My high stats kid running out of steam

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is playing a fall sport, a club sport, is in 3 ap classes and volunteers on weekends, and is applying to a couple special programs with unique requirements in addition to the reach/target/ safety thing. She started the essays, but I’m finishing them for her to proofread. I’m handling the common app profile, fafsa, css, college board, and everything else that goes along with this process. The whole thing is very bureaucratic and it’s unrealistic to ask a hs senior to know how to navigate it.

Super lame.

Agreed. You’re finishing the essays? And doing the Common App? What the…

Are you new to this world?

DP. Nope, neither of us are. Not ok at all to write their essays for them. If your kids can’t do that part, they’re either not cut out for the schools they’re applying to or they’re not cut out for the current schedule they have.

Or applying to colleges is a ridiculous process that is darn near a full time job.

But you all are making it worse by doing the work for them! The process could be much more reasonable if we allowed kids to demonstrate what a realistic product from a busy 17 year old looks like.

And if it’s really like full time job, there are too many schools on your kid’s list. It’s ok for them to learn how to navigate hard deadlines. To stay up super late a few nights, to get up earlier on weekends, to learn why coffee was invented. And yes, they might still get rejected after doing that. And that’s ok, too! Life lessons, people. Let your kid learn them.

This is a really good point an I agree with you. But who wants their kid to be the ones to teach the colleges a lesson? I don’t have confidence they’ll get the message.

[Anonymous]

I have learned something having gone through this process with three kids, with widely varying different levels/personalities:

1) Parents are helping kids - up to and including writing all essays. Some, like several on this chain, freely admit this. Others do not. But it is happening, so take that information and use it as you wish. It's a simple solution.
2) Some kids can handle it. Most cannot - and the reason isn't because they're not ready for college, but because high school, including extracurricular pursuits and jobs, DOES NOT TRAIN/PREPARE them for this process. This is a project management exercise the nature of which most professionals do not manage until they've been working a while. So those that say "if they can't handle this maybe they shouldn't be applying to the school" are wrong. It's not about a student not having an idea how to answer a specific essay. It's the million moving pieces. Again, no where have they been trained for this type of project management.

Number 2 is why parents are helping (or paying people to), and I don't fault them. The problem is, therein lies the huge equity issues. Kids who have parents with time/resources/ability to help are greatly advantaged.

I do not know what the answer is. The supplemental essays are becoming pretty meaningless but rather seem to be an exercise in proving willingness to do the work - the only thing they do is weed out some kids not willing to jump through extra hoops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a very important once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s exactly NOT the time to allow the kid to fizzle out. Give him whatever incentives/encouragement/kicks in ass that will work to keep him focused & productive.

100%
You will have so many regrets if you don't help them.....ask all the moms who come here in March depressed and can't get off this site bc their kid is now heading to Canada or the UK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is playing a fall sport, a club sport, is in 3 ap classes and volunteers on weekends, and is applying to a couple special programs with unique requirements in addition to the reach/target/ safety thing. She started the essays, but I’m finishing them for her to proofread. I’m handling the common app profile, fafsa, css, college board, and everything else that goes along with this process. The whole thing is very bureaucratic and it’s unrealistic to ask a hs senior to know how to navigate it.

Super lame.

Agreed. You’re finishing the essays? And doing the Common App? What the…

Are you new to this world?

DP. Nope, neither of us are. Not ok at all to write their essays for them. If your kids can’t do that part, they’re either not cut out for the schools they’re applying to or they’re not cut out for the current schedule they have.

Or applying to colleges is a ridiculous process that is darn near a full time job.

But you all are making it worse by doing the work for them! The process could be much more reasonable if we allowed kids to demonstrate what a realistic product from a busy 17 year old looks like.

And if it’s really like full time job, there are too many schools on your kid’s list. It’s ok for them to learn how to navigate hard deadlines. To stay up super late a few nights, to get up earlier on weekends, to learn why coffee was invented. And yes, they might still get rejected after doing that. And that’s ok, too! Life lessons, people. Let your kid learn them.

This is a really good point an I agree with you. But who wants their kid to be the ones to teach the colleges a lesson? I don’t have confidence they’ll get the message.

It’s a risk either way. I’m avoiding a heavy hand in my kid’s applications because I don’t want to be the one responsible for steering her wrong. Admissions officers know what they’re looking for, I don’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very important once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s exactly NOT the time to allow the kid to fizzle out. Give him whatever incentives/encouragement/kicks in ass that will work to keep him focused & productive.

100%
You will have so many regrets if you don't help them.....ask all the moms who come here in March depressed and can't get off this site bc their kid is now heading to Canada or the UK.

You will have absolutely no way knowing whether your kid’s results are due to your help or not. This is not about you.

[Anonymous]

In our community, this is how it works:

You don't hire a private counselor bc our private school CCO is great.

You do hire an essay coach. You give "coach" 20-40 pages of writing in the summer. They help you with a personal essay. That's $5k.

In August and Sept you give them drafts for your supp essays. it's another $1-2.5k per school. You have final polished essays by Oct 15 for all early schools.

Total spend for 10 early schools: $20-25k

[Anonymous]

I see this as a lesson in resilience- that as a parent I am talking to my kid about how do you want to handle this stress. While I have lots of degrees I am not allowed by my kids to read, much less edit their essays. This resilience they are built now will help them during midterms and finals when they get to college. They will get into a college where they are ready to confidently achieve good grades as they were judged ready based on the merits of their applications. If they don't get into their reach schools I do believe they will be fine with that whatever outcome they have. I do hope that parents that are writing their kids essays are not undermining these kids confidence or putting pressure on them to get into a college where they will not thrive- as that is what will all want for our kids, right? Not bragging rights they get into school x,y, or z?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see this as a lesson in resilience- that as a parent I am talking to my kid about how do you want to handle this stress. While I have lots of degrees I am not allowed by my kids to read, much less edit their essays. This resilience they are built now will help them during midterms and finals when they get to college. They will get into a college where they are ready to confidently achieve good grades as they were judged ready based on the merits of their applications. If they don't get into their reach schools I do believe they will be fine with that whatever outcome they have. I do hope that parents that are writing their kids essays are not undermining these kids confidence or putting pressure on them to get into a college where they will not thrive- as that is what will all want for our kids, right? Not bragging rights they get into school x,y, or z?

Yes to all of this!

[Anonymous]

I applied to 8 elite colleges back in the early 1990’s- age of manual typewriters and snail mail. (And I had a kid go through the process of applying to 11 a couple years ago). I don’t remember anyone’s parents helping anyone with any part of the application process except filling out financial aid forms and driving around for college visits. This was in an affluent setting. The expectation back then was that this was the first step many of us were taking towards the adult world and this was a good time to learn how to do things like call colleges to schedule tours, keep track of deadlines, get to the post office, etc. Thirty years later, I felt obliged to be more involved in my kid’s application process (mainly booking campus tours online and nagging about deadlines). The stakes seem higher now. Even that level of involvement made me feel like I was helicoptering too much. There are no easy answers here and I wish everyone well during this stressful process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's tough. Help with the research....

so, for Stanford (as an example), I helped with a Google Doc of classes, cool profs, ECs, interesting articles from the paper, and events I saw.

links to everything in the Google Doc to shortcut the process. DC added more as well, but good starting point.

How do you find "cool profs"? Trying to help my DD but don't know where to start!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I applied to 8 elite colleges back in the early 1990’s- age of manual typewriters and snail mail. (And I had a kid go through the process of applying to 11 a couple years ago). I don’t remember anyone’s parents helping anyone with any part of the application process except filling out financial aid forms and driving around for college visits. This was in an affluent setting. The expectation back then was that this was the first step many of us were taking towards the adult world and this was a good time to learn how to do things like call colleges to schedule tours, keep track of deadlines, get to the post office, etc. Thirty years later, I felt obliged to be more involved in my kid’s application process (mainly booking campus tours online and nagging about deadlines). The stakes seem higher now. Even that level of involvement made me feel like I was helicoptering too much. There are no easy answers here and I wish everyone well during this stressful process.

Exactly. The word is so different now. Do you remember any of your friends having essay coaches or counselors? I don't. I went to an SAT class in person for 6 weeks. That's it. I took it once.

The stakes do seem higher.

There's a lot of helping we can (and imo should) be doing around the edges that don't involve actual writing. I can help with organizing, researching, and reviewing draft Common Apps. Seeing this reminder on IG (found it on TT) means a lot of kids have these formatting issues: https://www.tiktok.com/@tineocollegeprep/video/7561444468776275230?lang=en

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is playing a fall sport, a club sport, is in 3 ap classes and volunteers on weekends, and is applying to a couple special programs with unique requirements in addition to the reach/target/ safety thing. She started the essays, but I’m finishing them for her to proofread. I’m handling the common app profile, fafsa, css, college board, and everything else that goes along with this process. The whole thing is very bureaucratic and it’s unrealistic to ask a hs senior to know how to navigate it.

I’m sure colleges won’t notice the adult voice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is playing a fall sport, a club sport, is in 3 ap classes and volunteers on weekends, and is applying to a couple special programs with unique requirements in addition to the reach/target/ safety thing. She started the essays, but I’m finishing them for her to proofread. I’m handling the common app profile, fafsa, css, college board, and everything else that goes along with this process. The whole thing is very bureaucratic and it’s unrealistic to ask a hs senior to know how to navigate it.

Super lame.

Agreed. You’re finishing the essays? And doing the Common App? What the…

Are you new to this world?

No. I’m not. My kid filled out her own Common App. And wrote her own essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have learned something having gone through this process with three kids, with widely varying different levels/personalities:

1) Parents are helping kids - up to and including writing all essays. Some, like several on this chain, freely admit this. Others do not. But it is happening, so take that information and use it as you wish. It's a simple solution.
2) Some kids can handle it. Most cannot - and the reason isn't because they're not ready for college, but because high school, including extracurricular pursuits and jobs, DOES NOT TRAIN/PREPARE them for this process. This is a project management exercise the nature of which most professionals do not manage until they've been working a while. So those that say "if they can't handle this maybe they shouldn't be applying to the school" are wrong. It's not about a student not having an idea how to answer a specific essay. It's the million moving pieces. Again, no where have they been trained for this type of project management.


This is such an elite perspective. It's not wrong, but just be aware of the privileges that let this be a reality for families,

First generation college attendees, kids from families where parents lack funds for hired help... it's not their reality.
Number 2 is why parents are helping (or paying people to), and I don't fault them. The problem is, therein lies the huge equity issues. Kids who have parents with time/resources/ability to help are greatly advantaged.

I do not know what the answer is. The supplemental essays are becoming pretty meaningless but rather seem to be an exercise in proving willingness to do the work - the only thing they do is weed out some kids not willing to jump through extra hoops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's tough. Help with the research....

so, for Stanford (as an example), I helped with a Google Doc of classes, cool profs, ECs, interesting articles from the paper, and events I saw.

links to everything in the Google Doc to shortcut the process. DC added more as well, but good starting point.

How do you find "cool profs"? Trying to help my DD but don't know where to start!

Np. It's not really cool, it's finding profs whose academic interests align with your kid's own niche interests.

If your kid is into medieval studies but also migration trends and/or international relations/MUN, for example, with a focus on the Med and North Africa, and applying to Brown, I'd definitely mention this professor below by drawing parallels between modern refugee/migration crises and how this professor's study of how "barbarian" migrations transformed Roman identity.

Your kid has the intellectual curiosity, but might need you to give them links to the right professors. Then they'd connect the professor's specific research lens (identity, connectedness, cultural transformation) to something your DC has encountered, even if DC hasn't studied 5th-century vandals specifically (yet).....

https://vivo.brown.edu/display/jconant#Research

Make sense? All you do is give kid link to prof and maybe mention a few topic words?