Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Do you list DYS on a college application?

I think the point is that this problem is a societal problem, not something at the level of individuals. I'm very concerned that we're creating a nation of young adults who've been taught how to climb a ladder, rather than taught how to make thoughtful decisions. Obviously, the problem is bigger than admissions at competitive colleges, but the admissions process is still a huge problem.

Bostonian's message about his wife taking his five-year-old to golf lessons to improve her chances for getting into college is a case in point. The tiger mom movement is another case in point. We toured a local prep school last year and the parent who spoke to the group spent (I am not making this up) at least 15 minutes talking about admissions to IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS!!! I could go on. It's completely insane, and IMO, it does serious damage to our kids and young adults.

Education as a whole (there are exceptions of course) seems to have stopped being about creating thoughtful citizens and is now more about, I don't know, shallow stuff.

I think some of the blame lies within the credit bubble. Massive generation of credit that has no reason to exist will cause massive distortions all over the place.

You're giving out free money with no relationship to actual value, like the dot-com instant millionaires and the recent financial fraud. So, the way to the top is status climbing rather than actual work.

Of course, that ended in 2007, so it's going to take a few decades and some sort of massive inflation/default event to really reveal what was going on.

(soberly) Yes, it has. Taking a big step back from mainstream cultural messages is the only way that most parents ever see it for what it has become, I think.

Most parents are fully enmeshed with it, and never question the subliminal messaging re: tiger-parenting.

An enforced step out of the mainstream is, in my own opinion, a terrific blessing and gift in terms of parenting, because it does give one the opportunity to choose more thoughtfully and with greater awareness.

{By the way, for anyone that has ever wondered, this is rather what my signature line means. It's an inside family joke, but it's also a serious allegory. When you can't live in the mainstream even if you wanted to-- be that for 2E, HG+, etc.-- you live with a Howler Monkey loose in the house. Surprise! NOW what seems most important?? Thought so.}

The magical fountain of money may have run out for the time being, but the social climbing is still alive and well. Example; I know people who moved from a blue area where they were contributors to blue causes and politicians, who now live in one of our nation's reddest states and...hang around with/support tea party politicians. Beliefs or what might be right or wrong are irrelevant. It's all about status.

They wised up .

...Except that they go back to being blue when they're with blue types....

They're probably just people with extremely high emotional sensitivity to the extent that they are literally overwhelmed by the emotional response of their peers with respect to their peers redness and blueness.

Have you noticed whether they cry during commercials when one of the actors or actresses look sad?

Do they donate all their time to finding homes for animals at the local animal shelter?

I wish I could say that, but I think they laugh.

I suppose you can look at the bright side.

They're certainly not rigid ideologues, right?

And they're funny! They laugh!

Because they have intuited what was documented by the following paper, which has been much-discussed online:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027656241000065X
Ivies, extracurriculars, and exclusion: Elite employers’ use of educational credentials
Lauren A. Rivera
Abstract
Although a robust literature has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic and social rewards remain less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the returns to formal schooling yet little is known about how employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational credentials. In this article, I analyze how elite professional service employers use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Contrary to common sociological measures of institutional prestige, employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top four) rather than selective university affiliation. They restricted competition to students with elite affiliations and attributed superior abilities to candidates who had been admitted to super-elite institutions, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, a super-elite university affiliation was insufficient on its own. Importing the logic of university admissions, firms performed a strong secondary screen on candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments, favoring high status, resource-intensive activities that resonated with white, upper-middle class culture. I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of educational credentialism to suggest that (a) extracurricular activities have become credentials of social and moral character that have monetary conversion value in labor markets and (b) the way employers use and interpret educational credentials contributes to a social closure of elite jobs based on socio-economic status.

************************************************

Some other research on whether college prestige affects earnings -- the findings are mixed -- is surveyed at

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/college-prestige-matters.html
College Prestige Lies
By Robin Hanson
March 22, 2009