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Oh come on rf, you’re telling me with a straight face that all of the parents of these brooklyn tech kids aren’t editing their kids’ college essays? I call bullshit.
People should have to write their college essays under SAT type conditions. Get ’em all in a room with no parents in sight and don’t leave the room until you hand in your essay.
I once read a piece by the president of Harvard where he stated that they try to shape their student body such that it doesn’t consist of (I’m paraphrasing here) “the precious, the aloof and the brittle”
All of the help all of these parents give their kids just delays the moment of truth when you finally figure out whether you’re a useless fuckup or whether you have what it takes to succeed. A lot of these kids aren’t finding this out until their in their mid 20s. What a waste of time and money! So much easier to throw them all in the deep end of the pool when they’re teenagers and scoop out the ones who are still swimming after a while and send them to good schools.
The harvard admissions committee probably gets specialized training on how to recognize what’s coming from obnoxious overbearing helicopter parents and what’s actually coming from the kids. They pretty much assume that no one writes their own essays any more.
“My understanding is that when it comes to getting into the very top schools, it requires a team effort of the kid, parents, and school, in addition to a lot of luck.”
I think that’s how helicopter parents justify their ridiculous behavior to themselves, but I don’t think it’s true at all.
“um no, 7 kids who happen to go to that school got themselves into harvard”
My understanding is that when it comes to getting into the very top schools, it requires a team effort of the kid, parents, and school, in addition to a lot of luck.
The kid is obviously the key, but has little chance of pulling it off alone.
I’ll provide a somewhat contrarian POV to my friend Legion on this topic. While intelligence may be under-valued in the general society, I would submit to you that it is over-valued by parents in the upper echelons of society, and I am speaking as someone who went to top-tier schools. It has been my observation that the most successful of my classmates were usually NOT those with the top grades. Many of these kids spent so much time studying that they did not develop social skills and what is often caled “emotional intelligence”.
Almost without exception, my classmates who did very well were those with decent grades (B or so) together with great social skills and/or an intrinsic understanding of game theory.
Oh come on rf, you’re telling me with a straight face that all of the parents of these brooklyn tech kids aren’t editing their kids’ college essays? I call bullshit.
People should have to write their college essays under SAT type conditions. Get ’em all in a room with no parents in sight and don’t leave the room until you hand in your essay.
I once read a piece by the president of Harvard where he stated that they try to shape their student body such that it doesn’t consist of (I’m paraphrasing here) “the precious, the aloof and the brittle”
All of the help all of these parents give their kids just delays the moment of truth when you finally figure out whether you’re a useless fuckup or whether you have what it takes to succeed. A lot of these kids aren’t finding this out until their in their mid 20s. What a waste of time and money! So much easier to throw them all in the deep end of the pool when they’re teenagers and scoop out the ones who are still swimming after a while and send them to good schools.
Lechacal, it’s really not true that no one writes their own essays anymore. Maybe in Irvington…
“The societal celebration of athletics over brains is really misplaced.”
And the societal celebration of brains over achievement is really misplaced.
The harvard admissions committee probably gets specialized training on how to recognize what’s coming from obnoxious overbearing helicopter parents and what’s actually coming from the kids. They pretty much assume that no one writes their own essays any more.
“My understanding is that when it comes to getting into the very top schools, it requires a team effort of the kid, parents, and school, in addition to a lot of luck.”
I think that’s how helicopter parents justify their ridiculous behavior to themselves, but I don’t think it’s true at all.
“um no, 7 kids who happen to go to that school got themselves into harvard”
My understanding is that when it comes to getting into the very top schools, it requires a team effort of the kid, parents, and school, in addition to a lot of luck.
The kid is obviously the key, but has little chance of pulling it off alone.
I’ll provide a somewhat contrarian POV to my friend Legion on this topic. While intelligence may be under-valued in the general society, I would submit to you that it is over-valued by parents in the upper echelons of society, and I am speaking as someone who went to top-tier schools. It has been my observation that the most successful of my classmates were usually NOT those with the top grades. Many of these kids spent so much time studying that they did not develop social skills and what is often caled “emotional intelligence”.
Almost without exception, my classmates who did very well were those with decent grades (B or so) together with great social skills and/or an intrinsic understanding of game theory.