needed to apologize for the opportunities he had - they were mentioned in his essays because they were germane to the topic.</p>
<p>My daughter was very matter of fact about her upbringing. She didn’t apologize or gloat. It is the only life she’s known. She went to a fairly well known private school, but it is just a school to her. Her only meaningful EC was ballet. It is an expensive EC, and we’ve paid for summer intensives every summer, but she also won an all paid for Governor School for dance in our state. To her there was no difference in going to a paid for summer program vs a free program, because she’s had to audition for both of them. </p>
<p>In her essays she talked abou how much she appreciated our “support”, without it she couldn’t have accomplished so much. I don’t know if she came across as “privileged,” but she certainly wasn’t pretentious.</p>
<p>How many 17/18 year olds really know if they were privileged or not. I didn’t grow up with much (we were first generation immigrants), but it wasn’t until I went to college to know how little we had. My friends were going to spas with their mothers for weekends, and I thought going to Mcdonalds on a Fri night was a real treat.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl – I asked the same thing of the StatsEval people, as we have done a good bit of family travel (on the mega-cheap, thanks to FF miles from DH’s work), and international exposure would seem to a be a good thing to mention for an IR major. The collective wisdom seems to be to avoid it.</p>
<p>unquote:</p>
<p>I think these people giving you the advice to hide your IR hopeful son’s international experience and expoure are terribly irresponsible, in my humble opinion. If your son was a bio major, and did research in the bio related field, would you EVER hide it lest the adcoms think he has an unfair privilege? If your son is going to be music major and spent a summer traveling with New Philharmonic to Europe as their unpaid intern", would you hide it? If your son is going to be an IR major, how could his exposure and experience in the international scene hurt? If anything, wouldn’t it be counted as an “organic” growth of his interest, well thought out and well reasoned based on life experience?</p>
<p>People who are haphazardly making that kind of advice are not thinking strategically, but are rather regurgitating some half cooked “fad of the day” advice on “how to appear humble and not privileged” to overworked adcoms making $50K/year. I think their advice is relevant to kids who have all the markings of an air headed trust fund baby who, left on their own device, might write an essay on international experience as in “I lorded over these poor and hungry locals while they were busy waiting on my table when I was dining on endangered species kebab served on a pure 24K gold plate” :)</p>
<p>Adcoms deal with kids who obviously came from very privileged background, and last time I checked they are not proactively punishing these kids with vindictive zeal. Come on, let’s give these people some credit for being sophisticated enough. As long as the fruits of privilege seem to further the productive goals of the kids’ education, I don’t see why the kids should go out of the way to “hide” the opportunities made available to them that they took advantage of.</p>
<p>Keilexandra, I don’t recall - are you a student or a parent? For some reason I thought you were a student, but perhaps I am mistaken. </p>
<p>Heck, ANY EC is indicative of some privilege, insofar as it presupposes that the kid doesn’t need to work to support the family and / or babysit younger siblings so parents can work and / or work in a family business. I think there is a lot of inherent privilege in a lot of the “blue chip” resumes on CC, personally. My personal reaction is that a lot of these EC’s at high levels can’t occur unless there is one parent to serve as chauffeur and / or a car readily available for the sole use of the student. Which is fine – NTTAWWT, and no one needs to apologize for any advantage.</p>
<p>hye…interesting marketing perspective…but what if there is only one essay and one short answer to write? Do you use that one essay to weave all of those positioning elements together? Seems like a lot to fit in…unless you are specifically talking about very top tier schools who require multiple essays.</p>
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<p>Most of the applications S1 did allowed supplemental essays and on top of that some of then allowed the applicant to submit additional essays. Another way to create a complete picture is to see if you can “encourage” the rec letter writers to address a certain features of your kids’ salient aspects that complete the picture. That, though, needs be done carefully.</p>
<p>I have to agree with this. My son has lived a relatively privileged life (meaning we are not rich but we are better off than a lot of people) and goes to the most expensive private school in town (lucky for him, he is an only child). There are many kids in his class with way more than we have and have done zilch with it in terms of education, others have parents who spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on private tutors, high-end camps, etc. to ensure that their kids gets into Harvard (and they do!).</p>
<p>Two of the top students in his class this year come from relatively modest means and at least one, if not both, will get into a Ivy.</p>
<p>My point is adcoms realize that kids come from all walks of life and some with privilege take advantage of it and do well, others could care less. Those who could care less obviously don’t have the stats to get into a top school. While I wouldn’t ‘flaunt’ the privilege thing, two different counselors have advised us that in order to ensure the best fit for our son, we need to let his true self shine in the application/essay. There is no need to ‘strategically’ try to make you child fit a profile that you think the adcoms want to see and to do so is to risk getting your child into a school he or she really doesn’t belong or worse, getting them rejected.</p>
<p>To give you an example, my husband asked the counselor the other day if son should take on a certain EC this year to make him look more appealing to colleges. The counselors reply was 'if it’s an EC he wants to do, then great. Otherwise, there is no reason to do it."</p>
<p>Along those same lines, if the child focuses on letting his or her true nature show through on an essay, the adcoms will see it and appreciate it. If it happens to involve some sort of privileged activity, then so be it. If it’s done just to ‘brag’ then that’s a different story altogether.</p>
<p>I read a post on CC recently where someone stated that kids from private college prep schools aren’t getting into the top schools because of the ‘privileged’ thing. That really disturbed me. Not only because I know it’s not true (our school sends 1-3 students to an ivy every year out of a class of about 50-60) and the local public schools might send 1-2 out of classes of 500 but because that implies that the adcoms are deliberately excluding hard-working, bright kids because of their socioeconomic status. Maybe I’m being naive but I just find that hard to believe. A good student is a good student regardless of how much money they have.</p>
<p>hyeonjili,
My son is interested in international studies/international business and was a very lucky soccer player who had some national and international travel opportunities with teams he has played for over the years. While he had opportunities to continue playing in college, he made the decision to be a full-time student instead.</p>
<p>In his essays, he talked about how soccer opened his eyes to the world beyond our community…from travel experiences, coaches in his club from other countries & cultures, teammates likewise…</p>
<p>He was quite aware that he could come across as privileged or spoiled (which he is!), so in his essay he also addressed the fund raising his team did to raise enough $$$$ that everyone could afford to go to prestigious tournaments and international trips.</p>
<p>At a couple of his on-campus interviews, the interviewers referenced his essays and they discussed the thoughtful way his coaches had addressed possible socio-economic inequalities on the team…and what a life lesson the boys had received.</p>
<p>What’s funny is my son never got to find out if his essays “worked”, although I think they did from the reactions he got. He had applied ED to American University (a match/safety even?) because he really, really liked it and just wanted to be done with all the college stuff so he could enjoy his last year of school and soccer…and withdrew all of his other applications at the beginning of January.</p>
<p>I am paying close attention to GWU and American for my S2. I hope to ask you sometime later how your son is doing at American as an IR major, since that’s more or less where my S2 is heading toward. that is, if you don’t mind…</p>
<p>And possibly mine too, who is also interested in the Georgetown / GWU / American trifecta (fully understanding different levels of selectivity, and fully not caring).</p>
<p>It’s a pity that some families choose this way. But, at the same time, I feel kids may not treasure their “privilege” when parents simply shower them with educational opportunities indiscriminately. Clearly, to have a “good return” on time and monetary investment, kids must take the opportunities seriously. For most kids, they will only engage fully when they are very interested in the activities. Even then, once the newness and the fun is over and work sets in, most of them would lose heart and become passive. This is an important point for the family. Parents must carefully assess whether further encouragement and emotional support would rekindle the passion or it is time to call it quits and move on to something else. I’ve seen too many times parents delay the inevitable “call it quits” too long to the detriment of their kids. I’m guilty on this many times myself. In this highly compeitive environment, you will put your kids at a disadvantage if they are competing with their less than enthusiatic interest against people with true passion. In the long run, your second or third best is not going to beat someone’s best. Use your time and money to explore your kid’s true passion and then let them loose.</p>
<p>I’d like to follow up what PaperChasePop just said with a corollary that may be more controversial: at least in terms of college admissions, I think it may not be helpful for a kid to pour all his time and energy into something that he isn’t really good at. While it may show passion and commitment for a kid to work hard to be on a team, or to dance or play music, if he’s not good enough at the activity to distinguish himself, it’s at least worth thinking about whether there’s something else he’d be better at doing that he would also love to do. Again, we’re talking about admission to top colleges, which are interested in achievers. If a kid is determined to follow his passion, even if he’s not highly talented, that may not be compatible with chasing the most selective schools.</p>
<p>I don’t know…I see your point about applying to top colleges but tell a kid he or she shouldn’t follow their passion because they are not the ‘best’ in it seems to be sending the message that life is only about achievement and that anything else is a waste of time.</p>
<p>While it might help achieve a short-term goals of getting into a select college, I would worry about setting a child up for a lot of heartache later on in life. No one is the ‘best’ at everything they do. IMHO, there’s nothing wrong with following one’s passion purely because one loves it.</p>
<p>The interesting thing is I’ve known quite a few kids that got into Ivies that were just doing what they naturally love to do. There was no long-term strategic planning of every move the kid made. </p>
<p>I’m understand the angst of the parents here. I’m in the same boat. I have a kid who would like to get into a more selective school. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t but it’s not the end of the world if he doesn’t. There is always graduate school, careers and families in the future. Really, some of the most successful people I have known (in terms of careers and $$) went to the State U.</p>
<p>I think that’s a really sad statement, honestly. It presupposes that simple enjoyment and engagement aren’t worthwhile. It presupposes that valuable life lessons can only be learned while one is actively engaged in winning State / awards / honors in a given area. It’s very inconsistent with nurturing creativity.</p>
<p>I completely disagree, Hunt. Your position may be correct if the ultimate goal is to get a child into an extremely selective school. However, if the ultimate goal is a productive and happy life for your child, there are worse lessons to learn than “you can’t always be the best and sometimes you just have to do something because you love it, not because it brings you some sort of material reward.”</p>
<p>For some, certainly. Speaking for myself, I want my kid to go to the best school he’d be happy at, and I’m sure there are top-20 schools where he’d be happy. But if we don’t find one, then he’s not going to a top-20 school. I’ve never pushed my son to do anything he didn’t want to do, and I’m not going to start now. That’s not inconsistent with a desire to see him attend the best school possible, with reputation being one of the factors determining what’s best.</p>
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