Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Getting into a competitive school

I think if you goal is to get into Harvard, or other top Ivy's his advice is fairly good. Except for the fact that glosses over the need for a top GPA. And his advice isn't far off what DS's school is trying to tell parents/teachers. Find something you love and excel in it is a better strategy than spreading yourself thin. I particularly like his examples of what constitutes a spike.

The only downside to this is I hate that kids seem pushed to choose their passions at such a young age. I think we should be encouraging kids in H.S. to try lots of different things, to help them figure out WHERE their passion is. In addition sports, marching band and other time consuming activities are often what helps keep a teen happy & excited about High School and should be judged not just on if they are helpful for the college application processes.

The question of if striving for a top Ivy League school is worth the energy is a different question than if this young man's advice is for getting into a Ivy is helpful.

We won't face this for years, so it's easy for me to say - may be harder for me to stick to as we get closer but:

I think it is critical to keep in mind that "getting in to an Ivy" is NOT a viable life goal. It is a dead end goal. If it is met solely for the purpose of "Getting In" it will leave the child who achieves it hollow and directionless. The child's childhood will have been wasted, padding a glittery resume targeted at "Getting In" rather than organically evolved from the development of interests that flowered into passions. The child will miss the chance to find, enjoy, discard, or dig further into all the wide world of possibilities that childhood presents. The child will have minimal to no opportunity to find true passions. The child will enter college with vague expectations and will often find nothing that fits.

A healthy life goal that involves an Ivy would be "getting in to Harvard so I can study X, because Harvard's X department offers what I need for my career." But a child applying to college can only make this analysis after being given the chance in childhood to find what she or he truly wants to study. (This is not saying that the area of study might not change once at school. Life brings surprises and unexpected angles.)

This is sort of an ongoing rant for me right now. So thanks for reading.

There is almost nothing taught at the most prestigious schools that is not taught elsewhere, but some employers continue to filter their job applicant pool based on the school attended. Going even further, I wonder if my eldest son could teach himself enough computer science and math on his own to be a good programmer or quantitative analyst. But employers in those areas are still looking for college graduates, so he will attend college.

Your son might be interested in the "Hire Skill, Not School" idea popping up all over Silicon Valley. I understand from talking to HR folks at my LargeTech company that this is a thing, not just a slogan. E.g. - https://www.hackerrank.com/work (not to discourage him from college - which I think is valuable for many reasons other than just technical training!)

Suevv, I completely agree (although my DS is young so I also have many years to resist being sucked into the vortex). Attending a certain college in itself is a poor life goal; pursuing your passions and being a life long learner are much more important. Bright kids who follow their passion may be good candidates for "top" schools and those schools may be good fits for them, but it is not necessary for "success" in life. For full disclosure: I went to some "elite" schools, and I will say the best thing about it was being surrounded by lots of people smarter than me with a lot of passion. So I agree, albeit from the comfortable position of someone with a young child, that my goal is for my son to be his most authentic engaged curious self, not an excellent college candidate.

Twenty years ago, I would have disagreed with this idea and would have argued strongly in favor of liberal arts colleges and places like Penn and Harvard (e.g. smallish classes and rigor). Now I don't feel the same way.

I went to a small liberal arts college and got a wonderful education. They worked very hard at teaching us how to interpret a text, how to write, how to think like scientists, etc. That's changed now, and a lot of the rigor is gone. For example, everyone has to take 2 science classes. We could choose from physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, and a couple other classes. Two or three of these choices (e.g. physics and chem) didn't count toward major requirements, but they were still solid introductions to the subject from the ground up.

Now they offer forensics, "ocean life" (or something like that), and a variety of other courses that make me think of a live version of a popular science book. IMO, the college no longer has an honest requirement that its students learn science. I checked the Harvard catalog and it has the same types of fluffy courses. I suspect this trend is common to near-ubiquitous. While MIT doesn't have fluffy courses (!), Stanford does; e.g. BIO 3N: Views of a Changing Sea: Literature & Science. Understand: I'm not saying this topic is worthless (it's important). I'm saying that it's not a proper introduction to a fundamental science.

My alma mater and many other very pricey colleges have also added a lot of majors that strike me as being bogus (e.g. 27 majors ending in "Studies," up from 2 or 3 when I was there) and not conducive to instilling an ability to analyze, think critically, question one's assumptions, and draw conclusions.

For this I would pay $60K a year? For this a person will rack up $50K or more (much more?) in debt?

I suspect that the science and engineering departments at these colleges are still excellent to world class, and might still encourage my STEM-y kids to attend one of them (MIGHT). But that doesn't detract from the reality of being able to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a degree Me Studies.

Class sizes at some of the big name schools are supposedly very large too. Why pay $60k to sit in a lecture hall with 200 (or 500) other students.

I took a trendy-sounding courseload, and I was also lazy. I do regret some of my choices, because there are some major basics I'm missing. (I took my last European history class in middle school. How did that happen? I never took physics or calculus. This is embarrassing.) HOWEVER, one thing I absolutely developed in college was critical thinking skills. And the trendy-sounding classes were no easier than other classes at similar levels. Sometimes they were harder.(I think professors sometimes use this type of class as a Trojan horse--it sounds fun, but it's a bit of a trap.)

Honestly, I also often wonder if people who criticize this sort of thing have taken a class in it. I was an English major. My most difficult class in my major, and the only B I received in my major, was feminist literary criticism (cross-listed with women's studies). That is some dense stuff. It made my head hurt.

The easiest classes I took at my small, selective liberal arts college were:
Introduction to Macroeconomics (not sure why this was easy, but it was)
Computer Science 101 (I took this to fulfill a requirement)
Child Psychology (This was taught by a visiting professor who did not seem to understand typical rigor at the school; the other psychology classes I took were much harder.)

None of those were trendy "Me Studies" classes, of which I took a number.

Interesting, where I live in the NE most say that elementary and middle school kids should have exposure to various things so they can figure out where their passion lies. The idea is that by high school a child will know which passion/s to pursue based on past experience. I don't know if that really works in practice since my DC are not yet HS age.

In the UK, their equivalent of high school kids take their AS and A level exams in very focused subjects usually 3 - 4 subjects. So a student interested in studying a STEM major in university will take Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Math or Chemistry, Physic, Math and Further Math. They will also be expected to have pursued extra-curricular activities related to the major they have applied for for instance a future medical student should have volunteered in hospitals or similar healthcare settings. Prior to high school, UK students study a lot more than those subjects through and then sit exams (the GCSE exams) on them. This helps them to determine which subjects they like and are likely to do well in.

GCSEs are typically written around age 16; A level is written around age 18. My experience many years ago was that A level STEM subjects essentially covered the first year and a half of the corresponding university courses in North America.