a final warning to high school students in the college admissions game

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: In hindsight I struggled because I didn’t spend my HS years learning, building study and executive functioning skills, building resiliency, and thinking about what I was passionate about. I spent 4 years playing the game as best I could. I got all As at all costs. I chose my sports and activities based on where I could win awards or hold leadership positions. All of my choices were based on building my resume and I moved through classes and activities to check boxes. I picked a school and major based on what seemed prestigious and what I thought I was supposed to want. I was winning for the sake of winning.

how exactly would you have built that grit attitude? it has to come naturally, imo adults cannot teach it to the immature brains of kids, parents can give the talk to their kids but not do the walk for them

I've seen smart kids regretting not being more ambitious and not getting into better schools, the parents did push them and they had enough support, financial and otherwise, just didn't have the drive to work harder, sometimes two kids in the same family just different personalities, one gets into an ivy, one just happy with community college

in my experience, forcing an outcome is not the optimal path for the kid, let's say the kid is smart enough to get perfect grades and scores but is not studying and practicing hard enough, so feels better sailing smoothly without the extra effort, tutoring and so on, those kids will still get into good programs at lesser than T20 schools and keep good grades in college and get good jobs and yes, maybe they could have been the CEO of some startup if graduating from T10 but would that have been worth it the extra effort all along the way? if money is enough for good life, do you need to strive to be billionaire? some people are made for that, the extra responsibility, double work hours and so on, most people want easier paths and it is nothing wrong with it even if the potential is there, there are so many people reaching for the stars so there will always be someone filling that spot, no need to get into that competition if you really don't find it that much fun

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: In hindsight I struggled because I didn’t spend my HS years learning, building study and executive functioning skills, building resiliency, and thinking about what I was passionate about. I spent 4 years playing the game as best I could. I got all As at all costs. I chose my sports and activities based on where I could win awards or hold leadership positions. All of my choices were based on building my resume and I moved through classes and activities to check boxes. I picked a school and major based on what seemed prestigious and what I thought I was supposed to want. I was winning for the sake of winning.

how exactly would you have built that grit attitude? it has to come naturally, imo adults cannot teach it to the immature brains of kids, parents can give the talk to their kids but not do the walk for them

I've seen smart kids regretting not being more ambitious and not getting into better schools, the parents did push them and they had enough support, financial and otherwise, just didn't have the drive to work harder, sometimes two kids in the same family just different personalities, one gets into an ivy, one just happy with community college

in my experience, forcing an outcome is not the optimal path for the kid, let's say the kid is smart enough to get perfect grades and scores but is not studying and practicing hard enough, so feels better sailing smoothly without the extra effort, tutoring and so on, those kids will still get into good programs at lesser than T20 schools and keep good grades in college and get good jobs and yes, maybe they could have been the CEO of some startup if graduating from T10 but would that have been worth it the extra effort all along the way? if money is enough for good life, do you need to strive to be billionaire? some people are made for that, the extra responsibility, double work hours and so on, most people want easier paths and it is nothing wrong with it even if the potential is there, there are so many people reaching for the stars so there will always be someone filling that spot, no need to get into that competition if you really don't find it that much fun

💯 to all of this. It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me….

[Anonymous]

I think he is very brave and amazing if rather young and naieve! A lot of high-achieving high school students have bought into this fiction that an elite college admission will be some kind of golden ticket where everything will fall into place for them. Although it can be an asset, it is so much more complicated and does not work like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Take his video with a grain of salt.

In four years, he graduates, gets his Princeton degree, and goes on a gets a good job, brags about his degree, and makes good money. He will look back and say it was tough and it sucked sometimes but it was worth it.

The current epidemic of anxiety disorders in people in their 20s belies your statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You do know you can transfer - right? I do not feel bad for anyone who just whines and doesn't try to do anything about it.

If you watch this kid’s YouTube video on where he got in, you will see he is the child of immigrants with a very low income. I don’t think transferring is easy for kids that are on large amounts of financial aid. He was a questbridge finalist or something, so under $65,000 HHI

Wonder if part of his problem is meeting kids there who have immense family wealth and he’s being eaten up with jealousy. It’s one thing to know that billionaires exist, it’s another to meet one and think “why him and not me?”

This is probably the most unlikely theory.

I went to a private high school that had uber-rich kids as well as trailer park kids on scholarships. (Many others, like me, had parents with good incomes e.g. doctors and lawyers but not uber-rich.) You have no idea how much smoldering resentment the poor kids had for the rich kids. You drive a beat up old junker and the other kids have brand new BMWs. The sad part was that the poor kids thought all the rich kids were snobs who looked down on them, when in fact the rich kids didn't think about them at all.

Reminds me of a line from Gosford Park where the servants are gossiping about their lords upstairs until one of them reminds everyone that while they think a lot about the "haves" upstairs, those folks upstairs couldn't give two farts about their servants downstairs.
The have-nots simply don't exist in the minds of those who have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Princeton is not among my favorite colleges. I've always disliked it. That said, this kid was pretty messed up before he went to Princeton.

He reads his admission essay on youtube. He is US born. His father was bon in China but adopted by a Caucasian American family and grew up in the US. So, this kid is NOT from an immigrant family in the usual sense.

Much of his essay is about his father's rage and how he was regularly beaten by his father and how he tried to save his sister from that when his father began to beat her.

That sort of upbringing leaves scars no matter where you go to college--and even if you don't go at all.

Other aspects of the essay make it seem as if the kid is OCD.

Now, I don't think Princeton is a great place, but this kid's issues aren't entirely due to being at Princeton.
+1

+2
This kid has bigger problems that Princeton can't fix.
I think that is a big problem with school admissions trying to pull the levers of social mobility. College cannot fix a broken childhood where the kid grows up compulsively self-sabotaging because that's all the family taught them.
These videos are a form of self-sabotage aren't they?

[Anonymous]

I think that is a big problem with school admissions trying to pull the levers of social mobility. College cannot fix a broken childhood where the kid grows up compulsively self-sabotaging because that's all the family taught them.

Princeton's social mobility efforts have taken a bunch of kids out of poverty and landed them jobs in FAANG, top IBs/PE shops, and solid PhD programs.

Princeton can't fix people's emotional traumas and not all of the kids will be prepared to make use of Princeton's opportunities. Back when I attended, I knew some children of billionaires who were in and out of rehab for drug problems. Even people from rich backgrounds sometimes have broken childhoods.

The social mobility efforts seem to be succeeding on the whole even if not for every kid. I personally think increased social mobility is a net positive for society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem with QB and colleges with low income kids is nobody gives them a crash course in social dynamics when you throw $65k kids into a pool where the majority are wealthy and super wealthy.

Lots of focus on academics and traditional college life, but nobody gives the “scared straight” talk about how jarring the different socio-economic strata may be.

There was an article several years back about how one Ivy school (it may have been Princeton) would give FA kids free tickets to student events and what not (that required an entry fee), but you had to wait in a separate line that basically “outed” you as poor. Well, the poor kids just stopped going until someone in the administration asked.

Also, it was only recently that many of these schools decided that they wouldn’t have students do work study in the dining halls, because it just created a terrible dynamic betweeen rich and poor.

Maybe they are starting to wake up to this…don’t know.

This this this.

+10000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with QB and colleges with low income kids is nobody gives them a crash course in social dynamics when you throw $65k kids into a pool where the majority are wealthy and super wealthy.

Lots of focus on academics and traditional college life, but nobody gives the “scared straight” talk about how jarring the different socio-economic strata may be.

There was an article several years back about how one Ivy school (it may have been Princeton) would give FA kids free tickets to student events and what not (that required an entry fee), but you had to wait in a separate line that basically “outed” you as poor. Well, the poor kids just stopped going until someone in the administration asked.

Also, it was only recently that many of these schools decided that they wouldn’t have students do work study in the dining halls, because it just created a terrible dynamic betweeen rich and poor.

Maybe they are starting to wake up to this…don’t know.

This this this.

+10000

It depends on the kid. I went to Duke on 100% financial aid, and the work study jobs are a great memory, and I met my best friends at those jobs. I never thought about being a lower class student to be honest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I graduated from Princeton years ago and had a similarly bleak, lonely experience, despite having come from a well-off background (and majoring in English, not computer science). My DDs chose Yale and Rice and each had a fantastic time and made lifelong friends. “The best damn place of all?” They’ve got some work to do.

Your kids are obviously their own people.

I am struggling to understand why you might think you would have a magical college experience at Yale, but Princeton was terrible for you. Seems like maybe the entire group of top schools were/would have been a bad fit for you.

My Yale friends tell me they are envious of how Princeton alumni seem to be a tighter group who are more loyal to their school and have more fun at reunions. But of course alumni had a different experience than current undergraduates. Grading is tougher at Princeton and it's become more STEM-oriented, and that translates into more stressed-out kids.

How would your Yale friends know what Princeton alums do at reunions?

Do they take notes while attending with a spouse?

[Anonymous]

I’ve heard similar things about Columbia

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could some of this issue (or most of it) be caused by the test optional trend of the last 4 years?

I imagined if you were an average or slightly above average student with an inflated GPA who got into one of these intense schools via test optional, starting behind everyone else from the get go would be very stressful and demoralizing.

I have wondered the same thing. Are there studies out there. Kids with inflated GPAs getting into prestigious schools when they shouldn’t be there. Sounds snarky I know. And my DS was not in the running so not personal. He is going to a school in south that he loves (and requires test scores).

[Anonymous]

My friend graduated from Princeton and had the same experience as this young man. He went on to graduate school at ODU and said he would never send his kids to Princeton.