<p>Is it just that I went to a hick high school over 35 years ago, or are graduating seniors so much brighter now? Their resumes are remarkable. Is this a matter of grade inflation and resume building or are students today much more ambitious? Is the 35% to 50% increase in applications due to technology making it easier to apply, or are there that many more qualified candidates?</p>
<p>In reply to your questions:
Both.
Both.
Both.
jk–My own high school, about that long ago, was semi-hick at best.</p>
<p>Honestly, in 20+ years of teaching college kids, I’d have to say no. Even with all the honors/AP stuff out there now, I can’t say my freshmen are any better prepared or any brighter than they were when I started in this business. They do expect better grades, however, my own spawn included.</p>
<p>^^No I don’t think on the surface they are brighter. They are different…they have had, in my opinion, a more rigid path in K-12 course curriculum with less emphasis on creativity and creative thought. They have been “programmed” to take tests often and have been validated by test scores their entire life. Grades in my opinion are inflated. A and Bs are common…everywhere… even in colleges. Cs which meant average 3-4 decades ago are looked down upon these days. Even the sacred SAT was “re-centered” because of years of declining scores and re-engineered to boot. A well known local academic wrote a scathing letter to the editor a few months ago when the local “honor roll” filled almost an entire newspaper page. The kids have been rewarded from everything from washing their hands frequently to turning in their papers on time and letters are now given in athletics for participation even if it’s bench sitting and not playing time. Every teacher gives “extra credit” - my college freshman reported one prof that assigned an “extra credit” paper and frequently my college kids have reported their “lowest test grade” is dropped. </p>
<p>These are the differences…statistically yes they “appear” brighter…but intellectually brighter I think not. When I look back on my grades in HS and college, my SAT and ACT scores and the resume I went off to college with…no flies on me. But the grades, SAT and ACT would appear “weaker” without recentering and recallibrating to what happens today…the resume of ECs and athletics wasn’t too shabby and would hold its own against today’s kids.</p>
<p>The kids are technologically strong but so what…I did statistics in the days before calculators and actually knew how to use a slide rule and I knew how to punch cards to make programs run. “My skills” were valuable then and the kids’ skills are valuable now. They might not know exactlly why something happens when they push buttons (unless they are a programmer) but they don’t need to know why. If anything “our” generation has had the best of both…we know why and if we’ve kept up with technology we know that too! I’m still “one up” on my kids anyway in that regard.</p>
<p>Finally there are many degrees that are housed in colleges now that were not necessary housed in universities decades ago. There used to be “nursing schools”, schools for physical therapy, schools for “business” and others. Those are now housed within the university structure (more kids “in college”). There are more “educated parents”, it was fairly rare for our generation to have college educated parents and even rarer to have college educated grandparents. Kids grow up within those types of familial expectations. There’s just simply more of them because of this and because their boomer parents (like H and I) all had “boomer babies” so the cycle produced more kids although we are “old” parents compared to our friends and the boomer generation is pretty much grandparenting now…that cycle is winding down.</p>
<p>I think today’s students are better at regurgitating, but not at solving problems. I put a lot of the blame on the test, test, test till you drop mentality.</p>
<p>I don’t know if kids are brighter or not, but I know that I feel “brighter” myself (at age 54). Or at least better educated, and I’m not talking about anything I learned in school. I think I owe a lot of that to those “bright” kids of yesteryear who developed the internet and the WWW. It is just so much easier to find information these days than when I went to school.<br>
If I read some new tidbit of information somewhere, or come across a new word or term, or even if I try to remember some long lost factoid from my own education, it is so much easier now to just Google it. I think we take it for granted.</p>
<p>My kids are much brighter than I am…but don’t tell them I said that!</p>
<p>I went to a “hick” high school myself (not really, but it seems that way in retrospect), and we simply did not know anything about competitive college admissions. I didn’t know I was “supposed” to do anything special, and nobody even told me how to apply to college. Most kids from my class went to community college or to our state universities. I went the community college –> non-flagship public university route.</p>
<p>Kids these days have more information, more data, more knowledge. I think that’s huge. They’re not necessarily brighter, but they ARE more well-informed.</p>
<p>While I still think my older son is brighter than me, I realized at some point that he was actually not more accomplished. I graduated at 16 and he was 19 - so with 4 AP classes by age 16 I actually beat him. Recentered our verbal scores were the same, he beat me in math by only 20 points. And I definitely will attribute his grades to grade inflation!</p>
<p>I agree kids tend to have been exposed to more information, but I don’t think they’ve always been able to process it as much.</p>
<p>I went to one of the best if not the best high school in my county, and close to the top in the state. Definitely not a “hick” high school.</p>
<p>Yet my kids’ high school, which is 1/3 the size of mine, has probably 5x as many AP courses available, maybe more. Both my kids have had to work way harder than I ever did in high school. More reading, more writing, lots more homework.</p>
<p>Number of colleges I applied to: 5
Number of meetings I had with my guidance counselor: 0
Amount of thought given to resume-building: 0</p>
<p>I think kids overall are as smart, although our school system is one of the top ones in our state, so maybe it’s just the kids I run in to. There is so much more emphasis on college now, that just didn’t exist 30 years ago. From where I sit, kids are definitely pushed much harder these days.</p>
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<p>Oh my gosh, I could have written this! In fact, I think I did on CC a few times. Absolutely and completely agree with you.</p>