What High Schools Don't Tell You: 300+ Secrets to Make Your Kid Irresistible to Colleges by Senior Year |  | Author: Elizabeth Wissner-Gross
Publisher: Hudson Street Press
List Price: $23.95
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 197502
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 1594630372
Dewey Decimal Number: 378.1610973
EAN: 9781594630378
ASIN: 1594630372
Publication Date: July 19, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
From the author of What Colleges Don't Tell You, more than 300 secrets for raising the kid colleges will compete to accept
The headlines prove it: Competition for admission to America's top colleges is more cutthroat than ever. Gone are the days when parents could afford to let high school guidance counselors handle the admissions process alone-gone, also, are the days when a student could wait until senior year to prepare for it. As Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, a highly successful educational strategist, knows from working for over a decade with hundreds of middle- and high school students and their parents, if you want to raise a kid colleges will compete for, you must act, early and aggressively, as opportunity scout, coach, tutor, manager, and publicist-or be willing to watch that acceptance letter go to someone whose parents did.
What High Schools Don't Tell You reveals 300+ strategies to help parents stack the admissions deck in their kid's favor, gleaned from Wissner-Gross's expertise and from interviews with parents of outstandingly high achievers-strategies that most high school guidance counselors, principals, and teachers simply don't know to share. From identifying exactly which academic credentials will wow an admissions committee to which summer programs and extra-curriculars can turn an ordinary applicant into a must-have, What High Schools Don't Tell You demonstrates how hands-on parental involvement early in a child's high school career is essential to achieving college admissions success.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
Good parts, and some info lacking March 17, 2009
Medavinci (California & Manhattan)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
All this competitiveness can drive a person insane. I've watched my daughter in a private school that is very demanding, slowly disintegrating. She is a nervous wreck, sleep deprived and unfocused. The parents are pushing and pushing, the kids cheat (it makes my daughter nuts since she works so hard, and is getting B's and C's while the other kids have copies of the tests saved by older siblings!). The school puts so much pressure on them to succeed and most of the kids? well they'll get in the colleges of their choice because their parents are legacies and the parents are so filthy loaded they can give $10-25,000 a year to the colleges! That's how it really works if you want to get real about it.
There is some good stuff in the book, but a lot of stuff has been left out especially for kids who want a performing arts career. Interlochen is okay, but I would recommend a place called Stagedoor Manor for real professional training in the summers. Most of the kids who did that camp are good students as well, but they have gone on to NYU, Yale, CCM, Boston Conservatory, Carnegie Mellon, Univ of Michigan, etc. Having Stagedoor on the resume helped a lot.
She also has some good programs in other areas which I didn't know about it, so it was worth the purchase. I'm assuming she wrote the book after she got her own kids through their "ivy league" schools (perhaps not to share the info with other parents along the way - but that is how it is out there).
Also, kids do better in school when they can focus. To focus, you need lots of sleep, especially teenagers. It's fact. The schools today give entirely too much homework. If the teachers are doing their job in school, there is no need to come home and do another 5-6 hours of homework (yep, that's what the school gives 7th on up in my child's school). They say 20 mins per subject, however, my husband and I have timed the work (and my child is a good student), and it isn't. Not by a long shot. Each teacher thinks their class is the most important. Many parents won't admit their kids spend that amount of time on homework and many don't realize their kids are up late doing it! I know only because my child is up (I don't go to bed until she's done) and kids are asking for homework help. Some kids have tutors and the tutors do their work. It is insanity because the schools know this is going on and yet do nothing (IF it is a child of a high contributor).
There are so many parents afraid to speak up. The schools (all of them) will make you feel like you're in the minority, but at the parents luncheons, homework is all they talk about. It is wrong for schools to deprive children the right to do things after school to unwind. It is wrong to give homework on every weekend depriving kids of family and worship. Kids need to do chores and help out (well at least some of them). Why deprive them of responsibilities or just, dare I say, having fun! They are only kids once. And the way the world is today, to have them stay young as long as possible would be a pleasure.
I love all the new books coming out on the Case Against Homework, and even the Wall St Journal wrote an article about a study that proved homework does nothing to improve grades. I know that with my child and her friends it only makes them despise the work...because the learning isn't fun. Running on 5-6 (if they are lucky) hours of sleep, is not good especially when they have subjects like math, science or languages first up in the mornings. These classes require cognitive thinking at its best.
Run schools like google runs its company, and you'd see a lot more kids loving it. I hate the fact that my daughter has to put in 14 hour days learning. I hate that there are kids staying up till 2am and then setting their alarms to wake up at 4am to finish their work (yep, in this school so many of them do that in 8th grade - this technique used to be reserved for college). And I hate that one poor child stayed up till 3am and couldn't do her latin homework and the teacher said "tough, it should have been done." Mostly, I hate that schools carry dead weight - teachers who just can't teach (hello MATH TEACHERS OUT THERE) and every parent knows it but is petrified to speak up. So we pay all this money for private school, and then what? People have to spend a bundle on tutors. That's the crying shame....And it's no wonder our kids are burned out by time they are ready to enter college. It's the parents fault for pushing so hard. And why is that? Because they want their kid to be the best NO MATTER HOW THEY GET THERE.
I think it's time to homeschool!
As for this book, it is depressing in some parts if you don't have money (but some summer programs offer financial aid), and it should be heartening to know that even the so called "best" private schools, DON'T always have the best teachers. In fact, there is a double standard of discipline as well. If you're a high contributor, you can pay to make things go away if your child gets in trouble. If you don't contribute, be prepared to be sent to a shrink for analysis!
I, for one, have just about had it with all this competition, and I think the year between high school and college when kids used to go backpacking and see the world before attempting to conquer college? Well I think it needs to be moved up to between middle school and high school!
 Way too competetive! February 16, 2009
Kelly L. Micek (Greater Cincinnati area)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
There is a lot of good information in this book to help your child make the most of his/her high school years; however, it promotes an extremely competitive approach to extra curricular and summer camp activities.
 It worked for us! February 8, 2009
Ren Jones (CA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
We stumbled upon this book two years ago when my daughter was in sixth grade at a large, inner city public middle school. The kind of school with caring but overworked teachers, and a counselor/student ration of 1 to 380.
This book and it's companion "What colleges Don't Tell you..." were a revelation for us. For less than twenty dollars, we received the kind of "inside information" that wealthier families pay thousands of dollars for. It was like having our own personal educational consultant.
By using some of the suggestions in this book and learning to put ourselves in the shoes of admissions officers, we were able to focus and develop her passions and present them in a way that interested scholarship committees and private schools. The results for us were amazing: she has a full academic scholarship and several partial scholarships for extra-curricular activities!
I must agree with the Amazon reviewer who said: "Anyone who doesn't want you to read this book is trying to eliminate the competition!"
Ms. Wissner-Gross levels the playing field for lower and middle income families. A heartfelt thank you from a struggling single mom.
Great resource. October 28, 2008
Ardita (East Coast, USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book helps to take the stress out of the college search process. It has great practical guidance for parents and high school students working their way through the application mazes.
For the Parent of a College Bound Senior October 16, 2008
Karen Verola
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is very informative for the parents of students who are trying to gain admission to a college.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
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