Reply to Ivies vs. Top 20 schools (after listening to many a podcast on the subject)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In many cases, parents have bulldozed the "achievements" of the successful applicants to the Ivies. There are very few kids who actually start their own non-profits/businesses on their own, like that.[/quote]

This is so true.

It sometimes makes me think of predestinationism and Calvinism.  I feel like there is this belief that some people are born to be graced with an Ivy League education, and those children will, because of their blessed nature, do great works and follow the Will of the Admissions Officer.   However, no one really knows who the blessed are, or what they actually do.  So, everyone is looking at all the people around them, seeing who other people say is blessed, and attempting to mimic what they are doing.  Thereby, no one is doing what comes naturally at all, and the entire thing becomes a farce.  [/quote]

Weird take. You might be overthinking this a tad. [/quote]

Lol...I promise I don’t think about it much.  My kids are in elementary school and almost certainly not going to an Ivy League school.  
These discussions just always remind me of predestination.  I remember learning about it in high school and thinking that the entire Calvinist religion seemed insane.  I mean, everyone participating must know that they are kind of faking it in order to prove to their neighbors that they are one of the ones going to Harvard ...sorry, I mean Heaven.

In all of these conversations, there is all of this talk about some kids being “born this way” or “having an innate ability” that others don’t have, and then there is this back and forth about how to determine who really “has” it.  It always makes me wonder what it’s like to BE one of these young adults.  I mean, part of you has to know that you faked it, or at least some of it.  What kind of adult does that make you?  How does that shape how you think of yourself?  It seems like it would be the supreme recipe for narcissism, right?  Feigned grandiosity in the face of a crushing superego.  And these are the people running the world.  The system doesn’t just find narcissists, it creates them from children.

I don’t know.  Maybe I do think about it too much :).  
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