As a note, I obviously typed and posted my response before seeing either of CF’s posts 
So impostor syndrome for me is only for academics. I feel just as comfortable around those who make millions as I do around those who have nothing. Money doesn’t intimidate me in the least.
It’s kind of hard to explain but I’ll do my best
We’ll take my two recent PhD applications. One of them accepted only 2 students out of the near-hundred that applied, the other accepted 6 of 108. I was one of the 2 and one of the 6. However, when I compare my work to others’ work, I don’t feel as though I am up to the level that they’re at. I don’t feel like I’m the “type” of person who should be at the top tier of academia. Every one I know in the cohorts before me came from money, educated parents, and had a pedigree that funneled them into top programs along the way. I did not.
When I got my last acceptance, I thought there had to be some sort of mistake. It doesn’t matter how much people reason with me or tell me that I’m just as good as them, it doesn’t sink in. I know, logically, that there was a reason I was accepted. They spend months going over these applications and now I have professors at one of the best universities in the world fighting over me. Yet, somehow, I feel as though it’s happening to someone else. It doesn’t happen to people like me- a person who grew up on foodstamps and Medicaid with parents who barely finished high school.
Now, I should note, that even when I told my parents this they told me how dumb I sounded (in loving terms). It is purely a psychological thing.
Hm, I hope that at least kind of makes sense.
Have any of you read about [“stereotype threat”?](http://www.apa.org/research/action/stereotype.aspx) There is robust research that says that just the consciousness that one is in a group that is “supposed” to perform worse on a certain task makes one perform worse on it.
You tell a woman, “Women do worse on this math test than men,” and merely hearing that statement makes her do worse! If you tell her, women perform equally with men on this test, she performs equally with men. So, constantly reminding a woman, in her dorm, that she is the wrong kind of person may make her unconsciously give up on some kinds of social connection.
The brain is so strange. Our intuitive notions of how it works tend not to be correct.
The relevant part of Romani’s experience is that just like other emotions (for everybody, not just Rom), it’s not accessible to reason. The rational part of Romani’s brain says, “Romani, don’t be silly, they picked you and not all these other people for this elite program because you’re a star,” but the other part of her brain, the lizard part of her brain, is saying “I don’t belong here I don’t belong here I don’t belong here,” and the lizard part can’t be convinced by reason because it’s not a part of the brain that has reasoning capacity.
For another example of how emotions just aren’t amenable to rationality, I’m kind of a chicken on my mountain bike. I’m afraid of small logs, and steep loose downhills, and other features that other people are not afraid of, and that I can handle perfectly safely. But every time I approach one of those features, I’m afraid, and nervous, and I have to force myself to ride the feature. Sometimes near the end of a ride I just don’t have enough emotional energy left for a section, and I walk it, even though I’m perfectly capable of riding it and the rational part of my mind knows it.
Saying that someone “shouldn’t” have an emotion that they do have is not a useful response. If they do have it, we have to face the fact that they have it and it’s not going to go away if we patiently explain the emotion is wrong.
So, if the low SES women in the study feel like they’re lesser, and they’ll just be rejected if they try to connect, we can’t just say “They’re wrong” and wash our hands of the problem.
Rom, I hope that as you gain your well-deserved success, the emotional part of your brain will catch up with your achievements and you can feel that you belong.
Alh, I am going to disappoint you. I don’t think I am going to read the book. I was never in a sorority . I told my kids I don’t like sororities and fraternities. They both joined anyway. I think it worked out for them so what do I know.
I love CF’s posts #402 and #403.
Thank you for being much more eloquent than I am, CF.
Eventually, my brain will catch up. At this point, it still feels like a dream- like it’s happening to someone else. I’m going to wake up eventually and go “huh, that was weird”
Dstark: The main theme of the book isn’t sororities though I can see how it would seem that way based on all my many posts here. As you have pointed out, a lot of projection goes on in these threads,
I think the main point of the book is whether the concept of the American Dream is viable any longer, and whether state flagships support social mobility or may instead hinder it.
Others may have different ideas about the main theme. I’m not going to claim I’m right.
I’d say the main theme is how social class affects women’s college experiences, and how colleges like Indiana are failing their lower-income female students.
The book is entirely about women. I wouldn’t draw one single inference about men from the book.
Alh, Those are very big issues. You knew I was going to say that.
Agree. As I read I couldn’t help but picture my D, who is off to college next year, where we don’t yet know. She only applied to one school that is similar to “MU” and it’s her very least favorite so it is almost certain she won’t attend. “Whew”, was my thought about that.
Regarding the idea that a lot of these issues go away to a degree at more selective schools…well I don’t know. Is the “work hard play hard” philosophy of, say, a Vanderbilt or Emory (very selective schools with pretty active Greek life) something that mitigates these issues?
This is also not a book about women majoring in CS or engineering or one of the physical sciences, although a couple are in the business school or pre-health biology majors and presumably had to go beyond the simplest math classes that would get the job done.
The authors seem to think that these issues go away at more selective schools. It does seem that Greek life fills a different sort of niche at some of these schools, although I have to wonder about UVa or Duke, from tidbits I have read here and there. If you go onto some of the Greek forums, you will also notice that even at so-called elite schools, students rank each other by “tier” and that being good-looking and “not awkward” seem to contribute to ranking of organizations even at these schools.
Old research indicates that everything else being equal, lower SES students do better at elite schools. I would like to see more recent studies, especially studies that look at STEM retention/graduation rates, and especially for lower SES students not coming from magnet schools or with similar background.
I think you have to look at the niche Greek life fills at any school before determining whether it’s a positive, neutral, or negative feature. I mean, my mouth is agape at the descriptions of systems in which once you go Greek, you’re all in, you spend all your time there, you never interact with anyone who is not in the Greek system unless you have to, and you’re so all-consumed by it that you can’t engage in other campus activities / extracurriculars. It’s so foreign to me.
A good friend’s son is in a fraternity at NU. We visited recently and had lunch with him. He enjoys it and doesn’t seem “consumed”. In fact he’s not living in the house this year at all.
In the chapter on achievers and underachievers, I noticed that the girl who got into the “top tier” sorority found that the time demands interfered with her capacity to successfully complete her pre-professional program. The girls who were in the “lower tier” sorority found the sorority a helpful diversion from their studies, and perhaps a source of mentoring advice not available elsewhere.
Substitute athletics, or performing arts, or whatever else, for comparison, and keep in mind that even at elite schools, majors have varying levels of difficulty for the average student, attrition rates, and attraction to potential employers for students not going directly to graduate or professional school.
I wish the authors had gone more into on-ramps and off-ramps for various pathways. Here is where I think students seem to face their biggest challenges, if they do not have access to family support and social capital, and the school is not necessarily filling in the gap.
I also think part of what makes the playing field so uneven is a vast difference in knowledge of “unwritten rules on how to negotiate various pathways” among students entering college, and capacity to get students back on a viable track if they falter. (When viable tracks become few and unpredictable, and fewer families can provide extended back-up for lack of funds or social capital, we are entering a whole new landscape as well.)
Even those of us who are college grads ourselves are often surprised at how much has changed since we were in school, or how much classroom management can differ among schools even in, for instance, ABET accredited programs. (One of my kids attended a state school honors program and the other an elite private research institution, and it is always interesting to hear them compare notes.)
CF - I am still on the fence over whether I would advise a student of limited means to go to directional university or a state school if they were unable to qualify for financial support at an elite university. Lots would depend on what they wanted to study, and whether they would be taking weeder classes. (The decision between merit aid at a state school and need-based aid at an elite can also get complicated.)
When we were at an informational session at PSU several years ago, one of the professors mentioned that he would advise anyone contemplating weeder classes and not entering with superior preparation to strongly consider starting on a two year campus and waiting to transfer up to main campus to complete their program. His rationale was that both the honors classes and classes at the two year campuses provided hand-holding and individualized instruction, while the large lecture classes were mainly suitable as a review for students who had covered the material in high school. Also,even getting hit or miss help from a peer tutor or even a TA might not be nearly as effective as taking the class in a small setting with frequent feed-back from an experienced instructor.
Our state directional universities might also do a better job of getting students through these classes than the flagships.
frazzled2thecore: Thank you for that thoughtful analysis. Taking weeder classes in a less competitive environment seems important to success in some cases. This book has really made me think about how important mentoring is to students. It doesn’t have to be parents doing that job. It seems to me most students arriving at college, ready to hit the ground running, have already had lots of targeted mentoring.
I have been one of those “follow your bliss” kinds of parents, and have advised others to let their kids major in philosophy, English, history. etc. with the idea an educated person will find a job. This book makes me wonder how true that really is. I wish there had been more students with those sorts of majors so we could follow their trajectories. The Classics major goes to law school, which used to be a pretty standard progression back in my day.
I thought you were right about describing the elephant.
I wonder what it’s like for guys. A lot of the experience of the women in the book is particular to women. Most of the women who were successful had hands-on parents. Are parents able to be so hands-on to their sons? Are women more successful nowadays in college because they accept more advice from their parents than guys?
In my nuclear family, my extended family, my friends group, my kids’ friends groups, etc. I can’t think of any difference in how hands-on parents are with girls and boys. All my peers talk all the time about how involved we are in our kids’ lives compared to how involved our parents were in ours. And most of us had pretty involved parents. Our kids seem to want that level of involvement, even when they leave the nest. We are finding it interesting.
I imagine the reason I keep forgetting this book is just about girls is because I don’t really see gender differentiating parenting practices in my tribal bubble.
I want someone to do a parallel study at the school with the boys.
adding: In my bubble, no one buys infant clothing in gendered colors for baby gifts. And people are really serious about it. Just as a reference point.
Really? I read often here that sons are much more uncommunicative than daughters when they go away for college… In the book there were numerous instances where one of the women talked over choices with her parents. Sons are more likely just to check in for two minutes every six weeks.
My husband had to be away on a business trip the first weeks we were empty nesters. He called one of my best friends and asked her to come stay with me so I wouldn’t be too lonesome. Friend and I had a lot of fun things planned: museum outings, theater, restaurants. I had to keep excusing myself to take phone calls from college sons, a whole lot of phone calls. She was amazed and finally said, “I wish my kids called me more often.” She has three daughters
During the years they were in college, they called daily. Sometimes more than once. Sometimes they wanted advice and sometimes they just wanted someone they could **** at without repercussions. This was totally unexpected to me, but not seemingly unusual. I know other parents with sons who called frequently and asked for lots of advice. I used to spend time sitting in a college bookstore cafe and heard just as many boys as girls on the phone with mom or dad.
My kids found their tribes early on in college and weren’t calling because they didn’t have other social outlets. They brought their friends home with them on breaks. All their friends (male and female) were in constant communication with their parents. But that is probably one of those like to like things.
When I met some of those parents for the first time at graduations, we felt like we already knew each other.
adding: I have no idea how common what I see as a common experience really is.
Our experience was the opposite. We once got a call from Fang Jr at college saying, “The surgery went well.” WHAT???