Publishers take note: The Neurotic Parent is proud to announce that this blog has been selected by the website "On Teens Today" as one of the 50 Best Mommy Blogs on the whole internet.
http://www.onteenstoday.com/2008/09/14/best-mommy-blogs-for-parents/
And I didn't even have to write an essay or list my extracurriculars.
If you have a ninth grader and some extra cash after the collapse of the U.S. economy, you might consider hiring Dr. H, an independent college counselor. For $40,000 Dr. H will get your children on the right track for highly-selective schools. She will put them in quirky activities so that they will have a hook by the time the application process comes around. Then, during senior year, she will offer essay-writing help, including brainstorming and unlimited revisions.
In a recent NPR interview, Dr. H says that many parents, who think college prestige will give their kids a better life, seek out her services in today's difficult times: "How many newspaper articles do you read about the valectorian with the 1600 who did not get in?" she asked.
If you don't have 40 grand to spare or are starting late, your student can attend her 4-day application boot camp for only $14,000. Dr. H. claims that this experience is so invaluable that Dartmouth chose of one her boot camp attendee's essays as one of their six best essays of 2008. She acknowleges that if Dartmouth (where she used to work as an admissions counselor) had known she worked with the writer of the essay, they never would have posted it. In fact, even though she "preserved the student's voice", they might never have even accepted the student.
So not only does Dr. H. give invaluable guidance, hiring her is dangerous and exciting – On top of all the other senior year stresses, you have to keep your fingers crossed that nobody finds out you have a puppetmaster.
Here is the NPR interview with Michelle Hernandez. It also includes an interview with the head of admissions from the University of Chicago, who says that what Hernandez is doing ("retooling" essays and packaging clients) constitutes as "perpetrating a fraud". "Some of my best friends are independent counselors", he says. "They offer help, but they don't go too far."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95034319&ft=1&f=1013&sc=emaf
At the very end of the segment, the NPR folks introduce two of their staffers, one who attended Yale and one who attended St. Olaf's, a school with no name recognition. Look, they say, these two ended up with the same exact job! So why are all you guys stressing?
With this in mind, the Neurotic Parent will be offering a special 3-day application bootcamp for parents, for the introductory rate of only $10,000. We will not divulge all of the pertinent information we are imparting, but one strategy will be to forget about those overrated top-20 schools that everyone is obsessed with. Instead, why not encourage your kids to apply to good schools like Cornell College in Iowa or Columbia College in Chicago? Admissions standards at these fine colleges are reasonable, and you can still say your kids attended Cornell or Columbia.
1) One app in. Two or three more to go, according to CJ. Is he a focused, zen-like kid who knows what he wants…or is he just supplement-adverse? Recently met a mom whose son applied to 29 schools – Surely CJ can come up with another 25.
2) Booked a flight to Berkeley, a great, cheap school that's a one-hour flight away. Asked CJ if he wanted to visit Stanford as well. Before he could answer, the phone rang. The caller told me a story about this year's freshman orientation at Stanford. "Look around you", the college president said. "Among you is a student who, when he was eight, discovered a new antibiotic that fights heart infections."
Guess Stanford is off CJ's list. He didn't discover his antibiotic until he was 11.
3) Separation Anxiety – Everything that CJ does might be "the last time". Yesterday was the last trip to Bakersfield for soccer. Should I be happy or sad that I pawned him off on another mom? (A big shout-out to her!) And if I should be happy that I didn't have to drive five hours round trip to see his team lose in 95 degree weather, how should I feel about him missing my birthday?
Once I went off to college, did I ever again see my mother on her birthday?
The Wall Street Journal, in an effort to cheer up its depressed readers, has published a humorous piece about New Yorkers who are attending Indiana University, presumably because they couldn't get into Northwestern or Cornell in this difficult, difficult year. The story states that a record number of students from Manhattan's prestigous Dalton school have chosen to move to America's heartland for the true collegiate experience
The article, with the headline "From Bloomingdale's to Bloomington", features a photo of a girl in a black Chloe mini-dress, talking on her Blackberry Pearl as she walks across the midwestern quad. Undoubtedly inspired by this blog, the author of the piece refers to Indiana is referred as "the new Wisconsin". There are quotes from Hoosiers who resent the New Yorkers' accents and shopping addictions, but most view the migration as a fascinating cross-cultural exchange.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122057234017401625.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
In a related story, the Neurotic Parent Institute has learned that students who have been waitlisted at Purdue are now heading east, enrolling at downtown Manhattan's Eugene Lang (The New School) in droves. In fact, there are rumors that to accomodate the influx of all-American palates, there will soon be an Applebee's in Tribeca.
The Neurotic Parent is taking care of important business in New York City and Sag Harbor, barely thinking of essays, SAT IIs, teacher recs or alum interviews. If you're a book publisher, please forgive me for taking a few days off. If you're the parent of a senior, go back to hassling your child.
Next post: Monday