Sacrificing

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We have entered another dimension of time and space: CJ is a college junior.  And as of 3pm this afternoon, GC is a high school senior…and we are officially old people.

What a ride: It's too bad we cannot relax and enjoy one more year of pre-empty nest quality time with our teen, but instead have to deal with Early vs. Regular strategies, biting nails over test scores, proofreading activity lists, and agonizing over whether it was a mistake to not include Bowdoin and Bates on our tour.  

But at least we haven't blown all our retirement money on remedial help for our kids.  In yet another NYT piece about the outrageous level of out-of-control educational spending in New York, there is an account of a Riverdale Country School family that paid $35,000 in a year to one tutor from Ivy Consulting.  (This did not include the $100k+ they spent the previous year on SAT prep.)  The $35,000 accounted for preparation for one oral exam, the culmination of one high school course -$750 – $1500 a week for the year. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/education/08tutors.html?_r=1&hpw

The Neurotic Parent Institute has done some preliminary research about the class in question, and has discovered that it is not AP Calculus or Physics, but rather an interdisciplinary course called "Integrated Liberal Studies."  According to Wikipedia, there are "readings and assignments covering Western culture, surveying classical philosophy as well as the history of science, and featuring literature, religion and arts components." And the reason the class is so notorious is because it uses "source material" (real books) rather than textbooks.

I started this post somewhat depressed about the melancholy fleeting moments of youth, the circle game cliché that has taken over my life. But now I am energized, now I have something to look forward to. 

As soon as my youngest leaves the house I can move to a Hudson-view townhouse in Riverdale and become a Liberal Studies tutor. 

As a source material aficionado who is as liberal as they come, I am super-qualified to prepare kids for oral presentations.  Just ten students at $1500 each a week comes to $780,000 a year -  considerably more than I earn in the entertainment industry or as a blogger. 

I had planned to use this post to rant about how B's, once defined as "good," are now the end of the world.  But it is the pressure of those potential B's that make parents spend more on a tutor than on tuition at an Ivy. 

What joy it is to have found my cause: As soon as I brush up on my classical philosophy, I am prepared to devote the next stage of my life wiping out B's at Riverdale.

The right spelling errors = Admission to Harvard

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We all know that China puts the U.S. to shame economically.  But for some weird reason, Chinese parents want their kids to study at our brand-name universities.

As most of you know, this is not so easily accomplished.  Even perfect students here find that Ivy admissions are a crapshoot.  But the Chinese have managed to figure out exactly how to win the game.  For fees starting at $15k, you can hire ThinkTank Learning and they will fill out your app, write your essay, help you come up with stand-out extracurriculars, tutor you until you get a 2250+ on the SAT and even bribe your high school teachers to change some of your grades. 

And, best of all, according to the New York Times, you no longer have to live in China to benefit from these services.  Six centers have now opened in northern California, with more to come.

ThinkTank, which netted $7 million last year, said they were "able to distill the college admissions process into an exact science."  Founder Steven Ma compared his methods to genetic engineering. "We make unnatural stuff happen," he said. "There’s a system built by colleges designed to pick out future stars and we are here to crack that system."

Although these "aggressive practices have been condemned by many American colleges," companies such as ThinkTank – and there are many others in China – are booming.

"Students, whose parents often pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, are molded by ThinkTank into well-rounded, socially conscious overachievers through a regimen often beginning as early as the year before entering high school," said Mr. Ma, a former investment banker.

Because of the poor English skills of ThinkTank clients, this can be a challenge.  “We really have to hold their hand…including deliberately leaving spelling errors in their essays so they look authentic…and building extracurricular activities from the ground up."

"ThinkTank has founded Model United Nations groups, built a Web site (sic) for a Shanghai student’s photography project to get news media coverage and helped another obtain funding to build a hydroelectric generator."

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No, I did not make this up.  I found it in the NY Times.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/global/30college.html?_r=1

A bit incredulous that a company would brag to the press about their unethical practices, I checked out ThinkTank's dense, unstylish website, which looks as if it were designed by the guys who leave carpet cleaning flyers on your windshield.  You would think ThinkTank would be somewhat embarrassed (or potentially litigious) about the questionable methods discussed in the article, but instead, they proudly have displayed a link to the Times piece. They even have lists of SAT scores and photos of their smiling clients holding up their big envelopes from Stanford and Harvard.

I have put in a call to ThinkTank to inquire about a position as a spelling error consultant.  Nobody is more adept than I at writing essays with a typo here or there.  For a massive fee, I would even be willing share my vast knowlege about authentic teen mistakes, including "definately" and "existance."  But so far, I have not heard back. 

Meanwhile, for the sake of our economy, let's hope that lots of these ThinkTank kids fraudulently get into Harvard.  Then, the first time they write an essay on their own, they will probably not include enough spelling errors to satisfy their professors, giving the competitive edge to the American kids who have beaten the system.

My New Extracurricular

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Yesterday I participated in a Japanese woodcarving class in my friend's courtyard.  I signed up without knowing that this would be a spiritual, meditative activity, rather than an art project.  The point is to choose a piece of wood and whittle away, letting the object shape itself, rather than planning what you want to create.  There are a few unwritten rules: try not to cut yourself, don't keep dropping your sculpture and if possible, refrain from talking. 

Halfway through the process, I began to relax and de-stress.  I stopped worrying that everyone else's work looked like an egg, a whale or a giant chopstick, while mine was "nothing."  I didn't even care that the compliments I received were about the grain of my wood, rather than what I had carved.  For once, I was free to enjoy the ride and not care about the outcome.

Ah, if only the college process could shape itself like this, I thought.  Take a block of rough wood, focus on the journey rather than the destination, and poof! you end up with something smooth and functional, something that was meant to be.

My happy, zen ponderings dissapated when I broke rule #3 and began to chat with my carving buddy, a  young woman who sipped green iced tea as she whittled.  Although she was a first-timer like me, her piece of wood had transformed itself into the kind of pendant you could purchase at Barney's, while mine looked like a marked-down souvenir from the Maui airport.

The small talk did, in fact, to turn out to be a huge mistake:  My cool fellow carver was, I kid you not, ….an SAT tutor.  And once she found out I was the Neurotic Parent, all she wanted to talk about was whether the UC's really do want subject tests this year, even though they say they don't. 

So much for meditation and sprirituality.

 

American Idol Finale Delays May SAT Scores

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Test takers all over the nation were disappointed this evening to learn that their May SAT results would be delayed by forty-eight hours.  Hundreds of anxious students posted on CollegeConfidential.com, expressing dismay.

jd989899 suggested that  "Maybe this is due to all the tornadoes…the graders couldn't come in to work."

may09sat theorized that "…the Rapture had something to do with it."

Another poster, cortana431 , did some investigative googling and found out that "this happened in 2006 when some answer sheets were found to be damp." 

Many angry, impatient students on the site mentioned that they would be willing to forgive the College Board for the two-day wait if the testing agency had decided to readjust the curve at the last minute.

MMAfAnatic9  was not so kind.  He or she asked other posters to weigh in on whether they thought the College Board was "…having technical problems, or just being a bunch of lazy asses."

After a full-fledged investigation, The Neurotic Parent has uncovered the true reason for the score report delay: The graders couldn't resist taking a break to watch the two-hour season finale of American Idol. 

We reached Gaston Caperton, the President of the College Board, who said, "Our staffers were unable to finish uploading exam results until they found out whether Scotty or Lauren would be the new Idol.  Now that they have seen Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Tom Jones, Tony Bennett and Judas Priest perform with the contestants, the majority will go back to reporting scores."

Caperton, a former governor of West Virginia, clarified that the scoring hiatus would last until the weekend.  "All of us at the College Board are obsessed with reality television," he said, "as evidenced by our recent choice of essay topics.  Although Idol is over, some of our employees feel compelled to catch up on episodes of Dancing With the Stars and Fashion Police before they get back to work, but we promise to get those results up by Saturday."