OK, because this was described in terms of AP classes per semester rather than per year, it made it sound like the AP classes were only one semester long (as they generally are with schools on semester schedules) and in turn like the kids were taking twice as many AP classes as they actually are. Which is a big difference.
Two AP classes per year may be entirely appropriate for many students but I wouldn’t want the school or other parents or other students who cannot handle more limiting what my kids are allowed to do. The problem is not with the kids who can handle more (and reading some of the comments on the coverage there are kids saying that it’s not excessive for them). The problem is with the kids who for various reasons can’t quite handle more not being willing to accept this and knocking themselves out trying to keep up with the Joneses rather than pursuing a program that is appropriate for them. This issue is not unique to Palo Alto by any means. And it’s a cultural and family issue. My kids can’t keep up with the best runners on the track team, and they’d probably have a heart attack if they tried their best to do so. Should I insist that the other kids not be allowed to train any harder than my kids are able to do? Not run any faster or longer?
The problem with so many APs is how well are these students sleeping and dealing with the stress. Are they staying up till midnight or later every night. The problem can be worse if they are getting up early for a sport practice before school.
How many post have we seen from kids afraid their admissions will be rescinded because their GPA goes down a tenth of a point or they might get one B in one class. Then we see the advice which is take as hard a schedule as you can if you want to be admitted to a selective school.
My daughter’s friend envy her when she told them she goes to bed by 10 each night. They couldn’t believe it. Of course she has two off periods which allows her to do her a lot of her homework before she gets home. We know she would be unbearable if she didn’t get lots of sleep.
TheGFG: You sound like me when it comes to AP and pushing themselves. My older son is a very driven kid. Always has been. Very organized when it comes to his studies and world (although his apartment does not reflect that all the time). He took 13 APs in high school. Loved the challenge. For the most part, he loved all the work! We never told him that he needed all those APs. We never forced him to take them. It was all him. He is a very good communicator, so I always knew if he was feeling the pressure. He has done extremely well academically and is now in law school.
My younger son has made me a little more anxious when it comes to pressure. He was exhausted the first half of his junior year. Juggled three AP classes. Had little or no sleep many nights. He once told us that he was waking up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat worrying that he did not do everything he needed to do for APUSH. The teacher was not the best with organization, and it hurt him, as well as others. His grades were good, but other classes suffered. The worst thing, I think, is that now, he really has a dislike for the subject, and he used to love it. He also was an athlete, and the workload affected his performance. I drove him daily to school (I teach in the same building), and many mornings, he would fall asleep for the 20-minute drive. But again, he chose the AP route. I hinted to him that he did not need to take all those classes, but it was his choice. During his senior year, he took six AP exams, and the funny thing was, he was so relaxed! He had teachers who were organized and knew when to give the kids a much needed break. He never felt the pressure. He, like his brother, finished as a National AP Scholar.
As a teacher, I am concerned about the pressures that young people face. One of my younger son’s friends is only a sophomore. Nice girl. Really works her tail off academically. She is also an athlete. She really has done a good job of keeping up with everything, but she has a different kind of pressure. Her mom is annoyed because she is always doing homework at night and on weekends. So her mom does not think she should take AP because she is missing out on spending time with family. At the same time, the parents want her to go to a great school. I feel for the young lady.
I think there is a difference between encouraging kid and forcing kid.
My grandfather forced my dad to do extra math every day while other kids played outside. Back in the 50s. Even beat him if he got wrong answers. He was a very successful chemist in high places. But they were not nice people.
My son got into early college academy for next year but he was already starting to not look forward to school next year because he was not liking the curriculum. So we sought advice from our wonderful college confidential folks and decided to pull him out of the program. He picked new classes that he is excited about…challenging enoughand he can still take college classes in soph year and beyond. As others started here…we know our kid, so this is right for him, and we would have been forcing him if we kept him in eca. (He is an obedient son and would have done it without one complaint but what a change in countenance when he was able to choose his classes!) So we encouraged him to do his best but we did not force him on to a certain trajectory when we knew there were other great options.
Our friend’s son also got in to early college academy. They would not be nice if they pulled him out because he is soooo excited about taking the program. He is even taking summer classes in order to take extra comp sci classes. He would end up being miserable knowing he can and wants to do this program but was not allowed.
I think both kids are happy and I am certain will be successful.
Not that I’m on this soapbox, I wonder how many of them had prescriptions for Adderall or Ritalin which have a potential side-effect is depression. I don’t know how common it is but a high expectations high school in Stanford’s rain shadow would presumably be well-represented in the set of kids who use (abuse?) these as a study enhancer.
I have made it clear to my oldest S (a sophomore) that I think 2 or 3 APs next year is plenty, and that he can focus on math and science APs and skip the others if he wants (he’s a high-achieving stem kid). Adequate amounts of sleep, free time and family time are important to us, and I think they are essential to a healthy upbringing. If, at the end of the day, the selective schools can’t appreciate the choices my son has made, then so be it. Their loss. There are plenty of other great programs that will be happy to have my talented boy.
That does seem like a very high number of kids with severe depression. I was shocked to read on this site many accounts from students who say they only sleep a few hours a night. Some claim not to sleep at all, for several days straight. Where are the parents? I get unhappy if my kids don’t get at least 8 hours.
If you read the prescribing info on accutane, it says “Accutane may cause depression, psychosis and, rarely, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, suicide, and aggressive and/or violent behaviors”.
How do you sue a drug maker when you experience a side effect that was disclosed right up front? Every drug carries risks.
Acquaintances just leveraged their son into a prestigious private university, using several board-level connections, where son will be in lowest quadrant re GPA/scores. Yes, they got him in. But will they be able to keep him in - when academically he’ll be not as prepared and not as equipped as his classmates? And no, it’s not a school w/“rocks for jocks” track geared towards varsity athlete-types. is that prudent to do? We know lots of boys who “over-reached”, and then we’re home again within two semesters.
As a graduate of 2 top-10 institutions, I know plenty of people who were mediocre students at these places and it was hardly a guaranteed springboard to success. For every success story, I know of two others where the person has struggled to get a toehold on a career, and their expensive parchment is not very helpful to them. As is said on this forum many times, the school can only do so much - it is the motivation of the student to succeed. Having been raised and schooled in elite institutions on the east coast, it has completely changed my world view to have lived in CA for 18 years and seen how many wildly successful people have gone to state flagships in the region or even state universities.
Rather than fulfill their own desire to brag at the grocery store or country club, parents should allow their kids to decide where they would be happiest and most likely to succeed (and typically knowing more than our kids, guide them to this answer as well). My son is about to graduate from a similarly competitive HS to Gunn in the Bay Area, where yes, ritalin is the #1 abused drug of choice so kids can stay up 24/7 and build their resumes. I am also an alumni interviewer for my UG university and it makes me sick seeing some of the kids I see, and the pressure their parents place upon them. Fortunately, my son didn’t really buy into the whole competitive thing (if anything we had to prod him along to do his work), but yet he did well anyway and received merit offers at every single university to which he applied (none of which were “elite” schools).
While I should be a snob based upon my educational pedigrees, instead I have begun to question whether the elite universities are worth it anymore for most people, and whether they are just becoming finishing schools for the super wealthy and lottery tickets for select low-income individuals.
Love your post, Cameron121. Hopefully, parents of struggling kids at schools like Gunn are waking up and recognizing that such a competitive atmosphere is not healthy for everyone. Re: the drug abuse issue, are these kids getting the drugs from dealers? If not, how are parents not catching the overuse of prescription meds? Or,…please don’t tell me that parents are allowing this overuse because it helps with grades.
There seem to be plenty of parents who allow their kids to be dangerously sleep deprived, some who are willing to get their kids false diagnoses of ADHD so they get entitled to extra time on exams or make them completely miserable with high pressure and unrealistic expectations. I have no trouble believing there are parents who are willing to look the other way if their kids are abusing adderall.
“As is said on this forum many times, the school can only do so much - it is the motivation of the student to succeed.”
"Rather than fulfill their own desire to brag at the grocery store or country club, parents should allow their kids to decide where they would be happiest and most likely to succeed "
I so much agree with both of these statements. Some HS kids understand this perfectly, but others might need parent’s input for understanding this. I have been saying the same for years and got attacked by so many here on CC for that. I can repeat one more time, college should feel like home, should be a good fit and kid has to work very hard there to achieve. Going to “presigious” place for the sake of the name and not being ready to work extremely hard there is not going to produce desired results.
I am not so sure that I would rush to blame ADD meds as the sole cause of student suicide.
ADD medications are banned in East Asia, yet there is still a high rate of desperation among students who compete within a prescribed curriculum for a limited number of spots at top universities, and who will continue to compete for a scarce supply of jobs that are desirable and lead to a secure financial base.
Our students find themselves competing for financial assistance via merit aid as well as university spots, if they have striver parents who earn too much for need-based aid.(It is not always the “prestige” that drives the desperation.)
Sleep deprivation can be a big issue, though. It is difficult for a parent to monitor a student who is determined to work through the night, or get up in the middle of the night to do schoolwork. Once a student is away at college, parental supervision will be impossible, and a student who had good sleep habits in high school might find themselves surrounded by peers who brag about how much they are accomplishing on little sleep.
Also, in some communities almost all parents have achieved their occupational and financial status as the result of having excelled at academics. In our neighborhood, for example, adults are mostly physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, accountants, financial planners, university professors, or managers. The few who are successful business owners have been dependent upon family connections.
How can a parent even monitor this though? Even if a kid is in their room, you can’t actually force them to sleep. Besides, they could always just get up once the parents went to sleep. Even when I was a little kid, my parents would send me to bed and I would stay up for hours reading in the dark. Unless you expect parents to stay in the room with the kids, it’s silly to hold parents responsible for their kids’ lack of sleep.
“How can a parent even monitor this though”
-Strange question, like parent is on another planet. I had only 2 rules at home and one of them was “in bed by 10pm, no lights”. D. really appreciated that, she needed about 10 hrs of sleep. Not only she had advantage of clear head in a morning it was als a good tool to develop a time mangement skill especially for a kid who was into everything imaginable and had a sport practice that took over 3 hrs / day, including Sat. and good number of meets including out of town. The time management is a great key to success, more so than many other talents. D. learnt to “write” her papers in her head during some periods of sport practice when she had no chance at socializing (which always been one of her top priorities). She was quicker writer than reader, since everything was ready by the time she needed to actually “put it on paper”. This skill was invaluable not only in college but also in Med. School. Going over material while walking to classes became almost a habit.
No, I did not stay in her room. It is silly to assume that one does not hear what is going on in a house.
This rule was lifted only for parties and other specail events over the weekends and breaks.
D. (25 y o) mentioned just few weeks ago, that it was a great rule and she likes my second rule - no crying.
Following up on my previous post, I really don’t know what the answer is when the bar has been raised very high in your child’s high school and other schools in the surrounding area where you might move are not much different. In our district, for example, there are middle school kids who are advanced enough to be bussed to the high school to take classes like AP Physics, AP Chem, Honors Pre-Calc and AP Calculus. So they are pretty much going to be taking all the available AP classes the school offers before they graduate and often classes at the local university on top. In addition, the school is complicit in this hyper-advancement. Once they realized how huge the market was for summer advancement classes, they got in on the action and started a summer institute of their own in order to profit from ambitious parents. So your child wants to take AP Bio next year instead of Bio 1, no problem! Take Bio 1 this summer at the institute and he can advance ahead of the normal progression. He can take those AP classes in freshman and sophomore years when in ages past that was impossible.
So, if my child “relaxes” and takes mostly college-prep level classes and perhaps two AP’s junior and senior year because I think that’s sufficient for her, then she will be scarcely average for our school. Also, her GPA and class rank % will not be strong enough to gain admission to the state flagship (which only accepts the top 5% of our state’s high school students) or the second best state uni… In a sense, the kind of academic life we may want for our D is irrelevant so long as adcoms are going to look at the school context when assessing applicants and unless we don’t care about the quality of college she will be able to attend.
I think the important part of what you’re describing is what do the kids want to do and is this appropriate for them?
I would have loved for my kids to have all the opportunities you describe instead of being bored to death in middle school, but our school is not nearly as accommodating. If they’d been allowed to do so many advanced courses in middle school, would this have caused a lot of other kids to knock themselves out trying to keep up? No, it wouldn’t have because the parents in our community are not so hypercompetitive and while they do push their kids a little too hard in some respects, there are only a few kids for whom this level of acceleration is appropriate and most of the parents are sane enough to realize that. For many years we had a few middle school students, roughly the top 1%, bused to the high school for precalc and/or calc but we do not have a frenzy of parents trying to push their less able kids into doing this, and in fact the school has made this a lot more difficult lately. And in our district summer academic classes are only for kids who failed the regular year class.
It all comes back to sensible parents who care about their kids’ well-being and finding a level of challenge that is appropriate for them, whatever that may be, rather than based upon a parent’s preconceived idea of what they would like their child to be. There’s currently a thread up from a distressed B student in science who hates the idea of being a doctor but whose Asian parents will hear of nothing else. When you get a culture of people who are determined that their kids be the “best” and conform to certain narrow ideals of achievement no matter the personal cost, there isn’t much the school can do about it in the end. If the school isn’t challenging enough the kids will be pushed along outside of school hours.