Anonymous
Post 04/09/2025 05:02     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
FYI- there are some of us who actually hope our kids don’t get into an Ivy. One DC is a high stats/ high EC students and wants to apply to top 10 schools (and yes, I know DC is not guaranteed a spot). There is so much more to life than living under the pressure of having to constantly over perform.

Oldest is in an Honors program at a SEC school and it is a great fit. Truly don’t care what others think.
Anonymous
Post 04/09/2025 02:55     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:OK B o o m e r.


Ummm you don't have to be a Boomer to think like that. You literally just have to be smart enough, reasonable enough to understand what a single digit acceptance rate means.

Find the 4-5 Top schools that interest you/are a good fit for you all around, apply and hope, but at same time create an excellent list of Target and Safeties that your kid also Loves and would really want to attend. Focus your enegery on those, because that is most likely where they will be attending.
To improve your enjoyment/happiness, make sure 1-2 of the targets are where your kid is at/above 75% and the acceptance rate is also 30%+.



Agree. Colleges have many many characteristics (quality of food, beauty of campus, safety, sports, class size, etc etc etc), & some people have allowed ONE of those characteristics (how hard it is to get into) to trump all the rest.

If getting an excellent education is the goal, there are hundreds of American colleges where the professors know 100X what your 18-year-old knows.

—Parent of a kid who went to a top 10 & another kid who went to a top 150. They BOTH learned a lot.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 21:26     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:You should convey to kids well before they apply that with so many amazing people who are smart and great at different things, there really is no notion of desert in elite college admissions.

It is also what parents often fail to grasp. Your child doesn't "deserve it" (neither does mine).


THIS. Especially the bolded. So sick of the whining parents every spring who just can't get over the fact that their kid didn't get into schools they ASSumed they should get into. They don't deserve admission anywhere, any more than my kids do.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 21:21     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:You should convey to kids well before they apply that with so many amazing people who are smart and great at different things, there really is no notion of desert in elite college admissions.

It is also what parents often fail to grasp. Your child doesn't "deserve it" (neither does mine).


The fact that many parents don’t seem to do this as evident by these forums is really sad. Makes me wonder if some parents are doing this to live through their kids. And at what cost? Saying your kid goes to Harvard or MIT will not single-handedly get you a seat at the table. People have to understand there’s more to life than this.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 21:15     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
You should convey to kids well before they apply that with so many amazing people who are smart and great at different things, there really is no notion of desert in elite college admissions.

It is also what parents often fail to grasp. Your child doesn't "deserve it" (neither does mine).
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 21:12     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It is just this site and the massive combo of wealth and anxiety.


It's most places that are UMC+ and not much LMC/LC.



Maybe UMC+ but that is a small fraction of society. I'm in a MC/UMC area (lots of doctors, attorneys but not big law, business owners, accountants, fire department senior people, some professors...) and I do not see this obsession at all.


So you have the real world in your area. If you chose to live in and attend public schools in a mostly UMC+ area, you start to see this obsession. And it definately is worse in the mid atlantic/Northeast versus say the west coast. But it's there as well. And the higher the income levels go, the more you see it.



Grew up in the Midwest and now live In The South. There are pockets of it everywhere, especially in affluent pockets.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 20:12     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Every generation wants better for their kids or at the top of society they don't want to go back down.

This is nothing new.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 20:10     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It is just this site and the massive combo of wealth and anxiety.


It's most places that are UMC+ and not much LMC/LC.



I grew up in an LMC area in NOVA. Nobody cared where you went as long as you went to college. Many went to community college or Mason and that was a big deal.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 18:39     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It is just this site and the massive combo of wealth and anxiety.


It's most places that are UMC+ and not much LMC/LC.



Maybe UMC+ but that is a small fraction of society. I'm in a MC/UMC area (lots of doctors, attorneys but not big law, business owners, accountants, fire department senior people, some professors...) and I do not see this obsession at all.


So you have the real world in your area. If you chose to live in and attend public schools in a mostly UMC+ area, you start to see this obsession. And it definately is worse in the mid atlantic/Northeast versus say the west coast. But it's there as well. And the higher the income levels go, the more you see it.

Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 16:05     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It is just this site and the massive combo of wealth and anxiety.


It's most places that are UMC+ and not much LMC/LC.



Maybe UMC+ but that is a small fraction of society. I'm in a MC/UMC area (lots of doctors, attorneys but not big law, business owners, accountants, fire department senior people, some professors...) and I do not see this obsession at all.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 16:00     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:It is sad - you know why? It's status obsessed parents who can't stand it when Biff and Buffy at the club tell them that Biff Jr. and Mandy are both going to Princeton and you have to tell them your kids only got into Virginia Tech or JMU. They can't possibly stand the disgrace. Let the kid go somewhere in the real world and learn how to grind, not learn how to snobnob with the country club set on their way up the social ladder, making sure they lock down those Goldman jobs on Wall Street by making the right "connections".


100% - so afraid that they are missing out on something and their lives will be horrible because of it...its starts with best daycare and pre school right through to playing travel sports and into education - and then we wonder why our kids are stressed...its because we are constanty comparing them to everyone else instead of focusing on the things that make them and us happy..sad is right.
Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 15:34     Subject: Re:The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:This forum is actually quite reasonable and realistic considering the wealth/status of most of it's participants. They don' try hard for Ivy just want decent schools.


Not really. "Decent schools is anything in T100-150"

Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 15:33     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:It is just this site and the massive combo of wealth and anxiety.


It's most places that are UMC+ and not much LMC/LC.

Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 15:32     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Anonymous wrote:OK B o o m e r.


Ummm you don't have to be a Boomer to think like that. You literally just have to be smart enough, reasonable enough to understand what a single digit acceptance rate means.

Find the 4-5 Top schools that interest you/are a good fit for you all around, apply and hope, but at same time create an excellent list of Target and Safeties that your kid also Loves and would really want to attend. Focus your enegery on those, because that is most likely where they will be attending.
To improve your enjoyment/happiness, make sure 1-2 of the targets are where your kid is at/above 75% and the acceptance rate is also 30%+.

Anonymous
Post 04/08/2025 15:26     Subject: The Obsession With Top Schools Is Sad
Encourage your kids to be entrepreneurs and founders. That’s who Goldman serves. That’s why Morgan Stanley analysts have to work 90 hours and jump at phone calls