Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion more on "Tiger Mom"...

You answered your own question. The population continues to grow, and at the top end applicants are less constrained by geography, so there are more applicants and a lower acceptance rate. One reason for my high-IQ-people-are-more-successful posts is that I wish employers gave more weight to IQ and other standardized tests rather than elite credentials, whose supply is artificially constrained. Harvard could expand its class size if it really wanted to, but a 6% acceptance rate signals its exclusivity.

I guess I didn't take population growth into account, but I can't say I believe it would make THAT big of a difference. Obviously, it's true that the US is not magically acquiring new Ivies to match population growth.

A country where a bright student with non-elite, "naive" parents is courted by the best universities could be described as meritocratic, a case I have been making in many posts.

Ah, but if your child is going to Harvard or Yale, it IS a race. Because once they show up at the doors to one of those schools, power and wealth are secured.

And so, the child MUST be valedictorian, and no matter that there are 4 hours of homework a night. The child also MUST fill out other areas of the college application, by election to class president, leading the debate team, starring in the school musical, winning the state tennis tournament, participating in the academic decathlon, and volunteering in the homeless shelter.

The result will be a child who sleeps three hours a night, has no close friends, and does not socialize in any meaningful way. The child will also have no executive functioning skills, because there has never been a time when the child wasn't involved in some sort of carefully organized activity. So, lacking any ability to function independently, suffering from severe mental issues, and unable to connect with other people, they arrive at Harvard and Yale. But don't worry, there's an effective support system at the universities to help them get through... just like if Mom were there. Plus, there's still more competition to be had, and at this point, that's all the kids know.

And then they graduate, with all these same problems, and go on to lead the boardrooms and political chambers of the country. The products of such an environment that rewards competition at all costs might go into politics, where they'd be expected to accomplish nothing other than being re-elected, and turn the halls of power into nothing more than an absurd theater for a perpetual election cycle, right? Or, they might go into finance, where a win-at-all-costs attitude leads to the reckless pursuit of short-term gains, at the expense of stability of the overall market, right?

So yeah, it's a good thing those things never happen.

It's very much an arms race. If you play the game, you lose. And if you don't play the game... you lose.

You do understand that this was in the early 1980's, though, right?

The few elite schools that I visited, it was also clear that I was a "low SES" admit for them-- that is, I wasn't like the other students at the institution. There's a reason why I didn't go to any of those schools.

I figured my kids will possibly get in as "low SES" admits (well, really just "low E"). Whatever works. At this point, the decision for me not to go back into advertising (ugh) and make a lot more money is pretty intentional. It would just jack up college finances. (Well, there is that little matter of retirement...but DH is fully vested in a pension plan, we do have other savings, and we're used to living on a shoestring.) I don't think my kids will have problems with the cultural environment at a school with SOME very wealthy kids and SOME private-school trust-fund babies. There were some at my college and I just wasn't friends with them. (Not on purpose. Just didn't happen.) But a school with a TON? Yeah, that could be weird/toxic.

Well, ultramarina, I think that there are several things at work.

1. Yes, common app means that kids with money (and those whose parents can afford to be throwing a lot at the problem to start with) are applying EVERYWHERE. They no longer apply to one :reach: the way our generation did-- they apply to five or six, as well as the half dozen more 'safe' bets.

2. Yes, many many students who would have been considered "marginal" as college material are now applying. Basically, the top 75% of a high school class is being advised to 'go to college' and the lowest quartile is being encouraged to 'build skills' in order to 'eventually' get there. (Which, to be clear, is probably kinda crazy to start with-- and it creates a LOT of problems elsewhere... a rippling through the system, as it were.) While I'm thrilled that accommodations for disabling conditions exist in K-12, it becomes less and less clear whether or not it's a good thing in higher ed... because honestly, how much "accommodation" is a hospital supposed to grant a surgeon in performing his/her job? Not much way to give time-and-a-half for brain surgery. This is a problem-- supports SHOULD fade through college, and way too many students and parents don't seem to understand that they HAVE to develop personal work-arounds during those years, or switch fields to something that allows for them. Life just plain isn't fair. Boy oh boy do I understand that one. But it really isn't a level playing field. In K-12, "compulsory" education, absolutely critical that it be as fair as we can make it. Yes. But not everyone can be an ______ (artist, brain surgeon, rocket scientist, fireman, etc. etc.)-- this is also a problem which has developed in this system over the past 25y.

3. Elite schools also have competition like never before from international students. So do less-elite-but-still-tier-one public institutions, and those private colleges whose endowments took a huge hit in 2000 and again in '08. They are admitting increasing numbers of foreign students not because (as they maintain) that those students are 'more competitive' than their American peers, though that is a pleasant fiction that they TELL people in PR materials... nope. But they PAY extremely well for the privilege.

This has been a HUGE problem in public institutions along the west coast-- so big, in fact, that there is no longer any way to deny that there is a financial incentive for the institutions to be doing so. Why straight-A's may not get you into UW this year

The situation is even worse in the UC system. Now, the reasons for the financial dire straits are open for debate, certainly-- but the fact that they are hurting enough for money that they are willing to alienate the voting public over it is pretty telling in and of itself.



In other words, it isn't just the US population expansion which is fueling this trend. It's that US residents are often competing for FEWER spots at top universities, among a cohort which has easily tripled in size.


So what used to be "high achievement" that didn't especially worry about what it could 'demonstrate' or 'document' has now become indistinguishable from the grooming that only highly savvy and slightly unscrupulous parents used to indulge in to get well-off but hardly stellar scholars into top universities. Because EVERYONE in that group started the document, document, document (oh, hey, look... I can slip in this exaggeration here and there)... which eventually turned into outright obfuscation and worse...

because the people just slightly lower on the savvy and UMC scale started doing it, and therefore that first group had to up the ante so that mediocre-kid could STILL come out on top...

well. You get the picture.


Jon makes an excellent series of points in his most recent post, by the way.

Caltech and MIT admit more on merit than on the other things that the Ivies like. Did Ivies or Little Ivies chase you?

A few, yes. Some of the seven sisters, Bryn Mawr, UVA, that kind of place.

But as noted (and I think this bears repeating) this was thirty years ago. Reagan era.

I'll also note with some cynicism that even then, I was WELL aware that one reason I was so desirable to the tech schools was that I am... female.

I don't think we all applied at the same time. I applied to colleges in the late 1990's, not the 80's, for example.