Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Actually, you are all missing what is really going on. The rat race has been created by our nation's colleges and universities which have successfully pushed the first and sometimes second year of college down onto high school students via the AP courses. This has worked out well for the colleges but puts incredible pressure on the students to get high test scores/high GPA/extracurriculars of note so they can get into a "good" college. This problem is compounded at Langley, as a PP pointed out, where only 8-10 slots go to UVA a year (no longer a safety, definitely desireable, economic for us VA taxpayers) so DC's like my own didn't even bother applying. Another contributing factor to the stress component is that colleges and universities are now being deluged with full-paying students from other countries, especially China. In order to add "diversity" and cover all that glossy marketing materials and new buildings to attract students, the colleges bring in more and more overseas students. This is especially true at second and third tier law schools. So the pressure really started with colleges saying "WE WANT TO SEE DEPTH OF STUDY - how many A.P. courses did you take?" So students comply. Then, they get into Langley's AP courses, discover they are taught at the college level, their GPA is falling, so 300 (stats from two years ago) want OUT of AP because they can't handle the work and are stressed out of their head, but Langley can't handle that many reassignments.
The system is broken nationally. It's not JUST the parents, JUST the teachers, JUST Langley, JUST T.J., Just Athelete preference, desireable skin color or legacies. It's because colleges have pushed the first year of college down onto the high schools and no one yet has said STOP! I applaud the parent who moved their child to a less stressful environment. We did the same with DC who now loves school and has made honor roll (totally on his own, no parent involvement whatsoever) for seven quarters. But very few parents living in this very expensive area can afford private school at the lower levels and then college expenses running as high as $67,000 a year.
I agree with everything you've written, but I don't think you've gone far enough in your analysis. You've left out the important role the parent plays when he/she insists that the top schools are absolutely necessary for future success. You can help your child opt out of this nonsense by recognizing that there are other state schools besides UVA. There's even (gasp) the community college route to a 4-year school. You don't HAVE to play the game.
2:05 back again. Yes, parents do play an enormous role in the problem, but I thought that had been sufficiently hashed out earlier in the thread. However, one way in which parents can REALLY assist their children is understanding what a game college admissions has become so they are not lulled in by the pretty brochures and emails and false promises. Read Andy Ferguson's "Crazy U" - he does an excellent job of laying out the problem, which YOU, the parent can explain to your child. For example, one of my DCs - a sophomore - is now receiving more college-related solicitation mail than we, the parents, are, because of the information he provided and his score on his PSAT. He has received at least 75 personal mailings and I am told has received 100s of emails (I haven't looked) but we told him before taking the test that once he fills in those bubbles at the start of the PSAT indicating his strong GPA, the 22101 zip code, the fact he is in private school, etc., and his interests, that the colleges will start sending him materials. This means nothing more than these colleges have purchased his name because our zip code (we allegedly have money by living in 22101 - hahaha) and his indications of interest and performance meet what the school is looking for as an applicant. I am careful to say "applicant" because the colleges and universities have no interest in having my DC admitted - they just want to make sure s/he applies so they can reject him or her, thus making the school's stats look better, as in more selective, for Forbes College Listings and U.S. News & World Report.
It's all a numbers game (Andy explains this well in his book). The more appicants the school can get in, the more they can reject. Some schools were caught this year by "rejecting" even incomplete applications because they wanted to lower their "acceptance" no. therefore making the college look more selective. Other colleges and law schools were recently caught hiring back their own unemployed graduates to do alleged "work" in the admissions office so the school could report that 89% of their students were employed, etc. Both attempts at massaging the figures were caught. But every year another college or university comes up with a new trick to bring in more applications, so it can reject more kids.
Another trick that you should tell you child is that the schools want to be able to report a high "yield" (acceptance) no., with Harvard and BYU now being at the top of the list. So if you go early decision/action and indicate that college X is the only college that DC wants to attend, your chances are better because the college knows that your acceptance will add to its reported "yield" to U.S. News and World Report. For that reason, I strongly recommend EA/ED. It worked for one of our children and saved us from a December and January buried in DC writing essays and applying to another 19 schools.
You also need to tell your child that even after applications have gone in, they will receive emails from Univ. of Nowhere saying "Please apply, we want you so badly we'll even waive the application fee and essay, just push this button" the college really doesn't want your kid - they want more applications so they can reject them, thus increasing the college's chance at creeping up the Forbes list to become a SLAC. Somehow my lousy college has managed to do this and is now a SLAC.
I doubt I could get into my own college and law school with today's standards and pressure.
Finally, tell your kids the whole process is now a crap-shoot, so, yes, if you are not going EA/ED, then apply to a number of colleges. You never know what item in the application might catch the eye of a reader. I don't think our kids should have to apply to 20 colleges (I applied to three or four, the old-fashioned way, with a pen) but they do, and for some that's the right decision. Well, at least much of it can be done online and some with the common application.
Do read Andy's book (no I'm not getting a kick-back!). It's funny but also lays out the serious problems with the system. He faults the success of the U.S. News & World Report college issue - which originally was not a big deal but now is the only viable publication it has left - as the destroyer of the system. Because the colleges are obsessed with getting good scores on these charts, they will do almost anything to get your child to apply. As parents, we need to understand why the system is broken, why all private colleges think they can price themselves competitively with other colleges of greater stature; why college expenses have greatly outpaced inflation; why my former college is now $67,000 a year (not worth it), and why we are all playing this game. To the extent you can help your child understand what is going on, they are less likely to fear it, get stressed over it, and get crushed by the rejection letters. They need to understand that U.S. News & World Report, not quality, is what is driving the admissions office.
And, yes, community college is a great way to go for some. Virginia has a wonderful guaranteed transfer program into UVA and William & Mary and the other state universities providing your child takes certain core courses and makes certain grades. Community college is a terrific way to save money, get the core work done, and then transfer when your child is more mature and has a better understanding of what they want to major in. I don't know if Maryland offers the same option.
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