quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

x-post -- Seersuckers, Elmo, never forget the seersuckers.

You're probably right Ned that it's just a sign-o-the-times, but I'm still really pleased to see an article about this sort of thing that doesn't take the "Some people say... but others say..." pussyfootin approach.

"applying volumizing mascara to underarm hair is the biggest grooming trend for smith college applicants this year"

a year ago this would have been nothing but glowing profiles. Agonies of the ruling class indeed.

well, maybe, maybe not. i think this thread is entertaining and a lot of the stories cited are juicy targets, but in the interests of fairness this kind of story is hardly the only thing the nyt does. you could do a whole alternative thread about all of its coverage of poverty, health care, immigrants, the housing crisis and the general economics of the working- and middle-classes -- all of which make up a much bigger chunk of its coverage than the rich-people fluff. (without even getting into all the foreign coverage.)

so, you know, capn-save-a-gray-lady and all, but ... babies, bathwater, etc.

should really be "a rolling new york times STYLE SECTION thread"

style section is the most disgusting savage imo

RE section can be pretty savage but in a more subtle way. Definitely corrupt.

yeah it's mostly a style phenomenon, with occasional assist from the magazine and real estate.

1 - the NY Times coverage of health care is a joke.
2 - its coverage of poverty is mainly confined to the Metro section, whose greatness has scarcely dimmed over the eyars
3 - there is some OK-to-good stuff on immigration, though a weird lack of follow-up
4 - housing crisis involves gigantic pools of money + homebuyer angst = ding ding ding ding
5 - general economics of working and middle classes: again this is almost exclusively a metro section phenomenon

perhaps i am a little harsh but i don't think it's by much

What's the deal with all of these "cruel story of (NYTimes-staff) youth" articles that have been populating the Sunday magazine?. First, we get David Carr and his crack addiction, then Daphne Merkin's journey through darkness, now it's Frank Bruni and his childhood adventures with bulimia. I can't wait to find out who received electro-shock therapy at Bellevue for chronic masturbation.

aging journalists jumping ship from the quickly-sinking newspaper industry and writing harrowing hopeful-bestseller memoirs aided by prominent placement in the nyt mag?

I think you're right, and I think I'd better get on the dependency-bandwagon right quick, if I really want a viable Plan B!

“It’s annoying when people complain about the money,” the Vermont-based counselor, Michele Hernandez, said. “I’m at the top of my field. Do people economize when they have a brain tumor and are looking for a neurosurgeon? If you want to go with someone cheaper, or chance it, don’t hire me.”

I kinda have sympathy for this, actually? Given that anyone who's prepared to spend thousands of dollars on college-entry counseling is presumably not exactly in a position to be super-exploited about it, and is making that decision competitively, and probably has the funds to send their child to a pretty decent school even without the edge of counseling? I'd care a lot more about the rates and quality of the people giving advice to those who really need it, like those who are the first in their families to even apply to college, low-income people for whom the process is more foreign and opaque, etc.

I think I might agree with you, nabisco, though the idea that such bourgeois counselors exist is still totally shocking, and in some ways disgusting, to me. But if someone wants to be all rich and disgusting, then whatever, they're gonna do it anyway.

haha actually I can't help thinking about the basic economics and cost-opportunity of it, like: if you can make more than $15,000 in the time it'd take you, as a normal parent, to help your kid apply to college, it just plain makes sense to outsource

"i'm at the top of my field" = "i am a college entrance fixer with more connections to prestigious alumni than you can imagine, cash gains you admittance to the secret corridors"

something about that article makes me doubt it, actually, though I'm sure they sell themselves as having some of those secret-club powers

a normal parent

Um, I graduated undegrad in fall 07. My parents didn't help me with shit, I applied early to one school and got in and that was the end of it.

As in, the normal parent helps their kid with writing the check for the application fee. Not being a ridiculous hovercraft over every detail of their kids' life and schedule and activities.

i think you have a different sense of what "normal" means than nabisco does

Anyone who can make $15,000 over the course of, like, a week is not a "normal parent."

xxxpost

not talking abt all pro counsellors, nabisco, just that dude

also the type of parents who shell out that kind of cash expect results and do not settle for anything less in my experience

yeah i think this is more about loving to spend money on stuff than any question of efficiency. applying to college is not that hard, iirc

I just don't grasp how kids whose families are in class positions to be able to afford these counselors haven't already been given the skills to fill out their own college applications. I can see it being challenging to someone from a poor background or for whom English is a second language, but to an affluent native speaker who presumably went to a "good" school? I mean, if they lack the intelligence and skill to do this on their own, then I question their ability to make their own way in life.

applying to college is not that hard

getting into college, especially the top tier of college, is really hard

yes, exactly. if i was an admissions person i would be looking out for people who have obviously used the help of a paid admissions counselor and put their applications in the shredder xp

i dunno my brother got into harvard w/o one ^_^

(xp)

The whole thing is that they don't make their own way in life.

My college counselor at school told me I shouldn't go to college, and that I should travel in Europe and find a rich sugar-daddy instead, then kill him and run off with his money

im sure your bro is really smart harbs but lets not pretend that hes any more "normal" than the kids who use private admissions counselors to help them with their applications!!

Anyone who can make $15,000 over the course of, like, a week is not a "normal parent."

I think this was the point -- haha thus the outsourcing

I don't recall my parents telling me much about college applications beyond reminding me to get the done -- they were probably busier figuring out the financial stuff for loan and grant applications -- but umm I would consider it a pretty "normal parent" thing to do to read over your kid's essays and give advice, or tell them they're not wearing jeans to the interview, or talk them through figuring out where they have a chance of getting in and what's a "safety school" and so on. I don't think that's abnormal behavior.

in interviewing oxford candidates i like to think i have become pretty good at detecting coached candidates. we make a note of it and it probably ends up being adjusted for (i.e. counting against them), although not in a formal way.

i'm not saying sometimes a little direction and counseling is totally unnecessary but this is retarded. if you can't figure out how to get in without spending $40k, there is no hope for you in life xxp

(They don't make their own ways in their own lives? Fuck, that sentence is fucking me up).

Anyway, yeah. All the kids I knew who went to Harvard? Lower middle-class kids who, like me, thought that using a counselor for the process was incredibly ridiculous. Most of the kids who used the counselor types ended up going to Penn, in the city where they grew up, and now where they still live. As in: they never did anything except rely on what they already knew, thus growing little.

I.e., if you were lucky enough to have parents with college educations who knew a little bit about the process, their advice and "normal parent" help would be the equivalent of, I dunno, a four-day $14k boot camp from an ex-admissions person drilling you on How to Get In

i'm not saying sometimes a little direction and counseling is totally unnecessary but this is retarded. if you can't figure out how to get in without spending $40k, there is no hope for you in life xxp

― blobfish russian (harbl), Monday, July 20, 2009 2:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do u really think this is true of like harvard/yale/princeton?

Oh sure, caek, but it's also totally situational for most families not using these expensive services. A lot of kids I know got no help from their parents, a ot of kids I know got tons of help. I knew my essay and everything was good, I didn't need to show my parents that shit. Especially because my mom was all weepy that I wasn't applying early to an Ivy, but instead 'throwing away my talents' to go to...uh...yeah, that school that I went to and enjoyed most thoroughly.

not caek, sorry, nabisco xpost.

no max i am being hyperbolic but it does make them sound stupid

Never mind that admissions officers say that no outsider can truly predict how a particular applicant might fare. “I guess there are snake oil salesman in every field,” said Amy Gutmann, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, “and they are preying on vulnerable and anxious people.”

i am also deeply skeptical of the *need* to go to harvard/yale/princeton to begin with so that's like half the problem for me

getting into college, especially the top tier of college, is really hard

It depends what kind of student you are. If you don't stand out in any way, then yes. Probably, because you shouldn't be going to a top tier college.

xp nabisco: I had normal parent help that consisted of my mom reading my essay answers and telling me when the applications were due and making me sit at the kitchen table and work on them until they were done. I think I wrote one essay about the annoying way my dad made orange juice.

i remember throwing a tantrum because my mom read my essay without asking X(

getting into college, especially the top tier of college, is really hard

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Monday, 20 July 2009 18:18 (9 minutes ago)

But there's no evidence that there's any causative relationship between spending low five figures on a counselor and increasing your chances of getting in. It seems a little like test prep to me -- the "best" people might charge as much per hour as an attorney to tutor your child, but those tutors don't know anything that isn't in a Kaplan course or a $29.95 book for that matter. There are no "secrets."

there are more students who stand out than there are places, so it's hard even for those who are the "right sort", xxp

(i am not saying a counselor is a good use of anyone's money though)

It depends what kind of student you are. If you don't stand out in any way, then yes. Probably, because you shouldn't be going to a top tier college.

i dont think any of this is true! for one thing: a lot of students who stand out in several ways in certain contexts still have a lot of trouble getting into the top tier of colleges! for another: i dont think that only those who "stand out" should go to top tier colleges, and i think a lot of admissions officers agree with me!

Never mind that admissions officers say that no outsider can truly predict how a particular applicant might fare. “I guess there are snake oil salesman in every field,” said Amy Gutmann, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, “and they are preying on vulnerable and anxious people.”

Coming from this woman, that is seriously surprising-- any admissions counselor knows that a kid from a Philly private school with mostly B's (and some scattered A's and C's) is going to go to Penn. They let kids like that in as if the fucking world depended on it.

(A kid from a public school in Philly? Yeah, you gotta get all A's).

haha table I am aware that not everybody gets a lot of parental involvement on college applications, I'm just not sure how this makes it abnormal for those who do! I mean, I wouldn't walk into a house where someone's proofreading their kid's essay and go "omg you FREAKS" and call child protective services

anyway clearly in these "counselor" cases we are talking about a socio-economic sphere that's not the one most of us know -- most everyone I knew as a teenager had parents who just wanted their kid to get into a decent school they could manage to pay for, which is very different from this more competitive and wealthy east-coasty thing, or from parents who feel like they should be using their large sums of money to absolutely maximize their kid's educational turnout, from the private kindergarten on up (and possibly even have parental status-competition about what schools kids get into, right along with the kid competition) -- surely this is the point where, if you have $14k to spare and you think there's any remote chance it'll help your kid do better in the process than he/she otherwise would have, you write the check as an "investment in your child's future." whether that remote chance actually exists is sort of a different story; haha probably depends on how clever you think your kid is to begin with

maybe this is stereotyping but a lot of this has to do with parents ensuring that their statuses will be cemented, and there's a long ass history of rich people spending frivolously to do that

But there's no evidence that there's any causative relationship between spending low five figures on a counselor and increasing your chances of getting in. It seems a little like test prep to me -- the "best" people might charge as much per hour as an attorney to tutor your child, but those tutors don't know anything that isn't in a Kaplan course or a $29.95 book for that matter. There are no "secrets."

― the kid is crying because did sharks died? (Hurting 2), Monday, July 20, 2009 2:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well sure, i dont disagree with this; im not defending the practice of college admissions counseling, just the motivations behind it. i wouldnt hire a college admissions counselor for my kid but i understand why people do it.