I have to agree with Val. We also didn't attend Ivies, and we've done quite well for ourselves and our child.
I also strongly suspect that at some point, being both extremely bright and NOT having gone to a very high-priced college/uni is going to start looking more promising than having a prestigious (high $$) pedigree. Why? Because it shows pragmatism that pretty much can't be bought at any price.
I also agree with her horror at turning 11 and 12 yo kids into workaholics by applying the lash. It's fine if it is truly the kids doing it. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with a 10yo that wants to homeschool to make time for an INTEL project or some other passion.
Where I begin to have a problem with this kind of thing is when it becomes an arms race-- and it has.
My family has spent a lot of time thinking about this-- and we've decided to opt out. As a family, I mean. It's not healthy, and the levels to which we have to push our kids to achieve are frankly horrifying in the current climate. Race to Nowhere. Truly; while that level of achievement used to be reserved for kids who were DYS material, now the PG kids have to differentiate themselves by winning national titles and demonstrating prodigy at ever-younger ages. All in an effort to distinguish themselves from the pack of hothoused/groomed kids that are not actually PG in the first place but have parents that want to make them LOOK like they are. Parents spend thousands of dollars to find an evaluator that will give them the right bits of paper 'certifying' their kids.
Acutally, colleges could care less as long as those kids are paying tuition $$ and not flunking out in droves. That's why even elite colleges are more than happy to provide remedial work for (otherwise bright-enough) kids who have been rushed through material that they had no hope of mastering at that pace.
Our PG kids are getting lost in that shuffle. But the only way to make them stand out against it is to rob them of what childhood they can still have.
We're living this right now with our 13yo DD. We have chosen to step off the fast lane when she chooses to, and let her succeed on HER terms, not those defined by the masses. Is she Ivy League material? You bet she is. But we don't care, and we see little evidence to suggest that it will matter to her, either.
More important to us is the long term development of DD as a whole, mature person with the capacity for contentment and happiness. That isn't to say that the parents of prodigies and Ivy-bound kiddos aren't doing that, as well-- just that kids who are PG and well-rounded, or just more even in their cognitive development, sometimes aren't suited for those kinds of "stand-out" activities on their vitae.
My DD enjoys chess, for example, and she loves science and literature. She's not a kid who is going to win trophies for any of that. Some of that is about disability, and some of it is about deliberately avoiding situations which make the disability's limitations more painful to face. This precludes even most cross-country travel, by the way. She'd rather play D&D (or whatever they're calling it now) than work on an INTEL project that would lead to honors (and national competition/awards) that she could only be bitter about not participating in. We are okay with that, because... she's 13. We want her to have some experiences that are normative, because that is the basis for so much lifelong social interaction.
She's just a top 5% kid in her grade range in many of those kinds of activities. In other words, she does a lot of things very, very well when compared with even high-achieving/GT students 3-4 years her senior-- but not always "extraordinarily" well compared with them.
Would she seem that extraordinary if we hadn't done the multiple accelerations? Probably, at least in a few areas. But there's no way that she'd have come out of that intact while being forced to work so far below ability day after day, so it's a moot point.
Bleh.
Back to the original question here-- would I list DYS (or anything else, for that matter)?
If it seemed truly relevent to something else, or included particular activities. What does it tell the admissions office about the student's suitability for the institution, after all?
Will we list DD's radical accelerations? No, probably not per se; it's obvious in a de facto sense to start with, and that will have to be enough. "I was only 14 when I graduated at the top of my class" isn't going to be there on the application, even if both of those pieces of information are there for someone to see if they look.
This isn't about WHAT a student is or is not. It's about who that student is as a prospective student, and what s/he is likely to do as a student. Note that this is far different than "capacity" for doing well.
DYS is, when you get right down to it, about WHAT a student is (capacity), not about that other stuff. So no, I wouldn't. I agree that either the grades and other accomplishments already say it, or they don't, and if it's the latter, then DYS says "underachiever" to anyone that is in the know.
