<p>It shouldn’t take that long for someone to get their act together. I had problems too, in elementary school I would constantly get in fights and get in trouble, but I knew that if I wanted to be a doctor I couldn’t do those things. By fifth grade I was on the straight and narrow and planned out my life. By seventh grade I had joined four major ECs that I continued on in high school. </p>
<p>I fear that if kids are told it is okay to “work through it slowly” people won’t get their act together. It is like those kids freshman year who thought grades don’t matter. Then come senior year they were headed off to local state schools.</p>
<p>I am 19 but the article only refers to differences in ability to discern the consequences of one’s actions. I think I understand the consequences of one’s actions pretty well, seeing as how I wasn’t dumb enough to believe in the stupid “late bloomer” concept, and knew I needed to work hard if I wanted to get somewhere. </p>
<p>That is what people should be telling their kids, not coddling them when they are mediocre with lies about blooming late. And although there are exceptions, the vast majority of mediocre kids stay mediocre.</p>
<p>“Um, as a parent of a 25 year old, I would say it takes even longer for some. Still waiting.”
LOL :]</p>
<p>“Really if a kid can’t get his s-h-i-t together by 9th grade I don’t know if that is someone who SHOULD be in the Ivy League…I was in 6th grade when I realized I needed to start doing some ECs if I wanted to get into college and before that I realized I needed to play an instrument if I wanted to get better in math.”</p>
<p>lol, dreaming about the ivy league in middle school? doing ECs in the 6th grade? now i just feel bad for u.</p>
<p>I don’t know why you would feel bad for me. My hard work ensured my parents have to pay almost nothing for me to go to college (YAY financial aid) and I get to go to Yale.</p>
<p>If anything more people should be doing what I did.</p>
<p>It seems to me that most colleges do a pretty good job of admitting a large number of immature and impulsive 18 year olds who, in turn, spend their freshman years and beyond engaging in nonstop partying, binge drinking, experimental drug use, and unsafe, permissive sex. I don’t think the colleges need any more of them… most are unlikely to have a sudden maturational burst the summer before they take off for college. Whatever their long term potential, they may not really be ready to take advantage of college if their frontal lobes still need more time to build enough connections to value planning above impulse. As they say, college is (sometimes) wasted on the young. </p>
<p>I do think that it would be beneficial to encourage gap years and growth time in youngsters who don’t seem to be mature enough for college, and I do think most college admissions offices look kindly on students who are applying a year or two down the line after taking some time out of school to grow up. </p>
<p>Unfortunately I think that many kids who go to college before they are mature enough to recognize and handle the responsibilities they face there may end up doing more long-term damage to their future long-term life and career prospects than those who don’t get into their parent’s top school choices in the first place. I mean --it’s not all that easy to repair the damage caused by flunking out of college the first year.</p>
<p>" fear that if kids are told it is okay to “work through it slowly” people won’t get their act together. It is like those kids freshman year who thought grades don’t matter. Then come senior year they were headed off to local state schools."</p>
<p>So? Most people in this country probably go to local state schools. It’s not as if such people are going to the local state pen.</p>
<p>Wow dBate that’s a mighty big chip you are carting around. People are constantlly evolving and changing…to think that people are preprogrammed at some point to be this or that or achieve this or that is incredibly short sighted. Frankly I would hazard a guess that there is more than one brain surgeon floating around who you would have considered a “wasted case” as a teenager. Life paths are not linear. I’m glad that you got where you want to be for now, but do understand that particular path was your path. It may not be someone else’s path. Know too that someone else may end up at the very same endpoint you land and that person may have taken a completely different path. That’s what is so very “cool” about life.</p>
<p>Dbate, you’re very smart but you’re not a model of emotional maturity yourself, with your meltdown that OMG-my-future-is-ruined-if-I-got-a-B-at-Yale. Not to mention there is a very big elephant in your room that you’re denying to your family. You’re in no place to critique a 9th grader who doesn’t have his act together.</p>
<p>I would rather have a child not go to the Ivy League than have an Ivy Leaguer who looks down on others because they don’t meet some kind of arbitrary time table for success. The most successful people in the world were free thinkers who developed in unorthodox ways. </p>
<p>I think it’s great for kids to get straight A’s, I think it’s great for kids to find things they love to do outside of school, I think it’s great for kids to be focused on college as the end goal from the moment they start kindergarten. But that doesn’t mean they have to follow some lockstep path, and it doesn’t mean that they’re mediocre if they’re different. </p>
<p>Some of the most mediocre people I’ve ever met were those kids that were driven only by a desire to get A’s, take the EC’s that colleges wanted (they didn’t have any interest in anything themselves) and get into a specific school so they could follow a specific career track so they could live in a Mcmansion. </p>
<p>Colleges, even elite colleges, consider many things when choosing and admissions class. One of hte major ones is “what does this student contribute to the student body?” The academic automatons who were too busy practicing their SATs to develop any real personality or self awareness are often the ones that contribute the least.</p>
<p>To some families, going to the local state school or community college is like a child molestation conviction, except much more embarrassing. At least the guy sexing up 9-year old boys on AIM might have the stats to get into Dartmouth… </p>
<p>It’s silly, but that’s the way it is with some people. That’s the reason why there’s so much outrage on this forum about every aspect of college admissions. Of course colleges are going to miss some kids who aren’t that impressive now on paper but will turn out to be amazing people. If you think that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton admits every student who will turn out to be a great person, you’re mistaken. There are successful people who don’t even go to any 4-year college at all, as well as losers who graduated with the most prestigious degrees in the country.</p>
<p>Exactly my case with my youngest. School from grades 4 thru 10 was a thrash with him. Completely unmotivated to want to do well academically. In junior high, successful day at school was measured by whether he was able to flood the bathrooms by stopping the sinks with paper towels. Smart kid, but would graduate HS by doing the minimum. He had infantry written all over him.</p>
<p>Junior year now. All of a sudden time management skills have appeared. A desire to do well, and pride in doing well, is evident. I actually hear him tell friends he can’t hang out today because he has this test or that assignment to do. All of this with my wife and I consciuosly staying hands off. He’s doing this on his own. I knew it was inside him, but the brain is a funny thing.</p>
<p>“I am 19 but the article only refers to differences in ability to discern the consequences of one’s actions. I think I understand the consequences of one’s actions pretty well, seeing as how I wasn’t dumb enough to believe in the stupid “late bloomer” concept, and knew I needed to work hard if I wanted to get somewhere.”</p>
<p>Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you that some late bloomers understand the consequences of their actions perfectly well. It’s their goals that change. I knew that failing high school classes would keep me out of college, at least in the short term, but at the time, I didn’t want to go to college. If you don’t want to go to college, it’s pretty stupid to waste your effort on a bunch of pointless high school busywork. </p>
<p>The part that bloomed later for me was the desire to go to college, not my comprehension of how to get there. Once I decided that I wanted to go, I didn’t have any trouble figuring out how to get there.</p>
<p>When you’re counting off the people who are dumb enough to believe in the late bloomer concept, you can add the Harvard College admissions committee, which admitted me when I was 22. You might say that their belief was vindicated when I graduated with a GPA in the top 5% of my college class. But what do they know?</p>
<p>So the mediocre kids are the one’s who don’t want to college. If they can not see that college is a neccessity to accomplish end goals in life then that is a problem. </p>
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<p>Good you got a kick in the a-s-s from somewhere, KIDS NEED MORE OF THIS. This thread seems to be predicated on the false belief that being mediocre now is acceptable because later on in life that person will be great, and I find that entire thought process to be simply stupid. NO ONE should just coax through high school or middle school or elementary school because they are hurting themselves. </p>
<p>To say that “late blooming” is okay is wrong, it hurts people in the short term even if it works out in the long term. </p>
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<p>They didn’t believe in the late bloomer concept they admitted a person who worked hard and accomplished something. If you hadn’t you wouldn’t have gotten in. The same is not true for late bloomers when applying to colleges. If you haven’t worked hard then you shouldn’t get in. Colleges will not think: “Well Johnny got a few Cs, but he is a late bloomer so let’s admit him.” And they shouldn’t. </p>
<p>When colleges reject the Johnnys of the world, they are rejecting lazy, mediocre kids not late bloomers. Because you can only know if someone was a late bloomer after they have already bloomed. If someone’s child doesn’t bloom then they are not late bloomers, they are just mediocre. </p>
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<p>There is nothing wrong with going to state schools like UT-Austin or UCLA, but there is something wrong with going to UT-El Paso or Chico State.</p>
<p>You can get along just fine in life without ever “blooming” into some great person. In fact most poeple who go to places like Chico become your teachers and local business people, your cops and accountants and city administratiors. Is that “greatness”–maybe not but they raise kids and try to do well by them so that somebody will be around to support your greatness whatever it is.</p>
<p>Are you for real? Sorry, this is either the ranting of someone just writing to provoke or a very young person who doesn’t know any better. If you are a kid then go play on the kid pages. Either way what you are saying is not very intelligent. Really.</p>