dperry
Postdoc
Posts: 2214
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
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04-11-16 09:13 PM - Post#206062
Dear Lord in heaven, this is getting out of hand:
Philly.com Article
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!" |
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32810
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Another Penn Suicide
04-11-16 09:33 PM - Post#206063
In response to dperry
Having had a daughter go through Penn recently, there is a tendency of some to simply overwhelm themselves with commitments. This girl was in two service fraternaties, had a business internship and carried a full course load. And before 6 in the morning, she (probably after pulling an all nighter) just leaped into the tracks. You have to enjoy college---this seems to be happening primarily to those taking incredibly intense workloads. There's too much pressure for a college student--question is where is it coming from? Another very sad story.
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dperry
Postdoc
Posts: 2214
Loc: Houston, TX
Reg: 11-24-04
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Re: Another Penn Suicide
04-11-16 10:36 PM - Post#206065
In response to palestra38
Sorry, don't know how that got posted three times.
David Perry
Penn '92
"Hail, Alma Mater/Thy sons cheer thee now
To thee, Pennsylvania/All rivals must bow!!!" |
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Streamers
Professor
Posts: 8236
Loc: NW Philadelphia
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Another Penn Suicide
04-12-16 07:22 AM - Post#206068
In response to palestra38
As a parent of a college sophomore, this is often a topic of family conversations. One of the things they talk to the incoming students at Duke about is "FOMO" or Fear of Missing Out. Schools like these offer their kids so many academic and social opportunities and such a competitive atmosphere, that the tendency to overload is rampant. In our case we could see the impact of the stress last semester and had her dial it back this semester and it has helped. So has the opportunity to blow off steam at Cameron. No joke, the hoops culture there takes their minds off school every now and then.
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Penn90
Masters Student
Posts: 574
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: Another Penn Suicide
04-12-16 09:28 AM - Post#206070
In response to Streamers
Interesting insight, Streamers.
I have a daughter in 9th grade and she's already extremely stressed about college. I wonder if kids, once they finally get into Penn/Duke/etc., think to themselves, "Is this all there is?" And that throws them for a loop.
Edited by Penn90 on 04-12-16 09:28 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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caughtinasnare
Senior
Posts: 362
Age: 35
Reg: 02-21-09
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04-12-16 04:59 PM - Post#206097
In response to Penn90
I would say that the economy might have some part to play. Kids feel the need to be ever more competitive because the job market for the 18-25 demographic is not so great and graduate school admissions are getting ever more competitive. Even coming out of Penn, it's hard for a kid to get a good job, so they feel the need to further prove that they are above and beyond everybody else. As such, they overextend themselves, and when they can't make 5 million things work for themselves, they feel like they have even less hope.
That's just my theory. Not necessarily any basis in anything other than observation.
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32810
Reg: 11-21-04
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04-12-16 05:04 PM - Post#206098
In response to caughtinasnare
I agree with what you say other than the job part. I don't think that kids are that job focused while at Penn such that they stress out junior year. This girl had a job and was going places. However, the comment someone made about "not missing out" is a very strong pressure at Penn, and it leads the kids to burn the candle and just exhaust themselves. Bad decisions are made when utterly exhausted.
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IvyHoopsFan01
Freshman
Posts: 68
Age: 63
Reg: 10-28-14
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04-12-16 06:44 PM - Post#206105
In response to palestra38
Over time, family members and healthcare professional may gain further insights into the key factors behind this most tragic turn of events for this Wharton student. However, this horrific tragedy is part of a very troubling trend among Ivy campuses. In recent years, there has been growing number of serious mental health and suicide cases across all the Ivies.
I do believe that increasing pressure on kids in high school and continuing in college is an important contributing factor in many cases of serious depression. For those of us who are actively engaged in our respective Schools Committee Interviewing process, we have seen a real trend toward high school kids who are putting unreal levels of pressure on themselves to achieve against a super high standard. I recently participated in an Ivy admissions panel discussion to hundreds of prospective high school applicants. This panel discussion had admissions schools committee representatives from each of the Ivies and Stanford. When we met privately before the panel session, one of the key topics of our conversation was how we are all seeing increasing number of students who are putting so much pressure on themselves to be become properly “packaged†to get try to get admitted to an Ivy. For example, we found it is no longer unusual to interview prospective applicants who have already taken 15 AP tests by the end of their junior year with their first AP tests being taken in middle school. Many of the most intense pressure cooker elite charter and private schools begin their very rigorous academic curriculum in elementary and middle school to enable kids to begin taking college level honors and AP courses by eighth grade and freshman year. In turn, the dramatic increase in the applicant pool along with the continual declining acceptance rates well below 10% is only further exacerbating this problem.
In this context, I encourage you to carefully consider reading the below New York Times article that reviews a recent report titled Turning the Tide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opinion/re thinki...
It is very enlightening to read this Turning the Tide report that was developed with input from scores of prominent educators, including the Presidents and Deans of Admission at many of the country’s elite institutions of higher education. Since the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc. take such a leadership role, it is important that we reflect in how we can both maintain high quality standards, yet reduce the pressure cooker atmosphere in our high schools and colleges. Otherwise, we will continue to read about increasing number of these tragedies.
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penn nation
Professor
Posts: 21193
Reg: 12-02-04
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04-12-16 07:33 PM - Post#206108
In response to IvyHoopsFan01
Your initial paragraphs are very troubling.
As the parent of two 7th grade boys, I'm seeing a bit of this already. At their dual curriculum Jewish day school, we were just informed that in 8th grade science they will have two options--a) engineering class, b) biology. The biology course is a killer so that the NY (High School) Regents exam can be passed, thereby allowing them to start off high school with other sciences. This course is basically designed for kids who will be going to a handful of elite public high schools in Westchester County--they insist on these qualifications to be admitted to the highest level freshman science classes.
Luckily, this does not apply to my boys as we'll be sending them to a Jewish high school (which one--who knows...many choices...sadly perhaps even a different school for each), where biology is a set part of the freshman curriculum--no placements out allowed.
Admittedly, their current school does do tracking in math (not in science), so they are in high level courses and will be in 8th grade which will allow them to place out of algebra in high school. But that's not really pushing anything on them, it's taking them where they already are. Algebra, their teachers tell us, would be a complete waste of their time in high school. The rigorous biology course, however, is definitely "pushing" an agenda.
I see a lot of their classmates participating in travel teams in various sports. We do not allow this. Our boys participate on many of their school's athletic teams, and when they were younger they did the local Little League and other local sports leagues, but for the most part we have kept things low key. Lord knows they will have enough pressure on themselves when they grow up, and Lord knows in Westchester County there are many places that have a certain ethos about this that I find revolting...but luckily in the town where we live it is somewhat more laid back and our kids can just be kids.
Obviously everything gets ramped up in a big way in high school....I hope as parents we can find the balance between on one hand helping our children to find strategies for success while on the other hand managing expectations. This parent will never, ever have as an expectation "you must go to an Ivy League school". I would much prefer that each child attend school with less pressure, frankly, and where each child can be "himself".
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