But @atomicPACMAN07 his friends just blew their money on beer and didn’t actually work-just stared at their cell phones, so therefore, EVERY TEEN EVERYWHERE has no business working.
OP, you said in your first post that your parents were “adamant” about wanting you to get a summer job, but you wanted academic programs instead, and that you “won.”
Perhaps your parents were “adamant” because they were hoping for an attitude adjustment. You come off in this thread as being arrogant, self-absorbed & self-entitled jerk. Maybe they hoped you would become a better person if you were in an environment that challenged your assumptions and your attitudes.
Obviously whatever you learned in your summer program, it wasn’t the lesson that you parents hoped to impart, as it clear from your posts that you still don’t get it.
No one thinks all (or even most) low paying jobs are glorious. Most of them downright suck. But you know what? Sticking with those jobs proves to employers like me that you’re responsible and will show up to work. A summer program doesn’t cut it, sorry.
Five jobs or one wealthy relative.
It has been brought up here several times that there are more choices than a job (good job, crappy job, meaningless job) and going to Harvard for the summer. There are camps, there are trips to visit relatives, there are sports teams, competition marching band or drum and bugle corps. There is summer school for college credit, there are kids taking remedial high school courses. You made one choice, you feel you put one over on your parents. Why can’t you accept that there are a lot of choices and some families make other choices? If one of my kids asked to go to the Harvard program I’d say ‘sure, go for it.’ We don’t have any relatives willing to give the $10k, so my child would be working away the summer.
I hope after you work this summer that you’ll realize work is work, and have a little more respect for those who have been doing it for 2-4 summers.
And maybe some of those “dumb kids” who have work experience will get nice summer internships over someone with no work experience.
I might not have been clear enough. I was agreeing with you.
Just saying that if someone at Stuy offered up "needing to work on academics to get higher GPA or otherwise bolster chances of college admissions, that justification would come across as advertising that one is such a marginal student in that rigorous academic environment context that he/she can’t do high academics, participate in co-curricular/ECs, AND work a part-time/summer job simultaneously. In short, not something that most would want to advertise to one’s peers.
OP’s justifications for not having a summer job would have garnered the exact opposite of “greatness” in the eyes of most HS peers or those I knew from comparable rival public magnets like BxScience when I attended.
Because working turned out to be a fatal error for many friends. Because a bump in SAT and better essays will get you into a better college and access to more scholarships and grants. Because college readiness and achievement gap is a major issue in the country. Because 50% of students fail out of college. Because the vast majority that go to college not only can’t handle a STEM concentration, they take 5-6 years to complete an easy degree.
This notion of forcing your kids to work every summer is out of date with the current college (admissions) landscape. Every single friend that got into a great college did these summer programs. It’s not a coincidence.
Your friends who didn’t get into top schools weren’t going to get into those colleges anyway. If they can’t do two things at once (work part time and study for standardized tests, for example), they aren’t top college material. Sounds like the issue is that they spent too much time drinking beer and driving around in their SUVs, not that they had part time jobs. And trust me that an essay written about time spent at an expensive summer program probably isn’t a winner in the college admissions game.
Your friends got into top schools did because they came from wealthy families and had good resources for SAT prep, tutors, money for training and skill building in competitive ECs, and possibly paid college counseling. They didn’t get in because they went to a pricey summer program, or because they didn’t have a part time job.
You are mistaking correlation with causation. A common freshman mistake.
“Because working turned out to be a fatal error for many friends”. - Because they didn’t get into tippy top schools like you? News flash… those schools only offer need-based FA (Financial Aid, no merit scholarships). I’m guessing in your neighborhood the incomes preclude FA.
At state schools, it’s all about the stats. You can get an SAT bump with local study programs, much cheaper than 10K. Personally I’m more impressed by kids that get their high scores based on brainpower and a lifetime of reading and diligent schoolwork (like my kids did ). But I realize there are many kids (especially bad test takers) benefit from study and coaching… so it’s often worthwhile to “play the game” and study for SAT/ACT.
I would rather my kids work in the summers rather than think they are too good for it and become entitled brats. And if most of the kids going to the “great colleges” are entitled brats who were too good to work at a job in the summer (especially while not only being too special to work but then begging family and friends for gobs of money to pursue their interests), then it’s not a college I would want my kids to go anyway.
OP “Because working turned out to be a fatal error for many friends.”
OP can’t know this for sure. No one will ever know.
@Intparent “Your friends who didn’t get into top schools weren’t going to get into those colleges anyway.”
@Intparent
You are pointing out the OPs logic error, that he does not know the unknowable. You then make the same logic error. He can’t be sure they would have gotten in, and you can’t know they wouldn’t have.
There are enough examples out here of kids who didn’t go to pricey summer programs and got into top colleges to offset his logic, I think. I know you/your kid made a different choice, and I think that makes you a bit defensive on this. But a summer with a part time job scooping ice cream isn’t going to make or break a kid for a top school. And I think there are very valid reasons that have been pointed out on this thread why overall some kind of work experience sometime prior to college is a good ting.
Actually, that just shows your very narrow perspective, probably influenced by the insular world you live in. Plus a serious deficit in basic logical/scientific reasoning skills. (Confusing correlation with causation).
My kids got into great colleges without us throwing away money on a fancy summer program for high school kids. Those college-based summer programs are mostly money-makers and marketing opportunities for the colleges that offer them.
Of course I had confidence that my offspring had the innate intellectual ability that they didn’t need academic augmentation over the summer. If they did, then nothing wrong with signing up for courses at the local community college.
There’s nothing wrong with seeking academic enrichment over the summer, but there is something very, very wrong with a kid who views that as an entitlement or thinks that somehow makes the person smarter or better than the kids who are capable of filling out a job application, making a commitment, and showing up to work on time and putting spending the day working around adults, doing something that isn’t particularly fun for them.
One advantage of paid employment is that young people who have held down jobs often seem more mature and confident among adults, than those who haven’t. They will tend to be perceived as more capable by employers.
Maybe it doesn’t matter to you. Maybe your parents are wealthy enough that you don’t need to worry about the costs of college or finding a job after college But it matters a lot to many other young people, and that’s why parents are happy when they see their kids taking moves toward independence and responsibility as teenagers.
Fatal flaw? Are they dead? Are they not going to college, or are they just not going to colleges that are up to your standards?
Get a grip, or get new friends.
With every successive post by the OP, I am reminded of Marie Antoinette:
The peasants have no bread? Then let them eat cake.
Why indeed should students take a pointless summer job when they could take an expensive academic enrichment program instead?
As long as we’re giving credence to anecdotal situations, following jr year of HS, my daughter attended a fantastic (parent paid) summer program run by Carleton College. She had a wonderful experience. However, she was NOT accepted to Carleton. During her senior year of high school (and the summer after) she worked her tail off in a series of increasingly better part time jobs. She is THRIVING as a student at UIUC and has succeeded in everything she’s attempted. She has become a go-getter, and her jobs, however menial, helped create that mindset. Once again, totally anecdotal. Just like your situation.
None of us know what would have happened to OP’s friends if they had done an academic program instead of working. But my guess is that kids who chose to spend their earnings on cases of beer would not have gotten much out of summer programs anyway. And In any case, if they spend all their extra cash on beer, their absence no great loss to whatever schools they applied to.
All…NU…in my house, if you didn’t work…you had NO spending money in college. That was something we simply didn’t give our kids. They were expected to work, and earn enough money for college discretionary spending…and for books. Since we picked up the rest of their college costs, we didn’t think it was too much to ask of them.
Working in a restaurant as a dishwasher was NOT beneath my kids. Neither was being a lifeguard…or babysitting.
They both worked on college too…10 hours or so a week. Both were fortunate to land really well paying college jobs…but part of that was that they had work experience, and letters of reference from their low paying HS jobs.
"With every successive post by the OP, I am reminded of Marie Antoinette:
The peasants have no bread? Then let them eat cake.
Why indeed should students take a pointless summer job when they could take an expensive academic enrichment program instead?"
Fantastic, and bears repeating!
Um, so not getting into the same college as you was a “fatal error?” ~X( [-(
I agree with what another poster said. Get a grip. Are you really so arrogant that you can’t see how anyone’s life could be better or at least not less than your own? No matter what college you got into, it doesn’t make you “better” than others. What we are trying to tell you is that there are other forms of education than just SATs, some of which can be obtained through jobs. That doesn’t make what you did wrong at all with the summer program. It doesn’t make what the kids who worked in the ice cream shop worthless either. If the only thing about a person that is worthwhile to you is SAT scores and college acceptances, then that’s actually quite sad.