Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^huh? De Vos is secretary of education. she's already started to screw up higher ed with her student loan policies. your NEA blaming isn't going to fly here.

No, that falls under the Assistant Secretary of Post-secondary Education. There is no confirmed Trump person in that position now. In fact, there is only an Obama acting in that office. Nothing is happening. Nothing would ever happen before an Assistant Secretary is confirmed. You are listening to NEA fake news. Please take it to politics.

Anonymous wrote:I am writing as the parent of two college grads (one with a graduate degree) who were two completely different kinds of students. Each is successfully "launched" -- self-supporting in a job that he/she enjoys overall.
This angst in the D.C. area is very overblown (my kids were in a different location for the first half of their childhood; here for the second).
Fact (and I've read all the books!): Experts list 100 to 200 colleges as offering top-notch educations for the best students. My DD went to one of those; my DS went to an excellent, supportive liberal arts college that was perfect for him.
Fact: It's not really a "screwed-up system" -- it's a screwed up D.C.-area way of looking at things. Admittedly, it is difficult not to get caught up in the competition, but remember -- come September if your DD or DS is enrolled in college, it won't matter any more where he did or did not get in (that is, if he or she doesn't have hysterical parents and friends).
Fact: Yes, tutoring and other things may help a bit, but only in limited circumstances. Colleges and universities understand the different schools and geographic areas that high school students are applying from. For example, my DD had very strong grades in tough classes, but her PSAT scores weren't great, so she enrolled in an SAT prep class, and that did help. But, if the classes she chose and the grades in those classes hadn't been very strong, that would have helped very little.
By the way, I visited Carleton and Macalester with my DD -- fantastic schools! It was snowing in October; she ended up applying early somewhere else. If I remember correctly, Macalester is very strong with need-based aid. Really, you could get a wonderful education at so many places such as the Honors programs at many state universities (just as an example). You would find many other extremely bright students who could not afford to go anywhere else there.

Most of all, I feel bad for the students who are put under such pressure. A good work ethic and resilience will carry you far, wherever you attend college. I just tried to shield my kids as best I could from the whole thing when they were seniors in high school. They also were allowed to (gasp!) do social things and just enjoy themselves sometimes (of course, there is a lot of growth and maturation that goes on during the high school years in many ways -- not just cognitively).

Anonymous wrote:^^huh? De Vos is secretary of education. she's already started to screw up higher ed with her student loan policies. your NEA blaming isn't going to fly here.

Anonymous wrote:I understand where OP is coming from. I am totally disillusioned with all of this maneuvering to get to the head of the line for the best colleges.

People are gaming the system with Prep that helps kids score higher on the SAT. They are studying to take a test better and better. So what does the SAT even mean? How well you can cram for a test, it's not a true measure anymore.

Schools hand out A's like water under the pressure of helicopter parents. A 4.0 means your kid is average now. So now kids have to take AP to get into colleges.

Wealthy people pay for tutors for the kids to spoon feed the course work to them. Do the improved grades mean they are smarter, more dedicated or just pampered students?

Lord help the kids that fall behind early on because they go to a lesser school. The road is too long and steep to catch up in this educational rat race.

I am sick of it. This uneven playing field isn't serving any of these kids (rich or poor) well. College is going to weed out a lot of these kids, but it probably won't be their fault at all.

Now we have DeVoss. That's the last nail in the coffin.


Cut it out. DeVos has nothing to do with higher ed. That falls under the still-to-be confirmed Assistant Secretary of Post-Secondary education. DeVos hasn't done all the horrible things the NEA said she would do. And she hasn't touched higher ED. Educate yourself before posting.