<p>Pizzagirl, I’m sorry some of my preconceptions about you were wrong. Although, you admit that your kids selected pretty good colleges and you helped as much as you could to increase their chances of admission. This is a very appropriate way to go. We should be helping our kids, within reasons, to achieve their best potential. But in your posts you often come out as advising people that it doesn’t matter where their kids would go and they shouldn’t try to increase their chances.
If my personal experience is interesting to anyone here, we don’t care for prestige. We only care for our kids to have the environment where they can achieve their potential. One went to a public university because that’s what he wanted. The younger one showed an aptitude in one area since early childhood, so we created opportunities for him to develop this aptitude. And of course helped him to become a rounded person. He always did what he wanted to do. It is just pure luck that he is so focused and determined. He applied to only 6 colleges, all top ranked in his area and having ECs that matter to him. He got into 4, was waitlisted by 1, and rejected by 1. He had no paid advisers or tutors (however, if we had the means we would consider hiring an adviser), he is not a minority or athlete, or any other hook. We are very happy with the outcome. In this case the advice “be yourself” worked really well.</p>
<p>Belyavsky,
so if teachers’ salary is one of the lowest in the professions requiring college degree, then social value of our kids’ educators must be really low. It’s probably true in this country. But is this good? Or perhaps it’s a problem?</p>
<p>From xiggi’s link - </p>
<p>“Iris W. Tian ’11, who is in her first year teaching the ninth and twelfth grades in Houston with TFA”</p>
<p>I believe I might have seen this person at a Harvard presentation in 2011. There was another Hispanic guy who was also with TFA but an year into it already and answering most of the questions about his life at Harvard.</p>
<p>Most elite schools are using their TFA teachers in the local presentations for maximum effect.</p>
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<p>I have never said “it doesn’t matter” or that kids shouldn’t try to improve their chances. But there is only so much whining that can be withstood about what a tragedy it is that someone didn’t make it into her very top choice Ivies and has to “settle” for - in the case of Miss Weiss whose article prompted this thread - the U of Michigan. And there is only so much whining that can be withstood about how apparently only HYPSM are the only schools worth attending and everything else is just sloppy seconds. It’s nonsense, it’s ridiculous, and I will be condescending and patronizing towards those views.</p>
<p>There are very good teachers who deserve much higher pay. But the teachers union won’t allow pay for performance at least in my state.</p>
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<p>(1) It was started by a Princeton graduate, Wendy Kopp, and 18% of Harvard grads (and I assume similar percentages at other prestigious schools) applied there, according to their site.</p>
<p>(2) The assumptions of TFA are widely shared by our elites:
(a) Improving education is very important to boost the economy and solve social problems.
(b) All children can learn – IQ constraints play little role in academic achievement. If most students in some schools perform poorly, it must be the schools’ fault.
(c) Closing various achievement gaps is both possible and a moral and economic imperative.</p>
<p>I will try to expose my children to a different point of view before they go to college.</p>
<p>tigerdad - post 645.</p>
<p>I agree with you about premed and I personally am breaking the rule about spending the money because I suspect my kid may switch gears.</p>
<p>Prelaw on the other hand may be a different animal. One has to look at top law schools to see who they are admitting and it turns out they use up most of their seats for other top school kids. If we were to say where you do law does not impact your income, then there is truly no need to attend top law schools but there seems to be a very high correlation between the school and income.</p>
<p>^ I agree. The name matters in law school much more than med school because of the over supply of law school grads and the demand hasn’t gone up much in the last 20 years.</p>
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<p>You can’t conclude this until you know what their APPLICANT pool consisted of. You don’t know if their APPLICANT pool consisted of 15% “average” school kids and 85% elite school kids, or 85% “average” school kids and 15% elite school kids. Until you know that - and until you know the qualifications of each group of students - you can’t draw any such conclusion about “who they favor.”</p>
<p>^ what if the regular school kids don’t bother applying because the law school results reflect no admits over the past 5 years for anyone from their school? It is a perpetuating downward spiral.</p>
<p>Beliavsky
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<p>Well, some achievement gaps are possible to close, depending on the method and the subjects (the individuals, giving and receiving), as well as the motivation.</p>
<p>And I would agree with the elites that it’s certain a morally desirable objective, if not “an imperative.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, most people still don’t “get” why some particular schools/neighborhoods continue to underperform alarmingly: It’s about culture, and it’s about home environment.</p>
<p>Absolutely everything has been tried, short of imprisonment. Even TFA is not making long-term gains in such schools, despite their impressive passion. Nor have crack teams of educators whose methods and classroom teaching I have personally observed, in my role. One will find no more self-sacrificial, knowledgeable, and professional groups of educators than some who have braved the most intransigeant learning environments in this country, including the most dangeorus urban situations and the most neglected rural South.</p>
<p>The gains ^ are short-term, by the admission of such groups. Why? Because the parents are not educated, and the students return to educationally deprived homes every evening. A Ph.d is not necessary, just literacy, basic enthusiasm for learning, a culture of academics at home, and, at the very least, a surrounding environment not hostile to education, let alone to “elitism” and “prestige.”</p>
<p>Most of the correlation between income and student success is due to the correlation between parental income and parental education. I hate to break it to TFA, but asking students to “go it alone,” despite under-educated parents who cannot support their students’ education beyond grade 3, despite a surrounding local culture which at the very least sends mixed messages to the student (about education), is not a recipe for academic success.</p>
<p>(1) Several years ago on CC, I got into a conversation with the poster Drosselmeier (home-schooled kids) about adult education for undereducated black parents, as a better initiative than one more failed experiment. He agreed with me. At one point, Obama had planned that as an educational initiative as well. I don’t know what has come of that.</p>
<p>In one of the more publicized experiments in the rural south (several years ago), a top team of administrators and teachers --mostly black, a few white-- entered into an intensive reading program, primary level, in the local publics. The leaders took big chunks of time/money out of their regular careers in education to do this. It was successful for a very short time. Those gains were not sustained. They discovered, rather, that the real problem, was the functional illiteracy of the parents. They therefore concentrated their next suggestions in the direction of adult education. I don’t know how far they got with that, or what the follow-through was. I believe the State was Mississippi.</p>
<p>(2) High-performing secondary-level urban charter schools (KIPP, Aspire, Leadership, others), whose in-school culture is single-mindedly College for Everyone, which have long school days and tough discipline, have found that it is very difficult battling the out-of-school local culture which is anti-education. Therefore, selectively, some of them have hand-picked particularly capable and motivated students, lifted them out of that environment, and sent them to East Coast boarding schools where there is no question about what the local culture values, and no peers to battle on a daily basis.</p>
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<p>Thanks for your comments on TFA. When only 1/3 of KIPP students graduate from college, a single-minded College for Everyone ethos is unrealistic.</p>
<p>[‘No</a> Excuses’ Kids Go to College : Education Next](<a href=“http://educationnext.org/no-excuses-kids-go-to-college/]'No”>http://educationnext.org/no-excuses-kids-go-to-college/)
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<p>Beliavsky, some would argue that 1/3 is a heck of a lot better than what was happening pre-KIPP. Nevertheless, my argument is that the (a) the model is inefficient, even with that, (b) is risky without a boost in parental education, (c) has been shown to be a temporary model for the remaining 2/3.</p>
<p>Further, KIPP and KIPP-like is not available to everyone, and when not, districts and schools are left to their own desperate devices, which again tend to yield minimal or temporary gains. Check out the recent story on education in Memphis in the NYT’s Education section.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, regarding your post #650. My assertion that we should grant students aspiring to elite schools the right to decide to apply to those schools for a wide range of reasons (some of which we might deem silly or immature), was directed toward those posters who are expressing negative attitudes toward the reasons they believe those kids are applying. My comment was not directed at any admissions departments, because they obviously have the right to look for whatever expressed rationales they deem acceptable. </p>
<p>What I’m trying to address is all the mud-slinging toward students who dare to strongly desire to go to the top schools. On this thread they’re being accused of naivete, provincialism, materialism, hyper-focus on a few types of careers, hyper-focus on prestige and ranking, and so on. I merely wanted to suggest the unfairness of not similarly scrutinizing the motives of those students who strongly desire to apply to the local state school. In my experience, their reasons are no less silly and immature. In fact, I’d argue there’s far more silliness and provincialism in that group. They want to attend the same school so many others in their community have attended, regardless if it’s the best fit for them personally or not. Dad went there, big sister went there, their boyfriend is going, 50 other seniors from their high school are going, and so it makes sense (and takes very little imagination or research) to simply decide to go there too. Their reasons are often related to trivial things like the school’s football team. Yet I don’t know that I’ve never seen a CC thread with thousands of posts, that spewed vindictiveness toward those students.</p>
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I don’t think I’ve seen very many posts on here from parents stating that you were screwed careerwise if you didn’t attend the local state school. I’ve seen plenty stating that it’s almost impossible to get a job unless you attend a top 10 or 20 school. Which, IME and based on pure numerical logic is absurd.</p>
<p>As far as kids, there will always be some with silly or seemingly silly reasons they want to attend somewhere. I’d give them some slack myself. But I have seen several threads basically about “the stupidest reason kid wants to attend X or Y school.” I don’t think those threads are entirely about prestige and Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Our experience with state schools, at least here on the East Coast, is that they will admit upfront that some recruiters just do not visit their campus or hire their graduates for entry level jobs, unless there is a personal connection or the candidate fits a desired demographic. That is one reason that some give generous merit scholarships to outstanding students; it is their hope that these will turn into generous alums, OR improve alumni networks. (There are of course other motivations as well.)</p>
<p>When these schools compete with higher-ranked schools for desired candidates, they tend to emphasize their impressive advising services, small honors classes where students get individualized feed-back, and experience in helping students build resumes and prepare impressive applications to elite grad programs, professional schools, and national fellowships. They dangle the affordability of taking a fifth year to complete a second major, and the freedom to choose a career path without regard to the feasibility of paying back hefty loans. </p>
<p>They do not make pretend that the most selective consulting firms, I banks, or companies such as Google or Microsoft are knocking at their doors to take on their top graduates.</p>
<p>Of course, YMMV</p>
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<p>Wanting to go to top schools doesn’t make one naive, provincial, or materialistic. Acting as though one’s future is permanently made or permanently broken based on college admission is what is naive and provincial.</p>
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<p>Fully agreed. There are all different types of provincialism out there. Sometimes it’s midwestern why-would-you-ever-leave-the-state. Other times, it’s northeast why-would-you-ever-leave-the-northeast. Etc.</p>
<p>bovertine, I haven’t been on the “stupidest reason” thread in a while, but last I checked the majority of comments are from parents posting about their own children. The tone is more affectionate exasperation than judgmental or accusing. Ha ha, my kid only wants to attend a school which has a KFC nearby, isn’t that ridiculous? They aren’t the same tone as some posts on here which ascribe various failures in reasoning, sophistication, or priority-setting.</p>
<p>^^
How about this.
Here’s a post that ascribes those faults in logic, and it seems reasonably serious-</p>
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<p>And actually, that all may be true. Although I also suspect such students would be a lot harder to find posting on this website.</p>
<p>Once again, my main point is that I think you would be extremely hard pressed to find a post on here from an adult claiming that your life is ruined if you don’t attend some state flagship or directional U. I bet I could find plenty that imply just that regarding failure to attend some elite school. Maybe not those exact words, but statements to that effect.</p>
<p>TheGFG, I’m not sure if I’m not communicating or you’re not hearing. I am not saying that it’s wrong or bad to want to attend elite schools! I do think at that level, one should be able to articulate a reason other than “well, I hear it’s a top school, USNWR says so.” I also don’t think it’s wrong to want to get an excellent education; I do think it’s “wrong,” however, to think the world revolves around the Ivies (or pick whatever constellation of top schools you like) and not getting in those schools dooms you to a life of want-fries-with-that. Finally, given the acceptance rates - the vast majority of perfectly well qualified kids will be declined and disappointed, so for them to take it as referendums that they “weren’t good enough” is insane. If you put forth a reasonable application, you have what it takes, regardless if you weren’t chosen.</p>