<p>calmom: Opposite here, for me. In grade school: “Hey youngyoungboy, are you going to be a perfect student like your older sister?” Even in first grade I said “****no!” Felt I should have gone to a different school. It is imoprtant never to compare or prejudge sibs.</p>
<p>Dado2 . My condolences. What did it tally? half cordial, half snark? Or did we do any better?</p>
<p>oldolddad, I was always glad that I had the kid who gave me all the grief FIRST. Made the second one seem really easy, even during the worst of her early teenage years. (honestly, how anyone expects a reasonable adult to live in the same house with a 14-year-old is beyond me… but somehow we do get past it).</p>
<p>Eventhough my oldest child is still a few years away from college, I feel like I have to say something so as not to be labeled a “lurker”. This thread has been one of the most informative I have read in CC so far. Thank you Cur and others for your insights!!</p>
<p>I have four kids all very close in age (5 years from oldest to youngest), and it is amazing how teachers prejudge younger siblings based on their experiences older ones.</p>
<p>WildChild took care of the younger sibling issue for himself (he was the younger one) by getting kicked out of the wonderful private preschool we had lovingly selected for his older sister and him! He was expelled from 4-year old pre-school, wound up in a mother’s day out program and announced on his first day there, “This is MY school- not <strong>sister’s</strong>.” And so it began…</p>
<p>curiuosmoom: And what is worse is that the poor sib thinks he/she is being judged by what the older one was like. I try so hard because of my own experience not to do that. Usually if I sense a younger sib is concerned I tell them my story. It breaks the ice and makes for a fun interaction.</p>
<p>Back to choosing money versus higher rated school… since I know everyone is in total agreement on that topic!!</p>
<p>MofWC: LOL</p>
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<p>O.K. Six pages and no one has added any numbers. I’m reposting it so that newcomers will see it, and hopefully to get some more points included. Anybody?</p>
<p>4) They need to be able to identify additional carrots from this school beyond just the $$$. i.e. research opps, a particular EC, or simply a peer pool that the kid really likes.</p>
<p>This is a sub-bullet to item # 1. Because we need to give people more specific guidance on how to know if #1 = true.</p>
<p>There is so much expertise on these boards, that it is a shame when parents choose to let loose with the condemnations rather than help.</p>
<p>I am still rather amazed at the response I received from my two ORIGINAL posts - you can go back and read them if you wish #176 and #244. In post #176, I simply stated that my son is looking for other “high ability” kids. And, that HE has found the best predictor of such “unprepped aptitude tests” - like the PSAT. I never mentioned HIS scores, nor did I mention a “bottom threshold” of acceptance of scores.</p>
<p>In post #244, I further explained his interests. He’s more interested in “process than product”. He would rather be in a class with kids who could understand, improvise, adapt, etc. These kids don’t have to be “high achievers” who turned in every homework, practiced until perfection, was letter perfect. </p>
<p>My son doesn’t want to be the “big fish”, he doesn’t want to be the top student. He wants to find a compatible group with whom to study a wide range of topics, discuss issues, laugh at jokes, and just enjoy.</p>
<p>In all posts I complimented those with other goals and preferences. </p>
<p>A few parents offered suggestions of schools or methodologies they found helpful - on list and pm - and I am grateful. But, too many decided to attack and create a very unflattering personality of my son and me - based only upon their own prejudices.</p>
<p>Why is this behavior so common on this list? </p>
<p>Each person/student has their own list of “preferences”. I may not share your preferences, you may not share mine. But, if I have access to information you desire, I can share it without attacking your model. </p>
<p>I must admit I find this aspect of CC parents to be very like that of the “playground bully” who is eventually revealed to be very insecure and emotionally immature. Aren’t we as parents above this?</p>
<p>“And, that HE has found the best predictor of such “unprepped aptitude tests” - like the PSAT”</p>
<p>I think it may be sentences such as this that provoke the reactions you’ve been getting. It seems odd to me that a teenager would choose the PSAT as his official predictor of who he wants to go to school with. Again, that’s just me. My son’s “preference” was the more generic “smart,” other kids may prefer fun or ambitious or diverse or whatever. (When my son visited schools, he sat in on classes in his intended major to get a feeling for the students he’d be with.) I’m not attacking your son’s preference per se, just indicating that it seems a little weird for a kid to pick a multiple choice test as his yardstick (especially when many high gifted students have difficulty with the restraints inherent in those types of tests).</p>
<p>Reflectivemon, I apologize if my one response to your post was questioning in nature. I commented on your wording “drill”, many posts back.</p>
<p>The probelm however, is how you phrase things. For example, “These kids don’t have to be “high achievers” who turned in every homework, practiced until perfection, was letter perfect.” I suppose many of us would find uncomfrotable by your definition of high achiever with “practiced until perfection”. It is demeaning in the way as your association of high SAT scorers being “drilled” into it.</p>
<p>reflectivemom- I actually hope your son changes his mind about that predictor. He will overlook a lot of interesting, fun people as he moves through life. I just got back from a business meeting with a group of foresters (college degrees in forestry). These guys were as intelligent as any group of business people I have been around, and were laid back, fun and interesting. I didn’t poll them, but I suspect their PSAT scores might not have been all that high.</p>
<p>“And it’s also fair to ask whether that kind of atmosphere isn’t in part a function of the near-monolithic affluence of the student body. (It’s not that simple, but it’s not that wrong, either.)” - from the post about the drunk philosophy debating ball player pages and pages ago-</p>
<p>Is anyone besides me interested in exploring this idea? I was hoping someone was going to respond to the quote above since imho it may be the main difference between the very intelligent, engaged students at “lower” ranked schools and those at “higher” ranked schools. Intelligent, extremely engaged & motivated students from affluent families generally have had more educational opportunities than those from families without the same resources. It isn’t fair!! but it seems to me to be true. Does it to anyone else? Those from families with oodles of money have had amazing opportunities. They aren’t necessarily smarter or have any more potential for future success, but they enter college with a lot more knowledge & range of experiences and this does impact their classmates and friends imho. Does anyone besides me believe this or see examples at their kids’ schools? and that it perhaps impacts the classroom if not the campus culture? (which personally I don’t think it always does) Maybe it was just too obvious an idea for anyone to want to discuss.</p>
<p>BurnThis,</p>
<p>We’re talking a first pass? How did your son chose which schools to visit? </p>
<p>What criteria did he use to define what he meant by “smart”? </p>
<p>Some people use GPA, class rank, science awards, winners of various competions. I think everyone of use could “shoot down” any of those criteria. </p>
<p>He was just trying to narrow the field. And, quite honestly, he hasn’t seen many “highly gifted students” who had difficulty with the “restraints inherent in those types of tests” - especially the PSAT.</p>
<p>Wow. Now there is a stereotype. Foresters have low PSAT scores.</p>
<p>Ummm… My H has an undergraduate degree in Forestry. He got over 1500 (/1600) on SAT’s!! 
He also aced calculus in college…</p>
<p>He was also just offerd a great management job in boston (Non-forestry) with a very progressive company.</p>
<p>reflectivemom, the written word is frighteningly powerful. This combined with the inability to read body language and hear intonations in speech takes conversational written communication to a different level. I am not good at it 
so I give people much more benefit of the doubt when I think they are being rude. I did feel you were being ganged up on and at the same time I understood why everyone was trying to get a word in. Your topic of your son’s use of PSAT scores was breaking new ground, I believe, and set people on a roll to understand your position. Many, many people have felt bullied on this forum but stick around anyway. And many people love to have a good argument (I am not one of those ) So stick around, take the good stuff, consider the disagreements and throw out the junk and most of all develop a thick skin :)</p>
<p>I agree with Burn This above. As I stated in my previous post, your statements that your son bases his ideal peer group on PSAT scores bothers me because of my experience with my own two kids. For the purpose of discussion with you, I will refer to my kids as “1590” and “1380”, although, of course, we have other names for them within our family. (In the new terminology, I guess I should rename them “2090” and “2390”). </p>
<p>My kids went to the same high school three years apart, and they both had the same type of peers/friends (within their respective grades, with some overlap to other grades). In fact, “1380” and “1590” happened to participate in the same academic EC and on several occasions traveled to the state finals for this activity together with their peer groups. I guess you will be surprised to learn that “1380” got along well with “1590” and his friends, despite the three year age difference. In fact, “1380” is even very close to “1600”, a non-romantic friend of the opposite sex who attends another college. </p>
<p>“1380” is now going to school with a bunch of people who meet your son’s criteria, but she seems to have succesfully hidden her true inner “1380” self from them, because so many of them want to be her friend.</p>
<p>(Sorry about the sarcasm - I don’t do it very often and I am not as skilled with it as some others on this board, but I am a little annoyed right now.)</p>
<p>Reflectivemom, before you showed up again, the last time anyone posted something in response to anything you wrote was around 5:00 am PDT on page 37. We are on page 44 now, at least 6 hours later, and more than 100 posts down the line. We went back to the cost vs. prestige discussion since some time before 6:00… veered off into a discussion of a school for adigal’s son at around 9 am, and for the past couple of hours we’ve been joking around about birth order and siblings at school and exploring the issue of whether kids who are gapped on their need base aid resent the merit-award students who have full ride scholarships. </p>
<p>In other words, it hasn’t been about you for maybe a hundred twenty posts, so there is no “bully” around here… just a kid arriving back on scene to try to get it all started up again.</p>
<p>My daughter used to pull that stuff. She’d poke and poke and poke and poke and poke her brother and finally he’d turn around and whack her one, and then she’d let out a huge high pitched wail, “HE HIIIT MEEE, MAAAA!!” </p>
<p>If you don’t want to be “bullied” then I would suggest that you don’t dredge up the old stuff that is is sure to get the response you are looking for.</p>
<p>(In reflexivemom’s defense, perhaps she did not look at the thread until now and felt that she had to respond to the discussion earlier about her posts.)</p>