Reply to Will your kid make a big deal about "revealing" their college choice?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The way you described it, OP, made me think "yuck, no." My kid is not at this stage yet but will be in a few years.

But then looking through the "commitments" Instagram pages and even those bed party posts, I feel more okay with it. I still see lots of ways it could go wrong for an individual kid (like I know for a fact there are kids who are tracking the likes and comments on those commitment accounts and comparing theirs with other kids, and it makes me sad that stuff like that is so easy to do). But I also know enough about what it is to be a teenager now to know this is far from the only place where kids wind up comparing themselves, or feel the pressure to try and impress people.

My kid's likely HS is one where basically all kids go on to college. To me, that takes some of the yuck factor out of it because there is a sense of all the kids having a chance to celebrate. Yes, there will be some differentiation in terms of where kids go, but unless you are at one of these elite private high schools, the vast majority of kids wind up heading to one of a handful of well regarded publics. Then you'll have some small number of kids going to very selective colleges and Ivies. And then you'll have kids who are doing something different but not in a way that is necessarily competitive. One or two kids might be going to schools overseas, which is always interesting but not necessarily something kids feel competitive about. Some will go to smaller, farther flung schools based on specific interests, and I think people mostly just feel happy for kids who find the right place for them. Some wind up at lesser known SLACs or OOS publics that might not sound super impressive, but it's because they are getting substantial merit aid, which is impressive. You just don't know. Once you get into it, you can see how it's stressful for the kids but it's really not this situation of every senior wanting to go to the same 5 schools. At all. If anything, seeing the diversity of college choices is a good reminder that there are many different ways through life.

So my conclusion is that it's fine, and I agree with PPs that people should get to celebrate this after a rough few years.[/quote]

I wouldn't be grossed out by it, but it's all about social media and likes and tracking your popularity, and there's already plenty of that.  It never feels like genuine celebration, but a performance of celebration, and one with it's own kind of competition and anxiety.  [/quote]

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