Reply to Can you remind me why my DC will not get into the same schools I did?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ll help you OP. It’s a freaking arms race of affluent parents making sure their kids are getting the BEST enrichments, tutoring, mentoring, internships, etc. I occasionally interview for my alma mater and times have CHANGED!

I participated in an engineering program at a local college for girls interested in STEM where we built balsa bridges and went on a tour of the water treatment plant. I have interviewed kids who placed at the Westinghouse science competition or have patents. Patents! 
I worked at k-mart and Subway. I babysat. These kids intern at companies in the field they are pursuing. 
I was president of the French club and 1st chair trumpet in concert band. These kids are establishing their own charity or leading the advocacy for some pet issue with their city/county/state government.

I was smart and hard working. I was the Tracy Flick of my HS - all the APs, all As, all the sports and clubs. Kids “these days” are accomplishing things at 15-17 that upperclassmen at my selective university were not doing when I was there. If kindergarten is the new 1st grade, I’d wager that 16 is the new 21. I always come away from interviews wondering - how the heck did I ever get in, how the heck will my kids ever have a chance. [/quote]

DH is a physician currently doing interviews for residency. Every year he says how these applicants are amazing and how he wouldn’t even get an interview now. There are so many students with perfect everything. Perfect test scores. Perfect extracurriculars. Perfect research.[/quote]

Suspect if some of us were in school now we would be doing just as well as our kids are doing.  So I think the bar has risen....for all kids, including the high achieving kids.  But the high achievers back in the 80s were the high achievers of that day.....[/quote]

I think what's changed is there is greater expectation for more kids to take more rigorous classes. Back in the day, yes, there was a high achieving cohort but lots of kids who were fine students and expected to go to a good college didn't take APs. Their parents were fine with them just doing high school, even affluent/professional parents.

I went to an affluent LA suburb high school in the 80s. The school had a bunch of AP classes but in a school of about 2k students, 500 per grade, there were only about 30-40 kids in the honors and then AP classes (including me). There was only one section of each class so I took nearly all my classes with this one group of students, most of us the stereotypical nerds. The popular/party kids did not take honors/AP. I was talking about this with my DD who is a senior and tired of her crazy stressful HS where at least half of the school takes a lot of AP and that includes the popular/party crowd. She says she's realized this year just how many of them are coping with the stress by drinking or doing weed all weekend. [/quote]

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