Parents of the HS Class of 2026

Just because my D24 has 2 south Asian friends who experienced similar pressures & constraints from their parents absolutely does not mean that all south Asian or Asian parents in general are like this.

It’s an N=2. Not representative of the general population at all, or of this particular ethnic group.

I have no idea why my daughter’s 2 friends’ parents were/are like that. D24 has other south asian & other asian friends whose parents are not like that.

2 Likes

What I object to, regardless of the ethnicity or cultural background of the student & their family, is when parents put intense or unreasonable pressure on their high school student. When parents make it clear to their child that it’s “Top 20/Top 25 or bust” and the child has learned that if they don’t get into 1 of those colleges, then they’re a failure.

THAT is how you end up with a student who attempts to commit suicide over their college admissions.

THAT is how you end up with a student who has a mental breakdown in college…because of the intensity of the pressure to always be # 1.

I don’t care what color, race, or creed your family is. If you’re doing that to your kid, you’re not doing the student any favors.

Your mileage may vary.

7 Likes

Well, we’ve spent a few days in and around Boulder (campus tours are only tomorrow though we were on campus for a planetarium show last night) and C26 is in love with the place. Let’s see what the tours are like. There is clearly campus spirit around town and we’ve seen a number of Buffs sweatshirts, bumper stickers etc all around (including our visits to the neighboring towns). On that last - Mines isn’t on our list but we drove past a number of its building when we were in Golden and it looks pretty impressive - gleaming new-looking buildings etc. Not sure if anyone here has a student considering it for next year.

The class of 2025 thread reminded me I need to pop into TJ’s to get a local TJ bag!
Edit: popped into TJs and it was packed with students !

5 Likes

Speaking of all the test pressure- SAT attempt 3 is this week. I told D26 that I want her to try her best then be done. If she wants to try ACT I will pay but I am trying to take the pressure off. Almost all the schools she likes are test optional and it’s adding stress to her life.

Speaking of ACT, is there a decent practice test? If she scores super poorly on a practice I’ll encourage her to not take the test (why waste time and stress?). Her SAT is respectable but not Ivy League level. And I’m fine with that! She is coming to terms with that reality.

5 Likes

There are practice tests available here:Sample Questions - ACT Online Testing | The ACT Test

1 Like

Hope you enjoy the tour! I love the CU Boulder campus, and Boulder in general. Such a fun town!

1 Like

D26 did the practice test on the ACT site.

She took the SAT 3 times with minimal improvement despite hours of prep. She pivoted to the ACT in Feb and did much better on the ACT vs SAT, no idea why. Guess the test made more sense to her, even through she got less time per question than with the SAT.

1 Like

Okay, I am the biggest TJ’s fan and LOVE their bags and have a ton – but it never occurred to me to collect them from other cities! D’oh. I could have so many by now, lol.

Do you use all the ones you collect or just store them?

1 Like

College counselor recommended some more schools for D26 to consider:

  • University of Utah - D26 does NOT want to live in Utah, so that’s a no. This would be a WUE school for us (so affordable), but the 2 majors she likes at U of A are better. Basically any college in UT is a big no for reasons I won’t go into here.
  • Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL - Fits the bill for ‘not cold,’ but D26 feels it’s too far away. And I tend to agree w/her on that. Plus, I don’t think she’d mesh well with the Miami/Fort Lauderdale culture. Also, it’s 70+% female, which D26 feels is a negative.

Big physics test is coming up on Tuesday. AP exam prep has started. And on Tuesday, sign ups occur for what will be her LAST ‘project week’ ever. Basically, the last 5 days of school are half days (where school ends at lunch time) and you do fun educational stuff around a particular theme. The Latin/Classics teacher is doing one where everybody’s going to read The Odyssey out loud together. I kind of hope D26 picks that one because she’s totally into the “Epic The Musical” music right now, but I think she’s going to select a different one.

In other news, my DH fixed the broken ceiling fan in our kids’ bedroom. Just in time for the 90 degree temps that we’re going to have soon! :slight_smile:

4 Likes

This has started for my D26 too! She actually had an AP Lang practice test on Saturday morning at her school. Wow - I had no idea how serious this was taken. To be fair, I think it’s her particular teacher that wants the kids to practice and do well, which is great. But it’s again, so much work for a high school junior. Way more work than I remember at that age.

D26 is going to try the ACT in June after getting an offer from College Board to try the ACT and report her score to them. No idea how/why she got that offer, but she was willing to take the ACT for some cash, so we’ll see how it goes. She’s decided that she’s not going to really prepare for it much, but I’m kind of curious to see how she could do if she put her mind to it.

Also, we’re hearing about the seniors getting all their college acceptances and now D26 is starting to think about college more too. She’s been worried that students at her school don’t get into very competitive schools, but this year’s senior class is proving her wrong and getting her motivated. So interesting to see how her peers impact her thinking.

Lastly, anyone else noticing that the parent class threads and some of the no reply threads are the only ones worth being on here? I feel like I see folks from the parent threads venture to the compare college offers and the chance me/match me subforums and just get eaten by wolves. CC is a really weird place sometimes.

4 Likes

Junior year is intense!!!

2 Likes

Okay, I feel bad that I haven’t really been a good contributing CC member on the College match/chance me threads – once in awhile if I happen to see something that I know something about, I’ll post. But mostly I just post here and lurk on the 2025 thread. What do you mean, eaten by wolves?

D26 finished her run in the spring play this Saturday (it was great!), and next she’s doing a figure drawing class using a live model for the next five Tuesday evenings. We learned from RIT admissions that if she wants to pursue any major through their college of art & design – even New Media Design, which is mostly UX/UI type stuff – then they want to see a portfolio with some traditional observational drawing. Oy, she doesn’t really have that. She makes fantastic collages and loves to crochet and made an entire prom dress out of duct tape that was amazing, plus she doodles anime characters and such digitally – but she needs to learn traditional drawing, I guess. So, $200 of required art supplies later, I hope she gets something out of this class. (We were told a portfolio doesn’t need to have finished pieces – even sketches will give them an idea of the student’s capability.)

She’s also supposed to be working on her pieces for the drum major audition, but that got pushed aside for the play. Audition is on April 15. Next weekend is prom. She has a tentative plan with two friends and two acquaintances to go as a group to the big class-wide pictures/dinner thing. Crossing my fingers that it all goes smoothly.

Otherwise, I guess AP studying is next. She only has two – Calc AB and Physics 1. But she has a giant final project in honors architecture due pretty soon.

(Thankfully, she’s done with the SAT. Praise be.)

Oh! One weird thing – her friend that was in the play with her took the ACT on Saturday morning. The show was at 2 p.m. and he got extended time, so he took his costume with him, knowing he’d be cutting it close. Well, after taking the test, he was selected to take it again right then, and despite his saying he had a conflict, they wouldn’t let him leave. (Unclear if they actually detained him, or they said something like his morning test would be canceled if he didn’t agree to stay and take another one. I bet there’s fine print.) The second test was part of some trial program, I imagine.

But what the heck? Poor kid missed his entire part in the play, and they had to scramble to cover for him.

5 Likes

Oh, just that the comments on those forums seem to be overly challenging of the author. It’s just a vibe it gives off that everyone gets treated like a fool. Maybe I’m too sensitized to it. But I don’t think I’d ever post there unless I was responding to something specific that I happened to know something specific about.

Oh WOW. That’s crazy!

1 Like

Oh, huh. Now I need to go look!

1 Like

Totally. I posted a question about cybersecurity programs and some were very very blunt…saying stuff like “Oh with your daughter’s math SAT score, she shouldn’t major in cybersecurity or anything STEM.” However, I did open myself up for that by posting the question in the first place.

There’s a lot of Negative Nancy’s out there sometimes. People like that can go suck on a lemon.

That being said, I do think that the “Chance Me!” threads are kind of a waste of time because they’re full of people basically asking if The Borg Collective Of College Admissions Opinions think that they’ll get into “insert brand name U here.” Some people are super blunt. Other people say, “Eh maybe, but go for it anyway and then you can at least tell yourself that you tried.” And other people are Pollyanna and say, “You’ll get in for sure!”

2 Likes

I use them! I don’t have a lot really as I usually only get if I happen to go into a TJs anyway while I’m somewhere else. Today I made an exception as we are close to a TJs.

1 Like

I had to look up Epic the Musical – okay, I have no idea how my D22 isn’t obsessed with this, because it sounds right up her alley, lol. (Maybe she is, and she just hasn’t told me about it.) I’ll have to ask her!

1 Like

This was definitely the case at the beginning of Junior year for our daughter. Fortunately, the chatter has (for the most part) stopped. It took some conversation with her to put statements in perspective and context.

This was huge as our daughter was only allowed to look at in-state publics. Our starting place on all things college related was affordability. Without that, it was just a setup for large issues. The topic often began with we are doing this only under the assumption we won’t qualify for any sort of aid other than loans and we’re paying sticker price for 100% of it. Without this as the starting place, what schools to look at were completely off the table.

Grandparents were the ones repeatedly telling her Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc… That has since stopped. At first she was confused because they were telling her the exact opposite of what we were. Once she started telling them the in-state publics, they gave up.

This was a huge talking point in our house. Or daughter is not an Ivy League candidate in any manner. She is a hardworking student who is near the top of her class. Her SAT scores are absolutely no where near Ivy League requirements. They fall within the 50-75% on the provided stats from 2 of her schools and barely makes the 50% on her reach school.

She has finally comes to peace with knowing one test, not one school, does not define who she his and what she will do with her life.

3 Likes

This is also true for most of those who go on past UG to Grad/Professional schools. Sure, the quality of your undergraduate program may influence your grad/prof application for admissions - but to be competitive for top programs you have to perform whether you’re at a US News T25 or a small college that doesn’t have national prestige. There’s a little talk the first year or so on where you did your undergraduate but by 50% of the way in nobody cares because it’s about where you are now - your performance now among your cohort/colleagues is what is known.

Once you finish, it’s the quality of the program you went to grad/prof school, where you did your extern/internships, who’s vouching for you as mentor or LOR etc.

I’d guess there’s maybe some cache to where you did undergraduate in the Academic circles, maybe. However, every time I’ve been to Continuing Education or Professional Conferences - when the lights go down and the Speakers are being introduced as their CV is up on the screen. The Undergraduate Institution and BA / BS etc receives one single line. Masters gets one, especially if it’s the same institution as their PhD or Prof Degree, and the PhD or Prof Degree gets a paragraph or two as to what their thesis area was or what orgs they were inducted into in school… the bulk of their intro goes towards what they’ve actually accomplished, individually, to warrant their reputation / position.
<edit: typos>

1 Like

Not sure if true, but some companies/employers may ask for SAT scores.

Told my D24 to put it on her resume just in case.