Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
It's not about "getting in" for anyone posting here, I suspect. It's about getting in so that you can extract a good education from that setting at a cost that seems worth it.

I agree, and the gulf seems to be between the following camps:

1) This is the only educational option that works for our kids, so no price is too high.

2) The [rent] is too damned high.

Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Some kids respond very well to push-parenting (done in moderation, mind). My DD is one of them. Now, our version of "push" parenting is "No, this was your idea, you signed up for it, we paid for it, and you're going to follow through on the commitment."

That's not pushing, that's just parenting. If the goal is to raise self-sustaining individuals that function well in society, then the ability to follow through on obligations is a critical one.

Other parents act differently, because apparently they have another goal in mind.


LOL-- yes, but when your kid is Ghandi-like, the amount of, er.. insistence (ahem) can be fairly extreme. Dealing with this right now, in fact. DD promised to complete a BUNCH of things for fair entry, and she then dragged her feet so that she could socialize for the past six weekends instead of tackling it early. Well, the materials are here and so are her entry cards, so she WILL turn something in. Her choice how picky to be about quality, though. wink



CFK, the thing that I think differentiates a lot of parents HERE from parents there is that I do see a considerable amount of what I'd call hyper-prepping and Ivy-frenzy there. I just have trouble wading through it, honestly. I also have some trouble believing that "underachievement" is really a huge problem for kids who are statistically most likely to be bright or MG (IQ 120-135) and performing at the 95th percentile. But that seems to be all that I read over at CC, which just makes me appalled, so I tend not to read over there much.

I can find what I think is WORTH reading by searching specific things out, but it's important to stay away from the HYP(e) there. LOL.

I'll also say that I think there is a distinct difference between LOOKING top 1% and actually BEING top 1% within the context of a particular population. If you believe everything that people post at CC, then there are an awful lot more of the former than the latter.

Again, this is why I think this is a different population, in general. It's also a more thoughtful population since only a few of us are really into the stage of being processed by this particular machine.


I'd add a third group of parents--

3. Defaults to paying out of pocket because it's too Byzantine to be WORTH figuring the rest of it out at multiple institutions.


We're leaning this direction in spite of vacillating between perspectives 1 and 2. grin



Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.