The Neurotic Parent

Congrats to the all the seniors who finally have results. Readers have reported their kids’ acceptances to Harvard, Stanford, U-T Austin, Michigan, NYU, Evergreen, Northeastern, Wesleyan, Emory, BU, USC and even across the pond at St. Andrews and Oxford. And those are just the earlies and the ones who bothered to notify us.

Of course, for many students, getting into college is a piece of cake compared to paying for college. Some schools now charge $60,000 a year. And although most offer generous scholarships and financial aid packages, members of the middle class often find themselves in a FAFSA-resistant grey area.

One 18-year freshman has figured out a way to pay her tuition without going into debt. Instead of getting a loan or working as a barista, she is acting in adult films. The feminist/republican/libertarian/women studies major (never before have all those words been strung together) claimed that if her top-ten college had offered “…. the proper financial resources, I wouldn’t have done porn.” She finds porn empowering, she says, even though she was choked, kicked around, held down and spat upon in the very first scene she shot.

Belle Knox, the freshman porn star (no mere actors, everybody is a “star” in porn), created her stage name by combining the Beauty and the Beast Disney character with the alleged murderer Amanda Knox. After a classmate recognized “Belle” and word spread on campus, she chose to go public and now is the number-one googled teen on the internet, with more searches than the Pope or Justin Bieber. She has a publicist, 50,000 twitter followers, a paid internship at PornHub and a new line of sex toys, including molded replicas of her vagina. As a result of her self-launched media circus, she has had to endure hateful tweet-threats and public judgments about her decision. (Much of the hate evolved from the revelation that she was offered a full scholarship to Vanderbilt, which negated the logic about needing to do porn to pay tuition.)

But, never mind: Belle is on her way to a orgasmic full-ride for her tuition, and maybe even enough for law school, if the admissions committees forget to Google her.

Of course, the XXX world is not for everyone – in fact, there are still some old school feminists around who are disgusted by all this and long for the days of protesting swimsuit competitions in beauty contests. Even the new breed of “sex positive” feminists, who proudly call themselves sluts, prefer escorting and pole dancing because its easier to keep those off resumes and future country club applications. But for Belle, the toothpaste is now out of the tube and the vagina molds will live on in cyber perpetuity.

Luckily, not every student has to resort to porn. There are options that don’t require defending oneself to the ladies on the View. For the more modest, here are some other high-paying alternatives:

1) HAND MODEL – Belle has said that she earns ~$2000 per porn video, which sounds ridiculously low for exposure to all that dubious saliva…and beyond. Instead, she might think about a less exhausting hand modeling gig involving dazzling rings or classy tennis bracelets, paying up $10k a day. Bonus: unlimited no-chip manicures.

2) PENNY STOCK SALES - This worked for the Wolf. More regulated now, and the last of the Quaaludes have expired, so it’s all legal.

3) FREELANCE CEMETERY PLOT BROKER – Hot new field: Substantial profits in the resale/flipping of grave sites. Boomers are aging fast and are happy to do business with perky teens.

4) NATIONAL ENQUIRER TIPSTER –  Hang out with celebs. Earn up to $50,000 for sharing info about twerks and other indiscretions. That’s right, nearly a year’s tuition for just one hot tip.

5) FASHION BLOGGER/IT GIRL – Belle would need a makeover and design counseling for this alternative, but cutting edge fashion blogs have become goldmines for many young women. Leads to the app and the book deal…and this is a book your parents can proudly display on the coffee table.

6) SAT TUTOR – $1100 a session to travel to the Hamptons, arguably less than a porn scene, but with a much lower risk of chlamydia.

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Disclaimer: The Neurotic Parent normally doesn’t cover tabloid stories. But today’s post, albeit juicy and sensational, relates to the politics of financial aid, plus current dialogs in sociology, economics, neo-feminism as well as crotch replica marketing. And with some luck, it will result in increased traffic to this site, as well as more book sales. I hereby promise to donate a portion of the profits to media-hungry sex workers.

Q: What’s the latest buzz from the college tours?

A: (from SFD – Smart, funny dad, a reader on the road) “During a tour of a top Midwestern University we passed the undergrad business building. The guide remarked that a Personal Finance Class was very popular among Seniors – ‘because it helps you plan your retirement.”‘

The reader’s FB friends could not see what was so terrible about planning for retirement while still a teen. SFD’s response to his friends: “I see college as a time to forge identity, dream, try on values and attitudes and there seems to be so little of that now. It’s all bottom line and branding. I guess what I have more trouble with is that this was highlighted on the tour as a ploy to hook in parents….I guess I also think that there’s plenty of time to think about retirement once you’ve started to actually work full time.”

The pressure is on. Now it’s not enough to angst about that (prestigious) first job before even starting college, but also retirement. Yikes.

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Q: What is the hot school this year?

A: (according to a financial aid expert) U of Virginia. Their mission is to expand their out-of-state contingency, but that expansion has so far yielded mostly rejections.

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Q: Any memes you care to share? Maybe one that shows why growing up is not such a bad thing, why all this college insanity is still better than middle school:

A:

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Q: What’s the next must-have product for helicopter parents?

A: The teen version of this near-implant baby monitor:

Perfect for freshman spring break!

 

Is your teen ready for the SAT on Saturday? Umm…are you certain? FROM THE NEUROTIC PARENT ARCHIVES:

Q: What does “SAT” stand for?

A: It used to stand for Scholastic Achievement Test, but in 1947, the name of the exam was changed to Scholastic Aptitude Test. Then the folks at the College Board used their Critical Reasoning skills and came to the conclusion that a coachable exam could not be called an “aptitude” test. So officially, SAT stands for nothing, although at least one college refers to it on its Web site as the Scholastic Assessment Test.

Q: What time does Staples close, in case your kid can’t locate his TI-183 calculator the night before the SAT exam?

A: Luckily, the Staples in our neighborhood closes at 9 p.m., as we discovered the night before our son’s exam. (Our son, who had “just had” his calculator the day before, volunteered to pay for the new one, which should add up to about a week of his summer wages.)

 Q: What are some good snacks for the SATs?

A: A power bar, a peanut butter sandwich, and a banana. We typically procure all of these, but our sons typically leave the power bar at home and the sandwich and banana in the car.

Q: What is the ACT?

A: Another standardized test, which up until twenty minutes ago was popular only in the Midwest. But because there are no trick questions, they allow score cancelling and unpenalized guessing, and offer an early September test date, it is the test du jour . New Yorkers are now obsessed with the ACT, and it is gaining fans in other trendy cities. In fact, for the first time ever, the number of ACT test takers is about the same as the SAT. Poor SAT — it now stands for Sad Anachronistic Test.

Q: What is a superscore?

A: A superscore is achieved by choosing the best subscores from multiple sittings of the same test. (We know, a “sitting” sounds like you’re posing for a portrait, but bear with us.) For example, let’s assume you have these SAT results from these three sittings:

Sitting 1: 800M, 500CR, 450W

Sitting 2: 600M, 410CR, 780W

Sitting 3: 510M, 740CR, 530W

Your composite scores would be 1750, 1790, and 1780, but your superscore would be 2320.

Q: Wow! Do colleges superscore the ACT as well?

A: Not many superscore the ACT, because they’d have to work with five separate numbers, including a composite that often has been rounded up or rounded down. That would require advanced math skills, which would be too confusing, even for colleges. Except MIT, of course. They will even cross-superscore the SAT with the ACT…just because they can.

Q: Do you have to send in all your test scores to Yale, even the ones that suck?

A: No, that’s Penn. Yale’s Web site says, “As long as you provide a complete set of score reports from one testing agency (either the College Board or ACT, Inc.), you are not required to report scores from both. You can choose to report either all of your SAT results (both SAT and SAT Subject Tests) or all of your ACT results. If you want us to have any scores from both the College Board and ACT, Inc., you must report all scores from both testing agencies.”

And if you’re having trouble understanding this, you probably shouldn’t be applying to Yale.

Q: I thought the SAT and the ACT offered Score Choice, so you can send in only your impressive scores.

A: They do, but Yale wants to find out if sitting for standardized exams was your only extracurricular activity. And they promise not to peek at your lousy scores.

 Q: I heard you could cancel your scores so nobody will see them.

A: The SAT offers you a morning-after pill of sorts: If you were fooling around the night before or felt queasy during the exam, you can cancel before you find out your scores. But the more progressive ACT, which also allows you to guess without penalty, will let you terminate whenever.

Q: Do you really believe that Yale doesn’t care about SAT Subject Tests if you send in an ACT score?

A: No — so we recommend you submit the results of your APGAR test. That’s the score babies get from their doctors right after they are born, on a scale of one to ten. Yale’s APGAR average is 9.8.

 Q: What’s with the writing section of the SAT? Some fine colleges, like Cornell, say they don’t consider the SAT writing, yet if you take the ACT, they want you to take that with writing.

A: You’re right. Some things are just not logical—or fair. Even the Neurotic Parent cannot write a decent essay in 25 minutes, especially using a #2 pencil while sitting in a stuffy classroom surrounded by smelly teenagers. But maybe we’d have success if they’d let us write about reality television.

Q: Let’s get back to this ACT thing. That sounds awesome — no SAT Subject Tests! But I don’t get those wacky science graphs. Where can I find a good ACT tutor in Bethesda?

A: Unfortunately, the ACT is still very…er…Midwestern. Because of this, only one-test prep company on the East Coast at this writing claims to have ACT specialists as tutors. And they charge $880 per session. But the always-resourceful Neurotic Parent Institute has located the top ACT tutors in the country. They are all in Evanston, IL, and they charge $40 an hour. So for the price of one $880 session in Bethesda, you can fly to Chicago twice for tutoring and splurge on a Cubs game, a taxi to and from O’Hare, and a deep-dish pizza.