<p>CC is not the real world, by a long shot.</p>
<p>To put it in perspective, there are about 37,000 high schools in the US, and there were about 35,000 applicants to Harvard this year. That means there is on average, less than one student at every high school in America interested in attending Harvard. Not exactly a frenzy for that decal.</p>
<p>Like I said before, what you see here on CC is not the real world! It is a small segment of the population, just as in our HS and yours.</p>
<p>I learned some valuable information with my first child here, about how difficult it is to get into some of these schools. She had some rejections that stung, but she had good matches. And then my third (and final!) child was accepted into many very good schools, and I start to wonder what made the difference. Our home junior year was not that pressurized, as I had learned enough to have her take the SAT in October and ACT in December, and then she was done with those. All of my kids only took them once each. Senior year was busy with a fall sport and applications, but it was fine and there was enough time to go out with friends. And spring senior year is also busy with a sport and AP tests approaching, but her sports are her passion, and she still goes out a lot with friends. She has learned excellent time management.</p>
<p>I like when a family has multiple children, and they first put up a Yale sticker, then they put a U. of Michigan sticker above it for their second kid, then for their third kid, they feel obligated to add a Swampgas State University decal.</p>
<p>Yep, cc is not anything like the real world and regional differences are really that pronounced.</p>
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<p>I think that’s a pretty fair assessment when you consider just how large a number 5% of the high school population is. It’s good, it’s great, but it isn’t truly exceptional. And there’s nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>I joined cc for the great information on the fin aid forum. I found I enjoyed talking about colleges “stuff” so I became more or less regular on the parents forum. But, my children didn’t/probably won’t apply to anything close to a “reach”. Imcan’t be the only one. </p>
<p>Some of the threads here make me roll my eyes (come on, get over yourself/your kid), but then there are those that are lovely and funny and poignant. My heart breaks for the parents who need to hear that sometimes stats are meaningless and a kid just wasn’t ready for college. </p>
<p>You can be on this site and not get caught up in the competitiveness. But you may find you need to take a forum break once in a while.</p>
<p>finalchild, you don’t have to feed the beast. (I know, easier said than done.) You seem to have a lot of anxiety over the “prestige” issue, which seems to be largely the result of where you live. I actually don’t think CC is good for you, since you get a lot of reinforcement for your perspective (although hopefully by now you are starting to actually believe that there are many of us all over the country who do not view college through the same lens :)).</p>
<p>I suggest you look up some of the many good posts from Pizzagirl. She is adept at avoiding the hysteria (which is also common in more affluent areas of big cities throughout the U.S.). Also, avail yourself of whatever facts you need for reassurance. If you recall on that tedious other thread about prestige vs. merit $, NO ONE was able to come up with any factual evidence that the prestige level of one’s undergraduate education made one iota of difference to the success of the student post-college. Your kids are going to do great. It’s a big world out there.</p>
<p>I am going to stick up for you, finalchild. I don’t think you posted to be scolded or told you have issues. It sounds like you are a veteran of college admissions and are just making a plea for sanity in the process.</p>
<p>Agree with Sally. CC is skewed, and those that don’t see it are fooling themselves-- there’s a thread for parents of eighth graders, for goodness’ sakes! BUT-- there are also wonderful threads, great people, humor and support. And because of CC I have a place elsewhere that’s the greatest group ever to hang out with virtually. </p>
<p>The regional differences are real. Even within (small) cities it’s real. One part of my (college) town has the better hs and many high-powered professional parents and parents who are faculty at our in town flagship. Those kids apply to and get into much more prestigious schools than my kids’ run of the mill hs. Interestingly, however, about a third (at least) of those kids come back from their high-powered schools. I think it’s because our small city is more provincial and small-townish than people think. It’s hard to leave. But kids one state south-- they go all over the place!</p>
<p>I think the regional differences are just THAT strong. Not that many kids in the midwest are pining away for the Ivy League. Sure they get applications, we send maybe one or two per year to the NE to the uber selective colleges out of our Top 10 ranked small school, but it merits the same nice applause that the #1 kid in the class gets for achieving a pre-admit to Ross Business School at UofM etc.</p>
<p>Sure, I am very invested in my own kids. I had good fortune in my life, and with kids who are relatively talented, motivated and within range of very nice educations of course I want the best for them. They’re both great and going to be absolutely fine. So yes, I have my own investment and self-oriented interest here, as I assume most do including those that profess otherwise, but as a reasonbly intelligent person I also am interested in all of this as a sociological phenomenon and then of course the impact that this has psychologically both culturally at large and at the individual level. I don’t think I’ve invented any of this in my head. And I frequently see some of the so-called wise souls here readily chipping in to comment, and quite confidently and authoritatively I might add, about a whole host of elitist and comparative issues. It is strange to hear so many distance themselves from prestige concerns when you read through some of the threads here. MOST of the threads seem to be about prestige to me…which school is better than which school…how does this school compare to that school, etc, etc.</p>
<p>But hey, if it’s just me, and all the articles and books written about this are just for me, then that’s fine. I see my analyst at 3:00 :)</p>
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<p>Whaaat…we need to get the middle school and preferably K-5 grade parents on here NOW! Don’t they know it is never to early to plant the fear of disaster and future failure in a kids head. (okay, sarcasm OFF).</p>
<p>Really, this place is pretty far removed from reality. That said, a bit of the day spent here is informative and entertaining. It can, however, suck you into a vortex of anxiety about your offspring’s future if they are below CC average.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago a young man at local HS committed suicide. Just receive info this morning that a young woman, now a sophomore in college, who attended HS with D, committed suicide. A HS in another big city not far from me has had several suicides over the past few years. It seems like a predictable end result of telling children (!) that they risk life long failure if by 12th grade they have not achieved the pinnacle of bumper sticker status.</p>
<p>Next time I drive through the ‘corridor’ I’ll make a point of watching the vehicles in the Google, Ebay, Netflix, Facebook, Apple vicinities and check for their bumper stickers…my guess, it really is and East Coast Thing.</p>
<p>Drive a vespa. Then you dont have to worry about the window decal braggadocio :)</p>
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<p>That presumes that there is statistically relevant psychological impact and I’m not sure I “buy that” on some universal level. I would say the a very small portion of high school students are fragile enough to be psychologically impacted. </p>
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<p>Because many posters to CC, and this discussion board was originally intended for Ivy bound kids and still has remnants of that mission, ask questions about different and comparative issues. But often people will caution time and time again that some of the differences are so minor as to be negligible. I believe that often goes over the posters heads who really wants to hear A is better than B for whatever reason rather than to hear that A is minutely better than B but only the fact that the bathrooms in the dorms are larger.</p>
<p>And yes, LBowie, my posting was not intended to be about me or my particular situation. My kids, in context, are thriving. We generally knew what we were doing and fared quite well at least by my standards. And I’ve helped a handful of other kids with the process. I’m not the reason that the NYT has a whole section devoted to this stuff and folks are anxious to post the very lastest admits rates, and details about specific program rankings at Princeton vs Duke or WUSTL vs Vandy or Michigan, or whatever. But I guess all the folks who also went to elite schools and are experts on these matters down to the very fine print are very evolved and well beyond the very things they commentate about. They’re here just…well…because…</p>
<p>BTW, LOL, did I just dream up that some are competitively debating the number and quality of restaurants in Evanston, Ill???</p>
<p>momof3, psychologically impacted doesn’t equate to fragility. Everyone is psychologically (and sociologically) impacted all the time. All of us are embedded in a context, whatever that context happens to be.</p>
<p>We never had nor wanted to display where our kids attended at any point. Our D decided to give all 4 of us (including herself and S) license plate holders for our cars, proclaiming their U. She and S even installed it on our cars and have it on theirs. We’re fine with it, but don’t much notice it one way or another on vehicles–decals or other signs of where students are attending or got their degrees. Our kiddos U was actually the 1st choice of several of their cousins; unfortunately, none of them were accepted so far, so our kids are the only ones in the extended family to attend that U.</p>
<p>The disparity between rich and poor does seem to be growing and is more “in your face,” with these humungous salaries and bonuses publicized, as well as “reality shows,” about the rich and famous.</p>
<p>There is more visible poverty and homelessness with the “Occupy” or deOccupy movements as well as the drug and alcohol abuse. There are a lot of people of all ages unemployed and underemployed, including college grads and recent college grads. I am more concerned about these things than decal anxiety, myself. Lots of ivy parents around here do NOT put decals or other identifiable things on their vehicles to show that they attended Harvard or other ivy. My sib who went to Stanford doesn’t display it anywhere either.</p>
<p>Choose whatever word suits you, finalchild. The point is that it is not healthy for kids to be so hyper focused that they become emotionally fragile.</p>
<p>momof3, I agree, but I don’t think it is a problem that just lives inside of me. I see, frequently, right here, and right in the last couple of days, frazzled laments about, just for one example, whether Middlebury and Bowdoin are “name brand” enough? And for folks here, to act like none of them have some imagined cut-off line on their head separating “good enough” from “not good enough” I just think is really, really disingenous. I mean, really. And I think some are actually responding with a straight face, as though they are in the dark about their reactions work every single day. Since when did anger, resentment, pride, exclusivity, competitiveness, jealousy, pettiness, etc, etc become co-opted solely by New England or the Northeast? LOL. Or are Northwestern, Michigan, WUSTL, Pomona, Stanford, Carleton, et al just considered annexes of New England???</p>
<p>^No one is “acting like” anything. Why do you think you are entitled to constantly challenge the integrity of people whose opinions don’t fit into your world view? The whole point of this forum is to share information and opinions based on our PERSONAL knowledge or experience. Where data is required to make a point, people provide it. Many of us have offered you our perspectives on the “impact” (or lack thereof) of the prestige obsession in our schools, communities, and families. There seems to be broad agreement, on this and other threads, that geography plays a role in how people regard the importance of status and brand names. As HImom correctly points out, for some of us there are bigger things to worry about from day to day.</p>
<p>That said, having more important concerns doesn’t preclude us from coming on here and offering our opinion on students’ questions on “which school sounds like a better fit for me?” or “which is better for mechanical engineering, Carnegie-Mellon or Berkeley?” Nor does it preclude anyone from considering schools that ALSO attract the kind of people who are fixated on the minuscule prestige differences between several excellent colleges. Just because my kid might be interested in Pomona or WashU doesn’t make me competitive, petty, prideful, or a prestige hound. Nor does it make those schools “annexes of New England”–your point doesn’t even make sense.</p>
<p>I would say the NYT blog IS targeted exactly at people like you who have significant anxiety over whether they are doing the right thing with regard to their kids’ college preparation and choices, and feel the need to constantly compare oneself against others. Maybe that’s why I am not a fan of it, or the NYT in general outside of some of the news and feature sections. The “Choice” blog can be every bit as insufferable as the weddings section.</p>
<p>Final- ok, you’re right. But what are you going to do about it? The solution seems to me to be to permanently block this URL on your computer. And then you can go back to the imaginary cut off line in your head. But people come here to learn and I think sometimes they find the journey very helpful.</p>
<p>I certainly have a cut off line, but it’s in a very different place now than when it was when I first came to cc. I’ve had friends and nieces and nephews and cousins who have explored schools I don’t know much about and that has changed my views considerably. I’ve read posters here who share many values with me about education and their perspective has changed my views. And then there are posters who are so dogmatic that they’ve reinforced prejudices that I’ve retained based on my own upbringing in the Northeast.</p>
<p>So be it and your mileage may vary. But when you have a neighbor or a colleague at work ask you if you’ve ever heard of Lawrence or Beloit or Rhodes because their GC suggested they check it out, it’s nice when you’ve read of someone’s Classics major kid at Lawrence or English lit major kid at Beloit or Bio major kid at Rhodes who have gone on to distinguish themselves. At a minimum, you can reassure them that it’s worth exploring and that the gods of higher education are not going to implode.</p>
<p>Back in the dark ages when I went to college I had two sad cases in my HS. One was a kid whose father told him “Harvard or non-flagship campus of state U” and his educational journey didn’t end nearly as well as it would have if the family had explored the dozens of colleges which would have been a great fit for this nerdy intellectual. The other was the smartest kid in my HS class who had an almost full scholarship to one of the “seven sisters” and her parents (both HS grads but nothing beyond that) insisted that she commute to the local teacher’s college. Her story ended better, even though dozens of her less accomplished classmates ended up at high powered colleges (and had higher wattage careers, but correlation does not imply causation.)</p>
<p>But if I can ever educate people to the wide range of choices between these “either/or” stories, I take pride in that. There’s nothing wrong with a family asserting its values- wanting a kid to stay within driving distance so he or she can attend grandma’s 90th birthday or be home for religious celebrations, etc. But in many situations, these families grab on to the closest option- which may or may not meet the educational needs of the kid- rather than keeping their mind open enough to explore some potentially fine options which may also be acceptable, even if they’ve never heard of the college initially.</p>
<p>So if you’ve only read some of the passive/aggressive threads about elite vs. cheap or “is everyone at Harvard a preppy snob”, I’d encourage you to dig deeper. There are some very valuable nuggets here.</p>