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

Wow. This seems quite depressing to me. Like our kids have to be workaholics when they're eleven just to get into college.

Well, the PSAT is just automatic because you should be able to hit semi-finalist without effort.

The AP classes are the least boring of the high school classes, which you should be taking as a matter of course. Again, not much effort involved. You can probably sleep through some of them (like calculus and physics). I always slept through calculus. It was the first class in the morning, and I was generally up until 2.

That just leaves the "extra", so you just find a thingy you enjoy.

That just sounds like high school to me.

It sounds a bit doom & gloom to me too, so I did a quick search on our school district's website for the number of National Merit Semi-Finalists. We had 22 semi-finalists in the fall of 2011 - I didn't google further to find out how many of those became finalists, but I know one of them that did. I also don't have time to search for the total # of high school seniors in our district, but fwiw we have 5 large high schools.

I can absolutely reassure everyone here that we had many many *many* more than 22 students get into really great colleges and universities last year, as well as many many *many* great scholarships.

polarbear

I probably depends on your definition of "really great" colleges.

Some people think that the number of such colleges is very small with almost all states having zero such colleges.

The only good definition of "really great college" is one that is a perfect fit for a particular student.
Example: Youngest wants to go to Savannah College of Art & Design. Other Youngest has his eye on Carnegie-Mellon or Simon Fraser. Perfect fit for each of them, crap-tastic if they were switched around. And neither needs to be at Julliard or West Point, no matter how really great each is.

I remember when I was going to college. My main criteria was that it was free.

As a high student, I'm not sure how you have the slightest idea what school would be a "good fit". I know that mine wasn't a "good fit", but then I had no idea why I was in college except that I was supposed to be there after high school. I had no interest in being in college, but I had even *less* interest working at a job.

I expect that the expense of college, and debt loads, will become more and more important going forward.

The prestige of a college does matter to some employers. I know of situations where a manager, faced with thousands of resumes to select from, excludes applicants from all but a few select schools. Carnegie-Mellon would make the cut, but the "Savannah College of Art & Design" might not. I got a PhD but realized I was not cut out to be a scientist. The prestige of my undergraduate degree opened doors to a new career.

I'm not saying prestige is all-important or that fit is unimportant, but there are situations where prestige does matter.

SCAD probably wouldn't make the cut for a science degree, no. If one wants to go into a visual arts field, SCAD is a name readily recognized. As for Carnegie-Mellon...it's a helpful name if you're looking at STEM (or bagpiping). Is it $170K worth of helpful? The jury's still out on that one. We have a few years to look around yet; there are plenty of options.

This is getting more depressing...perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this way, so forgive me. But I see (generally, not just here) an over-emphasis on admissions to and degrees from prestigious colleges for many wrong reasons.

Students overburden themselves with activities and competitions, etc, and the primary purpose seems to be to gain admission to places that will give them the "right" credentials.

It seems wrong to put so much emphasis on doing something to get in and not because the kids just want to do it. I feel like we're creating automatons.

And as for prestige as a route to the right credentials, what happened to learning how to think and pondering important ideas? Technology is great, but when we don't give ourselves space to think about what we're doing, we're at risk for making bad decisions and getting ourselves into trouble (Wall St; the mortgage debacle; etc.).

And for what it's worth, DH has a very good job at a very good company, and he didn't go to an IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL. I know many others with similar backgrounds. Most hiring managers I know, including me, care less about pedigree than about "Do you know you're talking about and can you get stuff done?" It might matter for academic jobs at certain universities and at some VC/Wall St. firms, but that's a tiny slice of the world of work.

Education won't help with willful fraud and massive credit bubbles.

The solution to problems like that have more to do with being honest and not creating massive amounts of credit that shouldn't exist.

Apparently some schools provide magic tickets that enable you to have Careers Worth Having these days.

It's not about education. It's about branding. And it's less than helpful to everybody.