Announcing the CollegeConfidential Writing Awards for 2004-2005

Parent Cafe
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<p>Coward for Required Reading Before Making The College List: jonri</p>

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<p>**Supply and demand **
Jamimom is exactly right. It’s all about supply and demand. The best high school debaters, musicians and actors apply to HYP and other Ivies. With the exception of a few sports–fencing, squash, maybe a few others–the best athletes do not. So, it takes more talent in any of the former to stand out in the HYP applicant pool than it does to stand out as an athlete. This is particularly true in sports which yield revenue for OTHER colleges–the Ivy sports teams don’t generate income, except perhaps alumni donations. </p>

<p>Why would a kid who can play football well enough to be recruited by Stanford, UMich or Notre Dame, all of which give athletic scholarships, choose to go to HYP or another Ivy at which a) he will not get an athletic scholarship; b) he will not have the chance to be seen on TV; c) he will not have the same facilities–ever see the Yale Bowl? d) he will usually play with a small fraction of the # of people watching compared to the schools in the former group–even though Ivy students can go to football games for free many go through college without ever attending a game; e) he will have FAR less chance of making it to the pros; f) he will not get to play in post season games --there isn’t even an Ivy championship football game; g) he will get fewer hours of training–the Ivies restrict the number of hours sports teams can train, in order to make sure the athletes have enough time to study; this is a major consideration for kids dreaming of the pros or aiming for the Olympics; h) he will not get special sports team housing with special food and other facilities, but will live in a freshman dorm like everyone else, i) more important than you might think,he will NOT be a “big man on campus” and will not be the guy who can date any female he chooses just because he’s the quarterback. </p>

<p>Stanford, academically the equal of the Ivies, has few all-state musicians in its applicant pool. Therefore, it takes a lot less to stand out in its pool as a musician --or for that matter, as an actor–than it does at an Ivy. The kind of musical skill that wouldn’t make you one of the top 200 musicians applying to Yale or Harvard in a given year might put you in the top dozen at Stanford–and get you in. (It will take a lot more to get in as an athlete.) Is the fact that this musician gets into Stanford, though not to Yale or Harvard proof Stanford values musicians more than Harvard and Yale? Of course not!</p>

<p>It’s proof of the fact that too many kids who are very talented but not the very, very best in what they do–whether it’s an academic subject or an EC–apply to the very best places to do it. All the mathematicians apply to Princeton, Harvard, MIT. The wannabe economists apply to MIT, UChicago, Wharton (Penn.) The wannabe philosopher applies to Princeton. When they look for matches and safeties, they make the same mistake. The philosopher whose reach is Princeton uses NYU for his match. The musician applies to Yale and Oberlin. The artist chooses Bard . The creative writer uses Sarah Lawrence . The actor chooses Vassar. The squash player chooses Trinity College. A lot of the other kids with the same interests do exactly the same thing. Not surprisingly, the results of this sort of strategy are often disappointing. </p>

<p>Apply to a few schools which are not THE best in what you or your kid wants to do. A mathematician who isn’t USAMO level, but is very good should apply to Stanford and Yale, not just Princeton, MIT, and Harvard. The actor shouldn’t just choose Yale, Harvard, Brown and Northwestern as his reaches, but throw in Stanford too. The swimmer who isn’t good enough to swim for Stanford may well be a major “catch” for Dartmouth–which does so poorly in Ivy competition, that it tried to drop the team–unsucessfully. If he wants to go to a LAC, the actor shouldn’t just apply to Williams as a reach with Vassar as a match–throw in a Carleton. You can act there too. </p>

<p>The point is to take supply and demand into account in choosing your colleges and apply to a few schools where there won’t be 1,000s of kids who do what you do well too applying. That’s why athletes applying to the Ivies get in.</p>

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<p>Sorry, just a couple of organization-type questions.</p>

<p>Where will the Awards Ceremony be held?</p>

<p>Who will be the host?</p>

<p>Who will host the post-Ceremony party? Where will it be held?</p>

<p>What will the award figurine look like?</p>

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<p>Coward Award for Best Parent to Child Straight Talk About Money- Sillystring</p>

<p>We (lovingly) gave her the hard facts: We can’t pay $43,000 per year. If you don’t get a scholarship, it is out of the question. And we are not kidding, so don’t get it into your head that we will magically be able to produce the money.</p>

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<p>I agree ith Over30…</p>

<p>Coward award for Succinct Admissions Post- Coureur</p>

<p>You don’t need to hire an expensive consultant to “package” your kid. You can find out all you need to know by reading CC. What need to have is a great kid with great grades who is willing to work hard on the app. One by one your kid needs to jump over the hurdles: PSAT, APs, NMSF, ECs, EC awards, SAT, SAT IIs, more APs, Essays, Apps, Recs, & Follow-up with schools to make sure they got everything. Add a stiff dose of good luck and sit back and hope for the best. It sure wasn’t all smooth sailing, but sometimes it all works out in the end. My D’s dreams came true. She loves it at Harvard.</p>

<p>One more thing - FIND A SAFETY YOUR KID CAN LIKE.</p>

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<p>gosh, “you liked it, you really liked it” - to frazzled1 and mootmom. (I just read through this thread - I must have been in the bathroom seeing to my hairdo.) I was so stunned when I stood up to accept the award I accidentally dragged the tablecloth and all that lovely crystal and china with me. Apologies to the other nominees, just walk around the broken shards as you go up to thank the Academy.</p>

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<p>I am having my gown custom made. It will be woven of tshirts from every college we visited on our college tour last spring, including the one I was just too tired to see, UChicago. Won’t Baby Blue, Black and Orange, Crimson, Purple, etc etc look wonderful? We saw 11 colleges in 6 days, so should be very colorful. I plan to accent my outfit with a paper mache tiara, using all the 600 viewbooks and letters we got over the past 12 month. I will wear a large, shiny pendant, consisting of a copy of my daughter’s I Accept postcard. Oh wait, she hasn’t decided yet…Please hold off on these awards until May 2.</p>

<p>For an acceptance speech, I plan first to quote every single time my D has spoken to me with the intense teenage girl patented dripping-with-scorn voice, and then to give her a special patented, satisfying, mother-only, “I told you so!” Then I will quickly list every single person on cc who has given valuable advice, emotional support, or just an occasion to LOL. And since that will take too long, then I plan to get gracefully hooked off stage.</p>

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<p>I will be in my usual CC gown-- my nightgown</p>

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<p>Oh, heck…let me do the Emceeing…the Billy Crystal/Eddie Murphy thang is something I’d like to try: edgy humor, pushing the boundaries, and a captive audience.</p>

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<p>Sure thing. Anyone who looks like Johnny Depp is welcome to Emcee, wearing anything he wants.</p>

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<p>TheDad, what would be the topic of your opening monologue?</p>

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<p>UMDAD-
Since I am unsure of the status of Confidentialia College and we had already requisitioned Curmudgeon’s topsiders for the trophy case, perhaps we can use them as the model for our award. Other possibilities include an empty wallet atop a bunch of FAFSA forms and a Common App., or little battery-operated yellow laughing smileyface heads from the old forum.</p>

<p>Come to think of it, why can’t we use the campus of Confidentialia for the ceremony. Was it ever decided if the campus would be in Calif or on the Gulf of Mexico?</p>

<p>TheDad:

Try?!?!? You should get a Cowart for this already!! Your edgy humor is amongst the best of 'em!</p>

<p>Alumother and SBmom:</p>

<p>I award you the Edythe Head costume design coward and the “couldn’t have said it better myself” cowarts respectively.</p>

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<p>Nominating Alumother from the “Kids Working too hard” thread

and carolyn for the entirety of her post #6 on that thread, a must read</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=58026[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=58026&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For The Coward Wake-Up Call to Parents Awards. It’s never too late for us to stop pushing.</p>

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<p>AlumMother: it would be a surprise. Including, at the moment, to me.
Just give me two weeks notice so that I can create, block, edit, and polish.</p>

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<p>What a clever thread!</p>

<p>Am I too late to nominate MomofWildChild (is that the right SN?) for perspective and insight?</p>

<p>Carolyn has already been nominated for everything in sight…</p>

<p>Most inspiring students: Zantedeschia, Gracislisae and Kebree!</p>

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<p>Do we get to borrow jewelry from Harry Winston for the ceremony? Will presenters get elaborate gift bags? Forget the awards, I want the freebies!</p>

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<p>ASAP on the Kids Working too hard? thread</p>

<p>Where we live, the pressure doesn’t come from the adcoms, or even the school. We live in an upscale SoCal community with many immigrants from around the world - doctors, business people, professionals - who have a very strong work ethic and who have successfully imparted that to their kids. Their kids are very ambitious, but most(although I know a couple of exceptions) seem to handle it pretty well. What I see is the “native” kids feeling the competition and pressure to keep up.</p>

<p>Parents feed into this to some extent as they see how accomplished some of these kids whose culture values education so highly have become. Most of these families have sent their kids to tutors since they were five. They are bright, ambitious, talented, competitive, yet personable and contribute a lot of positive energy to the schools. Many of the kids born and raised here, especially in California, have to do quite a bit of scrambling to come close to staying with that group, if they even try. Granted this is not the only source of competitive stress, but it is a big one where I live. The girls seem to be a bit more driven by this than the boys, from my experience.
What to do? What these kids are seeing is the reality of the global world competition, right at their doorstep. Colleges are more competitive partly for this reason. It’s not something we had to contend with when we were growing up, but our kids are growing up in a different, smaller world. It’s important that they learn to find their niche in this setting, because this is the way it will be in college and after college as well.
If kids use what they learn from these families as inspiration, and not as something they necessarily have to copy and become, they would be a lot happier. We need to make sure our kids understand that there is more to life than achievement -yet still prepare them for the competitive world they will live and work in. It’s a tough balancing act, but the first step is recognizing that it’s necessary - at least in our community and others like it.</p>

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<p>coward to jmmom for “welcome to my world” reality check:</p>

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<p>My favorite part is the suggestion that no mom is a stranger to another mom. So true!!</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=58470[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=58470&lt;/a&gt;
Hey, I have an idea - why don’t we set up a co-op, kid swapping arrangement for college visits. That way we could ALL visit campuses with somebody-else’s kid in tow. My observation has always been that teenagers are quite human and often even polite and respectful when not in the presence of their own parents. </p>

<p>To take it one step further… why not set up a nationwide home-exchange program, where we could host students from other parts of the country and take them around to visit local campuses? Anyone in Boston or New York with a kid interested in Stanford and Cal? How about swapping kids for a week? </p>

<p>This could be the beginning of a new reality tv show, too. “Teen swap”. In which the teens discover that the world is full of embarassing adults who dress badly and say moronic things, and their own set of parents weren’t so bad after all.</p>

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<p>Hey Mods–You should set up another board for calmom’s idea. Very clever.</p>

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<p>Runner Up to Single Reply Coward: Maize&Blue22</p>

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