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

Earlier there were videos by Davidson Talent Development that I can't find now.  One of them was about "early college".  It went into detail about the ways you can tell and the reasons your kid might need or benefit from early college.   When the video only described how to identify an early college candidate I thought to myself, "they are or they aren't. and they will or they won't.  they're ready whenever they're ready.  isn't that the easy obvious part?"

Then I read this thread on the Well Trained Mind forum:

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/showthread.php?t=419614

Inside this thread uncovers an apparent trend of parents who are planning to rush their children through school to graduate with a bare minimum of credits to go through a college like Phoenix online, not even a community college. Yes, the distinction needs to be made between kids who are educated and competitive at a younger age and kids who are rushed into getting the easiest diploma.  I didn't know until reading that thread that there was a need for a PSA to distinguish between the two.

A good answer to this one is that in many cases, self-worth, meaning people's sense of their own value appears to be dependent on status and elitism.

Did I go to an Ivy League school?

Do I have an Elite Job?

Can I still become a Power-CEO or is it too late?

If not handled right, it results in suicide.

I know of two specific people who blew their brains out, in part, because of catastrophic status failure (for lack of a better word). One a lawyer, the other a specialist doctor.

That's part of what scares me about much of the thread. I'm hearing, "In order to get a job at the elite companies, they base their hiring practices a great deal on if the candidate came from an Ivy League school."

To that I have to ask, "Is that what is going to take to make that person happy? Having a job with an elite company? As for me and mine, we're quite content in jobs we feel passionate about and / or take pride in making a reasonable living and using the time outside of our normal working hours jobs to pursue other passions. In short, work to live, don't live to work. Everyone is different of course, if it takes an elite job to make someone happy, by all means, play the game of the Ivy League schools / Elite companies.

It seems to be a mindless game. When people get too wrapped up in it, it causes severe problems.

My personal problem is that I lack any passion for my job, take no pride in it, and have no passion for anything outside of working hours, ergo I'm bored out of my mind.

Which is why I say that I never figured out what to go to with myself and I couldn't begin to tell you what makes me happy.

On the plus side, since I don't actually have any real status, I'm extremely unlikely to take my own life due to "status failure".

The physician who killed himself was found by his 14 year old daughter. I'm thinking that's going to cause a bit of psychological trauma. It seems to be triggered by severe career path failures.

Clearly many people are in need of Howler Monkeys; that epiphany that comes with stripping away all of the things that do NOT matter in order to distill to those which really do.

To some people, that will indicate the need to pursue an Ivy league education and all that goes with it. For those folks, the status IS the most crucial thing.

To others, however, it will signify an awakening to the realization that life is too short to spend it chasing status rather than other inner needs. That is the path that we have found ourselves upon. It probably won't be right for others, but it feels right for us and our daughter.

I agree that people should think about what will make them happy and what they think is worthwhile. One study portrayed a grim life for entry-level investment bankers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472.html
Hazard of the Trade: Bankers' Health
By LESLIE KWOH
Wall Street Journal
February 15, 2012

Add investment banking to the list of things that could be dangerous to your health.

A University of Southern California researcher found insomnia, alcoholism, heart palpitations, eating disorders and an explosive temper in some of the roughly two dozen entry-level investment bankers she shadowed fresh out of business school.

Every individual she observed over a decade developed a stress-related physical or emotional ailment within several years on the job, she says in a study to be published this month.

Investment banking has long been a beacon for ambitious people who crave competition, big money, steak dinners and paid-for town-car service. The 100-hour workweek, these ironmen and ironwomen tell themselves, is just the opening ante in a high-stakes game.

But investment bankers, salespeople and traders are only human. Under the immense stress of their jobs, many suffer personal and emotional problems that escalate into full-blown crises, with some bankers developing conditions that linger long after they have left the industry.

Of course, no one is being drafted into high finance. Aspiring Wall Street stars sign up for the punishing hours with eyes open. What's more, the study's small size and the lack of a control group raise questions about how closely the findings apply to the broader population of roughly 267,000 would-be masters of the universe.

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

The published study is
Michel, A.A. (2011). Transcending socialization: A nine-year ethnography of the body’s role in organizational control and knowledge worker transformation. Administrative Science Quarterly: 54: 1-44.

As a finance person, I honestly don't understand why anyone who is not a workaholic would want to become an investment banker. The work requirements truly are as bad as described. And if it was all about the money, there are some other finance jobs that pay as well or better but allow close to a normal life.

But returning to the latest topic on this evolving thread: I am quite sure that I was considered for my finance job because of my MIT degree. If I did not attend a top 10 school, I would not have made it in the door.

Students seeking to attend college for status rather than to learn are more likely to cheat. There is a current story about many Harvard students who may have cheated on a take-home final exam in political science. There is a lot of vitriol in the comments at the Harvard Crimson article on this, but the following comment is interesting:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/8/30/academic-dishonesty-ad-board/#comment-635012657
Former TA and resident tutor at Harvard (5 years). I was very surprised to observe how many students studied for exams at Harvard. Instead of trying to master the material individually, many of them would band together in groups (5, 20, sometimes even larger) and create "study guides" by splitting up the material and each contributing a few pages to a small booklet of notes. They would then focus on memorizing the booklet, sometimes with haphazard results. As a TA for several large courses, I noticed that on final exams students would often simply regurgitate anything remotely related to the topic of the question; many of these "essays" had a canned feel because they came straight from the same guide that their classmates were using. The solution? 1) Admissions: stop looking for activity stars, and start looking for students who are intellectually curious and care about learning; 2) Campus culture: needs to change; there are too many students who focus on clubs and CVs, and who don't care enough about learning to think for themselves -- instead they prefer to take the easy way out, shopping for gut classes over house lists and relying on sloppily prepared guides; 3) Professors: need to stand up to the task of education; inspire students to value deep understanding over shallow cleverness, effort and integrity over quick results. There is a culture of ego at Harvard that engulfs students and teachers. It is part of the game to make things easy for everyone and pump one another up. Not enough professors take a stand against grade inflation, etc., because really putting in the time to teach would take away from research. Not enough students take the responsibility of learning seriously -- the comment from the student at the end of the article is indicative of an expectation to be spoonfed "the right answers."

My roomate in law school tried I-banking for a couple of years.

Eventually, he decided to get into BigLaw and then go in-house.

I don't think he really enjoyed those 100 hour workweeks.

This was pretty standard for law school and high school. All cheating, all the time.

I didn't really see much cheating in engineering undergrad.