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> When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, My neighbor

> When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA and get into a good college, My neighborhood and social circle have a number of high school age children, some aiming for high ranking universities. None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. What universities are you targeting with such an extreme schedule? There are some parallels here to the people who say that everyone in tech is working 80 hour weeks: If you get pulled into one of these bubbles you are surrounded by others doing the same thing and it starts to feel like everyone is doing it. You assume everyone, everywhere is having the same experience. The people outside the bubble are left puzzled by these descriptions.

geodel 2mo ago
I think magnet school and/or outside school /rec-league sports can easily bring that 15h number. Overall I think you are right it is indeed bubble and once one is in, it is difficult to see not everyone is doing that. I have a friend in town both husband, wife work from home and extremely busy with their elementary/middle school kids school/activities that I haven't seen him in years. Being out of their bubble I only know whats happening but don't get to be tutored in how all these activities are essential. And even rare back out once in a while can be serious digression that affects child's future.
mylies43 2mo ago
For the 7.30 start, its possible its a 0 period class( class before school starts, what a blast these were) and they start earlier then the rest of the student body.
- throwway120385 2mo ago
  At my high school that was the normal start time for all of our classes, which were 90 minutes. Most of us had to be at the bus about 45 minutes to an hour before start because many of us came from more rural areas with acreage between roads.
jorts 2mo ago
My public high school started at 7:10 a.m.; I assume it was to accommodate bus schedules.
godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
> My neighborhood and social circle have a number of high school age children, some aiming for high ranking universities. > None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. Hate to break it to you mate but none of them are getting in. Anyone who lives in a neighborhood with a high proportion of kids making it to the Ivy league and other top schools knows exactly what this guy is talking about. If you think it's a fib just because you're not aware of it that's not exactly robust social commentary.
- toast0 2mo ago
  Like, ivies and whatever are great. But overscheduling and overstessing to get into one isn't. Many states have a guaranteed acceptance path to a state school and/or a path where you do two years at community college and can transfer into a state school to do two more and get a bachelors. A great school on your degree can open doors at the beginning of your career, but missing out on that isn't some terrible tragedy.
  - godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
    I agree with you. I didn't go to those schools. That doesn't mean the environments the original comment that started this chain mentioned don't exist. That was my only point. Whether they are desirable or not is another question. But I don't think we should pretend it's one with an obvious answer for parents. Yes, you don't want to stress out your kids. But I'm not sure it's so easy to blame parents from those hypercompetitive neighborhoods. We are living in a world of self interest were increasingly everyone has a college degree, thereby devaluing the credential at a basic supply/demand level. The very best schools are in a class all their own, and (rightly or wrongly) have been largely immune to this downward pressure. Talk about bubbles is also not really useful. Wealth is a bubble. Software engineering is a bubble. A neighborhood where everyone goes to a state school is a bubble. Poverty is a bubble. But at the macro level if people don't think the world is getting more cooperative and is just getting more competitive, doing whatever they can to keep or send their kids to the best bubble possible is at the very least defensible. I think there are also a lot of parents who don't seem to have a robust concept of the future. I assume anyone being born today is entering a far more competitive and frankly, brutal world by the time they are college age. The world is getting smaller. And not enough people seem willing to do the work required to make sure all kids do well. In such a world, pushing your kids in high school so they can get the best shot makes sense. This can be true even if it doesn't make other people morally wrong. In the same way wealth doesn't make you a better person. But let's not pretend that in a world where (in the United States at least) many people among us if they lose their job won't be able to afford healthcare, that wealth is entirely without virtue. Suggesting that is indicative of the same sort of "they'll be fine" thinking that frankly, strikes me as the most "bubble" idea possible. From where I sit, it's simply the case that the world is not getting easier.
mitkebes 2mo ago
> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Local high school runs 7:30 to 2:30. It's one of the better scoring high schools in the state, so we have some students who commute 45min-1hour to attend here (at least I had friends who did that when I went there). When I was younger I lived in Albuquerque, and I believe that high school started at 7am, they had staggered start times of 9am for elementary, 8am for middle school, and 7am for high school.
- coldtea 2mo ago
  Sounds like US high school is even worse than its healthcare system!
  - geodel 2mo ago
    It has to be. And I think it is same everywhere we want everyone to attend high school. Nowadays we want college and universities degree for everyone too.
peterlk 2mo ago
It’s been a while, but when I was in high school, I was up at 6:30 so that I could run through the shower, get to 7AM jazz band late, be at school until 4ish, then off to my minimum-ish wage job until it was time to go to evening jazz/symphony/other bands. Home at 8 or 9; bullshit some homework for a passable grade; and then do it again (I was often doing homework during band practices). Weekends were music events. I did not go to a top tier school, and I did not live in a top tier place. The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique. I wasn’t even the most busy of the people I knew. This wasn’t every single day, but it was more on days than off days. Contrarily, I had a great time in college because the pressure of classes actually felt like less than I was doing in high school.
- ratelimitsteve 2mo ago
  this closely matches my experience graduating with a C average and getting accepted to a branch campus of a public university. I then crashed hard out of that school because, as you said, suddenly I actually had a lot more agency and a lot less responsibility.
- coldtea 2mo ago
  >The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique. Unique no. Hugely outlier, yes.
  - Tostino 2mo ago
    You kidding? Did you not know working class kids who actually needed a job?
    - coldtea 2mo ago
      And had to wake up at 6:30 or earlier to go to school? No.
      - xandrius 2mo ago
        I also woke up around that time, just because it took 30-40 min to go to school + breakfast and preparation. So why dismiss other people's lives just because they are different than yours? What's the point of lying about waking up early?
a34729t 2mo ago
I guess then it's good to be a D1-level athlete? (for everybody else, that's basically being a state champ in whatever sport)
ratelimitsteve 2mo ago
I was at school from 6:45 AM to about 4:30 PM every day, and had extracurriculars and homework on top of that. This wasn't considered an extra stressful or difficult schedule, it was just what you did.
GPerson 2mo ago
The OP is describing my experience. (Result: deferred from MIT, so it was somewhat for nought.)
SkyPuncher 2mo ago
This was my high school experience and many people I knew. * School at 7am * Sports practice after school. Game days were basically all night events. * might take an hour or two break * 2 to 3 hours of homework For junior and senior year, I worked 16 hours on the weekends as well.
eli_gottlieb 2mo ago
> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. My high school had us in the building and starting homeroom at 7:30AM, back in ~2003-2007, and that was in upstate NY for a B+ student with nothing special going on.
phil21 2mo ago
> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Within 30 minutes in each direction this was the normal start time for practically all high schools in my area growing up. Where I live now my niece who I occasionally drive to school when weather is bad starts at 7:30. We need to leave her house by 6:45 to make it on time with traffic. The reason for the absurd starting times was always explained that bussing schedules forced it. They did not want to start grade school so early, and the same busses ran routes for both. One or the other had to start 60-90 minutes before the other. I’d sleep in my clothes and try to make it out the door to be at my bus stop by 6:40 every morning. Luckily I had a really great bus driver who knew where I’d live and if I was running late would stop outside my house and honk. You spent the entire morning extremely tired and a lot of kids slept through study hall or classes. The early study hall was coveted for this reason - additional time to sleep. This was pretty much every bog standard public or private (think catholic schools) high school in the area.
- locknitpicker 2mo ago
  > The reason for the absurd starting times was always explained that bussing schedules forced it. This sounds yet another problem created by urban planning, or lack thereof. Being forced to do a 2 hour commute each day is not normal, regardless whether you are a kid going to school or a grownup going to work. It's not school that has a demanding schedule. It's requiring a 60 minute drive to attent said school that creates a demanding schedule.
  - geodel 2mo ago
    Thats the amenity trap. People want all sort of amenities that smaller neighborhood schools can't provide. Therefore bigger schools are built which had large centralized facilities for sports, recreation and all. So naturally now it need more commute times.
    - locknitpicker 2mo ago
      > So naturally now it need more commute times. No, it's not. In some countries, if you drive 1h in a direction you'll be in another country. Don't tell me that most western Europe doesn't have decent schools.
georgel 2mo ago
My middle school circa 2004 in CT started at 7:30am. Similarly I was on swim team and we started practice around 5:30am in a Seattle suburb.
jbm 2mo ago
A previous grade school my kids attended (a public school in Calgary) started at 8. They left the house at 7:40ish to go, which was pretty awful. Eventually we wound up home schooling / remote schooling during Covid and moved to a spot where the school started much later. Frankly though, not late enough. I let them sleep until 10 during COVID and I feel it was positive for everyone involved.
silverlake 2mo ago
I had this same schedule at a mediocre school in small town USA in the 80s. The AP science course started at 7:30am to give us time for lab work (e.g. dissection in biology). After school activities continued until 4:30, longer if it’s an away game. Homework, part-time job, one off events. It didn’t feel overwhelming at the time, but kids today are soft.
mastermage 2mo ago
Hi from Germany here I have had to for the largest part of my School life grt up at 6:15 so i could be in school at 8:00 then i often had school until 15-17 and had to do homewerk after aswell. Only in my 11th to 13th grade did it relax a bit because I changed schools and also got better due to redoing some of the basics. And mind you in germany Extra Curriculars are not realy necessary.
fn-mote 2mo ago
> None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. I have contact with a lot of teens. This schedule is not unusual, although the truth IMO is that long hours and poor productivity form a vicious cycle. > I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Irrelevant to the argument. NYC has 8am start times. Notice that the hours were driven by involvement in sports, though. > What universities are you targeting with such an extreme schedule? Every highly selective school. Plus they have no clue what’s really necessary so there’s a lot of “cargo culting”. Plus, they don’t even know what they’re targeting until year 3 or 4 of high school, years after the long hours pattern starts. > bubble You are also universalizing your experience, no? Frankly, looking at the map of educational achievement, most people are not going to college or not successful there, so this whole discussion of “student doesn’t want to attend their state university” is already a rarified atmosphere. I agree that this is behavior destructive and unnecessary.

geodel 2mo ago

I think magnet school and/or outside school /rec-league sports can easily bring that 15h number. Overall I think you are right it is indeed bubble and once one is in, it is difficult to see not everyone is doing that. I have a friend in town both husband, wife work from home and extremely busy with their elementary/middle school kids school/activities that I haven't seen him in years. Being out of their bubble I only know whats happening but don't get to be tutored in how all these activities are essential. And even rare back out once in a while can be serious digression that affects child's future.

mylies43 2mo ago

For the 7.30 start, its possible its a 0 period class( class before school starts, what a blast these were) and they start earlier then the rest of the student body.

throwway120385 2mo ago
At my high school that was the normal start time for all of our classes, which were 90 minutes. Most of us had to be at the bus about 45 minutes to an hour before start because many of us came from more rural areas with acreage between roads.

jorts 2mo ago

My public high school started at 7:10 a.m.; I assume it was to accommodate bus schedules.

godwinson__4-8 2mo ago

> My neighborhood and social circle have a number of high school age children, some aiming for high ranking universities. > None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. Hate to break it to you mate but none of them are getting in. Anyone who lives in a neighborhood with a high proportion of kids making it to the Ivy league and other top schools knows exactly what this guy is talking about. If you think it's a fib just because you're not aware of it that's not exactly robust social commentary.

toast0 2mo ago
Like, ivies and whatever are great. But overscheduling and overstessing to get into one isn't. Many states have a guaranteed acceptance path to a state school and/or a path where you do two years at community college and can transfer into a state school to do two more and get a bachelors. A great school on your degree can open doors at the beginning of your career, but missing out on that isn't some terrible tragedy.
- godwinson__4-8 2mo ago
  I agree with you. I didn't go to those schools. That doesn't mean the environments the original comment that started this chain mentioned don't exist. That was my only point. Whether they are desirable or not is another question. But I don't think we should pretend it's one with an obvious answer for parents. Yes, you don't want to stress out your kids. But I'm not sure it's so easy to blame parents from those hypercompetitive neighborhoods. We are living in a world of self interest were increasingly everyone has a college degree, thereby devaluing the credential at a basic supply/demand level. The very best schools are in a class all their own, and (rightly or wrongly) have been largely immune to this downward pressure. Talk about bubbles is also not really useful. Wealth is a bubble. Software engineering is a bubble. A neighborhood where everyone goes to a state school is a bubble. Poverty is a bubble. But at the macro level if people don't think the world is getting more cooperative and is just getting more competitive, doing whatever they can to keep or send their kids to the best bubble possible is at the very least defensible. I think there are also a lot of parents who don't seem to have a robust concept of the future. I assume anyone being born today is entering a far more competitive and frankly, brutal world by the time they are college age. The world is getting smaller. And not enough people seem willing to do the work required to make sure all kids do well. In such a world, pushing your kids in high school so they can get the best shot makes sense. This can be true even if it doesn't make other people morally wrong. In the same way wealth doesn't make you a better person. But let's not pretend that in a world where (in the United States at least) many people among us if they lose their job won't be able to afford healthcare, that wealth is entirely without virtue. Suggesting that is indicative of the same sort of "they'll be fine" thinking that frankly, strikes me as the most "bubble" idea possible. From where I sit, it's simply the case that the world is not getting easier.

mitkebes 2mo ago

> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Local high school runs 7:30 to 2:30. It's one of the better scoring high schools in the state, so we have some students who commute 45min-1hour to attend here (at least I had friends who did that when I went there). When I was younger I lived in Albuquerque, and I believe that high school started at 7am, they had staggered start times of 9am for elementary, 8am for middle school, and 7am for high school.

coldtea 2mo ago
Sounds like US high school is even worse than its healthcare system!
- geodel 2mo ago
  It has to be. And I think it is same everywhere we want everyone to attend high school. Nowadays we want college and universities degree for everyone too.

peterlk 2mo ago

It’s been a while, but when I was in high school, I was up at 6:30 so that I could run through the shower, get to 7AM jazz band late, be at school until 4ish, then off to my minimum-ish wage job until it was time to go to evening jazz/symphony/other bands. Home at 8 or 9; bullshit some homework for a passable grade; and then do it again (I was often doing homework during band practices). Weekends were music events. I did not go to a top tier school, and I did not live in a top tier place. The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique. I wasn’t even the most busy of the people I knew. This wasn’t every single day, but it was more on days than off days. Contrarily, I had a great time in college because the pressure of classes actually felt like less than I was doing in high school.

ratelimitsteve 2mo ago
this closely matches my experience graduating with a C average and getting accepted to a branch campus of a public university. I then crashed hard out of that school because, as you said, suddenly I actually had a lot more agency and a lot less responsibility.
coldtea 2mo ago
>The stories I’ve heard from others indicates to me that my experience was not unique. Unique no. Hugely outlier, yes.
- Tostino 2mo ago
  You kidding? Did you not know working class kids who actually needed a job?
  - coldtea 2mo ago
    And had to wake up at 6:30 or earlier to go to school? No.
    - xandrius 2mo ago
      I also woke up around that time, just because it took 30-40 min to go to school + breakfast and preparation. So why dismiss other people's lives just because they are different than yours? What's the point of lying about waking up early?

a34729t 2mo ago

I guess then it's good to be a D1-level athlete? (for everybody else, that's basically being a state champ in whatever sport)

ratelimitsteve 2mo ago

I was at school from 6:45 AM to about 4:30 PM every day, and had extracurriculars and homework on top of that. This wasn't considered an extra stressful or difficult schedule, it was just what you did.

GPerson 2mo ago

The OP is describing my experience. (Result: deferred from MIT, so it was somewhat for nought.)

SkyPuncher 2mo ago

This was my high school experience and many people I knew. * School at 7am * Sports practice after school. Game days were basically all night events. * might take an hour or two break * 2 to 3 hours of homework For junior and senior year, I worked 16 hours on the weekends as well.

eli_gottlieb 2mo ago

> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. My high school had us in the building and starting homeroom at 7:30AM, back in ~2003-2007, and that was in upstate NY for a B+ student with nothing special going on.

phil21 2mo ago

> I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Within 30 minutes in each direction this was the normal start time for practically all high schools in my area growing up. Where I live now my niece who I occasionally drive to school when weather is bad starts at 7:30. We need to leave her house by 6:45 to make it on time with traffic. The reason for the absurd starting times was always explained that bussing schedules forced it. They did not want to start grade school so early, and the same busses ran routes for both. One or the other had to start 60-90 minutes before the other. I’d sleep in my clothes and try to make it out the door to be at my bus stop by 6:40 every morning. Luckily I had a really great bus driver who knew where I’d live and if I was running late would stop outside my house and honk. You spent the entire morning extremely tired and a lot of kids slept through study hall or classes. The early study hall was coveted for this reason - additional time to sleep. This was pretty much every bog standard public or private (think catholic schools) high school in the area.

locknitpicker 2mo ago
> The reason for the absurd starting times was always explained that bussing schedules forced it. This sounds yet another problem created by urban planning, or lack thereof. Being forced to do a 2 hour commute each day is not normal, regardless whether you are a kid going to school or a grownup going to work. It's not school that has a demanding schedule. It's requiring a 60 minute drive to attent said school that creates a demanding schedule.
- geodel 2mo ago
  Thats the amenity trap. People want all sort of amenities that smaller neighborhood schools can't provide. Therefore bigger schools are built which had large centralized facilities for sports, recreation and all. So naturally now it need more commute times.
  - locknitpicker 2mo ago
    > So naturally now it need more commute times. No, it's not. In some countries, if you drive 1h in a direction you'll be in another country. Don't tell me that most western Europe doesn't have decent schools.

georgel 2mo ago

My middle school circa 2004 in CT started at 7:30am. Similarly I was on swim team and we started practice around 5:30am in a Seattle suburb.

jbm 2mo ago

A previous grade school my kids attended (a public school in Calgary) started at 8. They left the house at 7:40ish to go, which was pretty awful. Eventually we wound up home schooling / remote schooling during Covid and moved to a spot where the school started much later. Frankly though, not late enough. I let them sleep until 10 during COVID and I feel it was positive for everyone involved.

silverlake 2mo ago

I had this same schedule at a mediocre school in small town USA in the 80s. The AP science course started at 7:30am to give us time for lab work (e.g. dissection in biology). After school activities continued until 4:30, longer if it’s an away game. Homework, part-time job, one off events. It didn’t feel overwhelming at the time, but kids today are soft.

mastermage 2mo ago

Hi from Germany here I have had to for the largest part of my School life grt up at 6:15 so i could be in school at 8:00 then i often had school until 15-17 and had to do homewerk after aswell. Only in my 11th to 13th grade did it relax a bit because I changed schools and also got better due to redoing some of the basics. And mind you in germany Extra Curriculars are not realy necessary.

fn-mote 2mo ago

> None of them have these grueling 15 hour day schedules you’re describing. I have contact with a lot of teens. This schedule is not unusual, although the truth IMO is that long hours and poor productivity form a vicious cycle. > I don’t even know of a high school around me that starts at 7:30AM. Irrelevant to the argument. NYC has 8am start times. Notice that the hours were driven by involvement in sports, though. > What universities are you targeting with such an extreme schedule? Every highly selective school. Plus they have no clue what’s really necessary so there’s a lot of “cargo culting”. Plus, they don’t even know what they’re targeting until year 3 or 4 of high school, years after the long hours pattern starts. > bubble You are also universalizing your experience, no? Frankly, looking at the map of educational achievement, most people are not going to college or not successful there, so this whole discussion of “student doesn’t want to attend their state university” is already a rarified atmosphere. I agree that this is behavior destructive and unnecessary.