I have no doubt that the Ivies have high standards. If they COULD choose, they WOULD be choosing the authentic item over the faux-awesome students. No question. They do winnow the field as best they can, so no
total slacker/doofus kids are likely to be admitted. Granted.
Yeah, see, I
was one of those kids that came from pretty much nothing-- so it makes me all the madder, I think.
My parents didn't KNOW enough to play the game, such as it existed then (mostly it was about counseling kids to seek out leadership experience and things that look good on their vitae if they have choices, YK?).
But this-- meaning what my DH and I see other parents doing, even doing fairly
brazenly at this point-- is NUTS.
I'm not especially worried about my DD. She has advantages enough that I don't need for her to have them all-- I'm even okay with her not having a few that should rightfully have been hers if not for said game.
No, what makes me REALLY hot are the parents at our SES who
do go after ALL of it like there's no tomorrow, and like ethics don't matter-- only "winning" does. I'd really like it if some of the kids who
need those opportunities had them instead of parents-- er, kids-- who know how to work the system the best.
These are the parents who elbow their way (oops-- I mean their kid's way... of course... HA) onto youth activities/boards/councils, etc. and then the kid shows up for MEETINGS, but never "work sessions," never mind actual WORK. Oh, sure-- they may SIGN UP to do work... but guess who never seems to actually show up for what they sign on for? Still goes onto their resume and records, believe me. Scholarship committees are often none the wiser, and supervisors are seldom permitted to say what they ACTUALLY know is going on to the decision-making committees deciding awards/scholarships.
We have had people at the local, county, and state levels
all apologize to us because they KNOW that our DD was the top candidate... but she didn't look all that different from two or three others
on paper, and they weren't allowed to tell what they knew about the veracity of what was there on paper.
Helpful tip for the unethical tiger parenting aficionado, that. Much time savings to be had there, and you can still claim all that the group does within the community if you opt for only "showcase" and "photo-op" activities that take less time! Let the uninitiated or ethically fettered take on all the time-consuming, thankless scut work! Yay!
My kid who actually has a great sense of personal responsibility and ethics is ALWAYS the one asking if the organizers need "extra help setting things up" or doing other things behind the scenes. Because she isn't looking to LOOK GOOD, but to actually DO GOOD.
The upshot, though, is that she winds up not having enough time to do (at least on paper) as much as those kids whose parents are the ones actually doing half of the crap on their vitae. These are the parents who sell cookies etc. and put together science fair projects when their kids are little-- and believe me, it doesn't stop there.
They are ALSO the ones writing essays (or paying someone else to), proposals, competition speeches, and still doing school and science fair projects when their kids are high school aged. I mean,
suuuuuuuuure your kid did {high-tech thing that can only happen in your research lab or hospital, or workplace} and then put together this glossy presentation about it... SURE. Which is why said high school senior can't answer any questions about it beyond what you-- oops, I mean the child-- wrote on the PowerPoint slides, and why s/he stumbles over every technical term in them. Hey-- didn't I see that one image in a recent publication with your name on it?
It's really obnoxious. The kids it TRULY hurts are the HG+ kids in the middle two quartiles. Well, and potentially their own kids, as the article Bostonian posted pointed out (and we do see some of THAT here, too in our town's sky high adolescent suicide and mental health hospitalization rates), who are under tremendous pressure on the few things that their parents CANNOT game/control. I really do know a few parents that have doctor-shopped for a diagnosis that they could use to get their child more time on College Board tests, justifying it by pointing out 10-20% increases in scores with double time and intensive coaching... Yup. They discuss which doctors are loose with diagnoses which are helpful. No, not about their kids' PROBLEMS... because they laugh about their kids not HAVING problems. That's what they ADMIT to. That is just disgusting. (And no, I do
not count such people as friends, and there is NO WAY that I tell them about anything that my DD does, because all of it seems like a 'challenge' to them to somehow match it on paper... but I do hear them talk, and as an introvert who is well buttoned-up most of the time,
people have always told me pretty much ANYTHING. ) DD hears some of her peers LAUGH about cheating-- and yes, on the standardized tests, too. They seriously don't see anything wrong with it, and clearly they got those notions from their parents, I'd say.
High achievement, I'm
all for. There are some young people in this area who are remarkable athletes, scholars, and musicians. They are rare, but not vanishingly so (as one might expect in a town with a high rate of terminally-degreed people). It's the grasping/scrabbling horde that I object to.
The lower SES but high ability kids, now they are the ones that most need the individual scholarships and such in order to garner reasonably good educational opportunities. But they sure don't get them with these kinds of shenanigans going on. I feel VERY upset for them, and I count some of them as my friends. Their kids? They are going to get hosed.
Not that I'm bitter. Okay-- maybe I am. But I do think that I'm not crazy to think this is
way wrong.
.