<p>^ One need to be top caliber academically to be accepted to top 10 school, this will include jerks and such. It is outside of major points that will make one to be accepted where one wants to go.</p>
<p>Well, Miami, I happen to think that if someone is a jerk that no one wants to be with or work with or collaborate with, how “top caliber” they are academically is of no use.</p>
<p>Buy a drumset.</p>
<p>Let me explain this. My kids got interested in rock music, and both of them wanted to form bands. At the point they both seemed genuinely interested in this, I went to Guitar Center and bought an inexpensive (relatively speaking) drumsset, and put it in our basement, even though neither of our kids plays the drums. Why? So they could have their bands come and play at our house. I cite this as the kind of support you can give to your kids’ interests–which, in my opinion, is most likely to help them succeed. It may be volunteering in your kid’s Scout troop, or driving him to hockey practice at 4 a.m., or helping him with practicing piano. It may involve spending money. The better clarinet will make a difference. A magazine subscription might help. A laptop computer. But just as often, it’s your time that will be the biggest support. Go to every game, every performance–both parents if you can.</p>
<p>^^^^^^^Will you adopt me?
I would have loved a drum set or a guitar or even a 64 count box of Crayola crayons when I was a kid.
That is why I really tried to pay attention to what they were interested in & supported it- although if they were doing an activity, I tried to make them stick it out for a year ( except seasonal sports), although in one case, I allowed D to stop performing choir when the choir director changed and the new one, was really gritchy.</p>
<p>( My H and I were also just talking about how younger D has always been interested in marine biology, even when she was five and wanted to be a ballerina/fire fighter/police. He had taken her fishing on the pier and noticed that she was tearing into the herring he had brought for bait. His first thought was to admonish her, but then he saw that she was carefully using the filet knife to scrape away the skin, then she carefully separated the musculature and the organs. She was terribly curious about how it went together* this was before she put all the heads on the ends of her fingers and waggled them around like they were olives at Thanksgiving* )
Learning is messy- prepare for mess.</p>
<p>I also did not pay attention to US News rankings when looking at colleges although I did use their info to get an idea of how much need based aid was loans.</p>
<p>Reed College, while once was US News darling, had slipped in " tiers" when they refused to participate in submitting the data needed to sell the magazine.
[Is</a> There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic (November 2005)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/shunning-college-rankings]Is”>Is There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic)
However, I wasn’t interested in finding a school that was impressive to those people who liked familiarity, I wanted to find a place for my daughter to learn.</p>
<p>I appreciate Dad II’s posting here–though his POV is very different from most of ours, I hope other parents will understand where he is coming from.</p>
<p>My kids don’t go to top 10 schools, but to excellent schools that were their first choices.
Their academic aptitude is genetic. They were homeschooled. So I, personally, am taking about 75% of the credit for their success. (25% to Dad for HIS genes ) Any failures are 100% their own darn fault.</p>
<p>I taught them to read. I gave them freedom. Freedom to “waste time” wandering around the woods looking at bugs. Freedom to practice sports every day when other kids were in school. Freedom to spend months on art projects. Freedom to travel. Probably too much freedom.</p>
<p>Oh, and one other thing–I helped them prep for PSAT/SAT.</p>
<p>Well, I think that’s the whole point – one poster attributes it to lots and lots of freedom, other posters attribute it to lots of strict rules / prohibitions … who knows?</p>
<p>^Pick and choose, just like all other decisions we have to make :). </p>
<p>I think there is a balance between freedom and control. We shift from total control to total freedom as our kids mature into adults. How much and how quickly we shift depends on how mature our kids have become. The process is analogous to building up one’s credit over time.</p>
<p>i see some kids whose parents have hired private tutors and prep classes. almost everything they do is because of their parents’ nagging. they might get straight A’s, but they don’t have the desire to achieve, and that will definitely hurt them in the long run. they have never been allowed to fail, and when they get their first B in college i shudder to think of the breakdown.
involved parents are good, but “helicopter” parents are bad. let them experiment, and let them fail. i think the best thing a parent can do is just support their kid’s explorations in finding their passions.</p>
<p>
Agreed!!
It’s a mistake some involved parents tend to make. </p>
<p>An extreme case for a helocopter parent - a funny one about a late boomer:
“when Douglass MacArthur left home to attend West Point, his mother went with him to keep an eye on the future soldier. To make sure he studied, she took an appartment that had a perfect view of his dorm room.”</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>She was probably suspicious because one night he told her “I will return”, and he never did. :)</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I guess from her perspective it worked, because young Douglas graduated first in his class.</p>
<p>As a mother of 3 sons ( all graduated and in the process of being educated), I can say that it is mosty attributed to the drive and ambition of the individual.</p>
<p>My oldest was an average student, played sports, was in the middle school orchestra, and then the jazz choir in HS. He graduated with a 3.2 GPA, no honor classes or AP’s and is now a working Paramedic furthering his education to be an RN.</p>
<p>My middle son has the people skills that money can’t buy and college can’t teach, but still just an average academic student. Played sports, sang in the performance choir and had a heck of a great time sociallizing. He is now 20 and at a CC to become a pharmacist tech.</p>
<p>My youngest is a freshman at U of Mich as a dual degree candidate in Engineering and Musical Theatre BFA. He planned out his curriculum from the first day of HS, knowing which AP and honors classes he would take and how they would factor into his college application process. He indeed was accepted to his dream school after lots of hard work in high school and in his application/audition process.</p>
<p>Now, the key factor here is that all 3 of these boys had the same opportunites, same upbringing and parental support. Each took a different path with different levels of ambition and education.</p>
<p>I am not sure that one can pinpoint anything. Good parental direction and guidance and let the chips fall as they may. </p>
<p>Good luck to everyone in their process with their precious ones. :)</p>
<p>Atomom, anyone who homeschools their children is amazing in my book. I could never in a million years have done it. Congratulations on a job well done, getting your kids into college and knowing you had a big part in their success…</p>
<p>Hmmm . . . three things that I think I did right as a parent. I tried my best to instill three qualities in my daughter:</p>
<ol>
<li> Self confidence.</li>
<li> Work ethic and perserverance.</li>
<li> Belief in the golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).</li>
</ol>
<p>I think that I achieved pretty good results. My daughter is an early admission candidate to veterinary school (which is a tougher admit than medical school), she’s as comfortable playing first chair oboe as she is competing in rodeo, and she’s a sweet, thoughtful, considerate, well-mannered young woman who cares about others and has never given me much to worry about. I couldn’t be more grateful.</p>
<p>I am glad we have so good discussions here. </p>
<p>However, I really don’t understand some of you. I made it VETY clear in the OP that I am not equalling getting into a T10 to successful in life and I understand getting into a T10 is not a goal for everyone. </p>
<p>I further clarified that this discussion is only limited the admission stage. Your child is looking at certain schools and it is successful when he/she gets in. So, it is not just luck nor genes. You as a parent did something right.</p>
<p>I am a true believer that, other than health related cases, every person is born equal. The development of capability of any sort is developed later.</p>
<p>re Post #190</p>
<p>I’ve been to West Point a few times…although not recently… but I don’t recall anywhere that an “outside” person could get an appartment that would overlook the student dorms???</p>
<p>Family environment is just one factor, Dad II. And that goes for families of all ethnicities/races. There are factors that are beyond the control of parents.</p>
<p>I have observed many families (of all races) in which the outcome for each child was vastly different. For example, we have three sets of friends whose children were radically dissimilar in how they turned out. </p>
<p>One of my closest friend’s son was just accepted by Yale (EA) and yet his older brother barely graduated from high school and is now getting D’s and Fs in community college. This is a Korean-American family.</p>
<p>Another close friend has a daughter who is a senior at Stanford. She has an older brother who dropped out of college (a 4th tier school) and is now in drug rehabilitation after being arrested for drug possession. This is a European-American family.</p>
<p>A third friend (Chinese American) had twin boys (fraternal twins), one of whom went to Harvard (straight A+ student 1590 SAT) while the other twin went to UC Davis (3.3 GPA). They both started out as pre-med (the father is a doctor) but the one who went to Harvard ended up switching out of pre-med and went to Santa Clara law school after Harvard (he did not do well at Harvard). The UC Davis twin graduated at the top of his class at Davis and went to Harvard medical school. They are both 30 years old now and the parents are still befuddled!</p>
<p>And guess what? All three sets of parents are highly educated–with Ph.D’s JD’s or MDs–and have incomes in excess of $200,000. </p>
<p>The moral of all of this is–as parents, we think we have a lot of control over how our children turn out, but in many cases, our children’s autonomous wills drive them to their own destinies. </p>
<p>This is not an argument for permisssive parenting, but just a cautionary tale about the powers we attribute to ourselves as parents when reality never fails to remind us that our children are not entirely ours to shape.</p>
<p>thanks, elizabethh, but my college kids (now senior and freshman) certainly “blame” me more for homeschooling(actually unschooling) them than they thank me for it. Which is why kid #3, after 9 years of homeschooling, is going to school full time (as are kids 4, 5, 6, 7. .)–to better prepare him for college, develop a better work ethic, multitasking skills. Yes, I think he’ll be better prepared, but his teenage years are certainly more stressful and less free, and that makes me kind of sad. When I think of how little “academic work” my oldest two did–and still got to the same place as their college classmates, and are doing just as well as kids with private schools, tons of APs–I wonder how much difference it really makes. Yet these high school kids are working themselves to the point of a nervous breakdown–and for what? Anyway, we all try to do the right thing for our kids, whatever that “right thing” seems to be at the moment.</p>
<p>So, I’m left with genes and sat prep.</p>
<p>Three things that I did that most contributed to their successes (well, hopefully, one’s a senior, so we’ll see!)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Sought and won a custody modification to get them out of an abusive home situation when they were 14 and 11. My children both think that this one thing had the largest impact on their present and future, and that had I not spent the year doing this (on my own, I wrote my own filings and everything!) they would have radically different lives. My son doesn’t think he’d even be in college now, let alone at his dream school. </p></li>
<li><p>Engaged in an ongoing dialogue for the past 7 years about college, focusing on what the children needed to do in order to get where they wanted to be. I have always talked about what they needed to do in order to acheive <em>their</em> goals and not put it as what I expected/demanded of them. </p></li>
<li><p>Supported the children in pursuing their passions as far as I could. I don’t have “well-rounded” children – they have strong passions, areas that they are very engaged in to the exclusion of other things. Those passions have lead to their academic and career interests. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>If I had to add another thing, it would be that I have asked for money for precollege programs. For both my children, we asked for increased aid to fund precollege summer programs. In both cases, schools worked with us to provide extra financial aid that allowed them to attend programs that made a big difference.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I believe she lived in the Hotel Thayer which is on campus(or more accurately on post).</p>
<p>I doubt that this would even be allowed now.</p>