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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid has a rough time in Covid but a silver lining has been this: if you let go of the idea of going to a "top" or competitive school, the process is actually easy and fairly stress-free (and you'll get a lot of merit money too). There are a ton of schools with high acceptance rates that are eager to have your kid.[/quote]

+1000[/quote]

Focus on helping your kid build  strengths for handling college, seizing opportunities, figuring out what they want to do with their life, and developing optimism and self-efficacy for their future rather than trying to optimize their admission into selective colleges. Every time they seem to be sucked into the college competition game, return them into thinking about what they want to do and why they want to do it.
Let the chips fall where they may with college admissions, but don't let your kid leave home into a massive financial and energy investment of college  without feeling like they have some sense of control, purpose and excitement over their future and some visions for what that might be. Not just pride or disappointment because they got/didn't get some brass ring of college admission.   It's very easy to just be good at school and think you need to just continue being good at school--it's harder to make that transition to building a life/career.[/quote]

It's not either/or. Most kids at selective colleges know what they want and are ready for careers.

It's just jealousy to pretend otherwise. 
[/quote]

I didn't say it was either/or--rather "let the chips fall where they may" but prioritize sense of purpose first.  I say this advice as my eldest kid who is now a senior at a highly selective college and, like many of his friends there, are feeling a lot of anxiety about life after school.  They have been successful so long at school, but they feel vaguely unmoved by future opportunities.  Some have good job prospects, some don't know yet.  But for both groups the vibe is more like "is this all there is?".  What I've learned for my younger is to start addressing purpose earlier and don't let them get sucked into competitive college process at the expense of it.  Kids only have so much time/energy and for high-achieving kids the culture is often pushing them just to get into the best college possible--some of which is very much out of their control.  And the evidence doesn't show that it makes a huge difference anyway--it's the kid not the school that makes the difference.[/quote]

You're putting up a[b] false dichotomy.[/b] Anyone, regardless of competence and functionality, can have self-doubts (and anxiety, ADHD, depression or whatever else). Also, and this is the most important - some self-doubt is HEALTHY.

[/quote]

Did you see I said it was not either/or??  I said I've learned to prioritize sense of purpose first, competitive college admissions second.  So it's not a dichotomy, false or otherwise.  Just that, from my experience, I see that the culture puts a lot of pressure on getting into a good college and many kids have to take a ton of their energy optimizing that and don't think deeply about why they want that, what they are going to do with it.  Maybe they say "I want to be an x" but that's often based on what's popular, makes money etc.  Very few think --what do I really want from college?

My kid sure didn't think too deeply--nor did most of his high achieving high school friends. And I'm not talking about not having self-doubt (I don't know where  you got that...), it's actually self-doubt that would help a high school kid see outside the college competition game and not just try to get the best prize at the exclusion of thinking through why and what else they care about.  My kid had a high achieving group of HS friends--he and a few others went to highly selective schools and others went to slightly or very less so, either via luck of admissions or desire to save money or other reasons.  I think the ones who went to the less selective schools seem more grounded and confident of themselves now--they had to process their future dreams earlier and take more control over their own success.  The ones who went to the more selective schools seem to be slightly more riding high on the 'I got the prize, my future is assured" and were less inclined to do the thinking.  Just my experience, of course, but this is a thread on "lessons learned."   Given that much of college admissions is out of kids' control, that the student has more impact on their future than the college, I think it has value.[/quote]

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