@runswimyoga , I can’t LOVE your post enough. So true, so true…
My D is a bit of an academic grinder. She has had stretches of time where I literally have no idea how or if she gets enough sleep. I figured out from other parents how those kids do all they do: their parents let them sleep-in on school days, and go in late. Or they let them stay home from school for a whole day. I used to think this was wrong. My kids go to school unless they are sick. Thing is, they (touch wood) are rarely sick. I could see that my kid staying up until midnight to do school work on the days she had mock trial matches was wearing her down. So I let her miss first period occasionally, like three days a year, or she has a “mental health day” a couple of times a year.
Anyway, you asked how parents handle talking about kids stats, and how they do it all, etc… I think some parents might be surprised to hear that my D misses a couple of days of school when she isn’t sick. My experience is that many parents are pretty open about their kids stats, especially if they don’t view your child as competition for their child. So when I talk to parents whose kids are below mine in terms of grades and test scores, there is an assumption that she is going to go somehwere “good”. And I am happy for everyone’s kids, no matter where they go to college. When I talk with parents whose kids are more similar to mine, we all nod knowingly and agree that our kids are going to great colleges. These colleges aren’t great as in Top 25, though some are. It’s just that we trust in our kids that they chose good colleges and will be happy at them. I guess in my area, it isn’t seen as super competitive. The kids in our school who got into Ivies, MIT, Duke, etc…everyone applauds them when they walk into class. Non one seems to be jealous or upset but then again, I am not a student, so maybe that is happening too. Very idyllic, haha!
I get jealousy, I really do. It’s been my son’s dream to attend a certain Cambridge tech institute since early in his HS days. Eight kids from his HS applied, five got in. He wasn’t one of them. Three kids he’s close to did. But you know what? He didn’t have the stats. He had the EC’s, which we’d hoped would override his GPA, but they didn’t. And the kids who did get in had spectacular stats, and the two who I know more than the minimum about have spectacular EC’s. So he gets it. And I do too. So I wouldn’t call it jealousy. More like a bit of whimsical “what if?”
"
An unexpected silver-lining of being long-distance boarding school parents, is there are no parents to gossip with to stoke jealousy.
I focused on my own kids and never shared their stats. If they did among their peers, that was their own business.
That said, it’s hard to avoid all of this. D attended the local public which announced the “top 10” and S went to a selective magnet so people knew that my kids had some academic cred. Both attended private colleges and we live in a state with excellent public schools (Virginia), so we had to field some questions about that. I tended to keep a low profile about all of it and simply say where my kids were going if asked. I did get asked some questions about how we paid/were we full pay (yes) by simply saying that we had planned for it.
It is hard to avoid this all together, but you can try not to encourage it.
I cannot believe people actually ask you in conversation how you paid for something. (Not that I don’t believe you!) Are people really asking for details or is it a generic “college sure is expensive these days!” comment? Because we got some of the “there goes your paycheck!” comments, but you just sort of smile and move on - they aren’t really asking about your saving strategies.
I can’t believe people ask and converse about SAT scores and GPAs of their kids.
My husband and I were asked this over and over during the years when our second kid was at an expensive college.
We told people we had inherited the money. This was not entirely true. (We had inherited some money, but we could have paid the college bills without the inheritance.) But we told the half-lie because it diffused the hostility.
One of the perks of homeschooling . . . less opportunity for comparison. That being said, it still goes on! And sometimes it is even more intense.
People do talk - my officemate’s kid seems to have magically inflatable GPA and SAT scores. Whether they’re saying the truth is another story. We were attending a scholarship event at DD2’s college for fall and a (Tiger) mom was contemplating that college with full ride vs two Ivies where she reported admission and no merit aid details. Turns out both Ivies were waitlists…
Having gone thru the admission process 3 times with my kids I prefer the Elbonian system (a single national entrance exam, grades posted by name and college, no EC’s)
I wouldn’t dignify it with an answer. They are not owed one, and by giving them an answer (even if it’s a half truth) you have now reinforced their inappropriate asking. It is simply not their business. At all.
Learning how to let questions fall on their face is a good life skill. But it takes some measure of self confidence that may be difficult for some to muster up.
We have already been asked how we are going to be able to afford to send our kids to school and they aren’t even applying yet, lol. I am going to tell people the truth. We have saved it all up. We live beneath our means. We don’t drive stupid expensive cars, live in a McMansion,or take multiple expensive vacations every year. We started saving when the kids were born. It meant giving up some luxuries but now we can afford to send both kids to whatever college they want to attend without any loans, scholarships, or merit awards.
If people don’t like the truth, that is their problem. We’ve worked very hard to get to where we are financially.
I was surprised at how many times I was asked if we received FA or Scholarships or how we intended to pay for our kids’ educations, but we were. I would never ask anyone that.
And as I said, we simply said “we planned for that”. With a smile and nod, of course!
Exactly! Why wouldn’t you handle it that way - in a bright, assertive, self-confident fashion – instead of getting all sooooo afraid of their supposed hostility that you feel compelled to make stuff up? Why be so passive about it?
Parent of a junior here - and I have been asked many times in the past 2-3 months about our “list”, D’s scores, and our finances. Now that they all have ACT and SAT scores, everyone is talking. For the most part, the kids have all shared their scores with each other - along with AP scores from last spring, and they all know the range of each other’s GPA from the rankings. My D is a bit reserved and quiet and has eluded all questions of scores, which is driving everyone crazy. Some have guessed that she is in the near perfect range- well above their kids, and others have guesses she is far below them all and asked me if we are getting her tutors. Truth is, she is just above in the range where they “say” they are. She does her best to change the subject or avoid all conversations when it is her friends. She has tried to say she is right around their scores when pushed but they don’t seem to believe her without a hard and fast number. We avoid the questions altogether.
I am vague and I usually let them do all the talking and reply simply and without much substance. I have been repeatedly questioned about why we were not going for “high reach” type schools (read as top LACs and Ivys) and I said that we were not visiting or applying to places that our D would not be able to afford to attend - that we crafted our list and limited it to schools that we could reasonably expect to get in and also to afford – most are appalled at feel that we are “limiting” our D’s future. Others are concluding that her scores are poor. Not our problem - if they are under that impression, perhaps they will stop questioning us. We did get some emails and calls from other parents about why she was not taking the spring tests (March SAT and/or April ACT).
The only conversation that I continued was with the mom of D’s longtime friend (since preschool - and friends through the years). I asked her if she was able to afford all of those dream schools that they were touring (probably way out of line for me but she had just told me that we were killing our D’s future by limiting her to affordable schools - I should have just smiled and nodded). She went on to say that those schools pay for top students and that their D would get scholarships (she was talking about their spring break tours of Cornell, Dartmouth, and “3 Boston” schools). She said that there is no way they can afford to pay full price - she said they could do about 10% of the COA at the schools they visited. Definitely middle class/upper middle income (mom doesn’t work - dad works in my H’s industry several layers above my H). I replied that she may want to look into their acceptance rates and that they may want to consider an academic safety and a financial safety along with those great schools - she rolled her eyes and said that they would be applying to all 5 so she would surely get into 2 or 3 with $ (no matter that her D is not hooked and as she has self-reported has below avg. stats for any of those schools). Not my conversation to have so I wished her well and told her it was going to be so exciting this time next year when we knew where they were all heading. We have never talked money or kids accomplishments before so I see no reason to begin now as we enter these years.
It is very hard to avoid these conversations and I am so thankful I stumbled upon CC to help me navigate this world - so I don’t have to rely on the chatter channel of our town. Can’t go to a performance, concert, or sporting event without this topic coming up. Lots of measuring up and anxiety going around.
I think I got lucky-in my peer group we’re all looking ahead instead of at each other. I’ve got moms that are offering to let my kid interview with their spouses to get more real life CS experiences, I’ve connected kids with internships that I know about through both my world and my husbands; we give info back and forth freely if we think it will be pertinent and helpful, and we’re supportive when our kids screw up without trotting over to another friend and saying “did you hear susie’s kid screwed up?”. We give tips for what to look for on psat’s, what’s the best test prep, etc.
A rising tide lifts all ships. I get that this may not be a typical group of fiercely involved, fairly well educated moms, but I will admit to doing some rather harsh culling of people out of my group that were takers and not givers.
A lot of questions people ask is because they want to know how to do it, and I take it in that spirit-you’ve accomplished something good and other people want to know how to make that good happen in their life. If they also accomplish it it doesn’t lessen you. If I think it will be helpful I’ll share. If I think it’ll be wasted on them or they won’t listen, I’ll say something vague like “we worked hard” or “we budgeted a lot”. I don’t lie, though, I don’t want people to make mistakes because I lied to them.
Jealousy-if you’ve accomplished anything in your life there will be people you encounter who are driven by envy or jealousy-the ones who see a girl in a lovely prom dress and say things like “she thinks she’s so special” (I heard this last night when a lot of the kids had gathered to have their pictures taken by the parents before prom). I said “she is special. So is your kid.”
Being jealous or envious like that woman is, is a choice, and for the life of me I will never understand why you’d go through life feeling eaten up by that misery and blasting out all that negativity. What a waste of a life.
Because “we planned for it” carries the implies message of “you didn’t plan for it, and now you’re suffering the consequences.”
Sometimes, it feels wrong to convey that message. And usually the reasons why it feels wrong have more to do with compassion than fear of hostility.
My answer to her would have been different. I would have said bluntly “those colleges don’t give merit aid and you’re doing your kid a disservice if you don’t run the NPC and know your numbers now because it’s a crazy game these colleges are playing.”
My good friends know I will be brutally honest with them about stuff, but not all of my friendships are this close. If this is your best friend, though, I would probably say something to her (although unless you’re me and your friends are used to being blowtorched at times, maybe couch it more gently).
I don’t recall ever having a conversation with other parents about test scores, EC’s, or even college applications. The kids probably talked about this with their classmates, traded information, discussed plans. But I only found out where my kids’ classmates were heading to college after they had made their final decisions.
This just wasn’t a subject for discussion in our family. We didn’t share information about test scores, finances, or even college search. The one partial exception is that when we took a big tour of colleges with my daughter she took along a classmate. This did not include the college that the classmate eventually enrolled in – that was a surprise. But we never talked to her parents about their or our children’s choices and decisions.
Maybe our experience was affected by the fact that the kids weren’t in a lot of clubs and other group activities in high school, so we didn’t have any particular reason to get together with the parents of their classmates. By far, the people we talked to most about college plans were our kids. They got into fine colleges.
I like what you said here @MotherOfDragons. This is generally how I get looped into conversations. I’m genuinely passionate about homeschooling and people will ask me (IRL) about different things we have done. If it seems like someone truly wants to know, I will go into more detail. Other homeschooling families have helped me along the way so I like to pay it forward.
On the other hand, I’ve had my toes stepped on and have probably stepped on other toes, unwittingly. It’s easy to get defensive of your kid and I realize that other moms and dads feel that way too.