<p>The WSJ only has 2 million readers so I quess that is less than 1% of Americans. And it is a weighted average of $200,000, so 6 times the national average.It would be somewhat of a meaningless stat if it did not represent the average reader in that they sell ads based on the demographic. But Hillary just finished 3rd, thank goodness, maybe she will drop out, so I am so happy that I will not quibble. Did not mean to scare you FroshMom.</p>
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Averages can be deceptive. The majority of their readership is not wealthy. My husband signs up dozens of undergraduates every semester at a special student rate. One multi-millionaire skews the average. Really, I know a lot of very unwealthy people who read the WSJ daily.
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<p>You think the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, etc. don't have multi-millionaire subscribers? Try retaking statistics; a large sample size balances it out. Your husband's story is interesting but not evidence; you think college students don't subscribe to the NYT, etc. as well?</p>
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midmo: I really like your style. It actually scares me to think anyone could argue with what you are saying.
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<p>You should be frightened, then.</p>
<p>My S is at Williams; his best friend is at East Stroudsberg. S was on the varsity academic team; best friend in resource room. What links them? S says that his friend is just fun and more emotionally open than the other kids he knows -- no drinking, no grass, no poker. They make movies together and put them on YouTube. </p>
<p>I would never encourage him to find this boy irrelevant. Yes, he has folks from his activities and summer programs, but he has this friend, too, and the time he spends with his friends is very important to him.</p>
<p>I watched him give up a chance to perform in the first violin section in an orchestra at Lincoln Center to have a very small part in the high school musical to be with his friends.</p>
<p>He wants to be a doctor and I think his heart is as valuable as his brain. And honestly, the kids at Williams value his loyalty and friendship more than his intellect, though he has that in abundance.</p>
<p>He is getting EMT training to work with Security to help kids who party too much. His "less desirable" friend is a volunteer firefighter. I think he has a lot he can learn from kids who do not have ambition as their primary motivator.</p>
<p>BTW: Williams really values friendship. Its entry program is outstanding.</p>
<p>Why do you or your son consider his friend "less desirable," mythmom? That doesn't seem consistent with your portrayal of Williams's philosophy.</p>
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Williams really values friendship. Its entry program is outstanding.
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<p>I don't know what this means. It sounds like a description of the program would be interesting to readers of this thread.</p>
<p>tokenadult, you are correct that Wissner-Gross did not use the term "dump your friends"; the author of the review is the one who referred to friends as potential "obstacles" to gaining admission to select colleges. I will plead guilty to over-reacting to a quick read of the book review. However, the reason for my response is because I do indeed know one student who followed the W-G plan, who did indeed sacrifice virtually all friendships in favor of pursuing a carefully laid out plan to get into tippy top Ivy. The objective was achieved, but my oh my, at what a price.</p>
<p>This is not to say I am opposed to students spending parts of their summers at various so-called "enrichment" activities. If the activity is something they love to do, go for it. I am opposed to students doing such activities simply because it is part of some plan to get to a particular college or type of college. I think there is a big difference in the two scenarios. My impression of the W-G book, based entirely on the one short review linked in the first post of this thread, is that parents are being advised to plan summer activities years before students can even know what their interests are, in order to give the kids some sort of edge. That is just a yucky sort of approach to child-rearing, in my opinion.</p>
<p>Bay, I know all people are not in a position to hold onto friends from their early years. I haven't been good at that, myself. My response was to PlanPlusDebater's notion that the "connections" one makes at elite universities are perfect substitutes for good friends from high school.</p>
<p>The "entry program" is not a program at all, it is the housing arragement for first years at Williams. It supports the formation of relationships as do the arrangements at, I would think, all colleges, but other than that it is not all that noteworthy (I have a first year there this year).</p>
<p>midmo:</p>
<p>Some of my S's most enduring friendships are with kids he met at his summer program. I remember well his characterization of his summer program: math with friendship. They keep in touch via facebook. Last summer, several of them happened to be in the area, so my S had a grand party of friends from his high school, friends from college and friends from his summer program. It was wonderful.</p>
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My impression of the W-G book, based entirely on the one short review linked in the first post of this thread, is that parents are being advised to plan summer activities years before students can even know what their interests are, in order to give the kids some sort of edge.
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<p>If that's your impression, it's really important to look at evidence other than the Wall Street Journal review. The book itself </p>
<p>has some very interesting things to say about how a parent can have a conversation with a child to help discover what the CHILD's deep interest really is, and as I recall the author relates some anecdotes of parents who were sure they knew what the child wanted, until Wissner-Gross pointed out what the child actually did with free time suggested a very different personal interest. There are something like FIFTY different possible interest areas laid out in the book, each with details of fun, interesting (but, yes, challenging) things a child could do in the teen years to pursue that interest. </p>
<p>The book is definitely influenced by an northeast culture (and specifically Long Island culture) of what a Midwesterner like me feels is an undue degree of concern about college admission, but it's certainly possibly to read the book for the program references (as I did) without putting a lot of buy-in into the regional culture.</p>
<p>marite, I do not doubt for a second that a math summer program is a fantastic way to make lasting friendships. In fact, I think it would surprising if such a program did not result in enduring friendships. </p>
<p>I would like to find a summer writing program for my high school daughter. She has no interest in extremely selective colleges, so I won't worry about being accused of nefarious scheming. I just think it would be an activity that she would very much enjoy and from which she would benefit, intellectually. However, she will not hear of it. She prefers to spend the summer here in town with her good friends, riding borrowed horses, volunteering at the pound, probably working at a vet clinic or a pet store. I could pressure her, and I guess a lot of parents would, but I won't. Maybe I will regret that approach some day.</p>
<p>I am a WSJ addict, but do fall within the expected demographic. My kids have been reading WSJ articles of interest to them since they were in elementary school. It is a great newspaper. WildChild has his own subscription at college and did in boarding school, too.</p>
<p>That said, WildChild in particular has friends from all walks of life going back to his darker days. I am proud of him for maintaining (some of) these relationships, and if anyone remembers my thread from last March when he was about to bail from his prestigious college, it was his apparent low-life friends who got him turned around and stressed to him what he was about to throw away and how disrespectful he was being to us (his parents). Don't judge a book....and all that.</p>
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an undue degree of concern about college admission,
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<p>Yep, that is what is bugging me. I spent a lot of last year perturbed with my son because he just would not play the game. He spent too little time and gave too little attention to the applications he submitted, and refused to consider some of the colleges I thought a kid with his kind of record should be considering. Shame on me. He had his own plan, and he proved himself to be far smarter than his mother. </p>
<p>tokenadult, I am glad you were able to get good suggestions from W-G's book.</p>
<p>Well, midmo, my S did not attend the summer program either for college or for friends. That he made lasting friendships was a real bonus, although it is not very surprising in retrospect, since the participants were just as mad for math as he was/is and shared his sense of humor.
I heard of the program from the parent of a student who'd attended. I could not believe her child did not want to come home on weekends to visit since they lived only 10 minutes away. Then my S who had looked forward to attend ever since he heard of it, attended the program, and I understood how much he wanted to spend time with his friends.
But if a student is not interested in spending time in a summer enrichment program for its own sake, there is no point in pressuring that student to attend. There's plenty of other things to do in summer.</p>
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I could not believe her child did not want to come home on weekends to visit since they lived only 10 minutes away.
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<p>I can believe it. The summer after 10th grade, my son spent several weeks, at taxpayer expense, at a summer program for the gifted. It took place here in town, ten minutes from our house. He was so sad to see it end, so unenthusiastic about returning home to the same old, same old. </p>
<p>Marite, I know your son did not attend a summer program for any reason other than love of math. I hope I didn't imply otherwise.</p>
<p>I don't consider him less desirable -- hence the quotation marks. I think S's friend very desirable: he has heart, humor, service mentality, talented cartoonist and film maker, morals and ethics.</p>
<p>Others have suggested less academic kids should be dropped.</p>
<p>I am arguing against this and against a caste idea of friendship.</p>
<p>I checked Wissner-Gross's first book out of the library, and can honestly say it is the most gag-inducing thing I've ever read. The whole tone was so "look how perfect my kids are; thanks to me they've done xy and z twice over, and if your kids are not in that group, they'll fail at the college admissions game and then at life." (She apparently has raised two perfect children, which has given her the expertise to write these books.) Maybe that's what people mean by the northeast culture, but really, most of the highly educated, successful people I know from NYC and Boston would never adopt that tone. I'm glad the newer book has some practical lists of programs and such, but the first one made suggestions that would be utterly impractical unless you have a kid who is desperate to break out of his local niche and is motivated to earn bragging rights to some high-status acheivement (Intel or whatnot). </p>
<p>I thought the WSJ reporter's take was relatively restrained, assuming the new book came anywhere near the horror of W-G's first book!</p>
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<blockquote> <p>I am arguing against this and against a caste idea of friendship.>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>I totally agree. I am very pleased that S has kept his friendships with friends from grade school who are quite a varied lot academically and otherwise. But I also think that for some, being able to attend an enrichment program that they have been looking for all year trumps keeping in touch with friends throughout summer. I will always remember the tears on the faces of students at summer's end. </p>
<p>Midmo: I know you were not suggesting otherwise. :)</p>
<p>And neither was I marite. This is not an either/or situation. Each relationship should be honored. My S went away for music programs every summer. He would not have started composing without them. But his friends were waiting for him, each friendship and experience important and part of who he is.</p>
<p>For me, the problem with the friendship angle in the Wissner-Gross article is that to some degree, she regards her son's high school friends (and their parents) as "the competition" and advises playing your cards extremely close to the chest/not sharing information with other parents/actively making sure your kid's friends don't even KNOW he's taking summer courses to boost his grade and kill the competition come September. Under those circumstances, I imagine it would be difficult to sustain close friendships.</p>
<p>For the record, I grew up in a small town in the MidWest and my husband grew up in a preppy suburb of a major East Coast city. He was raised to think of his classmates as "the competition" and is ALWAYS telling me to stop telling my friends and neighbors things. </p>
<p>For example, last summer I sent my little kids to a marine bio camp which they ADORED -- they, of course, told all their friends about it, and now several moms are calling me wanting to know the details of the program so their kids can go too. I'm thinking "great, my kids can go again and they'll have even more fun because their friends will be there too" and my husband's saying "Don't you realize that you've blown it? How will our child ever be the distinctive marine bio geek when you're sending all his FRIENDS to the same camp?"</p>
<p>That's, I think, what Wissner-Gross is talking about -- playing your cards close to the chest and making sure no one else finds out your "secret game plan" for trouncing the competition. In that scenario, surely making friends is difficult.</p>
<p>I own and found the Hernandez book very insightful, but also subscribe to some of the ways she suggests creating an intellectual household. We have always taken the point of view that your education is a gift that should be cherished and continue to engage ourselves with good literature and intellectual discussions. Our D seems to have adopted that philosophy and "owns" her own education. I know she will turn out well no matter what. </p>
<p>I read some of W-G in the bookstore, and just chuckled at the you against the world attitude. I particularly winced at the part about making sure you the parent had the rubric of every class and made sure the teachers knew you were on their back to ensure the kids got the highest grade. </p>
<p>I have profound trouble with that philosophy and find it very unhealthy. While D indeed faces teachers (NE suburban high performing public) with very different and haphazard grading policies, I simply have to believe that the ultimate grades will be an approximation of the truth and that fighting with a teacher to turn an A into an A+ is just not worth worrying about and can't possible make the difference in who she becomes. All through life though, we all get evaluated in some way and it is always only an approximation. Successful people are robust to those vagaries and I can't imagine why it should be different in high school. Experience teaches one how to win those battles. I could be wrong and D could lose out to all of the W-G protege's, but I'm sure we'll like who she becomes better. </p>
<p>In truth, I found Michelle Hernandez someone who I would enjoy spending dinner with (though probably not for $40K), and Mrs. Wissner-Gross someone who I suspect would cut me off in traffic and then flip me the bird.</p>