Another perspective on “prepping” from a lower income mom

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, but over 90% of the kids who get in prepped for years. IF you don't believe me just go to a prep center some weekend and look at how many kids are there. There's good reason there are so many prep options here.

Faulty logic. Lots of people at prep centers doesn't mean 90% got in thru prep. Going to a prep center is not a guarantee of admission. Nearly everyone I know who went to Curie did not get in to TJ or AOS.

Actually, no, their logic seems based on fact. Especially since just one of the many NVA prep centers claimed to have accounted for 30% of the entering class. Also, in my DD AAP class, the teacher polled the kids to see who had prepped for admission, and they said almost everyone raised their hands. I know it's not formal, but it sure seems like kids who are honest and unashamed of admitting this is far more reliable than a bunch of overzealous tiger parents. I get it you want to downplay this to help keep the competition down but I think the cats out of the bag.

Again with the faulty logic. 30% of admissions, but how many applicants? I suspect they had way more attending the classes, based on all these people I speak to who send their kids to Curie. Now if some of these 6th/7th graders get kids in, I will have to concede they are helping, because we are talking about kids I would judge as having no chance. I know several now 9th graders who similarly did not get in, who were better students than the ones I am considering not qualified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
There needs to be more assesments that tap into the lived experience of the disadvantaged.

Lets say I set an essey assignment about critically evalulating the SNAP program in the local area. Which demogaphic is most likely to produce a stong, nuanaced take, UMC kids with zero personal experiance with povery or those living in the local housing projects?

Some things can't be tutored for.

I'd go with the rich white college students who get trained in CRT and look at everything with a lens of race.

[Anonymous]

If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

Their children are likely lazy and incredibly dumb because tests are easy to game through prepping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: If you think you need to live the experience to write well about it, I suggest you take a class in creative writing.

Year former slaves were so accurately written in Song of the south. Asian depiction in Miss Siagon and Indiana Jones and the temple of doom wasn’t problematic at all (sarcasm)

You forgot to bring up cultural appropriation, and provide a list books and cultural works to be banned. I bet you’d love to live in a world where only blacks write for black people, Asians for Asians and the culture is divided into cordoned areas to prevent the wrong races from trespassing.

Let me do sarcasm for you: you must be really fun to be around at parties!

I don't think they seriously care about any of this but are desperately looking for ways to restrict these opportunities to students from the wealthier schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

Their children are likely lazy and incredibly dumb because tests are easy to game through prepping.

There are legitimate studies with proper control groups that show prepping on SAT increases the score by about 10-20 points out of 800.

You are confused by the prep marketing materials that claim 100+ increase “guarantee” etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: If you think you need to live the experience to write well about it, I suggest you take a class in creative writing.

Year former slaves were so accurately written in Song of the south. Asian depiction in Miss Siagon and Indiana Jones and the temple of doom wasn’t problematic at all (sarcasm)

You forgot to bring up cultural appropriation, and provide a list books and cultural works to be banned. I bet you’d love to live in a world where only blacks write for black people, Asians for Asians and the culture is divided into cordoned areas to prevent the wrong races from trespassing.

Let me do sarcasm for you: you must be really fun to be around at parties!

I don't think they seriously care about any of this but are desperately looking for ways to restrict these opportunities to students from the wealthier schools.

lol what? I want the wealthiest parents to be prevented from hording all the best opportunities, especially education which should be one of if not the greatest engine of upward social mobility we have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

+1

Operation varsity blues highlighted the most selfish, aggressive form of gaming the system. Their kids where too thick to pass the test to the standard that the parents wanted but that doesn't mean that prepping doesn't work. Otherwise equality of outcome across race and class would be the norm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, but over 90% of the kids who get in prepped for years. IF you don't believe me just go to a prep center some weekend and look at how many kids are there. There's good reason there are so many prep options here.

Faulty logic. Lots of people at prep centers doesn't mean 90% got in thru prep. Going to a prep center is not a guarantee of admission. Nearly everyone I know who went to Curie did not get in to TJ or AOS.

Actually, no, their logic seems based on fact. Especially since just one of the many NVA prep centers claimed to have accounted for 30% of the entering class. Also, in my DD AAP class, the teacher polled the kids to see who had prepped for admission, and they said almost everyone raised their hands. I know it's not formal, but it sure seems like kids who are honest and unashamed of admitting this is far more reliable than a bunch of overzealous tiger parents. I get it you want to downplay this to help keep the competition down but I think the cats out of the bag.

Again with the faulty logic. 30% of admissions, but how many applicants? I suspect they had way more attending the classes, based on all these people I speak to who send their kids to Curie. Now if some of these 6th/7th graders get kids in, I will have to concede they are helping, because we are talking about kids I would judge as having no chance. I know several now 9th graders who similarly did not get in, who were better students than the ones I am considering not qualified.

Here's the thing - if indeed Curie had an enormous number of applicants in order to account for their huge share of the freshmen class each year, that means you have a large number of Indian families who are paying $4-5K and sending their kids to hundreds of hours of additional prep because they felt forced to by the system. Parents shouldn't feel like it's a requirement to drop resources that many folks do not have or cannot afford to allocate to boutique prep in order to have a fair shot at admissions.

We should all agree - obviously - that even if the Curie course didn't result in guaranteed admission, that it almost certainly boosted students' scores on the admissions battery at least on some level. Remember that in the old system, students had to achieve specific percentile scores on all three exams in order to be considered for admissions at all - the exams were the only metric that culled the field from "applicants" to "semifinalists" and was thus a hard barrier to entry. If a student scored in the 99th percentile on math and science but the 74th percentile on the ACT Aspire English, that student could not be considered for admission.

I shudder to think of how many well-qualified applicants for TJ over those three years were booted out of the process because of inflated scores from mediocre kids who didn't even get in to TJ but spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to fail in their mission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

+1

Operation varsity blues highlighted the most selfish, aggressive form of gaming the system. Their kids where too thick to pass the test to the standard that the parents wanted but that doesn't mean that prepping doesn't work. Otherwise equality of outcome across race and class would be the norm.*

* If on average everyone across all races and classes were born with the same abilities and would do everything the same over their lifetime.

Everyone talks about educational achievement gap, nobody talks about the homework gap, which is the average amount of time spent on homework and other educational activities (I’d include prepping here, lol), daily in minutes:

White: 70 min
Black: 48 min
Hispanic: 61 min
Asian: 161 min

Source:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/07311214221101422

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: If you think you need to live the experience to write well about it, I suggest you take a class in creative writing.

Year former slaves were so accurately written in Song of the south. Asian depiction in Miss Siagon and Indiana Jones and the temple of doom wasn’t problematic at all (sarcasm)

You forgot to bring up cultural appropriation, and provide a list books and cultural works to be banned. I bet you’d love to live in a world where only blacks write for black people, Asians for Asians and the culture is divided into cordoned areas to prevent the wrong races from trespassing.

Let me do sarcasm for you: you must be really fun to be around at parties!

I don't think they seriously care about any of this but are desperately looking for ways to restrict these opportunities to students from the wealthier schools.

lol what? I want the wealthiest parents to be prevented from hording all the best opportunities, especially education which should be one of if not the greatest engine of upward social mobility we have.

Next, let’s prevent the wealthiest from hoarding money, the best houses, the best cars etc. Sounds like you’d love to be in charge to divide everything fairly.

[Anonymous]

Inequality of outcome is the price we pay for excellence.

You can’t have both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, but over 90% of the kids who get in prepped for years. IF you don't believe me just go to a prep center some weekend and look at how many kids are there. There's good reason there are so many prep options here.

Faulty logic. Lots of people at prep centers doesn't mean 90% got in thru prep. Going to a prep center is not a guarantee of admission. Nearly everyone I know who went to Curie did not get in to TJ or AOS.

Actually, no, their logic seems based on fact. Especially since just one of the many NVA prep centers claimed to have accounted for 30% of the entering class. Also, in my DD AAP class, the teacher polled the kids to see who had prepped for admission, and they said almost everyone raised their hands. I know it's not formal, but it sure seems like kids who are honest and unashamed of admitting this is far more reliable than a bunch of overzealous tiger parents. I get it you want to downplay this to help keep the competition down but I think the cats out of the bag.

Again with the faulty logic. 30% of admissions, but how many applicants? I suspect they had way more attending the classes, based on all these people I speak to who send their kids to Curie. Now if some of these 6th/7th graders get kids in, I will have to concede they are helping, because we are talking about kids I would judge as having no chance. I know several now 9th graders who similarly did not get in, who were better students than the ones I am considering not qualified.

Here's the thing - if indeed Curie had an enormous number of applicants in order to account for their huge share of the freshmen class each year, that means you have a large number of Indian families who are paying $4-5K and sending their kids to hundreds of hours of additional prep because they felt forced to by the system. Parents shouldn't feel like it's a requirement to drop resources that many folks do not have or cannot afford to allocate to boutique prep in order to have a fair shot at admissions.

We should all agree - obviously - that even if the Curie course didn't result in guaranteed admission, that it almost certainly boosted students' scores on the admissions battery at least on some level. Remember that in the old system, students had to achieve specific percentile scores on all three exams in order to be considered for admissions at all - the exams were the only metric that culled the field from "applicants" to "semifinalists" and was thus a hard barrier to entry. If a student scored in the 99th percentile on math and science but the 74th percentile on the ACT Aspire English, that student could not be considered for admission.

I shudder to think of how many well-qualified applicants for TJ over those three years were booted out of the process because of inflated scores from mediocre kids who didn't even get in to TJ but spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to fail in their mission.

They felt forced to by some system but not by that system. You're conflating the two systems. They're not the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If tests were so easy to game through prepping, then how do you explain the varsity blues scandal? Rich parents paid smart kids to take the test for their kids, or paid proctors to give false/inflated results.

Their children are likely lazy and incredibly dumb because tests are easy to game through prepping.

It is not. Most get minimal improvements of 10-50 points per section.