The upshot is that if someone perceived the check box as a negative they would just not check it (regardless of whether or not they were using paid help). Also, how to account for the many excellent organizations that are helping underprivileged students make their way through this convoluted system - why should those kids be penalized. Whatever system we have, there will always be people (often wealthy people) that will exploit it - there really isn’t a way to stop someone who is willing to do anything so that their kid gets ahead.
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The question would read ‘paid counselor’, so kids working with a college access org or pro bono counselor wouldn’t have to check it.
I think there are plenty of affluent people who don’t ‘exploit it’, but those students do have many built in advantages…generally well educated parents, superior K-12 education, access to ECs, access to good healthcare, neuropsych testing, psychotherapy, and the like.
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I don’t think most people are “those” people - including wealthy ones. I just don’t think a self reported check box will do anything to deter people who are willing to game the system.
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Agreed.
I do not have a problem with using an IEC; in fact, we are likely to use one. My daughter goes to a Title 1 rural school in which less than 25% of the students go to a 4 year school post graduation. The school GC is mostly focused on non-college application focused aspects of their job, primarily emotional and disciplinary support. They have little experience in navigating the college admissions process and can provide little guidance in that area. It only makes sense to seek the services of someone that has assisted many others in this process. Would a person prefer to use a surgeon that has performed 100s of the same surgery s/he needed, or would s/he be perfectly fine if it was this person’s first time performing the surgery? I personally would be more willing to use the first timer, so long as they had an experienced hand involved in the process.
However, this does not mean that someone else is preparing the applications or writing the essays, etc. The child should be crafting and responsible for everything. But, I fail to see how paying an IEC several k to assist in college selection and essay review and paying a private school tens of k per year for years for access to talented and competent college counselors.
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For highly -intensive math prodigies, I suppose Putnam numbers make sense. However, as many have pointed out, there are many kinds of 99th%ile (or 99.9th+) smarts out there. The IQ definition of genius is “above 140” though that is near the ceiling of the normal tests. The top 1% is above 135, or “highly gifted”. There are literary and writing highly gifted and/or geniuses, there are STEM geniuses, there are across the board academic geniuses…for artists there are art geniuses(harder to define), on and on. Putnam numbers are not good for finding the others, but I fully understand why it works for TheVulcan’s kids.
For my kids, I used SAT (pre-TO) range to target schools that would have large critical mass of similar academically gifted (99-99+) peers, paying attention to details known about each kid’s relative areas of strength and interests. I investigated whether the college was known for deep-dives in literature, primary sources, expectations of in-depth writing and a culture where critical thinking is praised. Course syllabi in STEM was used too, to compare and find the schools that have a lot of courses and opportunities that truly push the academic boundaries and foster growth. The fact is that the schools that have the largest % of students who fit this are highly correlated to the T10-15 Unis and T3-5 LACs. My kids were able to land in schools that had the right critical mass of similar-level thinkers, and one got acceptances to many such schools.
The broken part of the college process is that there are a large number of highly gifted to genius level kids who want that environment, but cannot get in. There are too few spots , so not all who want it or “need” it can be there. There are some kids (IMO the biggest outliers are certain recruited athletes) who are NO where near that level of student. That kind of situation never feels “fair”. And hence the calls for the process to be changed. The question is, how? I do not know, and this thread does not appear to have a solution.
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So much of what you write is major-dependent. I can promise you that well below the T-15 or LAC “level” you will find everything you’ve described- and more- among the kids majoring in philosophy, Classics, Renaissance Studies (yes, the much maligned on CC “Studies”), etc. A highly gifted kid who is not interested in a pre-professional major (i.e. an on-ramp to Wall Street, Med School or Meta) will NOT have trouble finding a peer group.
“The broken part of the college process is that there are a large number of highly gifted to genius level kids who want that environment, but cannot get in. There are too few spots , so not all who want it or “need” it can be there.”
Not sure I agree with this although if you hang out on CC long enough you will start to believe it. I’ll take Rutgers-- kids in NJ just refuse to believe the intellectual depth (and breadth) that exists at Rutgers-- among the faculty ABSOLUTELY, and once you get away from the pre-professional majors (which every flagship needs to have) among the student body as well. Too few spots at the state flagships for kids with extraordinary intellectual achievement and aspirations? I just don’t believe it.
The problem isn’t too few spots. The problem is that kids don’t want to be where those spots are unless it’s named Wharton or its equivalents.
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I had a kid that hit the ceiling of the GT screener at school at age 6. And was subsequently labelled PG. That kid had a very circutous educational path. We are upper middle class in an urban area. So we have working vehicles, an emergency fund, a nice 2000 sq ft house in a good neighborhood, etc. But dropping 40K+ a year x 2 kids for private prep school while saving for college and prepping for retirement as older parents didn’t feel like responsible use of funds. And when we were first looking, that didn’t even seem like a great fit for an opinionated 6 year old reading harry potter and arguing about math problems. Started algebra at age 10.
Anyway, many years later that kid had stats to apply to any school. Deep extracurriculars, but didn’t pursue competition in ways that would make him stand out. Would have fit right in at a school like MIT or CalTech. That was not a financial option for us. Went to a state flagship, graduated in the top 5%. Definitely felt like a big fish, but had a wonderful nerdy peer group. Faculty jobs at R1 universities are extremely competitive. Zero complaints about faculty. Not every super academically motivated student can gun for high end privates. In a class of 8000, when the average ACT is 28-32 if you weigh that as a rough marker of academic prowess, which seems popular here, that means there were 2000 students per year with scores higher than that. And it was not test optional when he applied. It’s a bit laughable to me when people talk about a student not being able to connect with a highly motivated peer group in a setting like that. Where there is more affordable options, some students will chose that path.
So I think the process is broken but maybe not in the same way some do. When we don’t have affordable paths and bright, motivated students are able to fall through cracks. I think we need to be better funding our public options and be looking at how we are funding organizations that mostly serve the wealthiest. Our state has recently made some very good changes. One of my kids did dual enrollment at a community college that recently transfered a student to MIT. There are highly capable students out there in a variety of settings. I will also say, having both kids use urban CC for dual enrollment, I was impressed both faculty and class quality (some teaching at fancier schools across town as well) and the stories of many of their students in a high pell eligibility.
I will also say kid above recently graduated college. Got a $$$$ job at a company with about a 1% hiring rate sitting next to T10 grads among many others. Had to do many hours of essentially standardized testing to do it. I think that is an intersesting choice for an employer hiring a lot of new grads and it makes me think they don’t necessarily trust any partiucular school to deliver a particular kind of student.
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Is pure math a pre-professional major?
I guess it can be. But it’s not generally viewed that way, and in my experience, most kids excited about deep math learning in high school aren’t doing it for the quant jobs.
And finding a peer group can very much be a problem in a smaller state like ours, where all top math kids leave the state. If you live in California or Michigan, sure, it’s a different story.
And so the proposition to “just make sure all state flagships are good enough for everyone” sounds even more pollyannish to me than one looking for a system where such kids can be clustered together more reliably.
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Employers seem to trust testing more than some colleges.
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Congrats to your kid!
“It is not the places that grace men, but men the places”.
And isn’t it interesting that the kinds of places that understand that aren’t very “holistic” in their hiring practices?
…Sounds like our kids might be eating lunch together:)
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I don’t know where you live- but I’ve known “top math kids” who have ended up at UIUC, Wisconsin, Virginia, U Mass and Stonybrook (so let’s add Illinois, Wisconsin, Virginia, Massachusetts and NY to your very short list) and they’ve gone on to do what it is that they set out to do (top flight grad programs). yes- it’s tough to be the kid from Wyoming or Montana or another low population state.
Yes, it is.
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Of course, that foregoes the possibility of in-state public reduced tuition and (sometimes, depending on the state) better financial aid. Students from more financially challenged situations (e.g. low income, divorced parents) may be financially limited from many of the out-of-state or private options.
I am not at all anti-standardized tests, but the purpose of hiring and the purpose of higher education are different.
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It would have to be a state that guaranteed all people human rights. So that cuts Texas right out. And here we probably have the real problem with “one national school” – every state thinks their set of laws is the best for encouraging society, and there’s at least one other state that thinks their laws damage society.
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I disagree. i think those kids do just fine and most graduate debt free so can go on to any career they want or to grad schools. Those states have a lot of money they are putting into education, both k-12 and college.
Well, I can’t honestly speak to the two states above specifically.
But the state we live in is not exactly considered an academic powerhouse. Our state flagship, in the second hundred of USNWR rankings fwiw, is a great place for many kids and many purposes (DW earned her 2nd and 3rd degrees there), but it isn’t where we wanted to see our kids, even though they both won full tuition scholarships there (the youngest several times over) — and it has little to do with prestige and a lot to do with the academic peer group.
If your kid is #1 in your state in their cohort in their chosen field, with not even a close 2nd, then to find other kids like them, they have to go out of state. It’s just math.
Can one succeed out of anywhere? Absolutely, they can. Lots of stories I can tell.
But I’ve seen the difference the right peer group can make in my kids’ eyes.
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I am not in any way disputing your position (and your kids sound fantastic btw).
But is the entire admissions process “broken” because there are kids at the tail end of ability/intellect in 10 states who cannot find their peers at their own state flagship? And we should throw out the baby with the bathwater, start an entirely new national university from scratch, reconfigure how we do admissions, etc. for the three handfuls of kids per year who fit your description?
I agree that this is a problem. My question is the best fix. And to me, localized, targeted subsidies for these kids so they can go where they want to/need to go is the cheapest and most efficient solution.
An analogy (so we aren’t talking specifically about your kids and the kind of “giftedness” they exhibit)… there are LOTS of places in the country where an astonishing musical talent cannot find the right instructor. Does this mean that we need to invest in a national network of conservatory level institutions? Some might say yes. I’d argue that making sure that every kid who has the talent, drive, and desire to be at Julliard or Curtis or the two handfuls of similar places-- financial support, logistical support, outreach to regional symphony and musical organizations so they know where to send their best and brightest for an audition- that’s the easiest way to solve the problem of “No conservatory in rural Mississippi”.
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I don’t know what the fix is either - and I am definitely not advocating for opening new universities:) (although that’s precisely what Brandeis founders ended up doing)
Great analogy with conservatories! I do believe they weigh auditions heavily?
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The Brandeis situation was completely different. As far as I know there are no quotas preventing math prodigies from West Virginia or Wyoming from attending the college of their choice.
Yes, auditions weigh heavily. How else do you determine who is a competent musician vs. a stellar one? There are no lack of “music major opportunities” in the US… but conservatory level talent is on a different plane.