Working a summer job gives a high school student a sense of responsibility and lessens their sense of entitlement.
" At the orientation meeting, parents and students were specifically told that the demands of the program almost always made it impossible for students to hold down paid jobs, either during the school year or in the summer."
I’m going to assume that families in the lower-income bracket don’t send their kids to this school, then.
@sseamom, unfortunately, I think your conclusion is correct.
And it’s a shame that it has to be that way, considering that this was a public school. The kids weren’t rich (the whole point of sending your kid to a public school magnet program is to get private school quality at public school prices – so these programs tend to attract people who aren’t wealthy). But nobody was truly poor, either.
I’d ask why a program for talented kids need to monopolize their summers. Why wouldn’t they be able to cover the IB curriculum during the school year, like many other schools do? And why wouldn’t the kids be able to work during the school year? Were they also told that they may not join sports teams, be in the school musical, etc?
I agree. H, his sisters and brother could not have gone to such a school since all of them had to work to support their widowed, ailing mother. D’s district has had some success with programs that allow kids to work yet still be in rigorous programs, but for the truly needy kids, it’s a real struggle at times.
The kids tended to use their summers to meet high school graduation requirements outside the IB program – including the community service requirement and non-academic courses available in the summer session, such as health and tech ed. They were also expected to do much of the work on their Extended Essay during one particular summer, and many also did a substantial proportion of their CAS hours in the summer (though with recent changes in the IB curriculum, doing CAS hours in the summer may no longer be practical in the way that it was in my daughter’s time in IB).
Some did participate in time-consuming extracurriculars such as a sport or drama during the first two years of high school (when they were too young for most jobs anyway), but many found it necessary to cut back drastically on extracurriculars when the demands of the full IB program hit.
I don’t know how it is for kids in other IB programs, but my daughter found that nothing that has come afterwards – not college, not full-time work, not graduate school – has ever been as demanding as the IB program she attended.
The magnet school where my son attended IB program had agreements with big box stores to provide them student employees for the summer and during school year. They also gave students one day a week off for internships (and provided leads) and had certain number of volunteering hours as a graduation requirement. Basically they knew how to package students for college admissions and treated work experience in retail as important.
The IB magnet my daughter attended prioritized having the highest possible percentage of students earn the IB diploma – and they didn’t care much about anything else. I like your school’s approach better.
I would guess that in this school everyone who is part of IB program earns the diploma. This school does not have all the “smartest” kids in IB program. Their IB is geared towards kids with interest in business and humanities/social sciences. STEM kids or artistic kids have other good options.
1.) I’ve done summer programs last two summers. Both times my parents wanted me to get a job instead, because ‘when we were teens that’s what our parents made us do’. But the landscape is vastly different for our generation.
2.) My friends wanted to get into the state flagship. They have pretty good stats but they were rejected.
3.) Of all the seniors that got into great colleges, nearly all of them did academic programs and/or lengthy mission trips. Maybe just coincidental.
4.) As for showing up on time, staying on task, and dealing with people at a job. I did all of those things at Harvard last summer.
It must have been the summer program. I bet every other kid in that summer program got in too. Hey kids, don’t forget to set aside $10k so you can get into top schools… Or better yet, send fundraising requests to family so they can fund your awesome experience.
Although I do think that grunt job experience is very helpful, I will admit that when we asks the hs GC about jobs he said, “his job is school” (He was in an intense IB program, He also did a ton of music and other ECs which we are glad he could do). Around here, part time jobs are usually at least 20 hours/week, so we thought school-only made sense in the school year. But lack of school year availability did lock him out of most summer positions too.
This. For a lot of academic kids. Summer-only jobs are few and far between in many communities.
No, it’s to cure self-absorbed teenagers of the conceit that the world revolves around them.
'"…dealing with people at a job. I did all of those things at Harvard last summer." You worked a job while you were in the summer program? What kind of job?
Not necessarily. In fact, I think that the number is very likely to be less than 100 percent.
Worldwide, about 80 percent of students in IB diploma programs earn the diploma. In the U.S., it’s about 70 percent.
At the school my daughter attended, 93 percent of the students in last year’s IB graduating class actually earned the diploma. I know this because the school brags about it on their Web site. A pass rate this high is quite unusual, especially in the U.S., and it reflects the school’s almost berserk dedication to this single measure of quality.
Marian, averages here are not applicable. The school hand-picks the best students from one of the most affluent counties in the country. This school has a very rigorous admission process that matches kids talents to a particular program and does not practice affirmative action or athletic recruitment. They can send unsuccessful students back to their home school district. The most important - they do not push IB on every student because it is not the best program for everyone. They do not want to bother future mathematicians with Integrated Math or future engineers with reading Kafka and Karl Marx. I found that in 2012 they had 37 students graduating IB program with the average ACT of 32 and everyone must seat for the IB exams. I am sure their diploma completion rate is one of the highest in the country.
We are hijacking this thread. We should move on.
We didn’t require our D1 to get a summer job during HS, but it was mostly dictated by the fact that her main EC was debate and a chunk of each of her last 3 summers was spent going to a 2 week debate camp and going to Nationals (1 week). Add in a 2 week family vacation and there wasn’t much left of the summer. She couldn’t very well go to a prospective employer and say, I’d like a job but I can only work the first and last weeks in June, the 3rd week in July, and the first week of August. She did have a part time job during the school year doing administrative/front office work at a tutoring center, and this semester at college she has a part time job on campus. She also picks up extra pay by writing articles for a web based magazine. D2 on the other hand is very anxious to get a job other than babysitting, but is only 15. She would love to work for Ulta or Sephora but I don’t think they hire until 18 so maybe next summer (2017) she can work at the local movie theater.
@mathyone I had to go to class every day, study for lengths of time, challenge myself, socialize with international peers, be in groups with random peers. Most high school students don’t even work, even easy jobs, they just lay around all summer with their same 5 friends. In essence summer school is a job, a job that helped me get into better colleges and qualify for more scholarships and broadened my scope.
I recognize the irony here, but I wish this thread would just stop.