[ryandrake]

The college prep rat race is insane today compared to when I was a kid. It’s become a 10+ year effort to check all the checkboxes.

1995: Have > 3.8 GPA, take the SAT, get a good enough score, write some decent sounding bullshit on an application essay, and bam: you have a shot at a top school.

2025: Start taking AP courses in middle school. Take and excel at advanced science and math classes for 4 years. Take 3 years of a foreign language and become fluent. Have a 5.0+ GPA. Have at least a 1580/1600 SAT. Have at least a 35/36 ACT. (Realistically you want perfect test scores). Be thoroughly involved in (preferably in a leadership role) multiple extracurriculars or sports teams. Have at least 3 letters of recommendation from prominent people in the community. Write an elaborate essay that checks multiple boxes, and a personal statement. After all this, you have maybe a 3% shot at a top school.

[gilbetron]

To those non-parents, or older parents, or parents of small kids, this is not an exaggeration. My son (a sophomore) is taking the exact same classes as I did in high school, except he is taking an AP course as a junior, and probably 2 as a senior. He has a 3.9 ish GPA so far. He is, in general, doing better than I was, and I got into a top 25 university. I've had comments from counselors and teachers saying, "oh, so is he not really on a college trajectory?" Insane and destructive. The thing is, at the same time, colleges have gotten easier overall. My brother is a professor and he has largely retired because he has gotten sick of, "I know the student is failing the class because they didn't do the work, but can you please just pass them anyway?" from university leadership.

I work with a lot of high-end CS graduates, and some are great, but few of them blow my socks off.

Our education is just messed up right now.

(By the way, it is possible for a high school student to graduate with an entire year's college credits via AP classes)

[HDThoreaun]

Colleges have refused to expand enrollment as our society/world becomes wealthier = more competition for spots. Either you subscribe to the overproduction of elites theory which means we need to return dignity to jobs that dont require education or colleges need to massively expand enrollment.