<p>DS is on his way to one of the “lesser Ivies”, having been rejected from HYPD and MIT. Through CC and knowledge of where kids in DS’s class got in, I find myself thinking about whether DD, who is going into 8th grade, has what it takes to get into the schools DS didn’t. She’s very smart and musically talented, but I’m not sure she has the overdrive to achieve at the level that I’ve seen in kids who have been accepted to those schools. For instance, she enjoys playing in the school orchestra, but is not interested in taking it to the next level, i.e., trying out for a regional or state youth orchestra. I look at the stats posted by those kids and I am not sure that I want to put that kind of pressure on DD. Is anyone struggling with this dilemma with a second (or beyond)child?</p>
<p>My oldest was very strong academically, my younger child sounds like your second child too. He plays in orchestra, but that’s it. His grades are good, but not great. His sophomore PSAT scores suggest that he’ll be National Merit commended, but not a finalist. He’s immune to pressure. Frankly he’s a good kid, I think he’ll have some good choices even if they aren’t HYPMS.</p>
<p>I don’t have any more children at home to worry about this, but I wouldn’t see it as any kind of dilemma at all if I did. There is no justification at all for putting pressure on a child to raise his or her performance to a “HYPS” level from a “lesser Ivy” level, because frankly there isn’t any difference between those levels that anyone can control, much less parents. It’s just gambling with your child’s psyche. </p>
<p>If a kid wants to superperform, fine, but he or she should be doing it for him- or herself, not for the parents, and absolutely not for the Harvard admissions staff. The same level of measurable (high) performance will get a child into a range of colleges, which may include Harvard or Stanford, and may not. If it does, everyone can be patting themselves on the back, but if it doesn’t there shouldn’t be any sense of disappointment or falling short.</p>
<p>We don’t have any more kids facing college admissions either. BUT I will say…#2’s college search was not even remotely like #1’s college search. AND we had no need nor desire to compare the two. We treated each one like they had no siblings when it came to the college search.</p>
<p>you mean with the dilemma of fearing that your child (an individual cognitive unit) will not live up to your standards decided by a propagandistic and flawed academic ranking system? is it really so important that you cultivate this one into a better student than your son (who is going to an Ivy no less; the fact that you call it “lesser” is a joke)?</p>
<p>too much pressure.</p>
<p>My older daughter was aiming for HPS, but ended up at a lesser ivy. The adcom told her GC on the quiet that they were taking over 5 kids from her school and they didn’t think she would go, so they waitlisted her. We watched her walk a straight narrow line in hs with one goal in mind, right or wrong, just like so many other hs kids.</p>
<p>Our 5 years younger daughter appears to get better grades than her older sister with less work, just as good of ballet dancer, and an accomplished violin player. I think we are more relaxed with the younger one because it is not the end of the world if she doesn’t go to those top tier schools. Her sister is very happy at Cornell, and we think our younger daughter should also explore schools outside of Ivies. She was selected to go join a highly regarded regional orchestra and compete at a few events, she didn’t want to do it, and we didn’t pressure her either. Life is too short. We hope she will enjoy her high school years a little bit more.</p>
<p>My parents put little pressure on me, letting me do whatever I wanted, so long as it was respectable and honest. They didn’t ask me to get into a school of a certain rank, nor did they even question my decision not to apply to IL universities, unlike many of my teachers and friends. As a result, I became an independent goal-setter, and felt responsible for my success and failures. Of course, they helped me magnificently along the way, but I’m positive their desire to let me achieve what I wanted has been one of my keys to success.</p>
<p>SO, if I were in your shoes, I’d encourage your D to succeed, but not pressure her to live up to the hype set by your older D. My brother and I visited vastly different schools, but in the end we both ended up at 2 great universities.</p>
<p>After all, the Ivy League is really just the name of a sports conference. People often lose sight of that fact. Of course it’s an amazing accomplishment to be admitted to one of those universities, but there are many, many other great ones out there as well.</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your family, you have accomplished a great deal thus far!</p>
<p>Ivies are well regarded because they are all ranked top 15, not because of a sports conference.</p>
<p>No struggle here. We have one child left in HS. Daughter graduated College last year, oldest son just finished up his sophomore year in College. I am curious about where #3 will end up but that will totally depend on what fits him by the time we start looking. You’re not supposed to raise your kids so they fit into a certain college, you’re supposed to see what college fits them. There are lots of choices out there and I think it should be an enjoyable journey to find one that’s just right - not a stress test. :)</p>
<p>Hallomar –</p>
<p>Aaaugh! I can completely understand the feeling of having a child who could potentially grab what you perceive as that brass ring and wanting to position the child so she won’t be disappointed later if she hasn’t pursued the ring-path, but I still think you need to take a step back and look at this from a different perspective.</p>
<p>Is there some reason that HYPD and MIT are all better fits for your older son than the “lesser Ivy” he is about to attend? (If he is a tech type, I can see where losing out on MIT could feel like a real loss, but if that is the case, it would make more sense for him to have tried for Cal Tech kinds of schools as opposed to mourning HYPD.) </p>
<p>It doesn’t sound as if your younger daughter is falling asleep at night and rising in the morning chanting, “Harvard, Harvard, must go to Harvard” with a really good reason that this is the one and only school for her. Step back: Would attending Cornell, Amherst, or the University of Michigan honors program actually crush her spirit and give her inferior educational opportunities than HYPD and MIT? </p>
<p>It is very easy to get into the mindset of thinking that only certain, very few schools will do without regard to the fact that 1.) no matter how spectacular a student you have, odds are they won’t be accepted and 2.) there are any number of other schools that will be a superb fit for your student, and do not carry with their diplomas a stigma of inferiority. Particularly if you are in a community/school system full of parents who think that only irresponsible parents of stupid, lazy children do not groom these children for Harvard from the moment their tiny hands can hold a viola, it is hard not to feel that you might be selling your child down the river if you don’t shove that viola into those tiny hands and push your child toward Carnegie Hall. Resist the impulse! </p>
<p>Pushing your daughter toward the schools that rejected your son is going to contribute to making your son feel like a failure, even though his college acceptance is spectacular, and it is hard to think of an Ivy school where he won’t be able to get a wonderful education, meet wonderful peers, and move toward a wonderful future. Getting into a great school this year was really tough, and he made it into a top school, if not THE top school of choice. </p>
<p>Of course you should make opportunities available for your D to develop and shine in areas that give her pleasure, but pushing her and creating a sense that she needs to hustle and struggle right away or she won’t surpass her brother’s college result just isn’t fair to either of them. He did great. So will she.</p>
<p>I can’t quite get over the fact that the OP’s D is just finishing up 7th grade and the OP is thinking about college. Oh my…my youngest is just finishing up 7th grade and he’s still my baby. I’m more worried he’s going to get zits than where he goes to college…I’m definitely in the minority on these boards I guess!</p>
<p>I like Elizabeth Wissner-Gross’ book “What High Schools Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know): Create a Long-Term Plan for Your 7th to 10th Grader for Getting Into Top Colleges.”
She advocates thinking strategically about how the student is spending their time, especially their summers.
I don’t see how this is stressful…I would think that planning carefully would eliminate some stress because the student is making the most of their talents and passions.</p>
<p>My kids planned to have fun during their summers - and they did. There was nothing worth putting on a resume from their summer vacations. One is at a “top” Ivy and one is at a “top” LAC.</p>
<p>Siliconvalleymom - “strategic thinking” and a “long term plan” are fine for the kids who will do what you tell them to do, either because they share your goal and respect your advice, or because they don’t want to cross their parents by disagreeing. DD will not do anything she does not want to do - for instance, we have thrown all kinds of ideas at her for summer programs for this summer - chorus camp, strings camp, basketball camp, field hockey camp, even a-couple-of-weeks-on-a-lake-having-fun camp. Not interested. She would like to do a CTY program like her brother did, but is not particularly anxious to take the SATS. All we can do with her is suggest, although she recently decided she wanted to stop playing her only sport, and we’ve told her she has to do a sport, we don’t care which one. She’s very tall and has athletic ability - I would hate to see that wasted. But after previous summers of summer swim team and basketball camp, I don’t have a problem with her having one summer “off.” Maybe she needs to recharge her batteries . . .</p>
<p>Momofthreeboys,</p>
<p>My youngest is finishing up sixth grade. He does not talk about college, except that when he goes along with us for the visits, he rates the food! </p>
<p>Truthfully, my youngest son talks about what classes he wants to take in high school, hoping that he has the same English teacher as his older brother, because she is outstanding, a lot of fun and likes baseball like he does. At the same time, that English teacher says that she hopes she will have my youngest. She just thinks he’s so cute!</p>
<p>The best thing one can do for one’s children is realize that they are different, and their plans will be different, too. My oldest dreams Ivy or another top-flight school. The youngest says he just wants a college that has a hockey team, good food and lots of pretty girls.</p>
<p>The problem I have with thinking strategically for very young (eg 12 y.o. kids) is that there is a real tendency to launch them in a certain direction and then create the expectation that they will remain in this trajectory until college. Right now, upper echelon colleges in particular can’t shut up about kids with passion. A passion. A deep, early interest that the kid is self-motivated to pursue with gusto. Oh, and the kid should be very, very good at it, too. This is all well and good for the child who is very internally driven to write poetry, work on the literary magazine, and attend creative writing camp. But what happens if the child, in grade 11, decides she really wants to stop the literary stuff and put her effort into something else? Thinking strategically, she shouldn’t be trying out new things that cut into the older “passion” unless she is planning to be an instant prodegy in her new arena. I have actually had kids, at 16, tell me that they are interested in starting a new muscial instrument or put more of themselves into a sport they’re never going to be very good at, but explain that there’s no point…meaning no point for college. Sadly, I think they’re right, but I also think that this is very, very bad for human development. It tracks kids very narrowly from an early age, and discourages pouring time or energy into exploration, dead ends, and brief enthusiasms. </p>
<p>With my oldest, who did have one area that she’d been into forever, and was very good at, I thought I was thinking strategically by encouraging her to be well-rounded. (Obviously, I hadn’t found CC or attended a series of college nights where I later learned the “passion” mantra.) I wanted her to stop pouring all of her energy into the one, beloved activity and go do something else (preferably involving leadership), in large part because I thought that that was what she had to do to have the opportunity to attend the colleges that interested her. I didn’t realize that passion was the new well-rounded. </p>
<p>I am concerned that “thinking strategically,” or plannning out the child’s life according to the fashion in college admission as opposed to allowing the child to truly take the lead and self-actualize according to her own internal needs and desires, may be good for college admission but not necessarily so great for the child.</p>
<p>momread - oh yes and man are they different! I wish like crazy I would have had a daughter but I would never, ever have guessed that three boys born of the same parents could be so different.</p>
<p>I want to add a note about the book mentioned above, "“What High Schools Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know)” – we regard that book pretty much as evil incarnate at our house. I have 3 very different kids, in terms of their talents, commitment to one or more ‘passion’, level of organization and motivation, ambition to be at the highest ranked possible school, etc. However, not one would for a moment agree to be packaged, polished and promoted the way that book suggests, not one would agree to viewing the world of their peers, teachers and hoped-for universities with the paranoid obsession recommended by Wissner-Gross. They may all at times think that I’m much too interested in college selection and applications, but all they have to do is take a quick glance at that book to calm down and realize how good they have it!</p>
<p>Have you read the book? The author’s whole point is that colleges look for substance and that the student’s own interests and strengths over many years are the basis for that substance.</p>
<p>I have three kids, and have gone through the college search process three times now. Each time, it was like starting over. Each kid was different, had different personality, different interests, different backgrounds (Yeah - same family, but still - different high school experiences, etc). </p>
<p>I say don’t worry. Your younger child may well want to go in a completely different direction. I recommend you concentrate on creating an environment where that is okay. </p>
<p>I speak from experience. S1 went to an Ivy, and S2 to a conservatory. D - 3rd child - is at a state school (although out of our state). We worked hard to help her realize that the next four years were going to be all about her, not her brothers. That she had nothing to “live up to.” That it wasn’t a contest. We even had to help her understand that she didn’t have to have schools that were in big cities, just because theirs were. The biggest hurdle we had to help her over was getting used to the fact that people were impressed by her brothers’ schools, but confused by hers - assuming they’d even heard of it. </p>
<p>After we got past that, she was amazed and excited by the choices she had.</p>