HYPMS Acceptances for one Bay Area HS

CrystalWolf
Sun, 08 May 2011 17:53:00 +0000

I did not say that there are absolutely no tiger parents; I just said that I have not experienced any. I am sure there may be some, but many students do not seem to have signs of having tiger parents. As I already mentioned, the students at Gunn seem to be privileged and sometimes sheltered (though not always). I have had friends who even demand things of their parents and develop tempers when they do not get them. The vast majority of students are remarkably well-mannered, but they are accustomed to well-educated, but probably not high-income, lifestyles. The overall attitude seems to be in judging themselves based upon their also-privileged peers who may live across the street and not from a broader perspective - that is, the rest of the world. (The same could be said for most of us in the U.S.) Also, many of the students are free-ranging. Many of the boys seem to be well-versed in the latest video games, and many girls are very artsy. (Please don’t tell me that true tiger parents would allow their kids to major in arts and humanities in college, though many Gunn alumni do.) Also, upperclassmen don’t like to be caught dead with the full contingent of seven classes and usually opt for at least one “prep period,” and sometimes two. (After Gunn had changed the rule a few years back saying that no more than two prep periods are allowed; some had even three prep periods and only four classes.) I could go on: the parking lot is like the usual high school’s - it has skid marks from cars full of teens blasting loud music and squealing across lanes. And, like I said, not everyone matriculates at a tier-one college. Tiger parents, not even those who cannot afford higher tuition, generally would not allow their kids to go to community college. And I have met some parents. They want their kids to do their very best and to get into what they think is the best-fit (which yes, sometimes means best) school; if the students do not quite perform at the 4.5-GPA-2400-SAT-eight-APs level, they simply throw their hands up and settle for whatever is possible. I’m sure there may be tiger parents, but again, I haven’t seen them. And certainly most Gunn parents are not tiger parents.

One thing that has been of some concern at the school is the unusually large education gap. Students are usually one of two crowds, the high-achievers and the average-achievers. The high-achievers all tend to know (or know of) each other but know few students in the other crowd, and vice versa. What has brought the school up are the high-achievers, which are very high-achievers indeed, outweighing the average-achievers. Yet what I have just said about the students applies more from my experience of the high-achievers and not the average-achievers.

As for the Stanford faculty, such families may live closer to the campus in North Palo Alto or in Stanford, CA, which is owned by the university and restricted only to faculty and students. Their children would then attend Paly and not Gunn. Generally, Paly is known to be slightly less academic and more athletic than Gunn. I personally think this is because North Palo Alto (Paly district) is more laid-back and comfortable, with its multi-million-dollar mansions, while South Palo Alto (Gunn district) is filled with lower-income minority (usually Asian) families who teach their kids to struggle for better lives. I haven’t seen much of the presence of Stanford parents at Gunn, though, again, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

Again, students are Gunn are very academically-inclined; there’s no questioning about that. There are some who’ve taken BC Calc before senior year, even as early as freshman year, and who go on to specialized Stanford math classes. There are some who take eight AP exams in May and some who have astronomical GPAs. Some do PHP and Java programming for fun, and some participate (and do very well) in national math and science competitions. Some do research at Stanford. Some weld robots for the school FIRST team. Some come out on top in state track meets. And yes, many students matriculate at Stanford, Caltech, MIT, or Ivies (enough that no one is too impressed with hearing the name “Harvard” anymore). But they are generally not pressured to the breaking-point, and they do have a lot of fun in high school. They simply come from well-educated (or hard-working immigrant) backgrounds, and this is often not because of affiliations with Stanford.