Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Apart from a handful of outliers, the kids in those towns just aren't that smart.

I always assume that the DMV is full of transplants, like me. Who knows that are schools here are .. good, but not topping any list. Who know that the DMV is not really the intellectual capital of the world. Or money capital. Or cultural capital. NY beats us, SF beats us, LA beats us. Never mind all the international centers. We're a mid-table city in most regards, like Chicago. We have a lot more bureaucrats, but nobody thinks that's where the best and brightest generally land.

So it always strikes me when I hear things like this .. which must come from a person who has never lived outside the DMV. Sorry to break this news, but we're not that special.

Well your radar is off today. I live in Los Angeles and was raised in London and NYC. My time in the DMV has been fleeting and I'm glad to see the back of it. Mainly due to the residents like you, who make such inane assumptions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I could invest in UK/European colleges, I would. I think the number of US kids going that way in the next 5 years will increase 10 fold. Roughly 150k all-in for a 3-year degree at Russell Group University? They'll all accept those 529 dollars. Why wouldn't you do that?

In my opinion cost is partly why you see the popularity of OOS public colleges, especially southern colleges, with kids from this area. With overseas universities I do see a few kids that go to Ireland and England. I’ve heard it can be harder to change majors since some universities can be specialized. Also assuming you need to meet A-level exam entrance requirements with AP scores, if you don’t know your AP scores for senior year and need those score to meet the requirements you could be sweating it with a contingent acceptance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Apart from a handful of outliers, the kids in those towns just aren't that smart.

I always assume that the DMV is full of transplants, like me. Who knows that are schools here are .. good, but not topping any list. Who know that the DMV is not really the intellectual capital of the world. Or money capital. Or cultural capital. NY beats us, SF beats us, LA beats us. Never mind all the international centers. We're a mid-table city in most regards, like Chicago. We have a lot more bureaucrats, but nobody thinks that's where the best and brightest generally land.

So it always strikes me when I hear things like this .. which must come from a person who has never lived outside the DMV. Sorry to break this news, but we're not that special.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

You are completely wrong about this. Most students attend the big school in their hometown or state no matter how smart they are. It is ridiculous to assume that the kids who chose their state college with a high acceptance rate are therefore all less intelligent than the handful of kids who got pulled from the lottery pool of applicants to a college with a tiny number of seats.

Having hired a lot of kids straight out of college, I can attest that this is true. Many students accepted to the Ivy League are average smart kids who are grinders and have good organizational skills. There’s this myth that they’re all brilliant, and it’s just not true. In fact, I’d say the resume that gets you into an Ivy these days is likely to screen out the brilliant kid who has a burning intellectual interest in one area, but really doesn’t care about making a 100% in an area they aren’t interested in. Ivy’s say they want “pointy” kids, but they really don’t. The only group it seems true of is MIT PhDs. Other than that, I know more truly brilliant people who went to lower ranked schools.

Pointy v. well rounded are not consistently defined - and also definitions of each vary per school, and different schools value different levels of each. To say one school prefers one or the other is to not know what really happens behind closed doors (admissions).

The proof is in the pudding.

Say wut?

Don’t look at what they say, look at who they accept.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

40% of kids at Williams, Amherst etc all recruited athletes. Why do people still buy this?

But Williams and Amherst are D3 which means they value academics and those athletes have to get in first. They're not dumb University of Alabama jocks. My DD was recruited at Johns Hopkins. The coach told her if she didn't have a 1460 SAT he couldn't even begin conversations with her. And conversations with her did not mean she'd get in. Just that he wasn't about to waste his time. These top LACs are like that with their athletes. She had to get a pre-read and then apply. These schools don't admit athletes who cannot cut it academically. You're thinking of D1 and D2.

Well that is unique to Hopkins or to your daughter. I know Ivy recruits this past year who were recruited with SATs well below 1400. I'm related to one. I know several others because I coach in the sport.

I know an athlete with a 1300 at Harvard. And that was before TO. These small schools with large numbers of recruited athletes/development cases applying test optional have a pretty small cohort of smart kids, much smaller than a school like UIUC. (In fact I’m pretty sure the cohort of high scoring kids at a school like UIUC is larger than the entire student body at Harvard.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

40% of kids at Williams, Amherst etc all recruited athletes. Why do people still buy this?

But Williams and Amherst are D3 which means they value academics and those athletes have to get in first. They're not dumb University of Alabama jocks. My DD was recruited at Johns Hopkins. The coach told her if she didn't have a 1460 SAT he couldn't even begin conversations with her. And conversations with her did not mean she'd get in. Just that he wasn't about to waste his time. These top LACs are like that with their athletes. She had to get a pre-read and then apply. These schools don't admit athletes who cannot cut it academically. You're thinking of D1 and D2.

Well that is unique to Hopkins or to your daughter. I know Ivy recruits this past year who were recruited with SATs well below 1400. I'm related to one. I know several others because I coach in the sport.

Anonymous wrote:

Apart from a handful of outliers, the kids in those towns just aren't that smart.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re the Midwest PP. It sounds wonderful to grow up in the Midwest. Your friends are doing something right. This keeping up w the Jones’s is not good.

Agree.

No shame in the Midwest going to in-state flagships.

Plenty of $$ left for Fancy family vacations /summer houses etc….Family time together…

I sent a college kid raised in the DMV attending a pretty diverse college to a Midwest flagship for more than 2 months for a special summer program this year. They came home with a pretty negative impression— basically, it that was very, very white and very homogenous (and they desperately wanted good Indian, sushi and Raman)— and my kid is white. I grew up in the rural south. Which was “diverse” in that half the students at Mt HS were black. But, it was the 80s, so everyone “kept to their kind”.

My point is the grass is always greener and you have a very idealized view of life in the Midwest. I grew up in a town a lot like Friday Night Lights. Which Connie Britton and Coach Taylor make look pretty inviting. But is not somewhere I would raise my kids. Living in this area has drawbacks. Faster pace, high COL, traffic, competition. But there is also raising kid in a more global society, near museums and concert venues and the Kennedy Center, (good Indian food ). And our kids push harder because their peers push harder and because they see a bigger picture of what is possible. Their dreams may be bigger than marrying/becoming the small town pediatrician.

I think that easing kids CAN be a great thing. Especially if your kid doesn’t conform to the white upper middle class homecoming Court, sports ne cheerleading, clean cut stereotype. And it’s our job as parents to guide our kids towards careers that suit them and their talents and personalities, not just expecting them to be an engineer or lawyer or Wall Street hedge fund manager. And we decide that the car magnet and cocktail party college name drop do not matter. Finding a college that is a good academic, financial and social fit is what’s important. And if that means deciding that you will make peace with the a college ranked 120 and speak about your kids college with as much pride as the Ivy parents, that’s what you do. Anyone who snipes at you isn’t worth knowing anyway.

You kid learns by watching you. You live here and choose to raise them in a less competitive way, and place less emphasis on a prestige college. It is possible.

Just my 2 cents.

Why do people persist in thinking that (a) all small towns are alike, and (b) the small towns they left behind 30 years ago have not changed in the interim? We left DC for many of the reasons pp suggested, and live in a small (about 20,000 population) town in the South — not even a college town — that has Indian, multiple sushi, Lebanese, ramen, Vietnamese restaurants (just to name a few). Did it 30 years ago? Of course not. In fact, the high cost of living on the coasts has led many creative restauranteurs starting businesses in small towns across America.

Just as you can impart your values to your kids in a big city, you can instill bigger dreams in a kid raised in a small town. Our kids know about the successful careers we had in DC, and they have traveled & they’ve experienced a world that is much larger than the small town where they spent the final years of their childhood. Our youngest wanted to go to a big city for college, and did so, but now they’ve been away, they have told me how much living in the city makes them appreciate the “vibe” (their word) of the small town we live in. Will they move back? Probably not, but they won’t spend their lives with parochial views about what people who don’t live in urban areas are like.

It drives me nuts when DC people pretend to be open minded, but then act like poverty and lack of ambition is somehow infectious. Our town is less racially diverse than DC, but it is much more diverse economically. In DC, my kid went to school with rich kids of many different ethnicities, which is hardly “diversity.” Living here has made my kid much more mature, empathetic and grateful. Could I have instiilled those values in DC? Maybe. But there is nothing like experiencing something yourself.

Racial diversity is very important to many people, especially non-white people. Just because YOU don't value it doesn't mean others do not. Ask a Hispanic kid (poor or wealthy) if he rather be somewhere where there are Hispanics or a bunch of white people of different socio economic degrees and see what he says. Or a black kid. I can tell you it won't be all the varying white people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

40% of kids at Williams, Amherst etc all recruited athletes. Why do people still buy this?

But Williams and Amherst are D3 which means they value academics and those athletes have to get in first. They're not dumb University of Alabama jocks. My DD was recruited at Johns Hopkins. The coach told her if she didn't have a 1460 SAT he couldn't even begin conversations with her. And conversations with her did not mean she'd get in. Just that he wasn't about to waste his time. These top LACs are like that with their athletes. She had to get a pre-read and then apply. These schools don't admit athletes who cannot cut it academically. You're thinking of D1 and D2.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re the Midwest PP. It sounds wonderful to grow up in the Midwest. Your friends are doing something right. This keeping up w the Jones’s is not good.

Agree.

No shame in the Midwest going to in-state flagships.

Plenty of $$ left for Fancy family vacations /summer houses etc….Family time together…

I sent a college kid raised in the DMV attending a pretty diverse college to a Midwest flagship for more than 2 months for a special summer program this year. They came home with a pretty negative impression— basically, it that was very, very white and very homogenous (and they desperately wanted good Indian, sushi and Raman)— and my kid is white. I grew up in the rural south. Which was “diverse” in that half the students at Mt HS were black. But, it was the 80s, so everyone “kept to their kind”.

My point is the grass is always greener and you have a very idealized view of life in the Midwest. I grew up in a town a lot like Friday Night Lights. Which Connie Britton and Coach Taylor make look pretty inviting. But is not somewhere I would raise my kids. Living in this area has drawbacks. Faster pace, high COL, traffic, competition. But there is also raising kid in a more global society, near museums and concert venues and the Kennedy Center, (good Indian food ). And our kids push harder because their peers push harder and because they see a bigger picture of what is possible. Their dreams may be bigger than marrying/becoming the small town pediatrician.

I think that easing kids CAN be a great thing. Especially if your kid doesn’t conform to the white upper middle class homecoming Court, sports ne cheerleading, clean cut stereotype. And it’s our job as parents to guide our kids towards careers that suit them and their talents and personalities, not just expecting them to be an engineer or lawyer or Wall Street hedge fund manager. And we decide that the car magnet and cocktail party college name drop do not matter. Finding a college that is a good academic, financial and social fit is what’s important. And if that means deciding that you will make peace with the a college ranked 120 and speak about your kids college with as much pride as the Ivy parents, that’s what you do. Anyone who snipes at you isn’t worth knowing anyway.

You kid learns by watching you. You live here and choose to raise them in a less competitive way, and place less emphasis on a prestige college. It is possible.

Just my 2 cents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

You are completely wrong about this. Most students attend the big school in their hometown or state no matter how smart they are. It is ridiculous to assume that the kids who chose their state college with a high acceptance rate are therefore all less intelligent than the handful of kids who got pulled from the lottery pool of applicants to a college with a tiny number of seats.

Apart from a handful of outliers, the kids in those towns just aren't that smart.

As someone who sent their kid to an expensive private school in the DMV and a school in a small town in “flyover country,” I can tell you that the cohorts, in terms of intellectual ability, are the same. In fact, I’d say the small town kids are “smarter,” because they’re doing the same thing without the tutors etc that make all the average rich DC kids look smarter than they really are on paper.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

40% of kids at Williams, Amherst etc all recruited athletes. Why do people still buy this?

But Williams and Amherst are D3 which means they value academics and those athletes have to get in first. They're not dumb University of Alabama jocks. My DD was recruited at Johns Hopkins. The coach told her if she didn't have a 1460 SAT he couldn't even begin conversations with her. And conversations with her did not mean she'd get in. Just that he wasn't about to waste his time. These top LACs are like that with their athletes. She had to get a pre-read and then apply. These schools don't admit athletes who cannot cut it academically. You're thinking of D1 and D2.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

You are completely wrong about this. Most students attend the big school in their hometown or state no matter how smart they are. It is ridiculous to assume that the kids who chose their state college with a high acceptance rate are therefore all less intelligent than the handful of kids who got pulled from the lottery pool of applicants to a college with a tiny number of seats.

Having hired a lot of kids straight out of college, I can attest that this is true. Many students accepted to the Ivy League are average smart kids who are grinders and have good organizational skills. There’s this myth that they’re all brilliant, and it’s just not true. In fact, I’d say the resume that gets you into an Ivy these days is likely to screen out the brilliant kid who has a burning intellectual interest in one area, but really doesn’t care about making a 100% in an area they aren’t interested in. Ivy’s say they want “pointy” kids, but they really don’t. The only group it seems true of is MIT PhDs. Other than that, I know more truly brilliant people who went to lower ranked schools.

Pointy v. well rounded are not consistently defined - and also definitions of each vary per school, and different schools value different levels of each. To say one school prefers one or the other is to not know what really happens behind closed doors (admissions).

The proof is in the pudding.

Say wut?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re the Midwest PP. It sounds wonderful to grow up in the Midwest. Your friends are doing something right. This keeping up w the Jones’s is not good.

Agree.

No shame in the Midwest going to in-state flagships.

Plenty of $$ left for Fancy family vacations /summer houses etc….Family time together…

I sent a college kid raised in the DMV attending a pretty diverse college to a Midwest flagship for more than 2 months for a special summer program this year. They came home with a pretty negative impression— basically, it that was very, very white and very homogenous (and they desperately wanted good Indian, sushi and Raman)— and my kid is white. I grew up in the rural south. Which was “diverse” in that half the students at Mt HS were black. But, it was the 80s, so everyone “kept to their kind”.

My point is the grass is always greener and you have a very idealized view of life in the Midwest. I grew up in a town a lot like Friday Night Lights. Which Connie Britton and Coach Taylor make look pretty inviting. But is not somewhere I would raise my kids. Living in this area has drawbacks. Faster pace, high COL, traffic, competition. But there is also raising kid in a more global society, near museums and concert venues and the Kennedy Center, (good Indian food ). And our kids push harder because their peers push harder and because they see a bigger picture of what is possible. Their dreams may be bigger than marrying/becoming the small town pediatrician.

I think that easing kids CAN be a great thing. Especially if your kid doesn’t conform to the white upper middle class homecoming Court, sports ne cheerleading, clean cut stereotype. And it’s our job as parents to guide our kids towards careers that suit them and their talents and personalities, not just expecting them to be an engineer or lawyer or Wall Street hedge fund manager. And we decide that the car magnet and cocktail party college name drop do not matter. Finding a college that is a good academic, financial and social fit is what’s important. And if that means deciding that you will make peace with the a college ranked 120 and speak about your kids college with as much pride as the Ivy parents, that’s what you do. Anyone who snipes at you isn’t worth knowing anyway.

You kid learns by watching you. You live here and choose to raise them in a less competitive way, and place less emphasis on a prestige college. It is possible.

Just my 2 cents.

Why do people persist in thinking that (a) all small towns are alike, and (b) the small towns they left behind 30 years ago have not changed in the interim? We left DC for many of the reasons pp suggested, and live in a small (about 20,000 population) town in the South — not even a college town — that has Indian, multiple sushi, Lebanese, ramen, Vietnamese restaurants (just to name a few). Did it 30 years ago? Of course not. In fact, the high cost of living on the coasts has led many creative restauranteurs starting businesses in small towns across America.

Just as you can impart your values to your kids in a big city, you can instill bigger dreams in a kid raised in a small town. Our kids know about the successful careers we had in DC, and they have traveled & they’ve experienced a world that is much larger than the small town where they spent the final years of their childhood. Our youngest wanted to go to a big city for college, and did so, but now they’ve been away, they have told me how much living in the city makes them appreciate the “vibe” (their word) of the small town we live in. Will they move back? Probably not, but they won’t spend their lives with parochial views about what people who don’t live in urban areas are like.

It drives me nuts when DC people pretend to be open minded, but then act like poverty and lack of ambition is somehow infectious. Our town is less racially diverse than DC, but it is much more diverse economically. In DC, my kid went to school with rich kids of many different ethnicities, which is hardly “diversity.” Living here has made my kid much more mature, empathetic and grateful. Could I have instiilled those values in DC? Maybe. But there is nothing like experiencing something yourself.

Racial diversity is very important to many people, especially non-white people. Just because YOU don't value it doesn't mean others do not. Ask a Hispanic kid (poor or wealthy) if he rather be somewhere where there are Hispanics or a bunch of white people of different socio economic degrees and see what he says. Or a black kid. I can tell you it won't be all the varying white people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the Midwest in an area where going to college was the expectation, but very little prestige given to this school over that. People mostly went public.

But .. there was also an expectation that kids got cars over their own in their teen years (new, nice cars). People cared indeed about brand names. People got married pretty young, bought an home at 30, and had their 3 or 4 kids by the time they were in their mid 30.

My parents were east coast transplants and we had to use the family car when it was free and applied to colleges further afield. We all went to Ivy League schools (in the day when it wasn’t that hard for full pay kids).

And now I live in Brooklyn and see this mania up close.

But as I watch my Midwest friends repeating this cycle I think, that’s a better way. It’s weird how this college thing overtakes a childhood. My old friends had more kids, roomy houses, less financial stress, got a lake house in MI or WI, are on track for retirement, and their kids had carefree childhoods. They all have fulfilling jobs. Their kids will too.

Why do we do this?

This is so interesting. What do you think is going on?

Same. I actually think my senior DD would love the midwestern university in the town I grew up in. She has toured and does like it but is influenced by the culture here and thinks that because it has a high acceptance rate it isn’t as good as schools with a lower acceptance rate. She could just pick this school and enjoy her senior year and also enjoy her college experience.

She is correct in that her academic cohort at a lower ranked / acceptance rate college is definitely for the most part, going to be inferior, regardless of the standard of teaching / research at the college.

You are completely wrong about this. Most students attend the big school in their hometown or state no matter how smart they are. It is ridiculous to assume that the kids who chose their state college with a high acceptance rate are therefore all less intelligent than the handful of kids who got pulled from the lottery pool of applicants to a college with a tiny number of seats.

Having hired a lot of kids straight out of college, I can attest that this is true. Many students accepted to the Ivy League are average smart kids who are grinders and have good organizational skills. There’s this myth that they’re all brilliant, and it’s just not true. In fact, I’d say the resume that gets you into an Ivy these days is likely to screen out the brilliant kid who has a burning intellectual interest in one area, but really doesn’t care about making a 100% in an area they aren’t interested in. Ivy’s say they want “pointy” kids, but they really don’t. The only group it seems true of is MIT PhDs. Other than that, I know more truly brilliant people who went to lower ranked schools.

Pointy v. well rounded are not consistently defined - and also definitions of each vary per school, and different schools value different levels of each. To say one school prefers one or the other is to not know what really happens behind closed doors (admissions).

The proof is in the pudding.