Reply to What are your rising juniors and seniors doing this summer?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Part time job.  Taking SAT IIs in June.   SAT I prep for October retake.  Assigned summer reading and essay for school.  Assigned summer work for next year's AP courses.  Starting college essays as soon as Common App is released.  Not a summer I would look forward to.[/quote]

Let's break this down:

1.  "Part time job" -- way to earn spending money with kids his/her own age. 
2.  "Taking SAT IIs in June" -- done by the first weekend of June.  Each test is an hour long.  They are designed to measure work the kid has done in school.  If the kid has prepped for an AP in the same subject area most don't re-study for the SAT II.
3.  "SAT I prep for October retake" -- This is clearly being done by choice of the family.  The Princeton Review course is 30 hours of classes for the course (so about 2 hours avg. a week)
4.  "Assigned summer reading and essay for school" -- Yikes!  Having to read a book!  Everybody starts this in August, if then, when they are back for pre-season.  
5.  "Assigned summer work for next year's AP courses."  -- Nobody starts this before mid to late August.  Usually one book or assignment for each AP class.  Many kids don't do it or half-ass it.  (SHOCKING!!!!)
6.  "Starting college essays as soon as Common App is released."  Hah, that's what you think.   :lol:

[/quote]

Wow, am I the only one who has sympathy for our stressed out kids?

1.  DS's part time job is 30-40 hours a week, and he is saving about 80% of his earnings to help with college and so that he doesn't graduate from college penniless.
2.  True enough, but mine will certainly spend time reviewing during what should be his first week of summer.  It is so dumb that they have to take another exam in the same subject they already have shown competence in through the school course and the AP exam, but such is life today.
3.  His choice not ours.  And he already did the Princeton Review course last summer.  It's actually six or seven hours a week in class for 5 weeks or so, another couple hours for commute time, and several more hours at home doing the assigned work.  This year we will use a tutor to target his weakest area, and it will be up to him how much time to put in.
4.  Well at our school they read three books of substantial length, often nonfiction (and I'm not talking about a casual read such as a Gladwell book).  No way could they read them all in August.
5.  Maybe my kid is a nerd, but he always does the assigned work over the summer.  And he will definitely start on his essays because he works so hard during the school year, and has sports.

To me that adds up to a pretty full week without the long hours spent at the pool or hanging out with friends that I enjoyed at that age.[/quote]

I am sure you are a great and supportive parent.  You want the best for your son, and he sounds like he is a self-motivated, hard-working, grounded young man.  However (because there's always a however), I don't buy into the idea that kids who are from middle class or relatively affluent families, who attend private schools, who can get the benefit of SAT prep costing thousands of dollars, should be objects of sympathy.  If kids are overscheduled and overstressed -- and they can be -- help them make choices to lower the stress, whether it's standing pat on the first SAT score, or taking fewer AP classes or AP exams, or making a choice of extra-curriculars.

On the specific points:

1.  A summer job is great.  Makes for a great work ethic and, depending upon the job, can be a lot of fun.  Reading between the lines -- it seems that you are hiring Prep Matters or another very pricey private SAT tutoring service -- you are not relying on your son's summer job money to make college affordable.  He is working mainly for college spending money (although it sounds like maybe you're asking him to help contribute for tuition).  That's not a stress situation.  If the hours are too long with the academic stuff he wants to accomplish and you want him to accomplish, he does not have to work a 30-40 hours a week.  That's a choice.

2.  The SAT IIs have been around for years -- as "Achievement tests."  I recall needing 2-3 to apply for college in the early 80s.  This is not something new loaded onto the Millennials.

3.  Tutoring for the SAT this summer is a choice, and you've got the money to fund that choice.  I suspect your child has good scores at the least and is trying to max them out to be great scores.  Plenty of kids in this country have no clue about preparation to start with, and if they do, they can't afford an expensive course or tutoring.

4.  I don't think reading good books is hard work.  Kids don't read enough to start with, which explains a lot of schools trying to make up for the deficit in summer reading.  I also think you can read three books in a month (wait until college).

5.  How much AP work really is there?  At our school it is something like prepping for one lab in the science class and reading a book of modest length in the history/English classes.  On the college essays, great, but that's a choice too -- how many schools the kid applies to, with how many supplements.  Is he doing a club sport as well during the year?  That's a choice too.  If he's doing sports at the school, some sports take more or less time.  There are choices there too.

Your kid knows he gets to go to college, with you paying for it, and you paying for him to get a great education and max out his SAT scores, and with money in his pocket from his summer job.  That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

This doesn't mean kids don't get stressed -- but if they do, we as parents can dial down the rhetoric, expectations, schedule.  Just because a kid wants to sing and act and play a varsity sport and apply to 20 schools doesn't mean he/she should try to shoulder that schedule.[/quote]

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