There's a line between caring about your children and helicoptering and/or demanding special treatment for your child. If you care about your children, you tea

There's a line between caring about your children and helicoptering and/or demanding special treatment for your child. If you care about your children, you teach them to work and study, or at least approach the teacher on their own for things like extra credit. The teacher probably has 20+ students. How much extra time per student do you expect him or her to suck up so that everyone's special child can make it into Princeton? Plus, isn't the point of grades a measure of ability? If we can just erase any bad grade at a parent's discretion, what's the point in having grades at all? The whole system in my opinion is rotting. We seem to be increasingly reluctant in the U.S. to measure merit - but in this case, if nobody loses, then nobody wins. Sometimes that's life. Princeton only has prestige because it is selective, and that selectiveness depends on some kind of measure of entrant ability.