I was in HS back in the 1980’s too and my parents would not let me take any of the test prep courses because they felt that if I had taken classes and prepared for the test, then I might end up at a college that was too difficult for me and I would not have a good an experience there…
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Could not agree more. Senior year in remote learning status has been bliss in one way. The frantic rush/stress of rushing from school to ECs (sometimes more than one in an evening) and then home (with dinner gobbled in car) to do homework until falling into bed to do it all again the next day has been paused.
Will we as a society allow ourselves to be pushed back into this life of stress and pressure for our high-schoolers post-covid? I fear so, but I’m glad that my child got a year free of it it, even under terrible pandemic circumstances.
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Bliss? This year has been far from bliss for my daughter. She is trying to teach herself high level classes because the teachers in our high school just push work out. There is no live lessons or instruction. She is forced to look up answers online due to there not being enough textbooks for everyone and the online subscription that our school district had for online books was not renewed this year due to budget cuts. Her SAT has been cancelled 6 times. Starting all the way back in March of Jr year. All through summer and her sept, oct, nov AND dec attempt on dec 5 th was cancelled. I assure you not all kids are feeling blissful
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I said bliss in one way.
My daughter’s SATS were cancelled too. She has similar problems with some of her on-line teachers. She is feeling completely isolated from her friends (who flout covid recommendations when she will not).
But the escape from constant “go go go” has been bliss.
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Wanted to throw something out there in regards to a prior post mentioning superscoring and taking the test multiple times.
One of my kids got a perfect score on half of the SAT right out of the gate. Easy breezy. The material came naturally.
The other half of the test was not my child’s natural strong suit. It required a lot of work. Months of studying. Many many practice tests. Focus and perseverance. Took the test and scored 130 points higher on the section the second time around.
Colleges may want to see which kids persevere and succeed even when the material is initially difficult for them. Doesn’t it indicate how the student will react to college work that is challenging or isn’t easy to them right out of the gate?
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A note: “Will we as a society allow ourselves to be pushed…?”
WE’re the parents. We’re the ones supposed to be watching, guiding, and at times, pulling them back. These are not insurmountable obstacles that we’re powerless against. When we continually set it up as us against some dastardly system, I think we forget some of our roles and responsibilities, as parents. If your kid can’t handle the scheduling, don’t subject him or her to it. Don’t get so wrapped up in peer pressure (lol) that you do your own kid a disservice.
Do I make it sound too easy? Maybe. I generally believe some pressures are what leads to growth, can’t deny that. But alongside taking on challenges and developing various strengths, becoming more able and “stress-tested,” we made sure they understood how to decide when to pull back, how to make the right decisions at the right time, for short-term and longer-term purposes, how to allow this and move forward.
I’ll admit that what college mattered to us, sure. For various reasons. But since they were entering K, our sight was on how ready they would be for young adulthood, i.e., post college. Not on the rat race of rankings.
I’m sorry some school situatons, like what @kmf2424 is facing, are so awful. I hate that it’s that way in so many areas. Especially junior and senior kids are suffering being denied the access to teacher, GCs, that interface and guidance.
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Well, if you believe it’s an individual problem, and not a systemic one, more power to you.
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For me ( and my kids) that isn’t it at all. It’s about people who want to recreate another system because they don’t like the system that exists. I personally think it’s fine. Thought it was fine 30 years ago too.
Why would we recreate a UK based system that doesn’t match our educational system. Makes zero sense. Personally, I would not want to mirror the UK educational system. Countries are different.
And yes, some kids are actually fragile ( anxiety) and other issues. Mine aren’t but I do have compassion for those who are. Taking tests when you want leaves choices in the hands of those who are subject to their results.
My kid always does top 99% in national tests. What if they were sick that day. So then they either wait a year and re-test or can’t go to a top 20 school and major in X. Why because you decided that was the way the system should work? Really.
Like most things I think it’s a matter of why fix what isn’t broken? YMMV.
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Agree with your comment and also oppose a national testing day. My kids test like yours and would do fine whether or not there was a national testing day. Stress is not the issue. The freedom to pick when to take the exam is important to us.
I don’t understand the kids who test multiple times. One of my daughter’s hs classmates took the SAT six times. Talk about stress! And imo being overly test-focused is not a good look. That energy could be better spent working on other parts of one’s application.
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A test taker who knows the words already can answer the question much more quickly than a test taker who needs to read the definitions. In a time-constrained test, knowing the vocabulary words beforehand will be a significant advantage.
Whether chicken or egg, you feel the first problem is the test or the individual, why shouldn’t parents get involved for their specific kid? If you think there’s a problem, you don’t just leave your kid to suffer. It doesn’t matter to me whether we can fight about the testing or other pressures. First responsibility is to our kids, our role as their immediate adults.
That’s not counting parents who push relentlessly. Just as problematic.
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Some career paths have high stakes standardized test gatekeeping (e.g. physician - MCAT ; lawyer - LSAT ; employers that ask for your high school SAT scores even though you are graduating college), although that may be less or not true of others.
Those with test anxiety may want to be aware of which career paths have high stakes standardized test gatekeeping when considering what career paths to seek.
Please. Off the soap-box with you, even if you find finger-wagging at posters about whom you know nothing a rewarding past-time.
No one has advocated for letting their kid suffer. No one has advocated against getting involved.
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It is very hard to armchair diagnose an entire cohort. Many posters on CC like to claim that “overly competitive colleges” are the cause of increases in suicides on campus. Ignoring the evidence that the college age (18-22 or so) is a prime timeframe for the appearance of all sorts of psychiatric disorders (whether or not a young person is in college), ignoring the evidence that the military (not just in the US) has also seen large spikes in suicides (and these are of service men and women who are not in college at all at the time of their deaths), and ignoring the caveats of epidemiologists who believe that it is very hard to compare contemporary suicide rates to those 20 years ago, since the stigma against suicide (and therefore, accurate death certificates and reporting) has only recently subsided, so it’s likely that thousands of actual suicides were mis-reported as something else so as to spare the feelings of the family, allow the person to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, etc.
Similarly, this “HS kids are so stressed out because of college and standardized tests and the need for “perfect” EC’s” crops up on CC periodically. And I’ll just caution y’all that just like with the suicide trope, it is very difficult to make such a claim if you care about facts.
Why? Because the population of non-college bound HS kids is ALSO seeing dramatic increases in anxiety and depression. These are 15 year old kids who are worried about having a roof over their head, or about supporting their toddler child. Their guidance counselors aren’t advising them about how to get into Dartmouth- their guidance counselors are working overtime to find a social worker who can get the kid into a safe environment and away from an abusive parent.
So diagnose your own kid all you want- intervene if your kid is experiencing what you perceive to be an inordinate or unhealthy amount of stress in thinking about presenting the “perfect” college application. But I don’t think it’s at all fact-based to toss the entire system based on anecdotal evidence that it doesn’t work.
There are still HS kids out there who have part-time jobs in fast food (certainly fewer of them during Covid), socialize with friends (certainly less during Covid) do “normal” HS activities on weekends and after school, take the SAT “one and done”. To claim that they are somehow participating in a broken system if they take the test, are happy with their scores, and then proceed to apply to college based on that is a bit weird IMHO. THEY are the norm- still- in the US. Not the crazed “OMG, how do I get a research lab to hire me to do cancer research” or “should I retake my 750 math score since I know I can get an 800 if I just study more” kid we read about on CC.
And the British system? You want to see a bunch of stressed out 18 year olds in a system where there are no second chances (or stressed out 12 year olds for that matter)? In a country where there is Oxbridge-- maybe UCL, a few of the Scottish options- and then a whole lot of clearly inferior (as far as the upper crust is concerned) universities???
Say what you will about the US system- a country where we are about to inaugurate a graduate of U Delaware as President… mercifully, nobody’s career comes to a crashing stop if they end up at their second, third, or 12th choice for college.
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Hmm, I find that unnecessarily harsh. No soap box, I’m responding to posters talking about kids jumping off bridges, etc.
Do what IS within your control.
Or not.
Anyone’s choice.
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They are assessing processing ability. Faster processing is correlated with intelligence so while they aren’t strictly an “aptitude” test they still stand in somewhat for one.
a little bit, maybe, but it has been moving further from aptitude over the years. now, there is not much left in it.
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Both cohorts belong to the same system. One in which the society’s wealth is more and more unevenly distributed and any kind of safety net ripped away from the bottom rung.
So the anxiety/depression at the top as a few try to remain in (or struggle into) the elite/wealthy class is part of the same system that produces an immiserated class with no socio-economic support (and tons of depression, mental health issues, as you point out.)
And then you wrap the whole package up in a veneer of neo-liberalism that says, it’s not the system that’s messed up, it’s you. It’s not the system’s fault your child is a stressed out T20 student, or a homeless 16 year old. It’s a function of your (or your parent’s) own bad choices.
Brilliant, really, when you think about it.
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Do not quite agree with that. It’s less obvious because the standardized tests are renamed, rebranded, and revised. Prep is available for free, for pay, through the district, privately, on Kahn, whatever. Regardless of all that, the tests still measure the ability to process information quickly and correctly. Is that useful information to an admissions committee anymore? That remains to be seen. What the school opts to do with the score is not the same thing as what the score communicates.
If the true objective was to measure processing speed, you could do that with a lot less content.
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