> 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.

A lot of this is just inflicted by parent culture and anxiety. Unless your kid applying to an elite school, most college/university accept between 60-80% of their applicants. If they have decent GPA.

We are making the kids endure that out of fear of their college, but stats don't back up the grind they make the kids do.

I'm 32. In my senior year of high school, I woke up at 5:30 AM, my first class (zero hour) was at 6:30 AM, regular school started at 7:35 AM. school let out at 2:30 PM. I had extracurriculars until 6:00 PM most days. Go home, eat dinner while studying, go to bed at 11:00 PM. I took 8 AP classes and had straight A's. 5 on every test. strong ACT.

I attended a prestigious land grant university, like Michigan, and I was totally prepared and performed very strongly right out of the gate. I was competitive with elite students who had attended the most prestigious high schools both in the United States and internationally.

Today, I'm an extremely well compensated engineer. My household income is top 1%. My career is gratifying. I have a rich social life and a loving wife and child. If your children are operating at this caliber, and they're able to sustain this level of effort, they're going to go places, no matter what they chose to do. You are rewarded for this effort.

> sports practice until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces.

Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges. I thought it was just a relic of Soviet past but no, apparently it exists in the US and other first world countries as well for some strange reason.

This must be a State thing.

> she was up at 6:30am, in AP classes by 7:30am (three more to go during the day). Classes were done by 3:00, then sports practice until 5:00.

In other States, high school starts later like 8:45/9am. You can take classes online and start school later if you want or do dual enrollment and skip later periods.

> Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces.

Mine worked and were in clubs. Kids are remarkably resilient. In some States, work time counts in lieu of volunteer time.

> Then you have test prep (APs and the ACT/SAT), college applications, writing essays and scholarship applications, college tours, sorting decisions, financial aid applications, etc etc etc. And now her college already has a few hours of orientation videos stacked up for her to watch before she moves in.

This sounds like a lot of undue pressure. UCF didn’t make you do that. ACT or SAT works and you have a couple years to do it. Not all at once in Senior year and you usually can composite your score across the highest tests.

Personally, I don't blame her if she checks out for a few weeks. Or a semester.

Nor would I, but I'd also accept that she did so and failed a few classes.

Just like I did in the 90s. Although in my case it wasn't burn-out, but system shock at actually having to try to get good grades (Fairfax County PS then UVA).

Did that bombed first semester probably eliminate med school or an elite graduate program? Sure. But I probably wasn't cut out for either anyway. And it was a kick in the pants and got me to pay attention and work.

Did she ever have time to just go outside and hang out with friends?

Are normal adults not "working" in a similar way to your kid for 15+ hours per weekday?

Comparable adult parent things would be up at 6am, prep kids for school day, in the office by 8am, 8 hours of work plus a lunch, departing the office around 5pm, transporting kids to/from some activities, dinner, helping kids with homework, somehow fit in regular shopping needs (food, essentials, etc), maybe some volunteering or hobby things, if lucky in bed by 10pm, and we're easily at 15 hours of "work" on a weekday.

Yes, it's a lot.

This schedule is no different than my schedule from 30 years ago and I don't consider it problematic at all. You frame it as 15+ hour days by including all aspects of their day as "work" but no normal adult includes their workout time and their social engagements as part of their work day. Time spent in sports is fun, not work. If it is work, then quit. Time spent in gym class and lunch is not work. Remove all that bloat from your framing and it is a very reasonable workload.

I am still traumatizes from high school after almost 30 years. I had no extra-curricular activities but I had to travel far for the school of choice (I was an ESL student). Waking up at 5:45, 90 minute travel one way, then 8-9 periods ending at around 5PM. Get home at 7 and then do homework.

Then the never-ending pressure of midterms, finals, and regents exams.

We need to normalize a gap year, or at least a gap semester. Young adults need a break after the pressure of graduation and college admissions, and whether it’s work or travel, some perspective helps ground the college experience and make it a choice instead of an obligation.

In my experience, many freshmen treated their first year as a gap year anyways, especially if they took difficult senior classes. First year classes aren’t always as rigorous as good AP classes (depending on both the high school and the university), so you can skip or cram while partying.

your kid could also not do any of those things and still go to college(or not) and have a happy fulfilling life

its truly crazy. game days for sports take even more time

lucky she has you who considers this. speaking from experience: think about trying to handle that with parents who dont have time management skills

Ok?

I did the whole APs, sports, volunteering thing too, and managed to do just fine in college.

Kids today are just so fucking soft.

Just to present another reality... a lot of kids coast through high school academically. They sleep through classes or play video games on their school-provided laptops, or play on their phones all day. They know about "minimum-F" policies where submitting 0 work earns them 50%. And they don't really care about getting Ds. Then some community support program assigns them a counselor who drags them over some finish line to get them admitted to a community college.

No, this isn't every high school student. But there are more people in the group I describe than there are in the group you describe.

Here's my point: There is a lot of ground between the two extremes. And both ends of the spectrum are making it into college of some sort. So it you think your child is under too much stress from taking seven AP classes, drop four of them. If they are overwhelmed by tennis practice, ... maybe recognize that removing all friction from a person's life is not necessarily a good thing. Work together to build coping skills. But no child has to be an Olympic medalist neurosurgeon senator CEO all at the same time. Who is "forcing" that on high school students? You?

There is plenty of room for people with 3.2 GPAs and only two AP classes when they graduate. Frankly, with some family support, it is not that hard to have a 3.8 GPA for 60+% of students.

But I've seen high school valedictorians with 3.9 college GPAs graduate and struggle to find a white collar job. What is the plan for that from U Mich?

Same with my kids. At the bus stop by 6:30am, out doing sports and extra-curriculars until 8pm, then dinner+homework until 11pm or so, rinse and repeat.

Sorry if this seems naive but do students in America actually work that hard these days? Modern television and social media seem to suggest they are all on drugs and doing God knows what

> When you force high school kids to work days that are significantly longer than a normal adult to achieve a good GPA

Is it possible that the kids who have to study very very long hours to get a GPA decent enough to get into college are just not that sharp?

No one is forcing them to do this. This is all self-incflicted.

That blows my mind. It seems so unnecessary. It also doesn't seem to work given where the US ranks globally in education. Is the problem what the admission process? In the UK, even to get into the most prestigious universities you do the same exams as everyone else, maybe a little extra-curricular stuff, and interview with the university. The amount of studying in the evening is no different than anyone else trying to get a good grade, and there are certainly no extra classes you can take (never mind starting the schooldays before the normal time).

If the sports and clubs are stressful, your kid should find other activities.

I did everything you mentioned in the nineties and aughts (my sport was year round and coach expected us to travel on our own dime to tournaments that lasted the entire weekend at least four times in the summer, and during the school year I was out of town most Sat-Sun at tournaments, which take way more time than the couple hours a volleyball game lasts or whatever), and volunteer activities that lasted until 10pm for a few week stretches a few times a year.

I had a blast doing things I loved. Counting travel, 30+ hours a week of sports. School from 6:30 to 3:30 (because I took an extra AP physics class that happened before school officially started). I acted in community theatre. I did martial arts. I quit tennis to teach acting for the YMCA my senior year.

Why doesn't your kid love the sport she plays? Why doesn't she love the volunteer activities? Those are meant to be FUN. Like, that's why the colleges want them: to see why she's an interesting person, not a time-management robot. They can tell these things, so stop gaming the system ad find a hobby she'll be so obsessed with that she'll write a college entrance essay all about how it made her a more interesting person.

There is no adcom in the world that is trying to find a selfless 17yo who does drudgery because it's expected of them. They're trying to find people who LOVE building for Habitat, who want to be chefs and serve at a soup kitchen, who LOVE God and ran tech support during COVID for their church livestream, etc.

That is the same schedule people had 60 years ago

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Is she typical or atypical of the kids having issues? My bet is the kids having issues are ones that were less academically inclined. Perhaps they were misled throughout primary education (trophies for everyone, equality of results rather than opportunity, dumbed down mathematics, skipping physics as a req., etc.)

I don’t think kids like yours are having issues but rather kids who didn’t apply themselves academically.

Basically A or even B grades cannot be an average grade. C or 2.0 would be the expected average but of course this hasn’t been close to true since GWB introduced his idiotic policy.

It’s no secret, if you let kids (or people) slack, 80 to 90% will slack off. 10 to 20% will ensure out of principle or habit.

^^^ This. 100% This.

This kind of applicant is now treated as table stakes for programs like UMich, and acceptance rates for impacted majors like CS in top programs have dropped to single digits.

It is ridiculously competitive to get into top programs now. I got into an Ivy in the late 2000s to early 2010s. With my stats from back then (13 APs all 4s and 5s, a 4.5+ GPA, varsity wrestling, JV XCountry, NHS, CSF, USAPHO, USAMO, Policy and LD debate, a 2200+ SAT, 35 ACT, 8 SAT Subject test), I would have been lucky to get into CS@UC Davis today and I absolutely wouldn't have gotten into my alma mater.

It’s what the American corporate work culture expects though. She’ll be well acclimated.