“I’d rather have a happy kid at UMD than a miserable one at Harvard”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think you may have missed the point of that thread you cited. It seems very unlikely that anyone was trying to say that everyone who works hard enough to get into Harvard is going to be miserable.

But what's undeniable is that the assumption by many parents, students, high schools, etc. that one needs to be admitted to an elite college like Harvard in order to have a successful and happy life is steering a lot of kids toward misery. Many, many kids sacrifice sleep, healthy eating, friends, fun, etc. in pursuit of being one of the 5% who will be admitted, and they end up in poor physical and mental health when they enter whichever college they end up attending. They'll be miserable if they get into Harvard or if they end up at Maryland.

Yes, the intensity is a positive for academic and professional success, but kids need to learn the important skill of recognizing when they've reached their limits. Research is showing that 50% of kids are highly stressed out on a daily basis, and 25% have medically diagnosable depression. And that almost always follows them to college and the workforce. Is that who we want in leadership positions in the coming decades?

This NYU study might help in understanding what's going on:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01028/full

This, this, this! You are missing the nuance.

OP here. I am NOT missing the nuance. The kids who “sacrifice sleep, healthy eating, friends, fun, etc. in pursuit of being one of the 5% who will be admitted, and they end up in poor physical and mental health when they enter whichever college they end up attending. They'll be miserable if they get into Harvard or if they end up at Maryland” are practically nonexistent. I was pushed by my parents and it worked. And pretty much everyone I know who was also pushed by their parents in our immigrant enclave ended up successful. And none of us are resentful to our parents for pushing us — we are all grateful. If they have complaints because they sacrificed sleep or socializing, they are probably bad at time management and spend too much time on tiktok. It’s simply NOT that hard to get straight As in the most rigorous classes at a good suburban public while playing a sport and an instrument.

Then go push your kids. I’m not going to change my parenting style. BTW our family is probably considered poor by DCUM standards.

Then your kids will stay poor unless you push them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is absolutely false. When a parent withholds love from a child early on and only grants it when the child is achieving, the child will do anything for the love. Period. To assume they would rebel is naive.

By the time they are an adult, they will feel resentment.

+1. I know lots of my peers have lots of issues with their overbearing parents but don't have the energy or boldness to confront them.

-1

OP here. I’ve never met these poor tortured tiger cubs you’re mentioning. I was pushed, and so were most of my high school friends, by immigrant tiger parents. We are grateful. None of us are resentful. You’re making up a figure in your mind.

NP here. OP - you are coming at this from your experience. Maybe your social circle really are all happy. Or maybe some of you friends are really good at hiding their thoughts from you, or themselves even. But I’m a high school teacher in a magnet program and see a whole lot more kids than you, and I can assure you that not everyone belongs or is thriving in the magnet environment and they are very conflicted about college and the major that has been chosen for them by their parents. Every year out of ~100 11th graders I have 2-3 of them literally crying in my office over not earning a perfect 4.0 due to my class. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the stress story to come out. Other teachers relate similar experiences. I’d estimate 10-15% of the magnet kids are truly unhappy due to being pushed too hard (not including the general 50% of them who are pretty stressed with high workload.) On the adult side, in our department of 15 there are 2 teachers who were career changers who switched to teaching after a few years because they didn’t like the field chosen by their tiger parents and didn’t enjoy their elite college experience.

Your experience is not the same as everyone’s OP. I agree with the nuanced premise from the other post (big fish, small pond is equally successful and less stressed/happier).

You are wrong! Just plain wrong. Totally wrong. If someone goes to Towson or another middling college and then Harvard for grad school, they will be crushed because they are not used to being the big fish in the small pond anymore. They will be crushed because they never learned how to deal with the intensity and stress of a pressure-cooker environment (which, BTW, every successful job requires). I would much rather have my kids learn how to handle being in a stressful, pressure-cooker environment in high school or college than grad school.

I would rather my children not go to grad school. Hopefully, they’ll do undergrad right & start earning, saving & investing as soon as they graduate.

OP here. FWIW I’m with you. I’d much rather have my kids go straight into a lucrative career in tech or finance or consulting at 22 than waste another five years in a PhD program (which almost always have a negative ROI) or law school. That way they can start saving and investing much earlier and take advantage of compound interest. It’s also why I’m amused when people say that SLACs are great because they’re great at being grad school feeders. That is a terrible economic decision.

And the highest paying tech jobs don’t hire Towson grads. The unicorn companies that give employees the big bucks — Stripe, Figma, Discord — do not hire from Towson.

So you think all decisions need to be "economic"? I want my kids to make a living, and afford a decent place to live etc . . . but being rich is not my goal for them.

I’m assuming you must be rich, and plan on giving your kids a trust fund. Literally everyone I know wants their kids to be UMC, and that requires a tech/finance/consulting/medicine/law income these days.

Yikes. Left a lot of careers out of there. Accounting, physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner or travel nursing, sales, HR…

Most people in sales, HR, and physician’s assistant are not making an UMC income.

Yes they are. $200k HHI can easily be achieved by a couple in those careers, which is UMC..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is absolutely false. When a parent withholds love from a child early on and only grants it when the child is achieving, the child will do anything for the love. Period. To assume they would rebel is naive.

By the time they are an adult, they will feel resentment.

+1. I know lots of my peers have lots of issues with their overbearing parents but don't have the energy or boldness to confront them.

-1

OP here. I’ve never met these poor tortured tiger cubs you’re mentioning. I was pushed, and so were most of my high school friends, by immigrant tiger parents. We are grateful. None of us are resentful. You’re making up a figure in your mind.

NP here. OP - you are coming at this from your experience. Maybe your social circle really are all happy. Or maybe some of you friends are really good at hiding their thoughts from you, or themselves even. But I’m a high school teacher in a magnet program and see a whole lot more kids than you, and I can assure you that not everyone belongs or is thriving in the magnet environment and they are very conflicted about college and the major that has been chosen for them by their parents. Every year out of ~100 11th graders I have 2-3 of them literally crying in my office over not earning a perfect 4.0 due to my class. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the stress story to come out. Other teachers relate similar experiences. I’d estimate 10-15% of the magnet kids are truly unhappy due to being pushed too hard (not including the general 50% of them who are pretty stressed with high workload.) On the adult side, in our department of 15 there are 2 teachers who were career changers who switched to teaching after a few years because they didn’t like the field chosen by their tiger parents and didn’t enjoy their elite college experience.

Your experience is not the same as everyone’s OP. I agree with the nuanced premise from the other post (big fish, small pond is equally successful and less stressed/happier).

You are wrong! Just plain wrong. Totally wrong. If someone goes to Towson or another middling college and then Harvard for grad school, they will be crushed because they are not used to being the big fish in the small pond anymore. They will be crushed because they never learned how to deal with the intensity and stress of a pressure-cooker environment (which, BTW, every successful job requires). I would much rather have my kids learn how to handle being in a stressful, pressure-cooker environment in high school or college than grad school.

I would rather my children not go to grad school. Hopefully, they’ll do undergrad right & start earning, saving & investing as soon as they graduate.

OP here. FWIW I’m with you. I’d much rather have my kids go straight into a lucrative career in tech or finance or consulting at 22 than waste another five years in a PhD program (which almost always have a negative ROI) or law school. That way they can start saving and investing much earlier and take advantage of compound interest. It’s also why I’m amused when people say that SLACs are great because they’re great at being grad school feeders. That is a terrible economic decision.

And the highest paying tech jobs don’t hire Towson grads. The unicorn companies that give employees the big bucks — Stripe, Figma, Discord — do not hire from Towson.

So you think all decisions need to be "economic"? I want my kids to make a living, and afford a decent place to live etc . . . but being rich is not my goal for them.

I’m assuming you must be rich, and plan on giving your kids a trust fund. Literally everyone I know wants their kids to be UMC, and that requires a tech/finance/consulting/medicine/law income these days.

Yikes. Left a lot of careers out of there. Accounting, physician’s assistant, nurse practitioner or travel nursing, sales, HR…

Most people in sales, HR, and physician’s assistant are not making an UMC income.

Accountants out of schools like Towson start at $80k at the big firms in this area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think you may have missed the point of that thread you cited. It seems very unlikely that anyone was trying to say that everyone who works hard enough to get into Harvard is going to be miserable.

But what's undeniable is that the assumption by many parents, students, high schools, etc. that one needs to be admitted to an elite college like Harvard in order to have a successful and happy life is steering a lot of kids toward misery. Many, many kids sacrifice sleep, healthy eating, friends, fun, etc. in pursuit of being one of the 5% who will be admitted, and they end up in poor physical and mental health when they enter whichever college they end up attending. They'll be miserable if they get into Harvard or if they end up at Maryland.

Yes, the intensity is a positive for academic and professional success, but kids need to learn the important skill of recognizing when they've reached their limits. Research is showing that 50% of kids are highly stressed out on a daily basis, and 25% have medically diagnosable depression. And that almost always follows them to college and the workforce. Is that who we want in leadership positions in the coming decades?

This NYU study might help in understanding what's going on:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01028/full

This, this, this! You are missing the nuance.

OP here. I am NOT missing the nuance. The kids who “sacrifice sleep, healthy eating, friends, fun, etc. in pursuit of being one of the 5% who will be admitted, and they end up in poor physical and mental health when they enter whichever college they end up attending. They'll be miserable if they get into Harvard or if they end up at Maryland” are practically nonexistent. I was pushed by my parents and it worked. And pretty much everyone I know who was also pushed by their parents in our immigrant enclave ended up successful. And none of us are resentful to our parents for pushing us — we are all grateful. If they have complaints because they sacrificed sleep or socializing, they are probably bad at time management and spend too much time on tiktok. It’s simply NOT that hard to get straight As in the most rigorous classes at a good suburban public while playing a sport and an instrument.

Then go push your kids. I’m not going to change my parenting style. BTW our family is probably considered poor by DCUM standards.

Then your kids will stay poor unless you push them.

We aren’t actually poor, and I don’t believe in straining their mental health.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is absolutely false. When a parent withholds love from a child early on and only grants it when the child is achieving, the child will do anything for the love. Period. To assume they would rebel is naive.

By the time they are an adult, they will feel resentment.

+1. I know lots of my peers have lots of issues with their overbearing parents but don't have the energy or boldness to confront them.

-1

OP here. I’ve never met these poor tortured tiger cubs you’re mentioning. I was pushed, and so were most of my high school friends, by immigrant tiger parents. We are grateful. None of us are resentful. You’re making up a figure in your mind.

NP here. OP - you are coming at this from your experience. Maybe your social circle really are all happy. Or maybe some of you friends are really good at hiding their thoughts from you, or themselves even. But I’m a high school teacher in a magnet program and see a whole lot more kids than you, and I can assure you that not everyone belongs or is thriving in the magnet environment and they are very conflicted about college and the major that has been chosen for them by their parents. Every year out of ~100 11th graders I have 2-3 of them literally crying in my office over not earning a perfect 4.0 due to my class. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the stress story to come out. Other teachers relate similar experiences. I’d estimate 10-15% of the magnet kids are truly unhappy due to being pushed too hard (not including the general 50% of them who are pretty stressed with high workload.) On the adult side, in our department of 15 there are 2 teachers who were career changers who switched to teaching after a few years because they didn’t like the field chosen by their tiger parents and didn’t enjoy their elite college experience.

Your experience is not the same as everyone’s OP. I agree with the nuanced premise from the other post (big fish, small pond is equally successful and less stressed/happier).

You are wrong! Just plain wrong. Totally wrong. If someone goes to Towson or another middling college and then Harvard for grad school, they will be crushed because they are not used to being the big fish in the small pond anymore. They will be crushed because they never learned how to deal with the intensity and stress of a pressure-cooker environment (which, BTW, every successful job requires). I would much rather have my kids learn how to handle being in a stressful, pressure-cooker environment in high school or college than grad school.

I would rather my children not go to grad school. Hopefully, they’ll do undergrad right & start earning, saving & investing as soon as they graduate.

OP here. FWIW I’m with you. I’d much rather have my kids go straight into a lucrative career in tech or finance or consulting at 22 than waste another five years in a PhD program (which almost always have a negative ROI) or law school. That way they can start saving and investing much earlier and take advantage of compound interest. It’s also why I’m amused when people say that SLACs are great because they’re great at being grad school feeders. That is a terrible economic decision.

And the highest paying tech jobs don’t hire Towson grads. The unicorn companies that give employees the big bucks — Stripe, Figma, Discord — do not hire from Towson.

So you think all decisions need to be "economic"? I want my kids to make a living, and afford a decent place to live etc . . . but being rich is not my goal for them.

I’m assuming you must be rich, and plan on giving your kids a trust fund. Literally everyone I know wants their kids to be UMC, and that requires a tech/finance/consulting/medicine/law income these days.

Nope. I am solidly middle class and would rather my kids be middle class doing something they love than selling their soul for a bigger house and fancier zip code.

The moment you “take a job you love,” you lose your earning power. Most jobs are a grind, even the ones in “passion” fields. Most people would be better off just acknowledging that work is a grind and taking a job that pays well. There are tons of threads on this site from NPO workers and other “do-gooder” jobs who regret going into their field.

[Anonymous]

OP a demographic doesn’t achieve cultural/soft power until they take risks and enter careers like politics, art, entertainment etc

[Anonymous]

Very classist.

[Anonymous]

You do realize 99% of people don’t work in biglaw, management consulting, big tech or finance?

[Anonymous]

OP: If being pushed so hard was so good for you, why aren’t you financially secure? What was the point of that pushing and prodding if you’re still feeling the need to act like a striver? Shouldn’t you be wealthy enough by now for it to not matter what your child majors in, if your childhood was worth it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very classist.

=and also very stupid snd ignorant observation. I met the best (and most helpful ) students at harvard and at the law school. I am friends with then to this day with colleagues who want to to help other Harvard degree holders.

[Anonymous]

Stopped reading after “false fallacy.”

[Anonymous]

OP why aren’t you wealthy enough after working at those unicorn companies & going to top schools to not have to worry about this nonsense. Perhaps it wasn’t worth it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is absolutely false. When a parent withholds love from a child early on and only grants it when the child is achieving, the child will do anything for the love. Period. To assume they would rebel is naive.

By the time they are an adult, they will feel resentment.

+1. I know lots of my peers have lots of issues with their overbearing parents but don't have the energy or boldness to confront them.

-1

OP here. I’ve never met these poor tortured tiger cubs you’re mentioning. I was pushed, and so were most of my high school friends, by immigrant tiger parents. We are grateful. None of us are resentful. You’re making up a figure in your mind.

NP here. OP - you are coming at this from your experience. Maybe your social circle really are all happy. Or maybe some of you friends are really good at hiding their thoughts from you, or themselves even. But I’m a high school teacher in a magnet program and see a whole lot more kids than you, and I can assure you that not everyone belongs or is thriving in the magnet environment and they are very conflicted about college and the major that has been chosen for them by their parents. Every year out of ~100 11th graders I have 2-3 of them literally crying in my office over not earning a perfect 4.0 due to my class. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the stress story to come out. Other teachers relate similar experiences. I’d estimate 10-15% of the magnet kids are truly unhappy due to being pushed too hard (not including the general 50% of them who are pretty stressed with high workload.) On the adult side, in our department of 15 there are 2 teachers who were career changers who switched to teaching after a few years because they didn’t like the field chosen by their tiger parents and didn’t enjoy their elite college experience.

Your experience is not the same as everyone’s OP. I agree with the nuanced premise from the other post (big fish, small pond is equally successful and less stressed/happier).

You are wrong! Just plain wrong. Totally wrong. If someone goes to Towson or another middling college and then Harvard for grad school, they will be crushed because they are not used to being the big fish in the small pond anymore. They will be crushed because they never learned how to deal with the intensity and stress of a pressure-cooker environment (which, BTW, every successful job requires). I would much rather have my kids learn how to handle being in a stressful, pressure-cooker environment in high school or college than grad school.

BS----plenty of kids come from smaller, lower ranked, less pressure cooker undergrads and go onto T20-T30 graduate schools. They all do fine. And every successful job does NOT require a pressure cooker environment. Your life must be miserable

Getting an MFA from Columbia or wherever does not count as a “T20 grad school.” Talk to the few kids at Stanford Med or Harvard Law who went to colleges like Towson and JMU, and they’ll tell you how much they struggled compared to their classmates at first.

It’s almost impossible to get into med school nowadays, so those who do don’t struggle once there.

This is true. "What do you call the person who is last in their medical school class?" "Doctor."

[Anonymous]

“I’d rather have a happy kid at UMD than a miserable one at Harvard”

This is like saying I'd rather be a happy peasant than a miserable king; I'd rather be a happy pig than a mad genius like Van Gogh, or Newton.

Sounds romantic - but no.

[Anonymous]

Given the obsession of DCUM parents with the Ivies, they would disown their kid rather than have them go to UMD over HYP