Incredible piece. Much to relate to your story for anyone's who's done things just for a line in their resume, as most have. So many quote-worthy lines too.
This is so well written. I have a 2 year old, and while I expect her to do well academically, one of my key goals to help her figure out the things that she really, truly likes and wants to embrace.
Have you thought about how you're going to approach education with your kid?
Thanks! I'm hoping to encourage her to work on projects that spark joy for her and create value for others regardless of how they're judged by some faceless committee. Much easier said than done though.
I am a Tiger-parented Asian American (got into Stanford, though ended up going elsewhere for a merit scholarship) and now have 3 kids ages 6 and under, and we are sending our oldest to a Sudbury school. If anything about the unschooling approach resonates at all, you should check it out!
Man this sucks. I did those competitions in high school and got up an hour earlier to do it period zero, but I loved every minute of it and so did my teammates. I can't imagine how awful it all would have been if we'd hated it and were only in it for admissions.
I'm curious to hear how things are going with your own kids! I would love it if my kids naturally loved to pursue intellectual challenging things and I think a lot about how to make that happen.
Still early. My oldest is 9, he's very into elements and molecules right now, the math stuff they expose him to isn't complex enough yet to be interesting. So far my experience is you expose them to various stuff and see what sticks? Trying to work in the LLMs, too...
Great piece. I have a similar story. For me it wasn't math competitions, which I dropped out of early, but Science Olympiad, which I kept doing for far too long even though I hated it. I didn't even really have a conscious plan of getting into a good school, I just thought it was something I was supposed to do. I was also rejected from several of my top choices (Yale, Princeton) but ended up getting into Stanford. I had a chance conversation with a vice principal at my school and he asked about my college plans. I told him about my rejections and that I was on the waitlist and Stanford. He said something like, "Oh, you're a good student, you should get into Stanford." A few days later I got the call that I had been accepted off the waitlist. This probably should have taught me something about the importance of influence and networking, but I wouldn't really learn those lessons for many years. Now I have a one-year-old and I worry a lot about how we'll handle school.
I know what you mean. In college I used to look down on the students who brownnosed at office hours and asked for extensions on their assignments, and now I realize that those were probably the most relevant skills we actually could have learned!
Oof, yeah, I didn't have it in me to apply for serious grad programs after this experience. In general I'm very skeptical of academia and try to encourage people to have other options. I hope that you're able to find a path forward that works for you!
Second, it’s also really interesting to me being the opposite of my experience. My academic path was free range home school > very non-academic and cult-adjacent Christian private school > two years of meh public high school > dropped out at 15 > went back at 21 as a mature student to try out uni life at Canada’s maybe 40th best university > dropped out again.
When I didn’t find curriculum interesting I just...wouldn’t do it? I’d convince my teacher or prof that some other project was more worth my time, else (mostly in high school) I’d just eat a zero and trust I could smash the exams enough to pass the course anyway. (I did exactly one math contest, for Waterloo, purely because I realized I’d get two periods off for it and I could speedrun it for a longer lunch. The actual math students seemed very stressed by it lol)
Given the choice between our paths...boy, it’s tough!
Like, stability-prioritizing parents do give their kids a real gift in that stability. Going to Stanford sets up you for a solid-to-excellent career and friends circle. But idk, all that also comes with what from the outside seems an almost neurotic level of stress and just...not joy? All my stable friends feel pressures I don’t.
As I’m pondering kids of my own, I can certainly see the allure of having them do the conventional route. It’s at least safe (though with AI who knows). But I also see the appeal of just like taking them abroad with me for a year or two to peruse museums and soak up languages, academic pathway costs be damned. My lack of academic accomplishment has more or less never mattered. Lower floor for sure, but not necessarily a lower ceiling. And with enough pluck I’m not sure the floor matters that much?
Anyway, really interesting to see the other side put so poetically. Great read.
Thanks! I'd love to hear more about your experience sometime, I'm pretty interested in the free-range homeschool thing myself although I would probably try to steer my kids towards finishing some kind of curriculum (I feel like this could be done in 20% of the usual time leaving them with a lot of free time for their own interests still).
Yeah that strikes me as a good balance. I did plow through some curricula that were good at scratching my curiosity itch. At the time the best was Princeton Review’s Jr series. But I was a bit scattershot in my reading, and there were a handful of weird subject gaps that I didn’t fill until later in adult life. Not ideal!
That said, there are so many great resources now that didn’t exist in the 90s. Eg Great Courses, Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, plus all the open courses from top colleges. Two hours of directed study combined with “ok now go follow your curiosity” seems huge.
The only real catch imo is integration. Kids need peers on a similar enough learning journey. But I suppose that’s easy enough to find in SFBA / Boston / NYC!
Wow, that sounds horrible. I did stuff like this for fun, even though it was the same that I never really understood what I was doing, but I was really good at combining stuff to get a result.
I missed out on the International Physics Olympiad by a tiny amount, would have surely made it if I had actually practiced solving the problems for a while, so that is a bit of a regret.
As a shy kid from a small country, I never applied to a top university, though maybe I should have, but in the end things turned out reasonably well.
Thank you for writing what was probably a difficult essay. I feel sorry for you, and a bit upset about your experience, but perhaps for different reasons that you might think. Some context is that one of my kids did (and still does) math contests, and he does so because he finds it fun -- he'd inform my wife and me that he signed up for this or that, just because he wanted to. One day he asked if he could travel 500 miles to a math tournament that he and some others had put together a team for, with no support from any school or knowledge on the part of parents. There they did so-so; I accompanied them and was amazed that there were teams with paid coaches, t-shirts, etc. My son's group had a lot more fun. That's what I remember from math contests when I was younger, too -- doing them because I wanted to, and no one was pushing anyone. This experience you describe of grinding through things to check off boxes is horrible -- it doesn't help the student live a fulfilling life, and what's worse, it poisons the atmosphere for those who do genuinely love the activities and contributes the increasingly nonsensical status games of college admissions. (My son did not get into Stanford, by the way. He'll do great.)
This is genuinely tragic. Speaking as someone who pulled the same late nights through high school for debate but if anything wished I could throw myself more into it but for commitments for college applications, etc., this sounds horrendous. I think the worst part of undifferentiated "prestigious" colleges is that their competitive application processes encourage activity for the sake of activity.
I was expecting you to go in a different direction with the exponential: I think the insight I most wished I had in high school was that everything I'd do would ultimately be either something I cared about being not-terrible at (gym, making friends, etc.), or something I wanted to be as good as I could possibly be at (primary academic field, because I'm still on a research-based academia track; treating friends well; etc.). The first category is basically linear: skills I don't care when I began to work on, because I can pick up whenever. The second is exponential: skills I deeply cared about when I began to work on, because that work compounds back on itself. I hope you've found something you can passionately improve exponentially at.
this is so well-written, and so, so resonant. i've never seen anyone else capture that distinctly uncomfortable feeling of being in high-pressure stem classes, able to get good grades without fully understanding the concepts, liking the material enough to carry on, always with the nagging knowledge that you didn't truly appreciate the underlying beauty that motivates any great mathematician/physicist/etc. like you i was on a math team in high school, and i got through college having joined zero clubs, having undoubtedly disappointed the admissions officer who thought i'd "contribute to the college community" (or something to that effect). reading this was incredibly cathartic; i do think there is this vague blind spot in the college app discourse every year when it comes to those who manage to achieve a semblance of success in the game. i'd like to think that there should be space in our top institutions for intelligent kids who have neither identified an innate passion by the age of 16 nor possess top 0.5% conscientiousness, even without asking them to sublimate their personalities into a high-achieving persona for an admissions committee. anyway... thank you for writing this. :)
Thanks for the kind words! For me, it's hard to see how to stop the admissions arms race within the context of intentionally limited spaces at prestigious institutions -- my guess is that any solution will have to come from outside, giving teenagers a way to build real things and contribute real value to the world around them instead of an admissions process acting as the sole judge of their worth.
As a fellow BCA alum and former mathlete, it is comforting to see that others also had BCA significantly impact them in similar ways. I perhaps didn't view the experience as empty as you did, but I did eventually coming to terms with my lack of true passion for math by giving up on math and starting a new track with chemistry. Although it hurt my college admissions, I did find what I truly loved for its own sake. However, I am still so grateful for my time in math comps as it taught me so much about discipline, how young people are more capable than you may think, and the camaraderie with fellow BCA students during those formative years. Thanks for the great essay, definitely sharing with BCA friends!
I do wonder what the other commenters are seeing in here that's so sad, though? Like, nothing bad happened in this entire piece of writing! You were channelled through an intense process that worked out just the way it's supposed to.
By which I don't mean to devalue this experience in any way, but anyone who goes through an intense experience will have some mixed feelings about it. And those who don't go through intense experiences will also sometimes have a bad time, and end up with mixed feelings about it. This sounds pretty good, as experiences go.
Incredible piece. Much to relate to your story for anyone's who's done things just for a line in their resume, as most have. So many quote-worthy lines too.
This is so well written. I have a 2 year old, and while I expect her to do well academically, one of my key goals to help her figure out the things that she really, truly likes and wants to embrace.
Have you thought about how you're going to approach education with your kid?
Thanks! I'm hoping to encourage her to work on projects that spark joy for her and create value for others regardless of how they're judged by some faceless committee. Much easier said than done though.
I am a Tiger-parented Asian American (got into Stanford, though ended up going elsewhere for a merit scholarship) and now have 3 kids ages 6 and under, and we are sending our oldest to a Sudbury school. If anything about the unschooling approach resonates at all, you should check it out!
Man this sucks. I did those competitions in high school and got up an hour earlier to do it period zero, but I loved every minute of it and so did my teammates. I can't imagine how awful it all would have been if we'd hated it and were only in it for admissions.
I'm curious to hear how things are going with your own kids! I would love it if my kids naturally loved to pursue intellectual challenging things and I think a lot about how to make that happen.
Still early. My oldest is 9, he's very into elements and molecules right now, the math stuff they expose him to isn't complex enough yet to be interesting. So far my experience is you expose them to various stuff and see what sticks? Trying to work in the LLMs, too...
Great piece. I have a similar story. For me it wasn't math competitions, which I dropped out of early, but Science Olympiad, which I kept doing for far too long even though I hated it. I didn't even really have a conscious plan of getting into a good school, I just thought it was something I was supposed to do. I was also rejected from several of my top choices (Yale, Princeton) but ended up getting into Stanford. I had a chance conversation with a vice principal at my school and he asked about my college plans. I told him about my rejections and that I was on the waitlist and Stanford. He said something like, "Oh, you're a good student, you should get into Stanford." A few days later I got the call that I had been accepted off the waitlist. This probably should have taught me something about the importance of influence and networking, but I wouldn't really learn those lessons for many years. Now I have a one-year-old and I worry a lot about how we'll handle school.
I know what you mean. In college I used to look down on the students who brownnosed at office hours and asked for extensions on their assignments, and now I realize that those were probably the most relevant skills we actually could have learned!
i cried after reading this
- burnt out college junior doing field research in the random of nowhere for grad school / fellowship apps
Oof, yeah, I didn't have it in me to apply for serious grad programs after this experience. In general I'm very skeptical of academia and try to encourage people to have other options. I hope that you're able to find a path forward that works for you!
First, this is a banger.
Second, it’s also really interesting to me being the opposite of my experience. My academic path was free range home school > very non-academic and cult-adjacent Christian private school > two years of meh public high school > dropped out at 15 > went back at 21 as a mature student to try out uni life at Canada’s maybe 40th best university > dropped out again.
When I didn’t find curriculum interesting I just...wouldn’t do it? I’d convince my teacher or prof that some other project was more worth my time, else (mostly in high school) I’d just eat a zero and trust I could smash the exams enough to pass the course anyway. (I did exactly one math contest, for Waterloo, purely because I realized I’d get two periods off for it and I could speedrun it for a longer lunch. The actual math students seemed very stressed by it lol)
Given the choice between our paths...boy, it’s tough!
Like, stability-prioritizing parents do give their kids a real gift in that stability. Going to Stanford sets up you for a solid-to-excellent career and friends circle. But idk, all that also comes with what from the outside seems an almost neurotic level of stress and just...not joy? All my stable friends feel pressures I don’t.
As I’m pondering kids of my own, I can certainly see the allure of having them do the conventional route. It’s at least safe (though with AI who knows). But I also see the appeal of just like taking them abroad with me for a year or two to peruse museums and soak up languages, academic pathway costs be damned. My lack of academic accomplishment has more or less never mattered. Lower floor for sure, but not necessarily a lower ceiling. And with enough pluck I’m not sure the floor matters that much?
Anyway, really interesting to see the other side put so poetically. Great read.
Thanks! I'd love to hear more about your experience sometime, I'm pretty interested in the free-range homeschool thing myself although I would probably try to steer my kids towards finishing some kind of curriculum (I feel like this could be done in 20% of the usual time leaving them with a lot of free time for their own interests still).
Yeah that strikes me as a good balance. I did plow through some curricula that were good at scratching my curiosity itch. At the time the best was Princeton Review’s Jr series. But I was a bit scattershot in my reading, and there were a handful of weird subject gaps that I didn’t fill until later in adult life. Not ideal!
That said, there are so many great resources now that didn’t exist in the 90s. Eg Great Courses, Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, plus all the open courses from top colleges. Two hours of directed study combined with “ok now go follow your curiosity” seems huge.
The only real catch imo is integration. Kids need peers on a similar enough learning journey. But I suppose that’s easy enough to find in SFBA / Boston / NYC!
Wow, that sounds horrible. I did stuff like this for fun, even though it was the same that I never really understood what I was doing, but I was really good at combining stuff to get a result.
I missed out on the International Physics Olympiad by a tiny amount, would have surely made it if I had actually practiced solving the problems for a while, so that is a bit of a regret.
As a shy kid from a small country, I never applied to a top university, though maybe I should have, but in the end things turned out reasonably well.
woah this hits hard, as I've just applied to college. good piece.
Wonderful, wonderful piece.
Thank you for writing what was probably a difficult essay. I feel sorry for you, and a bit upset about your experience, but perhaps for different reasons that you might think. Some context is that one of my kids did (and still does) math contests, and he does so because he finds it fun -- he'd inform my wife and me that he signed up for this or that, just because he wanted to. One day he asked if he could travel 500 miles to a math tournament that he and some others had put together a team for, with no support from any school or knowledge on the part of parents. There they did so-so; I accompanied them and was amazed that there were teams with paid coaches, t-shirts, etc. My son's group had a lot more fun. That's what I remember from math contests when I was younger, too -- doing them because I wanted to, and no one was pushing anyone. This experience you describe of grinding through things to check off boxes is horrible -- it doesn't help the student live a fulfilling life, and what's worse, it poisons the atmosphere for those who do genuinely love the activities and contributes the increasingly nonsensical status games of college admissions. (My son did not get into Stanford, by the way. He'll do great.)
Sounds like a great kid! I agree, having that innate drive is really irreplaceable.
This is beautifully written .
This is genuinely tragic. Speaking as someone who pulled the same late nights through high school for debate but if anything wished I could throw myself more into it but for commitments for college applications, etc., this sounds horrendous. I think the worst part of undifferentiated "prestigious" colleges is that their competitive application processes encourage activity for the sake of activity.
I was expecting you to go in a different direction with the exponential: I think the insight I most wished I had in high school was that everything I'd do would ultimately be either something I cared about being not-terrible at (gym, making friends, etc.), or something I wanted to be as good as I could possibly be at (primary academic field, because I'm still on a research-based academia track; treating friends well; etc.). The first category is basically linear: skills I don't care when I began to work on, because I can pick up whenever. The second is exponential: skills I deeply cared about when I began to work on, because that work compounds back on itself. I hope you've found something you can passionately improve exponentially at.
this is so well-written, and so, so resonant. i've never seen anyone else capture that distinctly uncomfortable feeling of being in high-pressure stem classes, able to get good grades without fully understanding the concepts, liking the material enough to carry on, always with the nagging knowledge that you didn't truly appreciate the underlying beauty that motivates any great mathematician/physicist/etc. like you i was on a math team in high school, and i got through college having joined zero clubs, having undoubtedly disappointed the admissions officer who thought i'd "contribute to the college community" (or something to that effect). reading this was incredibly cathartic; i do think there is this vague blind spot in the college app discourse every year when it comes to those who manage to achieve a semblance of success in the game. i'd like to think that there should be space in our top institutions for intelligent kids who have neither identified an innate passion by the age of 16 nor possess top 0.5% conscientiousness, even without asking them to sublimate their personalities into a high-achieving persona for an admissions committee. anyway... thank you for writing this. :)
Thanks for the kind words! For me, it's hard to see how to stop the admissions arms race within the context of intentionally limited spaces at prestigious institutions -- my guess is that any solution will have to come from outside, giving teenagers a way to build real things and contribute real value to the world around them instead of an admissions process acting as the sole judge of their worth.
As a fellow BCA alum and former mathlete, it is comforting to see that others also had BCA significantly impact them in similar ways. I perhaps didn't view the experience as empty as you did, but I did eventually coming to terms with my lack of true passion for math by giving up on math and starting a new track with chemistry. Although it hurt my college admissions, I did find what I truly loved for its own sake. However, I am still so grateful for my time in math comps as it taught me so much about discipline, how young people are more capable than you may think, and the camaraderie with fellow BCA students during those formative years. Thanks for the great essay, definitely sharing with BCA friends!
This is lovely writing...
I do wonder what the other commenters are seeing in here that's so sad, though? Like, nothing bad happened in this entire piece of writing! You were channelled through an intense process that worked out just the way it's supposed to.
By which I don't mean to devalue this experience in any way, but anyone who goes through an intense experience will have some mixed feelings about it. And those who don't go through intense experiences will also sometimes have a bad time, and end up with mixed feelings about it. This sounds pretty good, as experiences go.