Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by Val
Tiger parents should really be paying attention to this stuff, but I suspect that denial runs deep in that crowd ("my kid would never hurt himself because....").
I will. But maybe one reason the homework is taking 5 hours a day is that she is starting it dead tired at 8 or 9:30 PM. The high school day typically ends about 2:30 PM, and I think many students need to cut back on their time-consuming extracurriculars so they can get much of their schoolwork done in the afternoon or at very least start it in the early evening.

I agree completely about cutting back. But the problem is that she can't if she wants to look HG+ and get into Stanford. The tiger parents and everyone around these kids are sending very unsubtle messages saying that they will be total losers if they don't go to an elite college.

Do you remember A is for Admissions, that book written by a woman who used to work in Dartmouth's admissions office? Here's what she has to say about activities:

Originally Posted by Michele Hernández, pages 125-126 of Kindle edition
...being an Eagle Scout, co-captain of two sports teams, and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper rates a 5 out 9 on Dartmouth’s activity scale (in other words, average). An 8 or a 9 “might be someone who escaped from the former Yugoslavia during the war there, lost much of his family, but who learned English and demonstrated leadership and academic achievement in a short span of three or four years in this country.


And of course you have to have a sky-high average and amazing SAT scores. This stuff is mind-boggling, and it's also child abuse.