“Assertive mating”… well, that would explain why there were so many cousins.
I read long time ago somewhere that according to some research the biggest factor to a child’s doing well academically was to surround them with books, even if the parents don’t read them.
Genetics. Wealth which affects Parental envolvement in ECs (paying, driving etc) and envolvement in the college process including using ED! Not alot mentioned on this thread about ED… I’m seen alot of you savy CC members mention using ED.
I guess I’ll call mine assertive parenting! For my oldest S19, genetics cannot come into play as he’s adopted from overseas. So whether the fact that he’s naturally bright or I’m too assertive is the million dollar question. He tests very well but is that my assertive Practice Practice Practice mantra?? Who knows.
@sbjdorlo – congrats on how well your kids are doing!
Question: when you say 1000 point higher than local public, was that 1600 point scale or 2400? My kids were close to 600 points higher than local–on a 1600 point scale. I say that not to brag but to say this: They went to the local public anyway. They flourished there and found cohorts of likeminded students (not necessarily uber-high SATs, but serious, inquisitive students who fared fine in college apps.)
I just want to say that a student can achieve no matter what the school’s SATs, and that on a whole, the scores more reflect the location’s SES, not the education available.
So it sounds like you did great with your kids, but I just didn’t want there to be an assumed negative about schools that don’t have optimal “numbers.”
I had to laugh when I read some of the responses to my post re not letting kids miss school. Some clarification:
If they were really sick (fever, constant cough, whatever, they stayed home because that was best for everyone; them and everyone around them). What I was implying is we didn’t EVER let them get out of things because they didn’t feel good or were tired. If D was up late doing homework because she didn’t start at a reasonable time - too bad, so sad! If S was not prepared for a presentation because he was at a baseball tournament all weekend and hadn’t properly scheduled himself prior, too bad, so sad! The point was, school comes first. If you can’t do that, you can’t do the other stuff. It was about setting priorities, understanding of what’s important, and being responsible.
Regarding travel and family trips - we’ve been on MANY MANY wonderful memory making trips all over the US (haven’t done the foreign travel thing). Our kids have spent quality time in many of our national parks hiking, camping, white water rafting (funny I didn’t get to do that until I was mid 30s; they’ve rafted in 10 states, climbed mountains, learned to fly fish). They’ve been to the major museums and Broadway shows, baseball games at Fenway Park, etc. We’ve just done all those great things during school breaks. We wouldn’t consider doing it otherwise because school comes first.
Someone mentioned being an entrepreneur, focusing on results not time with butts in seats. Actually, I’m an entrepreneur and completely believe in a results driven world. Having built a successful business affords us the opportunity to take these trips and when we do, I completely unplug. No office communication whatsoever. Did it for 3 weeks once and had to laugh when I checked VM at the airport on the way home. SEC regulators stopped by to do a random, unannounced office audit and my staff was frantically trying to reach me (oh well, no cell reception in the Rockies). Best inspection I ever had probably because I wasn’t there. Have had many conversations with my kids about building businesses and the results world. I call this The Two Economies: Results vs. Time & Effort. They need to know about both. Not everyone is going to build a business but everyone needs to be able to set priorities, commit and follow through. I feel school years provide an opportunity to develop those skills and we took that seriously so our kids would be able to make decisions later in life.
Oh and BTW, my elementary school teaching wife would NEVER allow missing school unless a limb was severed. I could have started and ended with that!
Everyone goes about it differently but I clearly think it’s about expectations communicated and environment established.
@garland, great question! This was on the 2400 scale since my boys took the tests before the new one came out. (The average for local high school is about 1300 on the old 2400 scale) School is 90% non-white, 73% disadvantaged, and ranked 326 in California High Schools. I pointed out the scores to say that there was a mismatch educationally between my sons and the local high school.
The school was close to closing about 10 years ago, but they restructured it into 4 smaller schools, and it seems to have given students a lot more options for post high school including trade skills, but the education at the local school just wasn’t a good fit when my boys were in high school.
^Hah, my kids took the 1600-based SAT before the “new one” (2400 top score) came out. 
Dang, poor proof reading strikes again (my previous post). Re the post above, congratulations, I don’t think it is purely the luck of the draw - you set up the hope and expectation that the kids will go to college - they were bright enough to capitalize on that support.
@rickle1 yes, i knew what you meant about staying home and I think that echoes my point, which is that we never tried to “help” our kids with their homework or make excuses for them. Talk to the teacher. I think you are exactly right, let them work it out early in high school, and don’t punish them for failing or struggling and by the end you can see remarkable growth. The caveat is, and we did not have to deal with this, serious mental health issues or learning disabilities are not opportunities for “tough love”, but appropriate intervention. But, for the family not dealing with those issues, if you want your child to attend the best college for them, and succeed at that college, whether it is an elite college or other place, let them struggle early on to manage time, difficult teachers, and material.
^ yes mental health issues fall into a totally different category.
There is also more general stress related to these things today. We try to have rational conversations with our kids. “You’ve been here before, you succeeded, you can do this…” 2 kids each with totally different personalities and ways of handling things. S is very logical / rational. He understands what needs to be done. May have a moment when he says, “Geez how am I going to get this all done…?” but hen remembers last time and the time before and knows he can do it. Uses experience as quiet confidence. D is 100% emotional (she’s an actor - a good one too). Everything is drama. "OMG - how am I going to do this? Not fair! Why do they do this to me…? She ultimately gets it all done too but has a very different experience with it.
It’s the difference between 10 yrs experience and 1 yr experience 10 times. I try to show her how she can incorporate other methods into her world, but to no avail. At the end of the day, they are who they are (god bless them), and will do what they do. Truth be told, the frantic one likely has more fun flying by the seat of her pants than the structured one (although he would say the fun comes from succeeding without the heartburn!).
Key is early decision. Many of my friends chose early decision because it has a higher percentage rate in accepting the student.
I’m also growing tired of the phrase “tough love”. What’s tough about it? Explain your expectations to your kids. Even provide the guidance to get them going in the right direction. Let them plot their course, and succeed or fail / then succeed, and move on. It’s basic actions / consequences stuff.
To bring it back to the OP topic, some times those actions / consequences have a lot to do with HS grades, college acceptances, jobs and career. Sometimes they don’t. If motivated, creme generally rises to the top.
Can you think of a family where the parents have below average intelligence and their unhooked kids are attending an elite school? I can’t.
Genetics
Work ethic
Parents expectations/encouragement.
Peer group (fellow students/friends)
Opportunities (ECs)
Understanding college admissions to elite colleges.
All play an important component.
^^Actually, yes. I married one such person.
@socaldad2002 Great post! I agree with this but would place far less emphasis on Genetics and far more on Work Ethic and Parents Expectations. Have soooo many friends who are smart, professional, great jobs, etc. who constantly would ask us why we were looking outside of the state and what’s wrong with state U, etc. Consequently, ALL of their kids go to the major state Us in our state. None of them have aspirations about something else or “bigger and better”. Nothing wrong with any of that. Just making the point that it wasn’t important to the parents so it never became important to the kids. Kids took all the APs and DEs but from the vantage point of knocking out credits at state U. Just a very limited vision of opportunities.
This, friends, is where that one special teacher can make a life-changing difference. In DH’s case, it was a debate coach who spent thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to make sure that kids of limited means were able to get appropriate clothing, have entry fees paid, and had money for meals/transportation to tournaments. DH won a full tuition scholarship to an Ivy (back when there was still some merit money to be had), and he was far from the only one who benefited from this teacher’s generosity. After this dear man passed away, the alumni and forensics board immediately concluded that the most logical tribute to this man was to build an endowment that would continue to fund these things so that students could participate regardless of means. This man’s actions had a direct influence on how we chose to raise and educate our sons.
I also agree with the combination of factors listed in @socaldad2002 's post but with the kid’s work ethic being by far the the most important.
Our two daughters graduated 2nd and 1st in their respective HS classes and both went to the Ivy League. Whenever some other parent asks me “How did you do it?” I answer that “I didn’t do it. The girls did it.” They were the ones who put in the work, studied hard, earned the grades, took the SATs seriously, won the awards, did the ECs, led the group projects, stayed out of trouble, etc.
All those other factors were important to get into high-end schools, but the most important was that the girls wanted it for themselves and were willing to work for it. A kid can have all the best genes, opportunities, peer groups, and engaged parents in the world, but if the kid is unable or unwilling to put in the work and sustain it over four years of high school, it ain’t going to happen.
@Scipio Do you and your spouse get credit for instilling that kind of work ethic though or do you think it was innate?
@doschicos I’m not sure. We didn’t deliberately set out to instill that work ethic per se. I wouldn’t know for sure how to do that. It seemed to arise from the girls themselves. We did set high expectations and provided a lot of positive support and opportunities to enable them to achieve those expectations. But I’ve seen other parents who did all those same things and still had one or more kids who didn’t particularly want to go to a top school and were content to coast through high school and then go to local state colleges. And if one of my kids had chosen that path, that would have been okay too (sure would have save me a lot of money as well).
I think it helped D2 to have the example of D1. She wanted to excel like her big sister had done. However, she did get sick to death of friends and teachers asking her all the way through HS whether she planned to Harvard as D1 had done. So she plotted a somewhat different path. Still very high achieving, and still wanted to go out of state - Ivy or other top schools if possible, but with different ECs, different college, and different majors.