<p>People in our community who we don’t know particularly well, or who we haven’t spoken to in years have made comments to us about my daughter’s college acceptances. People talk about these things, especially people with high school age kids. I don’t feel stalked.</p>
<p>College acceptances - yes. Scores and grades - I’m gonna say “no” to that.</p>
<p>Re grades/scores: Everything is relative, and sometimes parents fish for information about how other kids are doing grade-wise in order to understand to what extent their kid’s performance is, or isn’t a problem, and what the source of the problem is. Is everyone struggling, or is it just Megan? In our experience with honors classes, for example, if everyone is struggling then you can usually relax a little and assume your child does not need to worry too much because eventually the grading will ease up after the teacher feels he has sufficiently scared the kids and convinced them that it really is “honors” and they have to take the class very seriously. If it’s just your kid who’s doing poorly, then the approach or need for action is different. The moms yesterday talking about their Ds’ math class were comparing notes to ascertain what was going wrong so they could help their children adjust. </p>
<p>^ Yes, it is relative and depends on the situation. I can imagine someone coming up to me and knowing WAY too much about one of my kids and it creeping me out. But that is unusual. Most of what people are going to bring up is going to be in the realm of normal. If someone came up to me and started talking about seeing my son playing tennis, that wouldn’t creep me out. He plays outside int he open and people watch. If someone came up and had filmed him playing…well, that would be creepy. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is a strawman.</p>
<p>As people point out, you can be aware of what others are doing without having an interest or comparing your kids to someone.</p>
<p>I read the school online paper, so I am aware of who went to debate nationals and how they did, same for the college acceptances, Siemen’s semifinalists, valedictorian, saladictorian, average number of AP courses per student, state scores, etc. </p>
<p>So, to recap:</p>
<p>Recalling information about SAT scores that was volunteered freely to you: Crazy, unless you also remember Starbucks orders.</p>
<p>Having a general sense of who the students getting major awards and recognition are: Pathetic (and probably unsophisticated). </p>
<p>Discussing your performance or that of your child relative to others in situations where the performance of others actually does make a difference: Proof that you are a loser.</p>
<p>Spending significant time on a college website talking about how much more high-minded you are than all those idiots who care about such things: The ultimate evidence of humility and class. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, that is not at all ironic because this is an anonymous site, so there is no linkage between information and a specific individual. You can’t equate information with gossip since not all gossip actually has reliable information.</p>
<p>People are interested in how the information was used by admissions or marketed by someone applying to a college.</p>
<p>“Having a general sense of who the students getting major awards and recognition are: Pathetic”</p>
<p>No one said that, so stop with the straw man. There’s a difference in knowing that Susie Smith was last year’s valedictorian and is really good in math, and knowing that Susie Smith got an SAT score of 2100 and then brought it up to 2250, got a 5 on AP US History but a 4 in Calculus and a 3 in French, got a B+ on last week’s math test, and more importantly thinking that I know enough about Susie Smith to judge that she “deserved” to get in where she got in.</p>
<p>“No, that is not at all ironic because this is an anonymous site, so there is no linkage between information and a specific individual. You can’t equate information with gossip since not all gossip actually has reliable information.”</p>
<p>Exactly. That’s the difference. It’s better because it is (quasi) anonymous. </p>
<p>Well, if people know the specifics of Susie Smith’s SAT and AP scores, it is probably because Susie or her mom volunteered it. I don’t think that most people do know other people’s stats with the level of detail you’re talking about except in the case of close friends sharing information with each other. I do think that there are certainly cases in which you know enough about someone to scratch (or shake) your head over an admissions decision without being presumptuous.</p>
<p>“It’s not a matter of “compiling data”–it’s more like, “So-and-so told me that her daughter Cindy just graduated from Maryland and will be going to grad school at Texas in the fall.” This interests us because we’ve known Cindy for a long time.”</p>
<p>But I’m not talking about that! It is the difference between hearing that Cindy went to Maryland and filing that away, and filing away all of Cindy’s academic stats. </p>
<p>"Well, if people know the specifics of Susie Smith’s SAT and AP scores, it is probably because Susie or her mom volunteered it. I don’t think that most people do know other people’s stats with the level of detail you’re talking about except in the case of close friends sharing information with each other. "</p>
<p>That’s not what’s been said on these threads. Some people are <em>very</em> clear that they “know” the SAT / AP’s / EC’s of all the top students in this class, such that they can feel appropriately offended and upset if Joey gets into Georgetown and their kid didn’t. How else can they be upset unless they’re sure that their kid did better? Remember all the discussion about how everyone “knows” who the smart ones are and what their scores are?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Two things, first of all that math test last week was really hard and the average was about a C-. The teacher said she would curve that test so it is actually a great result and she does deserve her admission to CalTech.</p>
<p>The second thing though is how do people actually get this information? Susie or her parents must be telling someone…why would they do that? Who does that?</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone knew my DS’s grades or scores. Someone may have seen a particular test score when the test was handed back, but I doubt that it was then distributed via facebook.</p>
<p>My DS’s answer to how did you do on the test, AP or whatever was “good” regardless of whether he aced it or flubbed it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think we can measure --or should judge-- the level of interest of one parent in the activity of the kids. After all, we all live in different environments that might appear crazy to others, especially when they live in different areas of the country. When I move away from Dallas, I left behind a great number of parents who never missed tha athletic events of their children, be it at swim meet for 6 years old at the Y or a select soccer game at the national level. And, depending on the sports, there were parents who knew all the statistics of their children, of the entire team in sports that used a time clock. Crazy as it sounds, the abnormal would have been to NOT be invested. </p>
<p>And, fwiw, that applied to academics, perhaps with a smaller granularity. If parents did not know the exact grades, they sure knew where X was going to school, and why Y did not attend the prestigious H. And, you better believe that the sidelines at the athletic events were loaded with conversations about scholarships and how many kids went to HYPS in the past three years. </p>
<p>However, none of that happened a few hundred miles away as people were mostly uninterested in high level athletics, safe and except for a bit of football and swimming. </p>
<p>Was one environment better than the other? It is hard to tell, but the kids who did play the sports surely seemed to enjoy having their parents on the sidelines, and especially enjoyed the active ones. </p>
<p>On a personal note, I believe that the pressure placed on academic results comes with more negative results, because many correlate the good results with nothing else than effort and time spent on studying. Sports, as cruel as it can be, rarely reward the efforts over the natural talent, and people are quickly aware that a soccer queen at the local Y might not get picked by a select team in August! Can’t get blood out a turnip. On the other hand, many tend to believe that the kid who could write and read in kindergarten will end up being a valedictorian on his or her way to Harvard, as long as the midmight candle stays lit. </p>
<p>In a way, all of us --myself included-- tend to be overly critical of what we do not know nor understand very well. </p>
<p>Another aspect to this debate is whether the stress of the competition for college admissions is now such that the label “crazy” is assigned in self-defense, or to settle the score with those who are competing better. Maybe people are feeling that what is required of students now for even good schools (not elite) is so much more than ever before, that it has become too much for them personally. So if they know they/their child doesn’t want to/can’t play that game, then they label the game and those who do try to play as “crazy.” In this way, they save face and justify their non-participation in the rat-race without having to admit it’s because of a lack of ability or an unwillingness to put in the required effort. Also, if Parent A appears to be more involved and knowledgeable than Parent B, and has higher expectations for her child than Parent B, and Child A publicly does better than Child B, then Parent A can become a target. Parent B may say, “Maybe Child A is really smart/fast/musical/etc., but her mother is ‘crazy’ and I am just not going to be like that” and thus feels better. Parent A could be legitimately nuts, or could just have decided to do whatever seems reasonable to support her child’s aspirations, but the “whatever” is more than what Parent B can or wants to do so it has to be defined as bad in some way.</p>
<p>Different high schools have different cultures. At some, people share lots of information, and at others, they don’t. There may even be different cultures within the high school. In my kids’ program, there was a lot of information sharing–they knew the SAT scores of many of their friends, because everybody was sharing that information. Now, you may think that’s a bad culture to have, but that is what some people do.</p>
<p>“The second thing though is how do people actually get this information? Susie or her parents must be telling someone…why would they do that? Who does that?”</p>
<p>LOL - read upthread, you’ll hear how it’s talked about! You know, people talk … moms blab … stuff is printed in the paper … the honor roll is printed … you hear who gets awards … there’s a discount card given based on grades so you know who has the gold card … etc. </p>
<p>Speaking about crazy parents being a new syndrome, I just read that Anne Sinclair (of DSK fame) went to a school where the mothers attended all classes to monitor the education and progress of their children. </p>
<p>This seems to even beat the story of General MacArthur’s mother moving across the street of WP in a suite at the Craney’s Hotel to check on DS. </p>
<p>^^^ I get that an honor roll is published or awards are announced, but specific grades? People actually believe what they hear when a student says they got all 5s on the APs or a 2350 on the SATs?</p>
<p>Well, I got to go, I am off to my job as a swimsuit model. My plane’s engine has been running and I don’t want to waste anymore gas, although I don’t actually have to pay those bills, I feel I need to do more for the environment. That is what I told Al Gore last week. Oh, and I also got a 2550 on my SATs (I got the extra points for taking the test in a swimsuit).</p>
<p>I suppose kids might not tell the truth, but I think they mostly do. Although, every couple years some kid at my kids’ high school decides that it would be “funny” to post on his Facebook page that he got into Harvard (even though he didn’t). It never turns out being very funny.</p>