Kids have too much homework! Hasn’t this argument been around forever?

In My Humble Opinion
61

My son had several hours of homework by the time he was in 5th grade, too. Now that he’s a freshman in high school (and he’s not taking any AP classes), he has upwards of 5-6 hours of homework a day. Part of that is that he is entirely virtual - the virtual kids have almost double the amount of homework the in-person kids have. It pisses me off to no end. He’s “at school” just as many hours as the in-person kids are, the only difference being location and transport.

Poor kid even had a written final plus five essays to complete. For gym. When I asked some of the parents of in-person kids what finals their kids took for PE, they said they didn’t have one.

62

Our school didn’t have a rule, but I think my senior year we only had 3 AP courses available to us: English, Chemistry, and Calculus. I took all three, then dropped down to regular honors English as I didn’t much like the syllabus, and AP counted the same as honors courses in terms of GPA (I believe that has since changed at my high school). I don’t remember any of the AP classes being any more time consuming homework-wise than the regular honors classes. If the kid can handle it, I’d have no issue with them taking as many AP classes as they want to hopefully earn some college credit.

63

The sheer number of applications that the top schools receive has skyrocketed over the past few decades, and while some prestigious schools have increased their overall enrollment numbers, the growth of freshman classes hasn’t kept up with the growth in demand.

Harvard, for example, admitted 1,608 freshmen in 1990, and 2,015 in 2020. Over that same time period, applications rose from ~12,000 to ~40,000, meaning that the acceptance rate has dropped from about 13.5% to about 5%.

Georgia Tech, according to its Factbooks, admitted 4,028 freshmen from 5,843 applicants in 1990, with an average composite SAT score of 1172. In 2020, GT admitted 7,511 freshmen from 39,592 applicants, with an average composite SAT score of 1417.

64

In the case of the University of Minnesota, there has been a significant change in its mission from when I first went there. When I started, any Minnesotan with a high school degree could enroll - if your grades weren’t good, you started in General College - if you got good grades there, you moved to the College of Liberal Arts. But shortly after I left, the U closed down the General College, the state preferred to send those students into the community college system - where successful students could transfer to the U (but few do, and fewer yet have developed the skills in community college to hack the U’s level of rigor).

State colleges and universities have been squeezed - lack of government funding makes it difficult to increase enrollment - no space, no dorms…And it isn’t like private schools are opening up and increasing enrollment to handle the influx of students wanting four year degrees either - if anything, they are closing due to financial issues. Even more middling schools that aren’t named things like Harvard and Yale are challenged. Many of my friends are Macalester grads, they all say they wouldn’t get accepted now.

65

People are applying to 10-12 schools now, many of which they have little or no hope of getting into. For example my niece applied to five ivies plus MIT, Stanford, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, Michigan and CMU. She was accepted by the last 3. She had a shot at GT, maybe Berkeley. But she applied to six or seven stretch schools where she had no realistic chance. Just because “you never know”

If it wasn’t for the consultant her mother hired to help her, she’d never be able to complete all those applications.

66

Yeah, it’s insane. The year I went into college – 1993 – the University of Chicago’s acceptance rate was – get this – 77%. Cite.. 77% for one of the most prestigious universities in the US. (I didn’t apply – I went to Northwestern whose acceptance rate, if I remember right, was around 40%.) U of C’s acceptance rate is now 6.2%. Northwestern is 9.1%. The competition is just staggering.

67

Right, and because the competition is so intense, it has–perhaps paradoxically–led to a situation where admission standards have actually become more and more arbitrary, and focused on issues outside of academics. I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, but there is no doubt that it has happened.

This has happened partly because, of the thousands of people applying to these schools, most of them are top-notch students who would do fine if they were admitted. @Mighty_Mouse said that his/her (?) niece had “no realistic chance” of getting into MIT or the Ivies, but I’d be willing to bet that, if one of those schools actually accepted her, she probably would have thrived, and done just as well as many of the students they did accept. Here’s a 2001 Report on Harvard College, 1995-2000, written by the Dean. This report notes that applications in 2000 were an all-time high of 18,693 (less than half of current applications), and that, of these applicants, “the vast majority are students fully capable of performing well at Harvard if they were admitted.”

So these prestigious schools get 10 or 20 times more applicants than they can admit, and the vast majority of the applicants are academically outstanding and would do fine in their classes. What they do, then, is begin to build a university community. They look at race and ethnicity; they look at gender; they look at background, location, extracurricular activities, tragic family stories, quirky anecdotes, etc., etc., etc, all in an effort to engineer a particular image for the university. As I said, I’m not really suggesting that there’s anything wrong with doing it this way, but here’s little doubt that it makes the system more arbitrary, and that getting into many of these prestigious schools, assuming your academics are outstanding, has become almost like throwing your name into a very large hat and hoping that you’ll be one of the lucky people picked at random.

Although it helps if your parents can shell out thousands of dollars for a college applications coach, who knows how to massage and tweak your application in ways that are most likely to catch the attention of the admissions people.

Or unless you’re a legacy, of course. Then you’re fine.

68

Part of it is the lack of need to complete “all those applications.” You fill out one application on line - then each school might have you add additional information if the school requires it. Some schools require a lot more information - I suspect to gate applicants - but even then it becomes a data entry task. Many just require a second “why do you think you want to go to John Doe University” essay. And schools that aren’t selective just let you click the button and send off the universal application. A coach or good counselor might have you write essays targeting each college, but you don’t have to, you can apply to every school with the same essay. And the cost to apply to each school is negligible in the overall scheme of things - especially for someone who has the resources to hire a coach and pay for test prep.

Its one of the reasons a lot of highly competitive schools are looking at early decision applicants more favorably. You can only pick one school to apply early decision, so they know you are their top choice - there are fewer of those applicants (even Harvard/Yale/Stanford/MIT, you have to pick ONE for early decision). But ED has its problems - because its binding you don’t get to play the financial aid game of choosing a college off the best package. Again, possibly less of a problem for the students whose parents can afford coaches - but it becomes a bigger societal issue when only the privileged students get access to the options.

69

Harvard/Yale/Stanford don’t do ED–instead they doing something much more pernicious, REA. That stands to “Restricted Early Access”. Basically, it’s not binding, but you agree not to apply early to any other private schools (you can still apply to state schools). Early Action gets you a decision by Jan 1st but isn’t binding. Under normal ED agreements, you apply to one ED school (because it’s binding), but as many EA schools as you want. EA applications also generally have a higher acceptance rate.

What this means is that you get a kid whose dream school is, say, Rice. You know they have no chance of getting in, but you support them in applying to Rice ED and EA to a good set of schools.

If a kid really, really wants to go to Stanford, though, you have this conversation:

Kid: I know it’s a stretch, but Stanford is my dream. I have to apply.
Me: For sure. I will help you. But you should apply regular decision and apply Early Action to these 8 schools.
Kid: But my chances are better if I apply to Stanford REA and apply to those regular decision, if I don’t get in
Me*:* Stanford is such a stretch. I think it’s highly, highly unlikely you will get in. I’ve supervised dozens of Stanford applications, and sent many, many students there. I am very familiar with what they are looking for and there will be some really serious holes in your application, from their point of view. Apply, but apply RD
Kid: I know it’s a tiny chance. I get that. But the only way I have any chance at ALL then, is if I apply REA. It’s even more important that I do.
Me: I think you have really good odds at a school like Northeastern or BC or Case, but you’ll get better results and more money if you apply EA. The tiny increase in your chances at Stanford is not worth losing all that
Kid: It’s my dream. Why don’t you have faith in me? I will regret it forever if I don’t give it my absolute best shot.

I see this every year. I understand that the point of REA is to make sure they only get serious applicants for the early pool, applicants with some skin in the game, but there are better ways.

Fun Fact: Northeastern has NO supplemental essay. This one fact has skyrocketed them up the rankings, because it makes them hellaselective.

70

To bring this back to kids’ homework, the focus on homework is counter-productive to getting into college. There is not a strong link between academic performance and high levels of homework. But extra-curricular activities are one of the distinguishing features for college acceptance.

71

I don’t know if that’s entirely true. For the really competitive schools, you need to have a full slate of advanced classes. This means, at the very least, a great deal of studying, reading and writing up papers and labs. Yes, lots of teachers assign a lot of work that is useless, especially at younger grades, but I can’t imagine covering the curriculum of AP Literature or AP Chem or AP World History without asking for some independent learning.

72

Though colleges know high schools based on rigor. And homework MIGHT (Manda JO would have a much better idea) correlate to rigor in terms of how colleges review grades. A great GPA from a OK high school is not as valuable as a great GPA from a school like Manda JOs. Which is another issue about how the game is rigged - not every kid has access to a rigorous school.

73

When did it become so very hard to get into college?

74

It isn’t. Its very hard to get into highly selective colleges. It was always difficult to get into the Ivys unless your Dad could donate a building, but its gotten much worse in the past 20 years.

75

My kid got 4s and 5s on AP World, APUSH and AP Lit and did very little homework. You can cover it. Whether those kids are college ready is another issue.

76

Can you explain what this means to a poor foreigner please?

77

True. But unfortunately, it seems many parents, teachers, and schools don’t distinguish between useful studies and busywork. And good teaching is always going to be more effective than self study.

78

AP are advanced placement courses - they are taught so that you take a test near the end of the year - the test is standard to all schools offering the AP course. They are supposed to cover a college semester worth of material. Some colleges will give you credit for AP coursework. They are scored 1-5. You generally need - at middle of the road colleges - a 3 in order to qualify for college credit (some colleges don’t accept AP credit at all, but they will review the scores). The college mine is at wanted 4s or 5s. It is merely a “selective” school (an acceptance rate of around 50% vs. Harvard’s 5%)

An AP test is a few hours long and is mostly multiple choice questions and a few essays…for something like APUSH (AP US History) or Literature. The ones for Calc or Stats or Computer Science might be a little different - I would imagine fewer essays.

79

It’s not. A kid with decent grades will always have a decent regional state school to get into. It’s very hard to get into an elite college, which includes many Public Flagship schools (Like UT or UMich). And there are a lot of reasons for that:

  • Arguably, growing income inequality makes it more important to be on the “haves” side, and it’s absolutely true that a degree from an elite school makes the path to a really high income much smoother. It’s true that while most people don’t care where you did your undergrad work once you’ve had a first job, that first job really, really matters. A degree from a top school, coupled with some amazing summer internships and working through their placement office, makes that first job much more likely to be an exciting growth opportunity. If your first job is the office manager/accounts clerk at a mattress store, your second job is not going to be the same as when your first job is at Google.

  • There’s more kids in the applicant pool. This is because of a great many factors: population growth, an increase in international applicants (education is a huge export) and a much broader sense of who should apply to elite schools. A generation ago, even middle class kids didn’t think to apply to Harvard and they’d never even heard of Northeastern or Tufts or Grinnell or Harvey Mudd or Case Western or . . . . the list goes on. Now those schools have amazing marketing programs that recruit all sorts of kids, and kids doing research find all sorts of colleges.

  • The internet makes it easier to see it as a system that can be gamed, and people get good at gaming systems. It used to be you sent off for an application packet, filled it out, and sent it back. Well, now a kid who looks for it (with or without a professional) can find all sorts of advice on how exactly to craft a fire application, starting in the 9th grade. And a lot of them take that advice and aim to exceed what was done before. That information about what other people were doing just wasn’t available back in the day. So now there are tons of applications that looks like the really, really amazing applications of 15 years ago. It’s gotten to the point that if you haven’t started a formal nonprofit, with all the paperwork filed and everything, it’s almost like, what are you doing with your life?

  • The shifting financial aid situation. Minimum wage jobs used to pay well enough, relative to tuition, that you could meaningfully save for college by working in high school. Now, stagnant wages and rising tuition make that seem laughable. At the same time, a crazy stock market and stupid big endowments mean fancy privates offer really good financial aid, both need-based and merit based (if you slum one level below your potential). So it makes more sense to forgo a job and develop a really, really good application.

80

This.

Some of the posts in this thread may give the impression that it’s hard to get into college. But there are plenty of less-selective schools, especially in parts of the country where the traditional college-age population is declining, that would like to admit more students than they actually do.