8 ms·
Tutor reveals the Ivy-admissions madness of rich penthouse parents
- herge 13y agoI would as much be wont to read the New York Post for any worthwhile commentary on rich people as, say, read The Atlantic for sports coverage.
- joshmlewis 13y agoCan you clean up your words so we can know what opinion or point you're trying to get across?
- sp332 13y ago"Wont", pronounced like "want". It means being accustomed to something. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wont#Adjective http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wont#Adjective
- stephencanon 13y agoHasty translation into simple english, at the cost of all snark and subtlety: “An article in the New York Post on the subject of rich people is likely to be of low quality."
- nether 13y agoI would never read the Atlantic since they started pandering to the reddit/HN/internet populist crowd (well, they're banned from reddit). Their hugely successful "digital-first strategy" to maximize web ad revenue is covered well by n+1: http://nplusonemag.com/the-intellectual-situation-issue-15 http://nplusonemag.com/the-intellectual-situation-issue-15
- salemh 13y agoYour URL is dead, I believe this is the right one: http://nplusonemag.com/the-intellectual-situation-issue-15 http://nplusonemag.com/the-intellectual-situation-issue-15 Edit: your URL is missing http:// http://, for whatever that is worth. Every time a plane flies over New York, we think, “Oh my God — is it another Atlantic think piece?” We mean, “an Atlantic think piece about women.”
- bjterry 13y agoThat article did indeed "cover" their digital-first strategy, but it was thickly laden with sarcasm, their heavy-handed ideal of gender politics, and plain old lack of clarity. I didn't "cover" The Atlantic's strategy in the sense that a journalist covers a story, but in the sense that mud covers my boots. Edit: In the name of fairness I looked for more nuanced/clear criticism of The Atlantic's digital-first strategy and was unable to find any. Almost all the pieces were fawning over its basically unrivaled success among the old guard. The Church of Scientology events were quite troubling, though: http://www.emediavitals.com/content/lessons-atlantics-sponsored-content-brain-fart http://www.emediavitals.com/content/lessons-atlantics-sponso...
- nmcfarl 13y agoPerhaps. But this doesn’t feel like news or commentary. This feels like allegory. It’s a bedtime story about following your dreams, and the independence of children, and people in general. And it’s good. It reads well. Better than anything in the Post has a right to be. (But I suspect that I think that as I don't read the Post enough to find these fairy-tales.) Well worth the 3 minutes.
- chadwickthebold 13y agoNot really news. Makes one wonder how the heck it could make it to the front page.
- ISL 13y agoBecause people upvoted it?
- aspensmonster 13y agoAnd why did they do that?
- schreiaj 13y agoBecause they were interested in it.
- notacoward 13y agoBecause HN readers are highly interested in how to game the same system the same way.
- wnissen 13y agoI was more interested in it as a potential failure of our "meritocractic" educational system to promote those with true potential instead of the right family connections. Sort of the other end of the spectrum from being born a black male in Oakland and, pretty much regardless of one's potential, being consigned to a lower-middle-class life at best. I want the kids who will invent the next Internet to succeed, regardless of background.
- ybmew 13y agoMakes me happy that I wasn't a rich kid coddled my entire life. I wasn't accepted to the college of my choice. I've come to enjoy hard work and realizing the pay off, even as I attempt to push myself harder every year at my own pace.
- Shenglong 13y agoI'm thinking this article is a little exaggerated. I applied to, and got into an Ivy, but had no sort of preparation at all. I was suspended over 20 times throughout my schooling, had 0 hours of community service, didn't find out that the SATs existed until my senior year, and my reference letters were from no-name teachers. Yes, some of the things described (working at a neuroscience lab) were true, but they were entirely my initiatives. More importantly, even at school, I never saw anyone (limited scope, I'm sure) with this kind of description. All my friends seemed passionate about what they were interested in, and the majority were from middle-upper class families. While I'm sure there are distinct cases of this sort of coddling, I would caution that this is likely more the exception than the rule.
- thedood0000 13y agoThat's why you got in.
- Trey-Jackson 13y agoOf course it's the exception. It's a story of the 1% - who else has an extra $7K to spend on their kid's preparation for college? It's as relevant to daily life as Honey Boo Boo or Jersey Shore.
- diminoten 13y agoMore than 1% of the kids at Ivys are from the 1%, or at least that's what conventional wisdom is, and that may or may not make sense. The posted article is attempting to explain that it's through a fault in the system where those with money can use that money as a substitute for intellect or drive to distinguish their children. I have no clue if it's right, but it's more valuable to daily life of those applying to Ivys than Honey Boo Boo or Jersey Shore would be.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- walshemj 13y agoThis is about the very wealthy types (members of the buller) whos kids are genuinely puzzled that you dont have a castle in Ireland or a summer home in the Hamptons.
- cjbarber 13y agoCollege admissions processes generally do a great job of selecting the type of people I hope my children will turn out like (source: I attend Stanford). How can we get the parents who are paying for services like these understanding that a much surer chance of seeing their child attend the university of their (the parents..) dreams involves something much deeper than paying people to paint a better picture? I believe that admissions counseling actually has the potential to have a really positive impact on many kids, if they are given the freedom by parents to allow these kids to become the type of applicant that colleges actually desire to admit. If you are an admissions consultant of the caliber described in this article, shoot me an email - username@stanford.edu, I'd love to chat about turning this industry into something that turns candidates into the right people (starting early enough - age 14 or so), rather than just painting them as such.
- revelation 13y agoThats not a source, thats full disclosure on your bias.
- EliRivers 13y agoIt does seem awfully odd that the very wealthy still, in theory, compete with ordinary people like this. I wonder how long they will put up with it.
- demallien 13y agoOh quite some time I would expect. The current system actually suits the wealthy quite nicely - on the surface it seems like it's a fair system allowing for admissions to be done based on merit. But as the article indicates, in reality the wealthy can buy a ticket for their children. So the proles are happy because they think the system is fair, and the rich are happy because a) they know it's not, b) they know the proles think it is, which gives them social cover.
- pigscantfly 13y agoYet the article also indicates that even the supposed 'golden tickets' into the highest tier schools don't guarantee success. Sure, if your family built the library, they'll probably let you in with mediocre scores, but for the >99% of students to whom that does not apply, the admissions system works exactly as advertised. Who really cares that Theodore Legacy IV gets in when those people comprise <1% of the students? Someone's family needs to subsidize everyone else's tuition...
- rayiner 13y ago1) "Wealthy" doesn't mean "trust fund" money. Lots of people in the part of the 1% that isn't in the 0.1% don't have enough money where their kids could maintain their standard of living without being professionally successful themselves. 2) "Wealthy" people in the U.S. tend to be the "working wealthy" not "umpteenth generation wealthy." Among respectable rich people, there is a strong desire for the kids to follow daddy's footsteps at Princeton, etc. Look at the Frist family. The grandpa founded Hospital Corp of America (a $33 billion/year company). He went to Princeton then Harvard Medical School. Then he still donated a ton of money to Princeton to get in Bill Frist Jr.
- auctiontheory 13y agoI have a friend whose company charges up to $1000/hour [sic] for SAT and other tutoring. And parents in NYC and SF pay it. And succeed in getting their kids into Stanford, Harvard, etc. I have another friend, an accomplished author, who says "I paid for my house writing term papers" for rich, lazy college students. Not sure which schools. If you're just trying to make it on your own, it's tough to compete against all this. Without SAT tutoring or parental money, I earned degrees from two elite schools, but these days - who knows whether I'd even have got in.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mhurron 13y ago> I have a friend whose company charges up to $1000/hour [sic] for SAT Not understanding the use of [sic] here.
- kilovoltaire 13y agoI think they're using it to mean "this is not a typo". Sort of unusual use since they're not quoting anything.
- auctiontheory 13y agoThat's right. Not a typo. Unbelievable but true.
- avar 13y agoWhen you use "[sic]" like that it means the exact opposite of what you think it means. It means that you're quoting something with any errors or nonstandard presentation preserved. That caused me to do a double take when I read that wondering whether it was actually $1000/hr or whether you were reproducing some misquotation of that number. Usually people resolve the matter by writing something like this instead: "[...] charges up to $1000/hour (yes, one thousand dollars per hour!) [...]".
- tokenadult 13y agoShared with me by a Facebook friend who thought a lot about the college admission process, and then went into industry before finishing his college degree. Although I enjoyed reading this article, I didn't submit it here because I usually like Hacker News submissions that tell us more about the reality of the external world. This article, as smooth-reading as it is, tells us mostly that the author is in the business of college admission counseling (serving as advertising for the author's business), and buttresses factual claims with inherently unverifiable anecdotes. I agree heartily that children ought to grow up to pursue their own passions rather than gratifying their parents' egos, but I've seen other submissions here that make that point even better. P.S. The article should be submitted with its original title, by the HN guidelines.
- kenster07 13y agoThe college system will be drastically altered by mooc, for the better. No more of the circus acts.
- jedmeyers 13y agoIn Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" there is a very nice piece in the very beginning: "Матушка была еще мною брюхата, как уже я был записан в Семеновский полк сержантом, по милости майора гвардии князя В., близкого нашего родственника." "My mother was still pregnant with me, when I was enrolled as a sergeant in a Semenovsky Regiment, by the grace of Guards Major Prince V., our close relative."
- rickdale 13y agoI was on the border line for the college I got into (subpar grades, mediocre test scores) and I can say that being good at a sport is what got me in. Whats funny about it is that the school I went to put almost zero spotlight/emphasis on sport and the sport I was playing was tennis not football. So all the time not studying for the SAT, and playing tennis, payed off in my opinion.
- tomphoolery 13y ago"Her parents were working late, as they always did, and other than the staff, we were alone in the house." aaaaaaaaand your daughter's a stripper.
- Amadou 13y agoIt seems my take away from the article was a lot different from most of you. What I read was a discussion of how coddling is crippling. That the parents who were financially capable of insulating their children from pretty much any sort of failure were actually setting their children up for failure when it matters most. It is reasonable to contrast that attitude with the failure-embracing aspect of startup culture. That here there is no stigma associated with a startup failing, it is seen as a learning experience. The idea that falling down is part of the process of learning to run is completely at odds with the attitude of the parents in the article.
- enraged_camel 13y agoStartup culture also irrationally glorifies failure, to the extent that in places like Silicon Valley failure is viewed as a noble thing and in fact a requirement for success. So yes, coddling may be bad, but so is being left completely to your own devices. There are a lot of parents who manage to hit the middle ground by exposing their children to failure while providing them with a safety net that society refuses to provide.
- coldtea 13y ago>What I read was a discussion of how coddling is crippling. That the parents who were financially capable of insulating their children from pretty much any sort of failure were actually setting their children up for failure when it matters most. With the money and businesses some of those parents got, they aint gonna need success anyway. Some might even become Presidents, like their fathers, despite being idiots.
- Amadou 13y agoThe effect on the country of these people moving into leadership roles may be extremely destructive.
- gajomi 13y agoWealthy people can be quite interesting and surprising. A very different perspective on problem solving seen here.