<p>To an insecure person, self-assurance may be viewed as arrogance.</p>
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<p>that is where the “bad” kids are too! LOL Look at your kids friends, by their late teens, they USUALLY find the ones that have similar belief systems. Not always, but usually!</p>
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<p>I was having the discussion with my 17 -year old just yesterday about confidence vs arrogance, and some of the things he can do to appear confident without appearing arrogant. More importantly, how NOT to appear arrogant. I tried to explain to him that being humble can be a very good trait too. </p>
<p>Later, I realized how contradictory I sounded since for the past 8 months I have been trying to get him to write more about his accomplishments and his successes for college and scholarship applications! To “toot his own horn, because no one else will”! I know that he thinks I am crazy. But it is all part of the learning process for all of this.</p>
<p>Another thing to remember is that kids’ worlds are small. </p>
<p>Many of them really and truly are the best in something in their local environment. The smartest, the most widely-read, the most talented. Someone has to be.</p>
<p>I remember when I was a freshman in college, someone I’d just met made a comment about a particular role in a particular musical, saying if anyone ever did that show, they’d have to cast her because she didn’t think there was anyone else who could sing that character’s song. What a strange thing to say, really, when the show is produced professionally fairly regularly in many locations, so clearly there are lots of people who could play that role. But she didn’t know any, and had somehow come to the conclusion she was the only one who could do it.</p>
<p>There is a lot of “I thought I was the only one!” discovery that goes on freshman year. Kids who thought they were the only one who spoke multiple foreign languages, had read the entire works of Shakespeare, knew how to fly an airplane. But then they find out they are not, and the arrogance begins to fade.</p>
<p>P.S. I wound up playing the role my junior year of college. I learned the song. It wasn’t that hard.</p>
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<p>…and many times an insecure person portrays arrogance</p>
<p>If you are best in your school or town at everything, it seems to breed arrogance. I’ll give you that. However, the arrogance of the top 5 kids in a town does help to give the other 5 or so kids who make up the top 10 or so more humility. So just look for the schools where kids #6-10 go. Usually just as smart as kids #1-5, but less arrogance because they realize that at age 17 or 18 they aren’t the shiznit.</p>
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<p>I think this is incredibly insightful. I mean, let’s face it, the kids on CC who are putting down (say) #13 on the USNWR list because it’s not as awesome as #9, or who spend their time trying to sub-rank and sub-tier the nation’s best schools – they ARE kind of putzes, and it IS kind of hard to think of them as being well-liked by the rank and file.</p>
<p>I just asked my D, who is 17, what she thought about the difference between confidence and arrogance. After a couple of minutes playing Words with Friends, she replied that she thinks of arrogance as a comparison of oneself versus others - how they stack up. Confidence, OTOH, is about the skills/talents of the individual based on his/her own capabilities, without having to place oneself above others.</p>
<p>^^you have a very wise daughter.</p>
<p>I remember reading somewhere that high intelligence is correlated with self-doubt, while more intellectually average people have more faith in their own abilities relative to others. I don’t know how this fits in to the idea the kids at elite schools are necessarily more arrogant than others.</p>
<p>OP, actually here on cc I see the opposite. Like “help, freaked out junior, need help ASAP…2340, 3.98, will the B I got sophomore year phys ed keep me out of HYP??? Should I retake for 2400?? Please help!! Losing my mind!!” Well not quite, but close. A lot of insecure kids trying to be perfect, which I find quite sad.</p>
<p>@2331clk Nah, most of the kids with those posts are actually arrogant. They A) want everyone to see how “great” their stats are B) want to seem humble while doing it and C) get super defensive if anyone ever doubts their skills or ability to get into HYPSM. The lattermost is how you can really tell. Because as soon as someone says anything that remotely implies they may not get handed a HYPSM acceptance on a silver platter, they suddenly bring up all these reasons why they are so incredible and will still get in. Despite having made a post about being nervous in the first place.</p>
<p>“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”</p>
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<p>Some of the kids here - and some of the parents too - are that smart.</p>
<p>I think it’s great.</p>
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<p>It fits perfectly. Kids at elite schools are intellectually average. (Only joking…)</p>
<p>Some of the kids who are admitted to elite schools are not used to rejection or failure. It’s pretty near impossible to have lived 18 years without experiencing any failure, but remember back when the elite school adcoms started saying they worried about the kids with the perfect transcripts–fearing they wouldn’t be able to handle it if they didn’t do as well in college? My D has a friend from college who has been highly successful in a number of arenas. He’s not arrogant exactly, but has an unbridled optimism about himself that comes from almost never losing.</p>
<p>LOL about Frank Lloyd WRight! That’s what allowed him to design houses with furniture, then forbid the owners to rearrange even a piece of it, long after they had moved in! (FLW’s letters to owners of the Darwin Martin House, Buffalo).</p>
<p>Some kids seem arrogant because they are very bright, and speak their minds as if they were adults. They are much more polite in person. Plus, you think some of the kids are bad?? Ha, read some of the parents posts! Nobody can match the arrogance and bragging of a proud parent. Sometimes I just have to stop myself from remarking on how sickening some of this is. It makes you gag. The kids aren’t near as full of themselves!</p>
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<p>I agree with this. At Harvard, my daughter found that however smart and accomplished you thought you were, you regularly encountered plenty of kids who were even smarter and even more accomplished. And often they were also better looking and wittier than you too, plus kind and friendly to boot. A very humbling experience.</p>
<p>One of her good friends at first struggled with no longer being undisputed queen of the whole school as she had been back in HS. She got over it, but just being back somewhere in the middle of the pack was a new concept that took some getting used to.</p>
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<p>Yes…ouch…</p>
<p>But check this out…what some students think about the</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/1289940-best-country-live.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/1289940-best-country-live.html</a></p>
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<p>I would have to say that my child has unbridled optimism about herself–it certainly isn’t from almost never losing, LOL! I do think the atmosphere at many of the selective schools give kids the freedom to think big. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>Some of the incredibly arrogant kids will be humbled when the actual acceptances come out this spring – and so will their incredibly arrogant parents. (In our neck of the woods, there’s a PARTICULAR mom who keeps going on about how her daughter “likes Harvard the best, but Yale would be OK too” – and many of us are indeed looking forward to the humbling that will most likely take place. 96 percent chance of it, anyway.)</p>