Like Blossom, our district is such that just doing your homework is not enough to get As past about 5th grade. Miami, you have a kid that bought into your system. Did you really check her homework assignments and work every single night through high school? Through medical school? My kid did his homework, he “studied” for tests and did fine, but was not driven enough to ensure he knew every minor detail. There was no way I could (or wanted to) make sure he knew the minutiae that was the difference between a B+ and an A+. I think you give yourself more credit that may be deserved. It is your kids that deserve the credit for their achievements.
^^Thank you, @NorthernMom61. “Mere mortals” DO exist on CC. What a wonderful end to the college search experience. Congratulations to your daughter!
@Knoxpatch Thank you for your kind words. We are proud for sure. As you should be for yours too.
@NorthernMom61 You sound just like me! Your story is exactly how I want my daughter’s to be. I want visiting colleges to be fun, thinking about college to be exciting, and applying to be well-thought out, but not stressful! Oh, and your quote from Lily Tomlin… genius!
The process is a long one. It should be more exciting than stressful so that the positives outweigh the negatives.It has been an equally fun ride raising this young person who can take my breath away every time she puts her instruments to her lips. I am proud, I will miss her next year, but I can hardly wait to see what she does next. Enjoy the ride with your girl. Best of luck. (I have always loved that quote!)
Another thing that bugs me are these “send your kid to do volunteer work in a foreign country…for $8000!” summer programs. Listen, if that’s what your child wants to do because he/she WANTS to and you don’t mind paying the $, go ahead. But to spend $8000 for that just so your child can write about it on their college essay seems sort of silly to me. Can’t they volunteer closer to home, for FREE, helping Habitat for Humanity or working in a soup kitchen? Or get a summer job? My daughter is spending her post-soph summer on a teen tour for FUN, and then plans to look for a job at a special-needs camp next summer (which she is willing to do for pay or as a volunteer). Why should my child’s service work cost me money? Do such things truly give one college applicant an advantage over another, or do admissions committees see right through it and understand that it’s another “advantage” available to children of wealthier families? I’m not knocking the experience. I’m sure it’s enriching and eye opening, but paying for a ready-made service experience seems odd to me.
And how interesting that a number of us on this thread have children who are musicians. I wonder what that means?
I agree, I hated all those brochures. My daughter went to two different band camps even summer since sixth grade, first junior then senior camps. They were both on college campuses staffed mostly by local high school music teachers, reasonably priced and she had a wonderful time. The rest of the summer was visiting family and friends as we live a long distance away the rest of the year. It all worked out, and she is not planning to major in music.
My daughter is unlikely to major in music as well, although she may choose it as a minor and once in a blue moon she talks about a possible dual major. However, she is only just finishing up her sophomore year and has plenty of time to grow as a musician. At the very least, she wants to be able to participate in an ensemble in college. I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who feels like kids deserve to relax in the summer or get a job that they actually want. Especially when they are expected to work their butts off during the school year! Again, I must say how reassuring it is to hear all these things. Even when my daughter was in middle school I would hear people talking about signing their kids up for activities because it would “look good for college later on.” When my daughter was twelve years old, I was not thinking about college. And it was weird to be made to feel like I should have been.
I think it is great there is a lot of kumbaya going on here. But what this often turn into is the only reason some of those kids got into tippy top schools is because parents paid for those ECs, or students had no life. Adcoms know when ECs are paid for. A lot of those high performing students go to competitive summer programs that are free and very selective - like Governor School, NJ Scholar (my kid went to), etc. The year she was there they studied about Human Rights: Past, Present and Future. It was the summer that she decided she wanted go into law. Since then she has interned at legal aid, and DA office. Oh yes, when she was in high school she was also an accomplished pianist and violinist, as well as a pre-professional ballet dancer.
I think it is great some kids decide to take a different route, but it doesn’t mean it’s better. This reminds me of staying home mom vs working mom debate.
I do not think paying $8000 for an international experience increases likelihood of acceptance. I think you are intertwining multiple issues.
There are kids who are intrinsically incredibly high performing, highly motivated, constantly pursuing opportunities that fill their areas of passionate interest. This is one of my children. His accomplishments belong 100% to him. He is a high energy, high achieving, pretty darn brilliant kid. He is also the child of parents who have a lot of kids and live off of their income and cannot afford their EFC. He followed merit $$ and is as happy as can be with his choice.
BUT…he was also highly competitive for top schools and that level of accomplishment was not a reflection on us pushing or prodding at all. It also was not a reflection of insane hours or lacking a great teenage social life. It is just who he is. For him, that is his avg normal.
As a matter of fact, he is a math and physics geek and he left me in the dust, not understanding a word he said, by the time he was in 8th grade. 
Thriving on intense studies and always wanting to understand more than is being offered in any given book or class…it is just who he is. And it doesn’t consume his life. It is his norm.
Like I stated in my OP in this thread, we don’t groom our kids. We let them be who they are. That is him. His siblings all have equally different personalities and they are who they are too.
I understand where you’re coming from, @oldfort, and it seems that expressing a viewpoint can often be misconstrued as judging those whose viewpoint is different. I don’t believe that everyone in an elite school has “bought” their way into the school. I know that there are extremely motivated children out there who bust their butts because they want to, and that getting into Yale or Harvard is very important to them, so they set high standards for themselves and strive to meet them. I think that’s admirable, actually. It’s more the general climate of the college admissions race that I find upsetting because it causes so many people unnecessary stress and heartache, not to mention headache! I see it all around me, not to mention in my mailbox: “Boost your child’s SAT scores!” “Strengthen your child’s college applications!!!” It feels like there are so many people capitalizing on parents’ anxiety and fear.
Funny that you should compare it to the working mom versus stay at home mom debate ( I have been on both sides of that one, though never felt I had to debate with anyone about it), because I found that to be quite similar myself in that there were others who viewed my choice, and my belief in my choice, as a negative judgment of their different choice rather than a personal belief and decision based on what is best for me, my child, and my family as a whole.
ttm321, " just to clarify, no crying at all or no manipulative crying? I get the idea of not tolerating whiny crying used by a child to try to manipulate events, but would you agree that crying can be a healthy expression of feelings in moments of grief, such as saying goodbye to a friend who is moving out of state or grieving the death of a grandparent or pet?"
- NO crying was allowed in my house. When grandkids were visiting while young, I had to “re-set” them so to speak. I explained cclearly to everybody, if you cry, we are going to Emergency room since you must be in in-tolerable pain. Crying was allowed only case of death in a family. D. ended up pointing out that “drama queen” behavior was so un-popular at her school that she felt very good about growing up without crying. I do not believe in crying being "healthy expression of feelings’. I believe that any negative situation has to be dealt with precise plan that could be possible only with cool head. And the actions have to turn around any negatvie experience into poisitive as quickly as possible.
But I only mention it here because I had only 2 rules that my 25 y o D. had mentioned being very helpful for her and especially in hormonal HS years.
@78,
I so love honesty like this:
I am an Ivy grad (and loved it). I did get some opportunities because of the “name.” Did they matter in the total scheme of my lifetime earnings and career? Not so much. This is a new world. It is tough out there, and I think success will depend far more on the kid than the name on the diploma. The gift you want to give them is the gift of being able to explore without having the burden of debt.
Full disclosure: My 2014 Oberlin graduate D (debt free) is currently self supporting but not in a permanent position. However, I am completely blown away by how much she has learned about networking and other necessary job skills. I’m 100% sure she’s going to figure this out.
Thank you for being so honest!
But there are also kids who find school easy - they aren’t working their butts off but they are getting A’s in their challenging courses. And then in their free time they are pursuing their own interests at a high level. I never pushed my oldest to be Harvard material. But I did encourage his interests all along. (A passionate interests in trains, then electronics, then math, then chess, and then computer programming.) It was almost impossible to get him to do things he didn’t want to do. He got a zero on a freshman year English assignment because he didn’t want to write a poem. We had a little discussion about how a bad poem with a grade of say 60 would average into your grades a lot more favorably than a zero - he didn’t pull that again!)
Anyway, like oldfort, just want to caution that it’s fine that not all kids are gunning for Ivies, and it’s fine that some are. But there are also plenty of kids who are just doing what they like and that makes them good candidates for the Ivies (or other selective schools).
I agree mathmom. It also doesn’t mean that just because they are candidates for Ivies or highly selective schools that that is the path they take, either. The entire scenario isn’t an either/or for any part of the discussion.
@IBviolamom - just popping in to tell you that I think it is great that your D is thinking of looking for a paid or unpaid position at a camp for special needs children. She might also consider volunteering as a “mother’s helper” for a family with a special needs child. When we were raising our non-verbal autistic adult, we hosted several young people who assisted us, mostly for pay, and for those who “worked out” and had the patience and ability to be helpful, this proved to be an experience that was valuable to them in years beyond, both personally and in many instances, professionally.
We found that those who had personally learned anything (sports, music, dance, foreign language) in a “coaching” situation in which they experienced public failure and needed to learn from mistakes, respond to feed-back without crumbling, and think on their feet were particularly suited to this type of experience.
@MiamiDAP - I never thought of crying as a voluntary activity. I have heard that there are big bucks for would-be child actors who can cry “at will.”
Yes, adcoms know. After all, they spend their months and years focused on kids and the grand variety of things they can do. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the right sorts of service efforts, the ones where they work most hours and do leave a difference. (That’s not the 8k+ for a comfy hotel, the pool, and an hour at an orphanage, then back to the pool or the bus tour.) Local community service is good for the kids who roll up their sleeves, work with the needy, make a difference and learn from that.
I think oldfort is making a point I agree with. CC fusses about “padding” or pushing, but a lot of these experiences can truly grow a kid, which is really our first goal.
To me, the point of this thread was to question the attitude that only the tippy top schools are acceptable that only the kids that work hard enough to achieve that are worthy of admiration. Of course there are kids that can effortlessly get As, but they are very rare and they probably do actually study more than their parents think they do, at least in higher level honors or AP courses. There are kids that have boundless energy and are highly focused. I applaud them.
It is the kids that work themselves so hard that they don’t get enough sleep, that they put so much pressure on themselves (and on their families) that life is just no fun. Some of them win the prize and get into their dream school, but others have their dreams crushed when all that work does not achieve that goal. In most cases, they get into really good schools.
But that doesn’t make those high achieving kids any “better” than the kids who chose a more laid back path or who are satisfied with playing on the B team. The point of the thread was to support those smart, but more laid back kids, not to criticize the high achievers. Life is a journey and college is (hopefully) just a short piece of a long life.
I was one of the 98/2380 billions of leadership positions kids and am going to an excellent school with a scholarship, got in an lot of places.
I did not get in to Harvard.
One of my friends was “good enough,” like your daughter; good but not crazy grades, took SAT three times before getting three 700 scores she was happy with, solid extra curriculars like violin (very good but no protege), student government (major leadership position senior year), volunteering. Most importantly, she is the kindest person I have ever met. She wrote her common app essay about her friendship with a maintainence officer at our school.
She was good enough for Harvard. She also got in to a bunch of top liberal arts colleges (Williams, Amherst, etc). She did not get in to the host of other ivies and similar schools (Yale, Penn, Stanford, UChicago, etc) she applied to.
My point is that there are schools out there that value being a good human being (Harvard, many liberal arts), there are schools that value special talent and achievement (most of the ivies, Stanford), and there are schools that value raw brainpower (MIT, UChicago for example). Your daughter sounds like she would be an excellent candidate at the first group of places if she makes sure it is a part of her application in a non-humblebragging way.