<p>Perhaps the courses were prerequisites for more advanced classes, and the college did not allow college credit for some of the AP courses taken at the prep schools. Private colleges WANT full paying kids to stay 4-5 years: more classes= more $$ in tuition payments.</p>
<p>Yes… I’ve now read Kirmum’s article (link in my post #334), and the question remains: why don’t these kids sign up for harder classes</p>
<p>With a new wrinkle: why don’t these kids find ways to expand/extend the classes they are in to make them more interesting and relevant? </p>
<p>Here are some quotes I drew from the article (comments to follow)
</p>
<p>Well, S1 went to a college that did not grant Advanced Standing, and allowed only two AP credits to be used, but only after upper-level classes had been taken and the student had received at least a B. There was nothing to prevent students to take harder classes, and one can always talk one’s way into upper-level classes. </p>
<p>What well-prepared students may find easy is the amount of work to be handled in college. It is not significantly different from the more challenging classes one takes in high school (AP classes, if well taught, are supposed to be equivalent to college classes).</p>
<p>Now here’s my commentary. My take on the NY Times article is that it portrays a bunch of book-smart, overloaded high school students who have lost the sense of joy at inquiry and discovery, and have been so crammed to the gills with the concept that knowledge is something to be packaged and delivered to them that they lack the confidence to delve and explore, including revisiting whatever it is they think they already know. They are top-heavy with information, without the fundamentals or habits that would allow them to explore creatively on their own.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that is in fact the case – that is just what I get from the article, which like all such journalistic endeavors probably has a grain of truth and whole heap of exaggeration.</p>
<p>But I am still left with the question: why “coast”? Especially, why “coast” when the parents are paying $50K a year for the kid to be there. If my daughter were to tell me she was bored at college, I might ask her, “Aren’t there any books in Butler library that you haven’t read yet?” (Would never happen with my daughter, in any case – “bored” isn’t part of her vocabulary) But the point is – the resources at Ivy League colleges are amazing, and open to all who arrive. Just because the book isn’t on the assigned reading list doesn’t mean it can’t be read. </p>
<p>If the kids are arriving to the Ivy Leagues overflowing with knowledge but bereft of intellectual curiosity … it doesn’t say much for the schools they have attended. And its a very big mistake to assume that the students who arrive at the college campuses with less “preparation” are in any way behind; if they show up at the campus gates with open and eager minds, I think they may be way ahead of the game.</p>
<p>There are certain elite HS which provide the kind of writing, analytical and science courses being taught at elite universities. These graduates do have a easier time even when they take upper level courses because they have acquired already the necessary writing styles and analytical skills. In contrast, fewer students from public HS have those skills to match. Thus, even at the most elite colleges, you"ll find a percentage of students who can take on even the most demanding courses with relative ease even though the subjects may be entirely unfamiliar to them. </p>
<p>AP classes at public high schools are poor gauge of a student’s readiness for college.</p>
<p>Do not clink on any link I post! I am having an ongoing, off and on problem my virus protector is having trouble with.</p>
<p>Anyway, Calmom, the article I’m speaking of appeared the week before last in the education supplement. Search this site, it was posted here. It talks about the huge gap between bad schools which are getting worse, and good ones which are getting better. It talked about colleges (Stanford in particular I believe) that are making changes to accomodate kids who were just better prepared.</p>
<p>What is catching up? Can I ever catch up to my born wealthy peers who will always connect with the people they grew up among who tend to be the people with lots of power in law and business? They have a built in advantage I can never have.</p>
<p>In NY and LA they think your education strategy needs to start with preschool. The kids who follow this path and go to the best schools tend to be those who travel often, get lessons of every sort and are totally polished by college. A kid may catch up in terms of grades but the polish the prep school got will go a long way on interviews. </p>
<p>Mini has posted about this, the valuable thing he learned at Williams being the confidence of those from enriched backgrounds. Most of us will never catch up with many of the privileges confired with birth. </p>
<p>As calmom points out, some of the kids at privates (and suburban good publics) may be extremely sheltered. Do they ever catch up with a kid from the projects in terms of street smarts?</p>
<p>I will always believe the elite schools is worth paying for if business and law are the goal.</p>
<p>The NY Times article, if I recall correctly, did not say the students are bored. It just say that the students are able to explore more than just class room academics. They may be sitting at the libraries doing random reading. That is at least what my D is doing half the time at the library. Have you seen the collection of journals?</p>
<p>By the way, my daughter arrived at college from a rather lax public school, and she still finds the “workload” of college easy to handle. She also found the course content extremely challenging. Fortunately, she never was trained to equate the time spent on a task with its intrinsic value.</p>
<p>Calmon, Didn’t you mention once she was finding a math class tough going?</p>
<p>Kirmum, you said the article referred to students who had attended prep schools like Andover. I did a search of New York times archives for the word “Andover” - as it was the only useful search term I could pull from your statement - and there was nothing there for the past 30 days. I only found “The Incredibles” article when I expanded my search. </p>
<p>Give me a search term I can use and I will find it. If you can’t safely post a link, but you have the article, post its title or a key phrase from it that uses fairly unique search terms. Proper names are always a very good search hook.</p>
<p>I started by going over the index of articles on line for the NYT Education section and did not find a different article that fits your description.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, the article was in the sunday Magazine</p>
<p>Padad, my daughter hasn’t taken a math class in college. My point, however, that challenging course work isn’t the same as overload. My daughter found her linguistics class extremely challenging, as did most of the other students in the class. Keeping up with the reading and assignments was easy. She has plenty of free time. </p>
<p>Understanding some key concepts required some extra effort, such as forming a study group, attending recitations, or going to the professor’s office hours for help. (In hindsight it turned out that part of the “challenge” came from TA’s grading inconsistently – she ended up with an A in the course, and considered the final exam to be relatively easy).</p>
<p>Padad, I agree 100% with your post #345 and I believe that is why my daughter does well even with advanced courses. Her school has a mandatory first year writing seminar, and part of the course involves peer grading or criticism of essays so she could see what the other 14 students were writing… and she felt she was way ahead of the game. I don’t know if it’s because of her schooling or in spite of it – but the point is that kid started out as a strong writer. </p>
<p>Being prepared for advanced courses and finding it relatively easy to tackle them in relation to effort/time expended does not equate to being bored by them, however. On the contrary, for a student who is prepared to learn, it simply provides the foundation for further exploration.</p>
<p>Sorry Calmon. Glad your D is doing so well. I didn’t know they actually use TA’s at Barnard. It is a wonderful school at a great location.</p>
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<p>“Campus Exposure” ???
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04sexmagazines.t.html?ex=1174363200&en=5df0bf8c66f59282&ei=5070[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04sexmagazines.t.html?ex=1174363200&en=5df0bf8c66f59282&ei=5070</a></p>
<p>:eek:</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ve gone back through the indexes of the Sunday Magazine for the past 2 weeks and that is the only college-oriented article I’ve found so far.</p>
<p>The Incredibles – It was a while ago and actually on a CC thread!
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/ed...&ex=1168318800[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/ed...&ex=1168318800</a></p>
<p>Thanks, CountingDown, but that’s the January article I already linked to and quoted extensively from – Kirmum said she meant something different after I posted it, Padad concurred and told me to look in the Sunday Mag.</p>
<p>Which was o.k., I found a really cool article about neuroscience and law that has kept me busy for the past 40 minutes or so… but it’s got nothing to do with this thread.</p>
<p>There are so many posts in this thread it is hard to read them all to see if this point has been made. I just want to say that I have attended and taught at some top ranked national universities and what a lot of people dont realize is that research is king these highly rated schools. Teaching undergrads is a dirty side job that many of the top professors with top credentials are not at all interested in. They show up for lectures completely unprepared, and pontificate for an hour and walk out. They are not evaluated or rewarded based on their teaching efforts or student ratings. The professors that win the teaching awards are viewed as “second tier” because they are usually not the brilliant researchers… I just wonder how many people realize this. For people in the know who have seen the system on the inside… many choose small LAC’s for their kids - where their kids will have profs who are there to teach. They save the big-name schools for graduate school. Apparently this is not common knowledge …but felt the need to share what I’ve seen a lot of “academics” choose for their own kids.</p>
<p>Padad, the course in question was at Columbia, but they do have TA’s in Barnard classes, too – at least the larger ones.</p>
<p>Now marite, we’re not referring to HYP in this discussion–though I do know students who have been bored at Harvard. Trouble is, it’s not so much the burn-out calmom, these kids had fabulous top LAC experiences as high school students. Even if the experience at Harvard is fabulous–they’ve already done something very very similar–including the bit about being surrounded by massive talent. This is what I saw in 1975. Not only did the teaching leave them missing what they left behind in their Harkness high school classrooms–the talent wasn’t as consistant either! Learning in a group of 50% NM scholars is a heady experience–whether you are at Harvard–or high school.</p>
<p>How does a student take harder courses when they are slogging through core courses? They are bored during the freshman and sophomore core classes. Thus my point that the boredom disappears when the classes are of own’s choosing.</p>
<p>In defense of mid to large sized universities, luckyTx’s experience hasn’t beenthe experience in our family. We did not attend small LACs and we have all had amazing, top scholars as teachers in mid-to large universities. Maybe our mileage varies, but I don’t think it is a given that a student has to go to an LAC to be inspired by teachers.</p>
<p>Also, kirmum, for connections, I would add Architecture to your list of Private is Better than State list–and I might add top tier scientific research. I know a number of well regarded academic scientists and they all have fancy, fancy degrees. Mind you, some state schools are pretty darn fancy in my book --esp those in California.</p>
<p>I would add engineering and nursing to your Any School is Fine list.</p>
<p>What about writers? Don’t the fancy schools get better credence at top publishing houses?</p>