<p>But where are you getting all “flagships only take the top 20%”? Did I not just mention that the state flagship where I went to high school is an auto-admit if you have a 24 ACT, and you can get in with a lower ACT if you have a certain class rank? That doesn’t make it a horrible school, nor does it mean all the kids are mouth-breathers – but there’s a difference. </p>
<p>Sorry. I feel more sympathy for the kid who is MIT-worthy who has to “settle” for Mizzou than I do for the kid who has to “settle” for Michigan (which isn’t much of a drop-down in the scheme of things).</p>
<p>Okay, imagine that you are in first grade and on the third day of school your teacher tests you on the word list through third grade (only stopping there because she doesn’t have the list for higher grades). You know the meaning of every word on the list, can spell them all correctly, and can use them in a sentence. Imagine that you are reading books like The Oxford Book of Norse Mythology.</p>
<p>Now imagine that you are forced to sit in class 5 days a week for the next three years being drilled on phonics and having to do spelling exercises that cover this list of words you had mastered by the time you left kindergarten.</p>
<p>Convinced yet?</p>
<p>The setup is real–my kid. The way things progressed was, thankfully, quite different, because our school system allowed inventiveness on the part of some great teachers. But now that high stakes testing has taken over, teachers in most places are forced to concentrate on bringing up the bottom achievers, not accommodating the top achievers. After all, they will do fine on the tests anyway. And that is all that matters.</p>
<p>“Top athletes want to train and compete with the best athletes in their sport. Why should academically focused kids be any different?”</p>
<p>Probably not the best analogy, given how few Top Athletes are actually successful in their sport … and how many who do “make it” end up broke and unemployable at 40.</p>
<p>But perhaps it is a good analogy … because Top Athletes don’t get to pick their opponents. The notion that “if I just get in a training environment I like then I’ll be successful in my sport” isn’t any more valid for athletes than it is for college students.</p>
<p>It’s not optimal. Of course, life rarely is optimal, but I don’t see what’s so difficult about understanding that bright kids want to be around similarly-motivated and academic bright kids. Again, how many parents on here have mentioned that when their kids went to CTY (or simlar programs), they finally found their tribes in ways that they hadn’t in just “regular” middle school or high school? </p>
<p>I’ll say it. I wasn’t interested in hanging around with the generally-average-academically kids when I was in high school, and I’m glad I didn’t have to hang around them in college. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t fine people with plenty to offer. But they aren’t my tribe the way that academically-inclined people are.</p>
<p>There may be a few kids who are lucky enough to have a really top-notch state flagship (or honors program) that is still a safety for them because of their stats. If Michigan, or Virginia, is a safety for you, then you don’t need to fret much about your peers if you are forced to go there. But that’s not true everywhere–and for some kids, the flagship may not have the program they are looking for (true for my son), so they have to look elsewhere for the true safety.</p>
<p>Well, that’s one state. There are 49 others, which vary widely in their admissions criteria and the extent to which they attract a preponderance of students with seriousness and purpose. You just can’t compare the Michigans and Wisconsins and Virginias and so forth to the state flagships in a lot of other states. They have nothing in common other than they are the state flagships for their respective states.</p>
<p>PG - You’re fighting a losing battle here. In Illinois the current scandal is UICU circumventing normal channels to admit the children of politicians … not exactly riff-raff material.</p>
<p>I used to say that Michael Jordan wasn’t expected to play basketball with me, so why should I be expected to study literature with him? :)</p>
<p>As we know, anti-intellectualism is alive and well in the US. </p>
<p>Regarding employment, I was FAR happier when working for software development companies. It was invigorating to work with a lot of smart people who were interested in continual learning.</p>
<p>NewHope, PG has already said that UiUC these days is a very different proposition from Mizzou when she was applying.</p>
<p>The reason I like the sports analogy is that nobody seems to be offended when you say that this kid over here is just a better soccer player than that kid over there–even if they are both motivated and work hard. And everybody understands why the kid who is better wants to play on a travel team with other good players. He may like the kids on the rec team, and they may be nicer–but playing with them won’t really help his soccer skills–in fact, it will hurt his soccer skills, because he’ll have trouble developing the skills that require teamwork–i.e., if nobody can effectively pass to him.</p>
<p>But people just feel squeamish if similar sentiments are expressed with respect to academic ability.</p>
<p>I don’t see how it bolsters your point. I would feel very differently about my kids attending UIUC versus attending Mizzou. Which - ta-da - is my point about how different state flagships may or may not provide sufficient density of certain “tribes.”</p>
<p>Great. So maybe some people ought to take state schools off the table as potential safeties. In that case, it might make sense to find a safety with a better “tribe” for their kids–say, a small LAC where there is a high level of intellectual engagement and they will likely get merit money. There are many, many schools that fit that category.</p>
<p>"Which - ta-da - is my point about how different state flagships may or may not provide sufficient density of certain ‘tribes.’ "</p>
<p>One more attempt and I’m letting this go. DW has some relatives in SE Missouri … in the Bible Belt. They’re part of a “tribe” … a tribe that puts their belief system ahead of everything else. They pulled their children from the local Evangelical school “because it was too liberal.” For college they said “pick any college that has ‘Evangelical’ or ‘Pentacostal’ in it’s name.” These people have done their children a dis-service, because the kids can’t be part of any group that doesn’t share the same belief system. (Trust me, that includes 95% of America … probably more.)</p>
<p>In brief, society works best when it’s “tribes” work together. And it’s hard to develop belief/confidence in other “tribes” if one insists on keeping separate from them.</p>
<p>I agree with Hunt about the sports analogy. It’s great for my friend to brag that her daughter is a track star, but when I say that my daughter (who is very unathletic) got an 800 on the Writing portion of the PSATs, people think that’s inappropriate (btw, D herself is a very unassuming, self-deprecating kid and could use someone to do a little horn blowing for her, in light of living in a very vocally competitive district.)</p>
<p>I think it makes sense to distinguish between kids who are looking for financial safeties vs. those looking for admissions rate safeties. I have a lot more sympathy for the kid who’s disappointed that finances dictate a year in community college than the one who’s so focussed on Yale that he can’t see himself at Grinnell, Trinity or NYU.</p>
<p>The problem is that a smart kid at a state school, surrounded by many attractive and charming people who are, well, not all that bright, may somehow be seduced into proposing marriage to one of them. In the heat of passion, IQ may seem superficially to be less important. </p>
<p>The issue will come to a head 20 years later when the resulting kids - your grandkids - just don’t ‘get’ multivariable calc, and spend a good deal of time in shopping malls. Projected admission rates to HYB* by then will be less than 1%, and top genetics will be an absolute prerequisite.</p>
<p>I also want to push back against this idea that kids who want to go to super-selective schools won’t be able to deal with “regular” people in their later lives. First, kids at super-selective schools are perfectly normal in most respects, and they vary a lot in temperament, background, and experience. Second, most of those kids have other opportunities, such as summer jobs and other activities to interact with people who aren’t in their schools. And finally, many of them will be going on to jobs in settings where many of the other people will also be very smart and motivated.</p>
<p>I know that one professor said that he couldn’t figure out how to talk to his plumber, but this is not really a problem for most smart kids.</p>
<p>And by the way–isn’t it a sign of progress that people–men, especially–want to marry intellectual equals?</p>