Yeah, we were small private. Online definitely helps. We had a class FB group, so stuff would get posted on there and you'd find out. Thankfully thanks to all the campus walking, I didn't gain the freshman 15.
Maybe Cornell is more accessible and it certainly sounds like they are more reasonable with their expectations. I honestly don't think Harvard, or Yale, or any of those super expensive and "Prestigious" schools are worth the price to go there. They may be slightly better than average, but really you are paying for the brand. It's not exponentially better than some other 4 year institution. It's all hype. But it's kind of sad that a girl who was at the top of her class didn't stand a chance with them just because it wasn't some big name high school. Don't they look at test scores and things? Like I said, my ex was super intelligent and had a near perfect score on the ACT. You'd think that would be plenty to tell one of those schools that they should be looking in his direction. But Wyoming is not known for its academic excellence...we have such a small population, they just don't look twice at anyone from there. It's actually kind of discriminatory to tell someone they don't stand a chance because they don't go to the right school. Honest, but discriminatory.
And this is why we have problems in the US with people bribing officials and recruiters and such to get their kids into good schools. They've monetized it so that kids who actually DESERVE to go to the good schools don't stand a chance if they can't afford to bribe someone to let them in. You get a bunch of celebrities' kids and other wealthy people's kids who really aren't academically on par, but get in because they know someone on this committee who will pull some strings for a price. It starts already in preschool! I found it rather ironic rewatching Full House when it came out on Netflix, and then Lori Laughlan getting in trouble for lying about her kids' skills to get them into school. There was an episode of full house in which Becky and Jesse are trying to get their twins into some prestigious preschool and lie on their application about all the things their kids can do, like that they are proficient on the bassoon. Makes me wonder if that's where she got the idea?
You can come clean my house next!
I think a lot is population. Look at Wyoming. It's the least populated state. There are fewer people in the whole state Wyoming than there are in one city somewhere else. Just based on statistics alone, what are the odds that out of all the graduating seniors in the nation, the top one comes from Wyoming? Just like Olympic teams....it's so competitive. The US always gets WAY more medals than the Netherlands....but the population is also exponentially larger. The pool from which they choose the athletes is larger, and therefore more competitive. With a larger population, you have more of a chance that your athlete is the best. And there are a lot of factors that go into that....like the Jamaican Bobsled team....they aren't known for winter sports. Their opportunities for bobsledding are pretty limited, so there aren't many bobsledders. The US can pick and choose from a huge pool where Jamaica kind of has to take what they can get qualified. And I think that's the thing with the colleges...they have a very very competitive pool to choose from, so they can take or leave whomever they choose. They don't NEED to look in Wyoming, because the chance that someone from that tiny pool has much more potential than someone ranked number one in a well-known school in Texas is slim. They might be just as good as that kid from Texas, but if Harvard doesn't want to have to go to Wyoming to look at one student, they can concentrate on the 100 students in Texas and be done with it. So you've got areas that hold a large number of people living in poverty in a big city in say, New York or California, who have poorly funded schools and their students can't compete. They are left out. Then you have people from smaller populated areas who get overlooked because a recruiter would rather visit a state where they have 500 potential picks than go to a state where they only have maybe 5. It's more cost effective to go where the larger pool is. Your chance is far greater if you live in the "right" place, regardless of your potential. They COULD be missing out on that top person just because that person didn't live in the right place that made them want to take a look. I was lucky...UW HAS to take any student from a Wyoming school as long as they have a certain GPA. And they give scholarships for Tuition and fees to the top 2 students in every high school each year. I got one of those scholarships. They also give out a number of full rides, but that's the top students within the state, not per school. My brother and my ex-boyfriend both got those. But Wyoming has cheaper out-of-state tuition than most In-state tuition rates for other states' schools. We get a lot of people at UW from states like New York, or Hawaai or wherever, just because it was even cheaper than going to a school in their own state with in-state tuition. Wyoming doesn't have a large pool to choose from, so they have to incentivize going there.
Absolutely....there's a whole documentary about it. Operation Varsity Blues. People will pay huge amounts in order to get their kids into a top school, and a lot of the kids don't deserve to be there at all. It's all because mommy and daddy are wealthy.
Was there a reason you were supposed to watch S at practice? We haven't been allowed to go watch at practices since corona started. We have to drop the kids off and leave. I don't even drop A off anymore. He rides his bike to tennis, which is only about 5 minutes by bike, and it's a back road route. He only has to cross one semi-busy street and the rest is through residential areas or quiet roads. M takes him to chess on Fridays, but he's going to have to ride his bike there next week, and once I get my drivers license, I'll have the car on Friday evenings to go to work, so there won't be anyone to take him, so he has to start going by bike. E doesn't have any activities because she has a full plate with school.
They don't really do extra curriculars here in school. There are no athletic teams through the school....it's all club. The only thing at school is theater, which they haven't been able to do for a year and a half. E was so disappointed because you aren't eligible until your 3rd year, which was last year. She's been waiting for it. So she finally was eligible, and then they couldn't do it because of Corona. But E doesn't really have an athletic bone in her whole body. Hopefully they'll be able to theater this year. A has his tennis club and chess club. E is much more academic...she does the "nerdy" things they come up with every once in a while. Last year they had this thing called "Night of the Nerds" which was some workshops about science and technology. She did that....and then later there was a Night of the Nerds Quiz, which was a nation-wide trivia type thing for schools. Her team won. This year, one of her teachers is really campaigning hard for her to do "Track in Learning" which is a series of workshops meant for students who "easily pass" all their classes...most kids struggle a bit and are happy to get a D. E has never had a failing grade and she's pretty sure she's the only one from her original class of 20 kids who never had a failing grade in three years. She has one friend from the other dual immersion class who can say the same. Her LOWEST grade has been the equivalent of a B. She's at the top of her class, so this teacher really wants her to sign up for this program, but she's worried about it. It's a year and a half long and involves missing regular classes to go to these workshops, most of which are in a different town. So she'd have to leave school, ride her bike to the train station, take the train to Winterswijk, have a 4 hour long workshop, then take the train home. She'd miss her lunch hour and right now you still have to wear facemasks in the train, so she couldn't eat on the train, but she'd be late coming home for dinner, she'd have to make up all the classes she missed and any tests she was supposed to take then. It's a pretty big commitment and while she's academically capable of it, she's thinking about how tired she'll be and how stressed trying to make up the work for the classes she missed. But since there are no extra curriculars here, and there's no real college application process, there's not much you get out of such a thing. Colleges don't even look at your transcripts here....if you pass, you get a diploma and as long as you took the required subjects, you can do whatever "major" you want. You pick a school, pick a program, and you sign up for it. That's it. You don't have to be competitive with a bunch of other kids. So this program, while it sounds interesting, doesn't offer her anything extra...it's just extra work to learn more. And in order to sign up, you have to have a discussion with your mentor and the school....counselor I guess, for lack of a better term....it's a person who organizes and is responsible for the requirements. They are the ones who give advice about which classes you should take, make sure requirements are met, grades are sufficient, etc. So you have to meet with this person to review your records and whether you are likely to be able to keep up with the course load. And there's no doubt she qualifies, which is why this one teacher wants her so badly. But she doesn't want her school work to suffer if she does it, and she doesn't want to be a ball of stress. Her one friend who barely passed and only made it through last year because she was allowed to drop the classes she wasn't going to take this year, wants to do this program. I'm pretty sure she won't make it through the meeting with the "counselor". She won't get approved. But that's pretty much the extent of E's extra-curriculars. She's not a "joiner"...she doesn't like large groups, she's not athletic...she's creative, but hates doing classes where they tell you HOW you have to be creative....like "Draw a picture of...." or "Make a poster in Pop Art style depicting an apocolyptic survival device." (yes, that was an actual assignment in art class.)
I don't remember any big schools being at our college fair. We had UW, of course, and the local community colleges.....Casper College, Sheridan, and Gillette Campus, LCCC in Cheyenne, and then Black Hills State in South Dakota, and I think Chadron State from Nebraska....that's it. There MAY have been one from Colorado, but I don't remember it if they did. It was all community colleges except Black hills, Chadron, and the University of Wyoming. But then, most of our students didn't apply anywhere else. A few went into the military because their grades weren't good enough to get into college, a few went to community colleges....most of them never even graduated from them. They'd go for a semester or a year and then drop out. We didn't have a very high rate of kids who got any further education after high school. There were 3 other kids in my class who went to UW with me and I'm the only one who graduated. We had 32 graduating seniors, plus 5 exchange students. Of those 32, I think 4 of us, or maybe 5, went to a 4 year university, and probably 10 did some community college. I think that's it. I THINK I'm the only one with any sort of degree, unless someone went back to school to get one later. We're just not known for academics. I was the "nerd". The week before graduation, the valedictorian got arrested for selling drugs.....to the Salutitorian. (I ended up #2, but somehow the other kid magically passed me in the 3rd quarter with one less A than I had, so he was named Salutitorian, and then I "passed him back" again 4th quarter. At least the scholarship was awarded in the 2nd quarter, so I got that. But in the 2nd quarter there was a "computer glitch" that switched our two rankings, and only our two. It was discovered and set right relatively quickly, and the counselor's secretary, who was a good friend of ours, had I think been the one to catch it, and she told me that my GPA was high enough that he couldn't pass me unless I really screwed up. Then 3rd quarter, I somehow got a C in Calculus though I had gotten A's on all the homework and had gotten a B on my test, and my math teacher wasn't able to explain to my mom why that came out to a C. And someone overheard a science teacher, not mine, telling the school secretary "I don't KNOW why. I was told to give her a B, so that's what I gave her" about some other student....so we knew grades were being fixed. And when mom went in to question my grades, they did discover that the other kid had been given AP credit for his advanced Spanish, but I was NOT given AP credit for my advanced German. Anyway, that's why I say he "magically" passed me. I don't think he actually did, but the councelor and principal had a beef...several beefs, with my family, so I'm pretty sure they rigged it.)