It seems to me that unfortunately the “reward” for giving up your childhood for admission to an elite school is four more years on the treadmill at the elite school. I know that for our child, getting into a lower ranked SLAC feels like the best reward because he’s finally destressed, gotten involved in lots of campus activities and met some really great people in a great community. He has great relationships with his professors and is getting a great education without all the stress.
In my own life, I had elite schools all the way and the “reward” was the opportunity to live in a high-stress environment in an major urban area with lots of traffic, fierce competition of all kinds and a really high cost of living. Since then, we have moved out of the major urban area to a lower stress area of the country with great weather, access to great beaches on a regular basis and really laid back people, many of whom have moved here in order to retire in someplace great. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had given the whole ‘elite schools’ thing a pass, since I could have probably wound up in the same place without all the agony.
@sorghum, you haven’t lived until you’ve gone a few rounds with a neurosurgeon. Try a discogram where they inject dye into your spine and tilt the bed you are on practically on your head. That sensation of impending doom, pain, and the feeling that you are about to die or become paralyzed is such a rush!
What are you talking about, Momzie?? SLAC is not ‘lower ranked’–it’s a highly respected research facility run in conjunction with the Department of Energy. And I don’t think it’s a separate institution from the main university in terms of admissions, etc. It does have some outreach programs, though.
Our high school sends many to elite schools every year. Most of them did not “give up their childhood” in any way. They played sports, enjoyed other EC’s, went to parties, hung out with friends…all the stuff kids do.
I’m with you @ Momzie. Left the Northeast for sunny, beautiful, Southwest. Never going back! A huge benefit for our kids, who have no idea that some students spend their entire HS years obsessing and stressing about college admissions. My D’s tiny public charter school sends a couple kids to the Ivy League and top 10 LACs each year but there is zero competition and hardly even any discussion about college admissions.
“Giving up childhood” is a bit exaggeration. But I wouldn’t be surprised many get stressed out in HS. Considering how rapidly brain develop in kids at that age, the effect may be considerable.
I have used the metaphor of driving along interstates highways as opposed to indirect, scenic routes. The Interstate is, as a rule, the fastest, most direct way to travel, but that is no guarantee. The scenic roads allow for more pleasurable journeys, and the voyagers might accrue more valuable experiences en route, while others are stuck for hours waiting for a multi-vehicle accident to clear. I see a multitude of threads from students and parents here on CC who got stuck on the Interstate and feel aggrieved that kids who took the scenic routes beat them to their destinations. If everyone is chasing a handful of opportunities, the majority will be disappointed. What are you doing when you tell a 17-year-old that his or her life is over if he failed to get into one of a few colleges? One young man on CC believes that he can only achieve his goals of “helping people” through medicine if he goes to Duke. My husband was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer six years ago. The surgeon who saved his life by operating went to University of Cincinnati (undergraduate and medical school). A lot of the people building trophy mansions near me did not attend elite colleges, if they graduated from college at all. They are in fields like construction or own car dealerships. My husband and I are Ivy-educated deadbeats, as is my brother (Harvard, undergraduate and graduate schools). We all have enough to satisfy all of our needs and many of our desires, but we regularly encounter very prosperous people with less prestigious degrees than our own. There are infinite paths to fulfillment. Believing that there are only one or two guarantees frustration and disappointment.
First off, woogz, I’m glad your husband is better.
That’s what I don’t get about CC. The comment about the people building trophy mansions who might own construction companies, car dealerships, small restaurant chains, etc. It’s like this knowledge is completely foreign to people on CC when they don’t realize this is the case. How can you get to adulthood in America, drive down the street of any upper middle class suburb, and NOT realize that lots of people got there through plenty of careers that didn’t require elite degrees - and indeed most of them simply went to the state flagship? I am truly curious why people don’t get this or know this, especially when you get the inevitable drumbeat that “the only way to make money is go to an Ivy and work on Wall St.” People who think this way - why? Did it really not occur to you the guy who manages a couple of car dealerships really well can make a fortune?
Or the guy in my region with a GED who started out mowing lawns and now owns a huge tree/landscape/arboreal business? Young guy- much in demand as a motivational speaker, who turned his ADD into his “secret weapon”. Can’t sit at a desk, loves to be outside or on a rig/driving a truck/supervising a complex project.
There are lots of ways to make a fortune (still) in America!
@Iglooo: I know from Williams, but I didn’t learn about it until I’d been university faculty for some years. LACs, no matter how prestigious, are actually something a lot of university faculty (at non-LACs, of course) never have any reason to be terribly aware of.
(I think I have always been aware of Amherst, OTOH, but I suspect that’s from the Emily Dickinson connection.)
The thing is its not enough just to earn a fortune. It has to be done at an “elite” job if you went to elite schools, so that eliminates doing anything creative or off the beaten path.
Personally, I would much rather own a carwash than sell my soul to Biglaw (for example). Then again, I went to the “other” law school in Boston…
If the whole point of having “elite” jobs and lots of money is to cultivate sophistication and worldliness, then what’s the point of being so unknowledgeable that you actually think only Ivy/Wall St is the only road to economic success? It’s the antithesis of worldly.