[inthewoods]

What I'm really curious about is how he got into Stanford, a school that famously no one gets into, given what we know about him. Not to say he's not smart or interesting - he's clearly a good writer - but I don't see what made him stand out to get into that school. I'd be interested to understand that.

I've got a freshman in high school - and he's very bright - doing AP Calc now. But he already feels like it's impossible to get into these schools so why bother. He started the conversation tonight with "I don't think I want to go to MIT anymore." Which broke my heart a little bit - not because I care whether he goes to MIT - but because it you could see his expectations being crushed by reality.

This is the system that we have built for higher education in the United States, and it's incredibly f*cked up.

[epicfeedback]

I don’t know that this is a problem specifically of the US or higher education, just humans. Humans want to have the best, to be the best. There’s only so many “bests”. When competing with millions or billions of other people, the odds you are the best are very low indeed.

I think it was less painful pre-internet, pre-globalization, where you only had to be the best in your town, or your state, and that was pretty dang impressive. Now if you aren’t the best in the world what even are you?

[inthewoods]

Yes agreed - the internationalization of the college application process has changed everything. The other factor is that when you have such competitiveness, you start seeing a professionalization of the process - so admissions consultants, high-end tutoring.

[lupire]

It really shows that admissions is a crapshoot. Also, this story happened 20 years ago.

Regarding your kid: There are 4million US high school graduates each year. MIT admits about 2000.

Sorry for being abrasive, but why is your child crushed that he isn't the very best? Why is it sad that he isn't better than everyone else?

Being upset about not being in the 0.1% as a teenager is tacky. 99.9% of us aren't.

[inthewoods]

Simple: he's crushed because he had a dream of going there - he wasn't framing it as "I'm better than everyone else." As I mentioned, it is his dream running into reality. So saying "not being in the 0.1% as a teenager is tacky" is not the right framing because he wasn't thinking about it that way - he just had a dream and now realizes how difficult (and unlikely) it is.