s/o Does what we do in high school matter?

[swimmermom3]

I thought we could ease some of the discussion about high school methodology and results away from Helena's excellent thread, so we don't distract from her original post.

 

I have a couple of links that may be of interest:

 

Over one-third of students entering college need remedial help

 

Are AP Courses Worth the Effort?

 

The Gap Between Enrolling in College and Being Ready for College

 

Nearly One in Five Freshmen...

 

Is the AP Program Worth It?

 

Advanced Placement vs. Dual Enrollment

[regentrude]

To answer the question in your post title: yes, of course it does matter what we do in high school.

 

As a college instructor, I have the opportunity to observe high school graduates from many different schools once they are done with high school and early in their college education. What happened in high school does have a tremendous impact on their ability to function in college.

This effect has several layers.

First, rather obviously, the academic preparation affects a students preparation for college. Students who received substandard math instruction struggle, even if they are motivated, because it is extremely hard to fill in gaps in math retroactively.

Second, and not quite as obvious, but maybe even more importantly, high school preparation in work ethic and study skills has a large impact. Among the most disconcerting experiences for me is when very bright, very motivated students seek me out in distress (and sometimes tears), being full of doubt whether they could possibly succeed in their respective majors. Why? Because they were allowed to breeze through a high school education that did not adequately challenge them, without having to make an effort. These young people enter college and never have learned to work. Everything was always easy. For the first time, they encounter difficult concepts that do not immediately make sense and translate that into "I am not smart enough". I feel a lot of empathy, as I have been this student myself. Those kids are smart, promising, top of their high school class, and have  been short changed by an educational system that is focused on the lowest 25% .

 

For my own kids, the message I am taking away from this was that what matters most, more than any actual course content, is to give them the gift of struggle and challenge. This is the main reason we home school. A gap in knowledge can be filled if the students knows HOW to study. From what I have observed, many high schools do not teach their students this vital skill.

 

[Nan in Mass]

Do you mean does what we do in high school matter to get our children into college (and let them stay there)?  In my experience, yes.  I think it would have been hard to get youngest into engineering school without four years of high school math, SAT scores (or ACT), and outside proof that he did ok in physics.  (In his case, a cc class but probably a class at our high school or an AP or SAT2 test would have worked also.)  Lack of study skills means you flunk things unless you are naturally good at that sort of thing.  Mine have struggled because of lack of experience balancing a number of classes at once.  If you can't read and write well or fast enough, you will probably struggle.

 

And if you didn't mean that, then I would answer of course it matters!  Mine would not be the same people without their particular high school education. : )

 

Nan

[swimmermom3]

To answer the question in your post title: yes, of course it does matter what we do in high school.

 

As a college instructor, I have the opportunity to observe high school graduates from many different schools once they are done with high school and early in their college education. What happened in high school does have a tremendous impact on their ability to function in college.

This effect has several layers.

First, rather obviously, the academic preparation affects a students preparation for college. Students who received substandard math instruction struggle, even if they are motivated, because it is extremely hard to fill in gaps in math retroactively.

Second, and not quite as obvious, but maybe even more importantly, high school preparation in work ethic and study skills has a large impact. Among the most disconcerting experiences for me is when very bright, very motivated students seek me out in distress (and sometimes tears), being full of doubt whether they could possibly succeed in their respective majors. Why? Because they were allowed to breeze through a high school education that did not adequately challenge them, without having to make an effort. These young people enter college and never have learned to work. Everything was always easy. For the first time, they encounter difficult concepts that do not immediately make sense and translate that into "I am not smart enough". I feel a lot of empathy, as I have been this student myself. Those kids are smart, promising, top of their high school class, and have  been short changed by an educational system that is focused on the lowest 25% .

 

For my own kids, the message I am taking away from this was that what matters most, more than any actual course content, is to give them the gift of struggle and challenge. This is the main reason we home school. A gap in knowledge can be filled if the students knows HOW to study. From what I have observed, many high schools do not teach their students this vital skill.

 

It is an awful thread title. I just couldn't think of anything else that would refer to some of the points of contention in the other thread. :tongue_smilie:

 

My youngest is taking Spanish 2 at the high school. He informed me that he has a 98% in the class at the semester's end. He also informed me that he had stopped doing the homework because it was a waste of his time. I found it difficult to celebrate his score with him because the warning bells in my brain were so loud for the exact reasons above in bold.

 

I was thinking about some of the posts in the other thread and about the idea that people often overcome marginal high school educations to go on and do well for themselves. Yes, some do, but many don't and for those that do, it's usually a mighty struggle.

 

My two older kids  (21 & 18) each did well with high school in the early years. They didn't have to do a whole lot of work and could still get good grades. It's the usual story. As classes got more difficult, they simply stopped doing the work, because they were stumped and not used to the struggle. My dd refused to get help from the teacher because she didn't want to appear to "be dumb." We tried to point out the irony of that thought process, but it escaped her. My oldest son believes strongly in "the gift." If you can't play golf like Tiger Woods the first time you go out, you don't have "the gift" and you never will.

 

Both of them are now making noises about going on to college. The realities of  being a young person with minimal job experience and only a high school education are sinking in. They hadn't thought about who their friends would be in this new world arrangement.  If they do go back to school, their roads will be difficult, because they have some basic skills to acquire and that will take time and money. This has been difficult to watch especially because education means so much to dh and myself.

[creekland]

In a word, yes.

 

More in depth got spelled out a bit in the other thread and I don't have time to retype much of it here.

 

To type a quick summary.

 

There are many paths to success in adult life, but the actual paths open to someone do depend upon their high school experiences and the different paths vary in content.

 

'Tis best to try to fit the path to the student and to look at it all with eyes wide open rather than not.

 

I've seen students really regret not doing more academically in their high school years (not necessarily aiming toward top colleges either). I'm sure there are some who regretted doing too much, but honestly? I've yet to meet one IRL.

[creekland]

I don't understand why we must do 4 years of liberal arts high school and another 4 years of liberal arts college.  I would have liked to focus more on my major than being required to take a bunch of random courses.

Middle son opted for a Research U over an LAC. His only required course was a freshman writing course - of which there were several options on different topics. He also has to take 2 "outside of his major" clusters of three classes each, one in social sciences and one in humanities. His social science cluster is in Psychology - very in tune with his Brain and Cognitive Science major and classes he is looking forward to. His humanities are in American Sign Language - something he has chosen to minor in,so he loves that as well.

 

One does NOT have to do an LAC college after high school. ;)

[regentrude]

 I don't understand why we must do 4 years of liberal arts high school and another 4 years of liberal arts college.  I would have liked to focus more on my major than being required to take a bunch of random courses.

 

But it is the student's choice to opt for 4 years of liberal arts college. Nobody has to choose such a program.

 

In our degree program, of the 128 credits, only 24 are required humanities electives not directly pertinent to the major (they include 6 credits of composition and technical writing, for which one can make a good case that it should be required).

Of the remaining 104 credits, 85 are directly related to the major, and 19 are free electives.

[Jean in Newcastle]

 

For my own kids, the message I am taking away from this was that what matters most, more than any actual course content, is to give them the gift of struggle and challenge. This is the main reason we home school. A gap in knowledge can be filled if the students knows HOW to study. From what I have observed, many high schools do not teach their students this vital skill.

 

I got out of high school (college prep boarding school) and was so mind-numbingly bored in university.  I tutored all of my major subjects while I was taking the classes.  I was the top in my university major.  My major was not the most difficult major but it wasn't easy either.  I went to a well regarded private university that cost a fair amount of money.  I was mind-numbingly bored in high school too.  Both schools gave me a lot of reading and a lot of work so it wasn't that I was sitting around filing my nails.  I just didn't find it  mentally challenging or inspiring.  

 

Well I don't feel like it did for me because college felt somewhat like a repeat of high school.  I did not major in anything particularly difficult, but still I would have expected it to be more than what it was.  I don't understand why we must do 4 years of liberal arts high school and another 4 years of liberal arts college.  I would have liked to focus more on my major than being required to take a bunch of random courses.

 

Maybe I'm a weirdo or some stuff comes easily to me.  I also may not have gone to a particularly rigorous school (not like I had a ton of options I went to a state school that I could afford). 

 

So sure I'd like to say yes it matters.  It should matter.  But in my experience it did not matter much.

:iagree:

[creekland]

Well see, again, due to financial limitations I went where I could afford to go.  I didn't even know at the time they had such things for undergrad.

And that's why these boards can be good - so those of us wearing the GC hat now can know there are differences as we try to assist our kids in finding a path that works for them (not necessarily a path we wish we had taken, but a path that seems to fit them). ;)

 

The correct path for each student can be totally different from that of another student, but it sure helps when we know the plentiful options out there instead of relying solely on our own experiences.

 

(And with his stats, middle son's Research U came in less expensive for us than an in-state state school option he also had. It wouldn't have without his stats.)

[creekland]

Me either.  And I took the highest numbered courses I could get away with in all the dumb general stuff I had to take.  I didn't take any intro courses in anything.

College A is not equal to College B. There are plenty of colleges out there where top students would be bored. One can also be bored in the "wrong" major for them. Getting fit right is important IME - important enough that some debt can be a worthwhile investment.

 

And for some students, college itself is not the right path. No one is saying it needs to happen for all. Not having a college degree will close some doors, but if they aren't doors the student wanted to go through to begin with, does it really matter? My nephew is enjoying being a diesel mechanic. That job wouldn't interest any of my guys at all. Different kids, different paths. Find the path for the student, not the parent or a neighbor or...

[Desert Strawberry]

My experience was much like Sparkly Unicorn. High school was freshman year of college in super slow motion. I went to a good high school, and average colleges.  

IMO high school was a waste of time. I plan to ease my kids into the real world with work experience, specialized job training, community or online college classes, internships, etc. In place of traditional high school academics.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Well, for me, it did and it didn't.  But mostly it did.  Allow me to 'splain myself:  :D

 

I had a stellar K-6 education - pretty classical, in fact, though I didn't know it at the time - at a private school that used the Carden method.

 

I had a truly atrocious, learned nothing, wasted 6 years 7th-12th grade at a parochial school.  It was really bad.  How bad was it?  No advising - if you didn't go to the church's college, you were going to hell anyway, so why should they bother to help you get there?  I took one science in high school - biology - and the teacher (a theology major) had to give us a study hall once a week so he could read ahead in the textbook.  That is just one of a long list of egregious examples.  I got all straight As with zero effort, zero homework, except in Math where I got Bs without really having much of a clue about what was going on.  That was good enough for me and everybody around me.  In a word, I coasted.

 

Luckily, I loved to read and devoured hundreds of books, mostly classics, then discovered nonfiction and just used reading to learn whatever I was interested in.  I always had a book on my lap during the utterly wasted years of my high school education.  I actually learned quite a lot that way. 

 

Willy-nilly, without any prep or any idea what it meant, I scored high enough in the PSAT to be a NMSF.  But like I said, I didn't capitalize on this in the least.  I kind of wandered to the local state college, wandered up to the Honors program table at the Welcome Fair, and asked if I could take honors classes.  When the program coordinator found out my SAT scores, he flipped and he got me into all honors GE classes, and he got me a scholarship to boot.  So my lower division stuff was pretty good, actually.  I picked a goofy major just to avoid having to take any math, but luckily got hooked up with the Psychology Club and connected with some profs who were doing research (olfaction & psychoacoustics) who must have seen some promise so took me under their wings.  They kicked my butt about being lazy about math, convinced me to take math through calculus, some computer programming, and all the statistics the college had to offer.  I actually had a great time, got to do my own research as an undergrad and present at a professional conference.  They encouraged me to apply to grad schools - which I did, pretty unrealistically prestigious ones, but what did I know.  I actually got accepted at only one school:  my reach school, which was MIT.  Turns out they were interested precisely because of my unconventional experience as an undergrad - 3 years of research experience.

 

So I go to MIT, and I am totally, totally blown away.  I had never been in the same room with so many smart people in my life.  It was, um, intimidating, but exhilarating. I was in the Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Science, on the Cog Psy track, but after being there a few months, I decided I really wanted to do Neuroscience.  I spent the first winter break reading Physiology and Biochemistry textbooks, literally giving myself a crash course in the background stuff I needed in a matter of a couple of months.  I convinced them to let me switch, and I did fine with all the coursework and with my research.  I ended up deciding I didn't want to be a neuroscientist for the rest of my life, but I got my PhD anyway, mostly just so I could be a card-carrying smart person.  ;)

 

So, it sort of all worked out for me.  Except.  Except that I never really learned how to do math properly - I'm remediating my math education now that I am teaching my own kids.  And I had learned so many bad habits coasting through HS that I had to beat out of myself to succeed in grad school.  I actually think that I was lucky to be smart, but I mostly got through on sheer grit and determination.  It didn't have to be that hard. 

 

I wonder: who knows what I would have accomplished had I had a decent HS education?  Maybe I wouldn't have bailed on academia if I wouldn't have had to work so hard to teach myself 8 years worth of math and science in grad school?  Who knows, road not taken and all.  But what my experience tells me is that yes, it matters what happens in high school - the choices we make for our kids now do have a big impact on what doors will open for them, or for how hard the doors will be to open.  But mostly what matters is what you bring to the table.  And I really haven't figured out how one teaches that.  I don't think anyone ever taught me.

[creekland]

Absolutely.  My dumb useless guidance counselor told me I should consider applying to community colleges just in case.  I graduated with honors and I had very good grades.  I think he just knew financially I was limited, but it still was a jerky recommendation.  And at that time community colleges bordered on useless.  You couldn't transfer stuff.  It was all associate degrees in stuff like dental assisting and paralegal (not ranking because those aren't bad career choices...just not what I ultimately wanted to do).

 

:grouphug:  The same thing can still happen.  It's frustrating.  I wish there were good GCs everywhere... helping all students find the right path for them.

 

Which again, is why it is important for ALL of us to share info to assist our kids.

 

If heading to college:

 

College A is not equal to College B. 

 

Research to find fit IS important. 

 

Research to find finances is important (if applicable).

 

It's easier to find decent finances with higher scores and some outside confirmation of grades.

[Susie in CA]

To answer the question in your post title: yes, of course it does matter what we do in high school.

 

As a college instructor, I have the opportunity to observe high school graduates from many different schools once they are done with high school and early in their college education. What happened in high school does have a tremendous impact on their ability to function in college.

This effect has several layers.

First, rather obviously, the academic preparation affects a students preparation for college. Students who received substandard math instruction struggle, even if they are motivated, because it is extremely hard to fill in gaps in math retroactively.

Second, and not quite as obvious, but maybe even more importantly, high school preparation in work ethic and study skills has a large impact. Among the most disconcerting experiences for me is when very bright, very motivated students seek me out in distress (and sometimes tears), being full of doubt whether they could possibly succeed in their respective majors. Why? Because they were allowed to breeze through a high school education that did not adequately challenge them, without having to make an effort. These young people enter college and never have learned to work. Everything was always easy. For the first time, they encounter difficult concepts that do not immediately make sense and translate that into "I am not smart enough". I feel a lot of empathy, as I have been this student myself. Those kids are smart, promising, top of their high school class, and have  been short changed by an educational system that is focused on the lowest 25% .

 

For my own kids, the message I am taking away from this was that what matters most, more than any actual course content, is to give them the gift of struggle and challenge. This is the main reason we home school. A gap in knowledge can be filled if the students knows HOW to study. From what I have observed, many high schools do not teach their students this vital skill.

 

I was trying to respond in my own words, but Regentrude did it much better than I could. I agree especially with the bolded part above. 

I have also noticed many of our friends breezing through highschool. Honestly, most of them are not really gifted kids. They are all nice kids; don't get me wrong. However, the course load they are required to carry is way to small to feel like effort. I want my kids to enjoy learning AND know what it means to think; to really work with the material and ideas. That's what we strive for. And yes, what happens in highschool does matter. We see this right now with ds who is taking Math at the CC. It is amazing how many highschool grads have to start with remedial Math (Pre-Algebra) and how many still struggle. These kids have a lot of Math ahead of them. Math they should have covered already.

[Caroline]

College A is not equal to College B. There are plenty of colleges out there where top students would be bored. One can also be bored in the "wrong" major for them. Getting fit right is important IME - important enough that some debt can be a worthwhile investment.

 

And for some students, college itself is not the right path. No one is saying it needs to happen for all. Not having a college degree will close some doors, but if they aren't doors the student wanted to go through to begin with, does it really matter? My nephew is enjoying being a diesel mechanic. That job wouldn't interest any of my guys at all. Different kids, different paths. Find the path for the student, not the parent or a neighbor or...

Creekland, I think you should be the college counselor at your high school. Do they get funding for a graduation coach? You would be amazing in that position. You know more about colleges, researching colleges, finding a good fit for the money you can afford, etc. I really appreciate your posts.

 

And to add to what you said above...

And not all state schools are easy and not all private schools are challenging. There are so many amazing colleges out there, depending out the major, the student, etc. My son is at our local state college, but it happens to be one of the top schools in the world for his major. We make him live there, though. I think going away to college is important, even if it is only 30 minutes away. (Of course, we have the money to do that, which I realize makes a huge difference.)

[creekland]

Creekland, I think you should be the college counselor at your high school. Do they get funding for a graduation coach? You would be amazing in that position. You know more about colleges, researching colleges, finding a good fit for the money you can afford, etc. I really appreciate your posts.

 

And to add to what you said above...

And not all state schools are easy and not all private schools are challenging. There are so many amazing colleges out there, depending out the major, the student, etc. My son is at our local state college, but it happens to be one of the top schools in the world for his major. We make him live there, though. I think going away to college is important, even if it is only 30 minutes away. (Of course, we have the money to do that, which I realize makes a huge difference.)

 

I agree with everything you wrote (esp the last paragraph).  For many engineering majors and similar the top schools ARE state schools.

 

But with respect to having a college counselor at our high school - we got one for 3 years via a "Teach for America" type of thing.  However, for this school year, when our school had to come up with $$ to keep the fantastic guy we had for the last of the three years, they wouldn't do it.  They tried appealing to the community and that didn't work either.  I was bummed. 

 

So no, we don't have a college coach.  We have guidance counselors who try their best, but they have so many students to take care of from getting them to purely graduate to doing the college stuff that it's really a load.

 

I do what I can on a free basis for a few promising kids when I see them, but it's nowhere near the same as what a dedicated full-time person can do.

 

[elegantlion]

Boredom was one of the reasons I didn't go to college right out of high school. I wanted to study archaeology and no school I could afford offered  anything near that. I graduated a semester early from high school and was bored that one semester. I never did homework and my lowest grade was a C that year. 

 

Because my circle of influence was small, my guidance counselor lousy, and my parents not really able to help, I didn't go to college. I truly believe had the Internet been around then (1985) my life path would have been different because I could have researched the options and made different choices. 

 

Oh the irony of nearly 30 years later still feeling bored with the options I have. Now, I'm tied by other responsibilities and can't simply move and transfer to someplace more interesting. 

 

So, for my ds, it does matter what he does in high school. He needs those skills, skills to transfer into test scores and good essays, and a solid way to represent himself to universities so he doesn't have to end up at my university, where they have nothing he wants to study. Currently, we're eyeing two other state schools, still affordable, but those would require room and board expenses. The scholarships, grants, or loans are going to have to cover most of those expenses. 

 

We don't have the option of multiple universities nearby. There are two within driving distance, one an expensive and selective LAC. 

 

I feel like ds is going to have to attend a college where he can study what truly interests him. To do that he needs to have a solid high school foundation. 

[creekland]

I'm 39 years old and still paying back my loans.  So I did incur debt.  Imagine if I had gone to an even more expensive school! 

 

I didn't have a car or a driver's license.  I didn't have parents who were all that supportive.  I did it all on my own.  I didn't know what was out there. 

 

I applied to graduate programs and was accepted, BUT I was just so incredibly broke I couldn't do it anymore.  I was tired of having no money and living at home. 

I suppose then this is in large part my experience and not everyone's.  Then again the place I went to graduates thousands of students per year so I'm not the only one who goes to those places. 

 

I'll admit I don't know stats and specifics, etc, but imagine you had gone to a better place (more expensive or not) and had less to pay because it fit your situation via need-based or merit based aid?  A good GC should have guided you in those directions rather than the school down the road that likely had very little aid.

 

And (most) graduate programs should come with a stipend costing the student nothing...

 

But yes, thousands of students annually go places that might not be right for them and their situation - and we end up with oodles of graduates who have a degree that might not be worth much and years of their life spent being less than it could have been.  Some of them quite possibly shouldn't even have gone to college (but now there are many jobs that require "a" degree, so no degree is totally worthless).

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

I want to add something to my story.  Sometimes circumstances come in and change the course of our life no matter what we did in high school or in college.  (tmi information. . . )  So while I think that our choices in high school and college have importance, I don't put all my eggs in that basket.  We just don't know how our lives are going to be directed.  BTW - I'd say I have a fairly happy and fulfilling life, though I wish that I didn't have that chronic illness as a major thread throughout it all.  

[8filltheheart]

I think it does.   But, what that "it" is should be completely student dependent.   For example, I regret having such a strong academic focus with our Aspie.   He would have been much better served if we had backed off and focused on coping and social skills and figuring out realistic career objectives vs. thinking about a white collar/college degree career.  

 

But, I think the idea that students can make up any gap in their academics easily after they graduate from high school and still meet career goals is not one that is universally true.   Dh and ds are both engineers and most of their friends that started off majoring in engineering with them did not make it through to graduation with engineering degrees.   Math is what stopped most of their friends.  Technically, yes, those kids could have put in extra effort, back tracked and repeated lower level maths in order to strengthen their math skills, but that is just not the reality that you see.   Basically, classes that are intended to be weeder courses, well, they weed.   Kids change their majors b/c they don't possess the academic skills to plug forward through the course work.  It is not as simple as all kids just change majors b/c they simply didn't like what they were majoring in......maybe some of the time, but definitely not all of the time.   My ds gets comments from his friends about how lucky he was in his classes b/c he passed them.  No....it wasn't luck.   It was education.

[Corraleno]

I think that what students do in high school is perhaps less important than how (and maybe why) they do it. IOW, I think it's more important that students are challenged and motivated and genuinely engaged, versus just checking off standard boxes of "what." Obviously math and science prep will matter more for STEM students, but for other majors, I don't think it matters much whether an English major took AP Chem in 10th or did a self-designed Ornithology course, or whether a theater major added an extra drama course in 12th instead of slogging through Calc. I think a student who spends the HS years pursuing topics of interest in depth can be as well prepared as someone who did all the usual survey courses — perhaps more so, if that student has been led to think deeply about the topics he studied, instead of just skimming the surface and memorizing facts for a standardized test. It's also been my experience that students will work harder, and tolerate a lot more frustration and struggle, in subjects for which they have a real passion, so I think that those skills/traits/characteristics may be more effectively taught by encouraging a student to pursue those interests, versus forcing him to slog through X number of APs because it will "look good on the transcript."

 

[Connections]

The specific content of high school courses may not necessarily matter, but adequately CHALLENGING our students and teaching them how to LEARN is essential. Students will be better prepared for college (and life) with a certain level of math, with well-developed rhetoric skills (oral and written), with good study skills, and with the self-discipline needed to work hard.

 

For many, AP and dual enrollment may provide the level of challenge necessary to support this growth and development. For others, it may be too much. For some, it may be too little. One does not learn to work hard unless the workload and content is challenging. The definition of "challenge" will differ for each individual student and I am not advocating that one size fits all. But, I do believe that what each student does in high school does matter.

 

High school is a prime opportunity for growth and character development. Why waste the opportunity? I would argue that challenge is a necessary component for that growth and I hope to challenge each of my children in ways that are appropriate for them and their goals.

 

As for college admittance, I do believe that what our children do in high school will also matter. But, I have no idea what specific "formula" will work at a given institution of higher learning in the specific year in which each of my children will be applying. All we can do is work hard, take our learning seriously, and let the chips fall where they may.

[Dicentra]

To answer the question in your post title: yes, of course it does matter what we do in high school.

 

As a college instructor, I have the opportunity to observe high school graduates from many different schools once they are done with high school and early in their college education. What happened in high school does have a tremendous impact on their ability to function in college.

This effect has several layers.

First, rather obviously, the academic preparation affects a students preparation for college. Students who received substandard math instruction struggle, even if they are motivated, because it is extremely hard to fill in gaps in math retroactively.

Second, and not quite as obvious, but maybe even more importantly, high school preparation in work ethic and study skills has a large impact. Among the most disconcerting experiences for me is when very bright, very motivated students seek me out in distress (and sometimes tears), being full of doubt whether they could possibly succeed in their respective majors. Why? Because they were allowed to breeze through a high school education that did not adequately challenge them, without having to make an effort. These young people enter college and never have learned to work. Everything was always easy. For the first time, they encounter difficult concepts that do not immediately make sense and translate that into "I am not smart enough". I feel a lot of empathy, as I have been this student myself. Those kids are smart, promising, top of their high school class, and have  been short changed by an educational system that is focused on the lowest 25% .

 

For my own kids, the message I am taking away from this was that what matters most, more than any actual course content, is to give them the gift of struggle and challenge. This is the main reason we home school. A gap in knowledge can be filled if the students knows HOW to study. From what I have observed, many high schools do not teach their students this vital skill.

 

:iagree:  :hurray:   The gift of struggle.  Love it. :)

[Gwen in VA]

High school is HUGE.

 

1) For kids who are academically talented but whose parents can't afford $50-60+K per year, the high school record (plus extra-curriculars) may be the ticket to a full-tuition or full-ride scholarship. (Yes, some top-20 LAC's do offer full-ride scholarships -- you don't always have to step "down" to get a full-ride!)

 

2) A strong high school education can help a kid be able to double-major, triple-major, or otherwise pursue seemingly impossible goals in college.

 

3) For other kids, high school may be their last formal academic education. It should count! My younger ds will probably never enter classroom again, but he learned how to learn in high school. He is currently teaching himself statics ad differential calculus!

 

4) The pathway to a huge goal can be started in high school. Ask musicians, Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs, and other highly motivated people about what they did with their high school years! High school is much much more than academics!

[Dicentra]

Well I guess I was already "gifted" struggle.  Probably why working hard was not all that difficult for me.

 

I hear ya, Sparkly!  I grew up in a household that was below the poverty line for most of my childhood.  Struggle can really bite sometimes. :(

 

When I said I loved the thought of "the gift of struggle", I was thinking more of the idea of "productive struggle" from an academic standpoint - like we were talking about in the "outside the box" thread. :)

[kiana]

With specific respect to difficult -- I really don't think *every* course has to challenge a student. I think it's perfectly fine if a STEM-focused kid takes an english/history course that's still college prep but very much lower than they really could have managed, because they want to put extra time into trying to make it through the entire AOPS sequence or something like that.

 

What's really important and underrated (jmo) is that a kid learns how to work hard on challenging work in *some* area. I had homeschooled friends who did all git-r-done coursework (solid, but much easier than they could have handled) because their main focus was music, and with doing less challenging academics they were able to get it done and have much more time for music. They were still able to do fine in college because they were able to transfer the work ethic and focus that they had learned in music to their other coursework.

 

Please note that I'm specifically not saying 'it's okay for kids to skip algebra 1 if they want to work harder at something else.' A college-bound student should still be following a college-prep curriculum in all major areas and especially in math and english.

[Nan in Mass]

I like Gwen's post SO much!

Without the high school experiences youngest had, college would be a lot more expensive. The college he is at would probably be out of his reach. Other colleges would be in his reach but this one is rather unique and the education/experience would not be the same.

The high school education we designed for our children was not designed for college entrance. It was designed to teach them the things we thought they most would need and to teach them to continue their educations on their own. Oldest refused to go to college straight out of high school, so by the time I was planning the next one's high school, the unthinkable had already happened and we were forced to face the reality of it. We tried to accomplish everything essential in high school. (It happened that oldest later changed his mind, but we never went back to the "college will educate them for us" mentality.)

Engineering is usually started early, too. Much earlier than high school. The high school years are really important for engineers because they are old enough at that point to gain grownup experience.

And along similar lines, knowing that two of our three were headed for engineering school meant that we knew that they would not be continuing their liberal arts education much past high school.

We took advantage of our parental perogative during high school to insist on some learning that they were not likely to do later on their own but which we thought would be useful in the long run. (Sightsinging comes to mind.)

On the physical front, mine gained some athletic grounding (gymnastics) which would have been very difficult for them to gain later in life, even in college. It has stood them in good stead and even saved their lives a few times. There are some fields in which youth is a major advantage (like dance) and one needs to take advantage of those important working years.

Most of the artists and musicians we know made major progress in high school.

Most lopsided people we know covered major amounts of ground during high school.

 

Nan

[Jean in Newcastle]

With specific respect to difficult -- I really don't think *every* course has to challenge a student. I think it's perfectly fine if a STEM-focused kid takes an english/history course that's still college prep but very much lower than they really could have managed, because they want to put extra time into trying to make it through the entire AOPS sequence or something like that.

 

What's really important and underrated (jmo) is that a kid learns how to work hard on challenging work in *some* area. I had homeschooled friends who did all git-r-done coursework (solid, but much easier than they could have handled) because their main focus was music, and with doing less challenging academics they were able to get it done and have much more time for music. They were still able to do fine in college because they were able to transfer the work ethic and focus that they had learned in music to their other coursework.

 

Please note that I'm specifically not saying 'it's okay for kids to skip algebra 1 if they want to work harder at something else.' A college-bound student should still be following a college-prep curriculum in all major areas and especially in math and english.

 

I am very comfortable with what I am doing with ds16 - there is a good mix of challenge and flexibility.  We've kept in the box for basic subject choice (though content and sequence has been more tailored).  I feel like we work a lot on character as well as other issues (like executive function and organization).  I see these threads on making what we do in high school matter and I wonder if we did enough that matters.  I don't want to settle for the  "it's better than the school down the street" argument if it doesn't make ds ready for college.  Ds has done well on standardized tests but I don't know if that proves anything or not.  We are doing our first online class this year and ds has struggled - not with the subject material but with issues related to his organization of materials and his time management.  We're working hard on that so that hopefully he will do better once he is without me to walk him through it.  Perhaps that is a weakness of not doing the dual enrollment route that many of my peers have done at this age.  But I'm not ready to give up my role as teacher just yet either.  And even while I find myself wondering how we compare to others, I also don't want my teaching to be based on comparison to others either - at least too much.  

[creekland]

 We are doing our first online class this year and ds has struggled - not with the subject material but with issues related to his organization of materials and his time management.  We're working hard on that so that hopefully he will do better once he is without me to walk him through it.  Perhaps that is a weakness of not doing the dual enrollment route that many of my peers have done at this age.  But I'm not ready to give up my role as teacher just yet either.  And even while I find myself wondering how we compare to others, I also don't want my teaching to be based on comparison to others either - at least too much.  

 

FWIW, my two homeschooled younguns have had absolutely no issues with time management and assignments.  For the oldest, that only worked until he got his serious girlfriend (now wife) though, but I don't take credit/blame for that.

 

My youngest - in ps for all of high school and for grades K - 4 - is the one who has massive issues with time management.  Public school has NOT helped as the vast majority of teachers accept work late (even in the DE classes) and most of those without any penalty.  Many students learn that deadlines aren't really deadlines.  :glare:  My guy has run into problems this year (senior year) with a teacher who takes points off for being late with work.  He's simply not used to it and in his peer group, turning work in late is more common than not it seems (his peer group consists of other kids in top classes).

 

I worry about how he will do in "real" college.

 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I'll admit I don't know stats and specifics, etc, but imagine you had gone to a better place (more expensive or not) and had less to pay because it fit your situation via need-based or merit based aid?  A good GC should have guided you in those directions rather than the school down the road that likely had very little aid.

 

And (most) graduate programs should come with a stipend costing the student nothing...

 

But yes, thousands of students annually go places that might not be right for them and their situation - and we end up with oodles of graduates who have a degree that might not be worth much and years of their life spent being less than it could have been.  Some of them quite possibly shouldn't even have gone to college (but now there are many jobs that require "a" degree, so no degree is totally worthless).

 

 

I keep hearing this comment about graduate education. I wonder if this depends greatly on the type of degree or on if the grad student is doing nothing but school and is in a position to be a TA.

 

Both dh and I have graduate degrees. They were earned on our own dime. My MS Ed program was paid for in full - by me.  Writing that check at the bursur's counter had a wonderful way of concentrating ones attention on studies.  I don't remember there being any option for a stipend for the MS Ed. I would say about 90% of MS Ed students are working full time in either a classroom type job or in some other field.  My program was directed toward non-traditional students, mostly career military who were interested in transitioning to teaching.  Now there might have been money available through the Troops to Teachers program, but that was a separate deal with time teaching in targeted districts as the payback.

 

DH had tuition assistance from his employer. They paid about 70% of the tuition, if the grade earned was above a certain point. But it was reimbursement, not pre-payment.  Since dh worked, there wasn't a TA option or the option of working on research in the department. And since it was a humanities degree, I'm not sure there were stipends for research assistance anyway.

[kiana]

It depends on the graduate degree you're doing. If you're doing something like a master's in education where the expected value is higher and the degree is shorter, it makes perfect sense to self-fund.

 

If you're doing something like a doctoral degree in an academic discipline ... well, frankly, payoff is uncertain anyway, so you shouldn't go unless you really are passionate about the subject matter, and not just looking for the next step and uncertain about what to do with your major.

 

But even if you ARE passionate, you shouldn't self-fund unless you really have the money to piss away. Opportunity costs are bad enough, but running yourself into massive amounts of debt (and graduate students aren't eligible for some of the aid undergraduates are) to pursue a degree with a dubious payoff is a really terrible idea.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Guidance Counseling

 

I thought about spinning this off, but decided it did relate to the value of high school. 

 

I often find myself wishing that my kids were in a B&M high school where there would be informed, active guidance counselors who could help them see the realm of what is available. 

 

But when I think about it, I'm not sure where I got this idea. I did have a pretty good guidance counselor my senior year. She did all she could to make sure that my paperwork was in on time and was enough to be worth considering for the Naval Academy.  At the same time, I came in the door with that as my goal. She invited me to hear presentations by other good Texas schools (Rice and Baylor, for example). But she didn't (as I recall) make a point of discussing how challenging a service academy application was or that I needed to make sure I was casting my net widely.  I was one of three National Merit Semi-Finalists in the school and was ranked #4 in the class. I only completed the application to one other school, which was quite a reach.  This was a medium sized school, with about 450 in each class and probably 3 guidance counselors.

 

As an admissions liaison officer for my alma mater, I've interviewed dozens of kids and talked to hundreds.  In many cases, the schools are not at all proactive about getting information about service academies or college ROTC into the hands of qualified and/or potentially interested students. In some cases, the guidance offices are so slow about responding to requests for paperwork that it creates a serious problem for the students' applications. This particular head counselor was what I'd call a well-intentioned dragon. She really seemed to think that she knew best about everything. But she threw up a lot of roadblocks to students and didn't take best advantage of her environment.

 

Just as an example of not taking best advantage of your surroundings, each year the high school would have a college and career night. They would fill the high school gym with tables and invite teachers from all of the on base schools to wear a college sweatshirt and represent their alma mater. Many teachers took this very seriously, and sent to their schools for promotional materials to hand out. BUT, they could really only speak about their college's school of education. Few had degrees outside education.  This was a military base overseas, so it's not like there were college reps who were making the circuit.  The great untapped resource was all of the military officers, spouses, civilian employees and enlisted who had degrees. Not only was there no general call to base residents and employees to come volunteer if interested, but the counselor specifically turned away non-teachers who asked if they could participate.  [i'm still bitter about this particular school, because not only were we overseas, but many of the high school students had parents who were not college graduates and who had not grown up in the US. It is doubly hard for a parent to guide a child into a college system that they have not only no experience in.]

 

But to give guidance counselor's their due, they often have far more students assigned than they could adequately counsel. One NPR report I listened to last night indicated that many counselors have as many as 1000 students assigned (250 is the guideline recommendation).  And if you have half of these who are struggling to get through high school, I'm not sure how much time you have left to help another student find the best college fit.

 

Just pondering. There are a few areas where I think it really does take a village. I wonder if this isn't an area where a wider, outside of schools promotion of college options would pay off. The study center where my kids took their first AMC exams is an example. It started out as one guy tutoring his son into the science magnet school, grew to tutoring other students into exam schools, bringing in other volunteer tutors and then grew into a small study center with paid instructors and classes down into the elementary level, AMC exams and guidance. This one grew out of the local Hindu temple community, but could be replicated in many faith and social communities.

 

 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

It depends on the graduate degree you're doing. If you're doing something like a master's in education where the expected value is higher and the degree is shorter, it makes perfect sense to self-fund.

 

If you're doing something like a doctoral degree in an academic discipline ... well, frankly, payoff is uncertain anyway, so you shouldn't go unless you really are passionate about the subject matter, and not just looking for the next step and uncertain about what to do with your major.

 

But even if you ARE passionate, you shouldn't self-fund unless you really have the money to piss away. Opportunity costs are bad enough, but running yourself into massive amounts of debt (and graduate students aren't eligible for some of the aid undergraduates are) to pursue a degree with a dubious payoff is a really terrible idea.

 

I don't disagree with this. I just see it as different than saying that most graduate programs have stipends available.

[stripe]

Do you mean does what we do in high school matter to get our children into college (and let them stay there)?  In my experience, yes.  I think it would have been hard to get youngest into engineering school without four years of high school math, SAT scores (or ACT), and outside proof that he did ok in physics.  

In my opinion, both for college admission and the college experience, students in science/math fields are somewhat different from students in humanities/social sciences. (Part of that is certainly self-selection: people who do very poorly in science/math and took very few of them rarely want to major in them, although there are exceptions, but often they don't last long in their major because it's too hard. And maybe this attrition hits some groups more than others.) Also, after graduation, I also think people look upon STEM graduates as knowing something, whereas there tends to be a degree of uncertainty (perhaps wrongly, but I do think it exists) for "softer" majors. Furthermore, STEM grad school often IS funded by the university, whereas not necessarily might be putting it mildly for other fields. 

 

I wonder if what most people study in college matters to what they end up doing.

[Soror]

 I wasn't held back as much by my education but my lack of information and guidance. I never made it to a high enough level of school (I only have a Bachelors) that my education was an impediment. I do believe had I had more encouragement, funding and info and ended up in a more rigorous college I would have found some big gaping holes in my knowledge. I also know that the lack of challenge in my schooling would have been the biggest impediment to success at higher levels. I would like to think that I would have risen to the challenge as I did quite enjoy the few classes I had that were more rigorous but it is hard to say now. Making sure I adequately challenge my children and letting them know that real learning is fun and hard is one of my biggest goals in homeschooling. I think quite often we underestimate the value of character and work. Unfortunately in our culture we revere IQ too highly and have this skewed notion that being intelligent means you never have to work at learning.

 

I have such mixed feelings about my own education as I love my family and had I went away to college life would have been much different. I still wistfully think about going back for at least my Masters degree, at the time my pragmatic self couldn't do it knowing that it would come with debt and I wanted to stay at home with my (future) children. I do hope that I provide an education and guidance for my children so they can live up to their potential and I have them find their own path.

[1Togo]

I've scanned the posts on this thread, and it seems that most of us agree that it does matter what we do in high school.  With the benefit of having a student who has gone to college recently, I am very aware of what we did in our homeschool that was good and what needs improvement.  I do wish we had done more writing; i.e. lots of short papers and a few long papers/projects, and I can see that we needed to focus more on problem solving in math.  We 're definitely adding focus in those two areas.  In addition, Regentrude's post about the importance of a solid foundation in algebra influenced me to do an Algebra I review with dd, which has been a smart move.  It doesn't matter where she should be or what needs to go on the transcript.  If the foundation is weak, it will limit her choices.  Without these tweaks, I know that dd would have a more difficult time transitioning to college.  It doesn't mean she wouldn't be successful, but we want the first year to go well.

[swellmomma]

Based on my experience nope.  I spent most of grade 12 skipping classes, napping in the student lounge and drinking slurpees.  I never showed up for chemistry 30 past the 3rd class because I hated the teacher and they wouldn't let me switch to the other class.  I never learned in class, never wrote a unit test etc.  I went into my diploma exam (test we write for each of the core subjects in 12th grade to be able to say we passed that course to graduate) and wrote it having read the text myself to study, the test was worth 50% of our total grade.  I passed the course with a 51% meaning I had to ace it.  Now having a 51% in grade 12 chemistry was not a great thing, I completely failed grade 12 math, only got a 47% went to summer school after graduation(only need grade 11 math to graduate) and got a 67%.  I was smart but a lazy student.  I went to college, I did chemistry, stats, and a host of other courses without issue, in fact I had 80s in those classes.  The difference was my motivation only.  I was always bright, but lacked motivation in high school.  Now I never had aspirations of being a STEM college student etc, I was doing an arts degree but taking science classes for fun, until I couldn't stay in college, not due to lack of motivation or weakness of skills but because of a complicated pregnancy that required bed rest and the then life took over.  All in all though I don't think what I did in high school really mattered long term at all.

[regentrude]

I wonder if what most people study in college matters to what they end up doing.

 

That, again, depends on the field. I am a physicist, and all my physicist friends ended up doing something they would be unable to do had they not majored in physics. Even the ones who ended up not doing physics would not have received the highly paid consulting jobs in financial firms without their physics degrees.

I see similar trends in other STEM disciplines.

 

In contrast, I know of plenty of humanities majors who do something that would not have required their specific degrees.

[Tiramisu]

I think worth ethic was worth more in the end than actual education. I went to a decent high school but looking back, knowing what I've learned through homeschooling, things could have been more rigorous. I went to a "somewhat selective" university as an undergrad and I had classmates who came from prep schools who had much higher SAT's but I did better than them because I simply went to class and did what I was supposed to do. Graduate school was harder at a "very selective research university" and it was then that I first realized there were certain things I hadn't been taught particularly about writing. Then, I hit a wall with the abstract thinking in a modern philosophy type of elective. It was the first time I felt my mind just couldn't grasp something. I was thankful to get through with a B. I don't know if previous education could have helped but tutoring may have. In any case, I was the youngest student around, there was very little faculty support, and I felt very isolated. That was harder than the academics.

[stripe]

In contrast, I know of plenty of humanities majors who do something that would not have required their specific degrees.

That is basically my experience -- most people with an undergraduate history/psychology/literature degree seem not to be working in an advanced capacity in those fields; the most related things most such majors do is teach these subjects in K-12; otherwise they are doing something else, something that seems to demand a college degree, but it's not always clear why. The college degree seems more of a sorting technique (proof someone is literate, for example, or will be a fairly reliable employee) than because of actual knowledge or skills obtained in getting that degree.

 

On the other hand, even people with STEM undergraduate degrees who go into other fields are often seen as having some concrete knowledge or, at least, a good brain on the basis of their degree. Speaking personally, I had more than one graduate professor assume I was quite unintelligent and/or in need of significant remedial tutoring, the recommendation for which was withdrawn once my undergraduate degree was mentioned. It was incredibly insulting yet amusing. I was never sure if the assumption was made because all students were assumed to be dumb, or some characteristic of me (being female, my appearance....?).

 

I wonder how that level of knowledge and structure could be gained outside of so-called STEM fields, or if indeed it could.

 

A perhaps tangential note....Last night I was reading "Reading like a writer: a guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them," by Francine Prose, thanks to a recommendation from this very board, and she discusses how much time she spent in college doing close readings of texts, delving into word choice and so forth, which has largely been neglected in favor of an analysis of the authors themselves, and their backgrounds, and critically examining their positions, rather than the use of language itself, and she has a short section about how diagramming sentences requires one to account for each word in the sentence. I thought it was an interesting example of "rigor" in the humanities/social sciences.

[stripe]

Plenty of parents cannot afford that so that category of students is probably quite large.  But lets take those in the very bottom financially speaking.  They still face a lot of challenges even though there are things out there.  You can't just be a good student.  You have to be exceptional.  If your parents have no money, it is unlikely you will play a sport or instrument and if you do, it is unlikely you will get private lessons, extra couching, special equipment, etc.  It's not this magical ticket out of your situation to go to public school. 

I had two female friends in high school who received very generous scholarships (maybe loans were part of it too) who were good but not exceptional students, but whose families had low incomes. One went to a small, rural school with a serious lack of ethnic diversity that had been courting high school students for years with various summer programs to attract a more ethnically diverse student body. The other went to an Ivy League school. Neither played an instrument or sport. I think one girl's extended relationship with the small college made her a well known commodity to them and made them more likely to offer her assistance. As neither school was local, they still struggled with expenses like travel to school, and the one who attended the Ivy League school felt like a poor churchmouse her entire time there.

[Nan in Mass]

What you do in college matters for languages, music, art, theatre, and STEM.  What about archaeology and anthropology?  Are those STEM?  They matter.  I should think some of the business stuff (about which I am entirely ignorant) matter.  I assume all the farming and athletic majors are under the STEM umbrella?  If you are lucky, you can get jobs in most of the non-STEM things I listed without a college degree, but the degree certainly teaches you things about your profession or career and the internships and contacts may make it easier to find satisfying work.  I think with things like the general liberal arts majors, majors where one is "getting an education" but does not necessarily intend to work in the field one studies, WHICH college matters.  Some are probably a repeat of high school material while others will stretch you and enrich you and improve your thinking and problem solving skills.  I suspect that the people here who say which college doesn't matter, have had an unenriching, unstretching college experience.  I don't remember anyone who had their thinking improved and enriched by their college experience saying that which college doesn't matter?  Obviously, this is a matter of degree (as in amount).  Because one's college education depends to a certain extent on how well one takes advantage of all the opportunities offered, people's experience of the same college will be different and something can be made of most colleges.  The idea behind an education is that it changes who you are.  If you have been changed for the better by your experience and/or given the means to make a living, I think you are unlikely to say that college doesn't matter.  (Obviously, many people are happy and successful without college.  I think most pepole here do not dispute that. " Does college matter" is not the same as "can one be successful without college".)

 

Nan

[creekland]

 

I wonder if what most people study in college matters to what they end up doing.

 

For many it does not.  Hubby was a Civil Engineer and now owns his own Civil Engineering business, so I'd say his major was pretty important.

 

I majored in Physics and Psychology and got a Math minor from the Physics requirements.  I need my degree to substitute teach - what it was in doesn't matter.  If I want to actually teach (for real - full time long term vs full time short term) then I'll need to get my Masters in Education - not any specific subject - though I've been told I can work while getting it.  What degrees do I use?  Probably the Psych major most as it involved learning how to motivate people.

 

Working all sorts of science/math classes does help keep my mind fresh on basic math/science up through anything offered in our high school, but I wandered down a hall in my Alma mater once and saw some Thermal Physics solutions posted next to my "old" prof's door.  There's no way I could do that stuff now without significant review.  I had an A- in the class back in the day.

 

Use it or lose it still applies.

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

 

That is basically my experience -- most people with an undergraduate history/psychology/literature degree seem not to be working in an advanced capacity in those fields; the most related things most such majors do is teach these subjects in K-12; otherwise they are doing something else, something that seems to demand a college degree, but it's not always clear why. The college degree seems more of a sorting technique (proof someone is literate, for example, or will be a fairly reliable employee) than because of actual knowledge or skills obtained in getting that degree.

 

On the other hand, even people with STEM undergraduate degrees who go into other fields are often seen as having some concrete knowledge or, at least, a good brain on the basis of their degree. Speaking personally, I had more than one graduate professor assume I was quite unintelligent and/or in need of significant remedial tutoring, the recommendation for which was withdrawn once my undergraduate degree was mentioned. It was incredibly insulting yet amusing. I was never sure if the assumption was made because all students were assumed to be dumb, or some characteristic of me (being female, my appearance....?).

 

 

This perception thing is huge.  Totally unfair, but huge.  I remember that when I did my first professional presentation as an undergrad at Cal Sate LA, I stood by my poster, and people walked by, looked at the title/affiliation, and walked on.  Now, maybe my title wasn't very catchy, but I noticed as I walked by that there were mobs standing in front of the students from Princeton and Stanford and such, and I didn't think their topics & findings were that much more compelling than mine. IMHO of course! ;)  Fast forward a couple of years and I was at the same kind of conference, standing in front of a poster with MIT written on it, and suddenly I was the belle of the ball.  And no, I don't think my work was that much more brilliant!  It was the name people were responding to.  

 

I still run into this funny positive-bias all the time.  I got a PhD in Neuroscience in 1998.  For the past 15 years, I've been working in the field of ecology - restoration ecology, agroecology, botany and horticulture.  People *still* assume that I must be brilliant and that all my pronouncements must be correct when they find out about my academic background - even though it has absolutely no relation to the field in which I currently work.  I can't tell you how many people have hired me as a consultant - in ecology - solely because I have PhD from MIT.  I find it very, very silly.  Nice and all, it is the payoff for finishing my degree in a field in which I had lost interest, but silly.

 

In *that* sense, I would say where you go to school, what degree you get, and what you major in matters hugely.  But it's a silly kind of mattering, isn't it?

[creekland]

I had two female friends in high school who received very generous scholarships (maybe loans were part of it too) who were good but not exceptional students, but whose families had low incomes. One went to a small, rural school with a serious lack of ethnic diversity that had been courting high school students for years with various summer programs to attract a more ethnically diverse student body. The other went to an Ivy League school. Neither played an instrument or sport. I think one girl's extended relationship with the small college made her a well known commodity to them and made them more likely to offer her assistance. As neither school was local, they still struggled with expenses like travel to school, and the one who attended the Ivy League school felt like a poor churchmouse her entire time there.

 

Kids who are willing to do the work and come with nice LORs from their teachers often get nice options IME.  It's those whose parents have higher incomes, but perhaps can't use all that they are deemed to use for college, who have issues usually.

 

[Nan in Mass]

My dad (an engineer) says that engineering school teaches you to think. : )

 

Nan

[Jean in Newcastle]

Wait - I thought that this thread was asking if what we did in high school mattered as far as being successful in college?  I was lazy and unmotivated in high school but was able to make it into a good college where I was still pretty bored.  BUT I would say that college itself mattered a very great deal.  It enlarged my thinking and helped me to hone my thinking, though not all of that took place in a college classroom.  Having a college degree has also opened a lot of doors for me both in and out of my major.  I am absolutely glad that I went to college.  

 

 

What you do in college matters for languages, music, art, theatre, and STEM.  What about archaeology and anthropology?  Are those STEM?  They matter.  I should think some of the business stuff (about which I am entirely ignorant) matter.  I assume all the farming and athletic majors are under the STEM umbrella?  If you are lucky, you can get jobs in most of the non-STEM things I listed without a college degree, but the degree certainly teaches you things about your profession or career and the internships and contacts may make it easier to find satisfying work.  I think with things like the general liberal arts majors, majors where one is "getting an education" but does not necessarily intend to work in the field one studies, WHICH college matters.  Some are probably a repeat of high school material while others will stretch you and enrich you and improve your thinking and problem solving skills.  I suspect that the people here who say which college doesn't matter, have had an unenriching, unstretching college experience.  I don't remember anyone who had their thinking improved and enriched by their college experience saying that which college doesn't matter?  Obviously, this is a matter of degree (as in amount).  Because one's college education depends to a certain extent on how well one takes advantage of all the opportunities offered, people's experience of the same college will be different and something can be made of most colleges.  The idea behind an education is that it changes who you are.  If you have been changed for the better by your experience and/or given the means to make a living, I think you are unlikely to say that college doesn't matter.  (Obviously, many people are happy and successful without college.  I think most pepole here do not dispute that. " Does college matter" is not the same as "can one be successful without college".)

 

Nan

 

[stripe]

In *that* sense, I would say where you go to school, what degree you get, and what you major in matters hugely.  But it's a silly kind of mattering, isn't it?

But since I can't change being female, and people somehow could tell that I was from out-of-state, and apparently based on various stereotypes, they concluded (over and over again) throughout grad school that I was a certain type of person. Which was.... dumb. So for me, the perceived failings of my own self trumped what I'd studied, until I self-identified. I do find that I am often assumed to be incredibly stupid (e.g. nurse at the pediatrician's office miming eating while telling me not to eat while holding my baby and then slowly explaining in tiny words what a bruise is), and I cannot tell you how annoying this is. 

 

Perhaps close study is rejected in college because it is done in the better high schools?

They aren't diagramming sentences here, but they certainly are examining word choice, re-reading and analyzing etc as part of 11th and 12th grade AP English.

Prose didn't seem to think so. What she wrote in her book was, "It's not the sentence's gigantism but rather lucidity  that makes it so worth studying and breaking down into its component parts. It makes us wish that students were still taught to diagram sentences, to map them into instantly visible, comprehensible charts that make it not only easy but necessary to account for each word and to keep track of which phrase is modifying which noun, which clause follows which antecedent." (p 42-43)

 

She also says, "...I was struck by how little attention [my college students] had been taught to pay to the language, to the actual words and sentences that a writer had used. Instead, they had been encouraged to form strong, critical, and often negative opinions of geniuses who had been read with delight for centuries before they were born" (p 10). And so forth. Her biographical statement says she's taught at Harvard, Iowa, Columbia, Arizona, and the New School.

[swimmermom3]

Plenty of parents cannot afford that so that category of students is probably quite large.  But lets take those in the very bottom financially speaking.  They still face a lot of challenges even though there are things out there.  You can't just be a good student.  You have to be exceptional.  If your parents have no money, it is unlikely you will play a sport or instrument and if you do, it is unlikely you will get private lessons, extra couching, special equipment, etc.  It's not this magical ticket out of your situation to go to public school. 

 

And what gets me is people will say there are all these opportunities out there and a lot of colleges will work with you, but if you have no money you can't even afford basics that you cannot live without while you are in school.  And the school doesn't tend to give you money for that.  Everything is always at least twice as challenging for people in that situation so they have to be at least twice as hard working.  It's an uphill battle!

 

That said, even my state school degree was my ticket to improve my situation.  My first job out of college was a 3 month temp job at $10 an hour with no benefits.  After that I got a job at an insurance company making about $40K a year.  In school my biggest paying job was $5 an hour at an answering service.  So wow, that completely changed my life!  So while I would have liked to have a different experience overall, I can't say that my struggles were for nothing in the end.  It was worth going to ANY college really.

 

Sparkly, I think many of us underestimate the part above in bold. Last year, our family opened our daily newspaper and was stunned to see the mugshot of a young woman who was a year ahead of my dd when my kids were in a private Catholic school. Her younger brother was in my oldest son's class for several years. A local columnist had picked up her story. She and her brother (who was visiting her) were busted for theft from student dorm rooms and housing on the campus of the state university that she was attending on scholarship.

 

Many of the comments were scathing, but things are not that simple that she is a spoiled kid with a criminal proclivity.

 

I was a room mom with her mom for several years. The parents came from backgrounds of relative poverty. They had worked hard to attain a lower middle class lifestyle. He worked in construction, but was over 50 and finding it to be more difficult to find work. Mom did everything she could to help her kids improve their chances. She tutored them after school to make sure they stayed at the top of their classes. She and her husband did without so the kids could play sports and have the same clothes that the other kids did. As members of the parish, the kids were eligible for scholarships for K-8. After that, the dd's grades made her eligible for scholarships at the two best Catholic high schools in town. She earned her scholarship to the state university. Then, I think the years of financial struggle undid her folks' marriage. They split and moved to other towns and dad dropped dd off at college with her scholarship and nothing else. He told the columnist that he figured she could get a job to pay her living expenses. It's a big university in a moderately-sized city with way more students than jobs.

 

I am not defending what the young lady and her brother did, but to some extent I understand it.  Their parents had protected them to large degree from financial uncertainty and then everything fell apart. I try to picture my own kids in that situation and can visual the puzzled look on my dd's face, "But how will I buy shampoo?"

 

I think there are more young people out there than we realize that are truly struggling to meet their basic needs, even on scholarship.

 

One of the things we talked about when I did training at the ps for working with students who were targeted to be the first in their families to attend college was that it was easier to get the kids into college than to keep them due to the financial struggles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nan in Mass]

Wait - I thought that this thread was asking if what we did in high school mattered as far as being successful in college?  I was lazy and unmotivated in high school but was able to make it into a good college where I was still pretty bored.  BUT I would say that college itself mattered a very great deal.  It enlarged my thinking and helped me to hone my thinking, though not all of that took place in a college classroom.  Having a college degree has also opened a lot of doors for me both in and out of my major.  I am absolutely glad that I went to college.  

 

Sorry - Somebody asked if college matters, too, so I answered that question as well as the original one.

 

Going back to the high school question... I received a miserable high school education except in math.  With the major I chose, that didn't really matter (except the math).  But that doesn't mean that my high school education didn't matter.  I would have been much better off if I'd had a better high school education.  I would have been able to do a number of things that I now wish I could do.  I would have learned useful French.  I would have learned to write and not had to learn it when I went to teach it to my own children.  It would have been nice if my science had stuck better.  I would have loved to have been able to do more languages.  I would have loved to have been able to do more art and music, not just in a participatory way, but learning more of the nitty gritty - the music theory, etc.  Maybe I would be interested in history if I hadn't had unbelievably bad history.  The one thing I am happy about is that my English class was bad lol.  I managed to avoid having to read a bunch of stuff for English that I didn't (and still don't) want to read.  As I said, none of this really mattered for my major (because the math was good and I took a very useful class at the nearby college senior year) but that doesn't mean it didn't MATTER.  *I* care.

 

Nan