THE NEUROTIC PARENT™

Neurotic September Senior Year Musings

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?

From Muncie to Chelsea

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 East Coast Without College Tours

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

University of Chicago Essay Prompts: Shallow Thinkers Need Not Apply

If you can write a good essay about one of these topics, you probably don't need a college education:

Essay Option 1

"At present you need to live the question."—Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Joan M. Burnham.

Essay Option 2

The short film Powers of Ten begins with an aerial shot of a couple picnicking in a Chicago park. The camera zooms out ten meters. It then zooms out again, but the degree of the zoom has increased by a power of ten; the camera is now 100 meters away. It continues to 1,000 meters, then 10,000, and so on, traveling through the solar system, the galaxy, and eventually to the edge of the known universe. Here the camera rests, allowing us to examine the vast nothingness of the universe, black void punctuated sparsely by galaxies so far away they appear as small stars. The narrator comments, "This emptiness is normal. The richness of our own neighborhood is the exception." Then the camera reverses its journey, zooming in to the picnic, and—in negative powers of ten—to the man’s hand, the cells in his hand, the molecules of DNA within, their atoms, and then the nucleus both "so massive and so small" in the "vast inner space" of the atom.

Zoom in and out on a person, place, event, or subject of interest. What becomes clear from far away that you can’t see up close? What intricate structures appear when you move closer? How is the big view related to the small, the emptiness to the richness?

Essay Option 3

Chicago author Nelson Algren said, "A writer does well if in his whole life he can tell the story of one street." Chicagoans, but not just Chicagoans, have always found something instructive, and pleasing, and profound in the stories of their block, of Main Street, of Highway 61, of a farm lane, of the Celestial Highway. Tell us the story of a street, path, road—real or imagined or metaphorical.

Essay Option 4

Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab (both national laboratories managed by the University of Chicago) have particle accelerators that smash bits of atoms together at very high energies, allowing particles to emerge that are otherwise not part of the everyday world. These odd beasts—Z bosons, pi mesons, strange quarks—populated the universe seconds after the Big Bang, and allow their observers to glimpse the fabric of the universe.

Put two or three ideas or items in a particle accelerator thought experiment. Smash 'em up. What emerges? Let us glimpse the secrets of the universe newly revealed.

Breaking News from the College Board

The Neurotic Parent Institute has just learned that the College Board is rethinking the future of the SAT because of the following:

1. NEW SAT IS WORTHLESS

It has been determined that the new exam (which incorporates a writing section and costs twice as the old one) does not predict academic success or have any correlation to college performance.  In short, it is useless.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/education/18sat.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=tamar%20lewin%20study%20benefit&st=cse&oref=slogin

(This backs up the findings of a previous in-depth research study by the NPI, which proved that the new section was designed for 50-year old females who regularly read the New Yorker.)

2. UC'S DUMPING SAT'S

In a more serious dis to the College Board, the University of California system, the largest customer of the SAT, wants to abandon the whole exam altogether.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E5D81030F934A25751C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

3.  ACTs BECOMING THE HOT TEST TO TAKE

Finally, today, the Los Angeles Times printed a front page article about how the SATs are mean and tricky.  Instead, many students are turning to the ACTs, which come from the midwest, and are therefore kinder and more straightforward. 

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-act6-2008sep06,0,2841248.story

In light of the above, the NPI is proud to report that top colleges will soon end standardized testing requirements altogether.  Starting with the class of 2014, they will evaluate students by the following six Facebook-related criteria:

1) Quantity of friends.  Students with more than 800 friends on Facebook can consider themselves shoo-ins for Wharton.

2) Performance at Word Twist.  Word Twist (a timed game in which players unscramble letters to create words) has been found to be twice as accurate as an indicator of both innate intelligence and academic success than the SAT, the ACT and the GPA combined. In a related announcement, Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins have reported that they will also consider applicants' standings in online Texas Hold'em.

3) Quality of Youtube Video Links.  For students interested in gaining entry to schools with film, art and music programs, the links they post to videos and music will be judged as valuable indicators of their artistic taste and sensibilities.

4) Appearance.  No need to guess what the applicants look like.  Most students have dozens of photos posted on their page, and are "tagged" in hundreds of others.  The party schools can choose girls who will go wild, and the all work-no play schools can be assured that they will be enrolling actual nerds.

5) Ethnicity.  Ditto.  You had better not write that you are part Algonquin if you look like Brad Pitt.

6) Social Conscience.  Forget the time-consuming clichéd essays.  A five-minute perusal of each applicant's Facebook page will clearly demonstrate college applicants' passions.  Extra points will be given to students who are membes of groups such as "Help AIDS Orphans", "Stop Japanes Dolphin Massacre" and "Official Project Runway Community". 

What happens to those applicants without Facebook pages?  They can still opt to hand in their high school grades, but it is unlikely that they will be taken seriously as applicants at mainstream schools. 

Those living in the twenty-first century without a Funwall are just not ready for college.

 

. 

If You Can't Leave Them, Join Them

Just when we thought the college-obsessed editors at the New York Times couldn't find another topic to write about, they published this piece about a popular new trend.  Parents are moving to college towns, presumably so they can attend hockey game and do their kids' laundries (although the NP suspects that they actually want to save on the rising cost of empty nester support groups).

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/greathomesanddestinations/22college.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Mr. NP and I think this is a terrific idea.  In fact, we have already identified the second home we will purchase should CJ happen to be accepted at Penn. 

We see this real estate find as the perfect place to spend our golden years - and it even has a pool table.

http://www.realtor.com/search/listingdetail.aspx?zp=19104&mxp=16&typ=7&sid=5b63e09730174978a316cb39a624a48f&pg=2&lid=1101890830&lsn=19&srcnt=49#Detail

Vetting by the Neurotic Parent - Sarah Palin's College Years

SARAH PALIN BUSTY IN COLLEGE

Posted August 31, 2008 at 7:36 pm

“I may be broke, but I’m not flat busted” — Sarah Palin. This undated photo provided by the Palin family shows Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in her dorm room at the University of Idaho. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced Palin as his vice presidential running mate on Friday, Aug. 29, 2008.