You didn't make this thread to talk about your "safety" (or whatever), you made it to faux-coy brag about doing an iron man. Congrats, annoying iron man guy cliche. I'm sure everyone at work can't wait to hear all about it...like they've heard about your training and diet each day for the last six months.
I was pulled over by an Ohio Trooper for 10-15mph over once. He let me go with a verbal warning. But I was driving my older brother, an Ohio resident, home from a DTW flight. So I guess the takeaway is feel free to casually speed, just have a guilt-trippy story to share and an Ohio resident with you.
Class-envy takes are so edgy. Who talks like this, seriously? Making fun of kids for being gunners. It's cooler when blue collar kids smoke dope and play videos games all day and talk about their high school football career for the rest of their life.
"These tended to be incidences where the candidate falsified a record or lied on their employment application." Any interesting examples? Are we talking stretching the truth or outright lies?
Yeah, those are reeeeally exclusive aims, bud. Every scholar I knew in high school couldn't wait to major in packing and crim justice. And if a sharp teenager dreams of being a hotel kingpin, they would go to Cornell.
Choosing an inferior, cost-neutral undergrad teases out poor decision making, inability to see the big picture, character flaws, & lack of competitiveness.
As someone who's bedded more than a few, they are not hot; they're trashy, obnoxious and lack self-awareness for how low their capacity is. The good ones with a head on their shoulders transfer to UM after a year or two.
Lol @ logistics. And MSU kids would have gotten into Ann Arbor if they weren't "Soo hungover when they took the ACT. Insane banger the night before..."
Guidance counselors are people too dull to become teachers. Yet they control the future of all students' college prospects. My guidance counselor was so lazy and worthless. Barely got my app in in time.
"Don't be friends with somebody who goes to MSU" LOL. Some of the biggest conniving scumbags I grew up with went to State. They're repulsive. When you're a teen and in college you don't even realize how sorted we really are. Honestly, people end up where they should.
- MSU: Too many to count. Unless they went to medical school (i.e., top 1% of MSU undergrad), they're dull, desperate (gold digging), provincial and wanna-look rich tacky trash. Perpetual sorority girls who slut around in Chicago for a few years before getting fat and having kids. They struggle to make non-Sparty friends.
- OSU: Slightly more sophisticated than MSU girls.
- ND: Always great families. Really, really sweet girls. Naive to a fault, but true...humanitarians (noblesse oblige?). I don't know why I'm supposed to hate this college, the girls that I've dated from here aren't super models, but from really remarkable families.
- Northwestern: Alpha girls. Pretty, polished & cosmopolitan. Won't let a relationship come between their ambition. Will straight break your heart and walk away to take a promotion across the country.
With regard to sports, only the MSU girls seemed to really care. Probably just an excuse to get wasted and wax nostalgic about their physical peak in life.
Anyone from Metro Detroit or who has lived in Chicago has probably slept with a Spartan girl. Easy pulls, intellectually shallow, lush, usually obnoxious. To spot them in the wild just look for 20-somethings in Lincoln Park, fail miserably in their quest to look rich, with over-bleached teeth and orange fake-baked skin, still acting like a perpetual sorority girl.
You still sound slightly bitter about the MSU girl. Is she still hot or something? Most Sparty girls look washed up at 23, as their faces and thighs load up on late-night carbs in Chicago.
"The Kalmazoo Promise is undoubtedly a promising initiative. However, roughly half of the students who received funding still don't have a degree. That's a major issue. Throwing money at academic underachievment can help, but it's no silver bullet."
Bingo. Kzoo publics are so atrocious these kids just go to college for the hell of it, nowhere near college ready. The concept of graduating high school "behind" (i.e., not college ready) is very alarming. Why? 90% of the kids aren't one or two years of math behind, they're FOREVER behind. You can predict with 90+% accuracy whether or not a 14-year-old will graduate from college, let alone a 17-18 y.o. who has an ACT score in the teens...
That said, pehaps the long-game goal is the Promise brings in a deluge of two-parent, college-educated homes into the district. Significant raising the tide over the next 10 years or so. When you raise the tide, you hope the lower-born students benefit from steeping in an environment with peers who have higher expecations.
You're highly unlikely to achieve social class mobility if you start at a CC. The theories as to why include your network suffers dramatically (missing half the time on campus, including very important first and second year rhythm of peer groups forming), transfers likely aim in something less competitive/lucrative, and less affluent kids rarely know how to speak the "language" to mesh quickly and form tight bonds with professors and affluent peers.
Look, there are always outliers, but the plural of anecdote isn't data. I personally wouldn't recommend to any family with teens to test the odds of them "making it" out of a CC. Further, the ethos of a 4-year university can motivate immature slackers, i.e. rise with the tide.
The plural of anecdote isn't data...but by all means, cling to those outliers, old sport. For every CMU or WMU grad with a new Ferrari there are 5,000 students who dropped out and moved back to their provincial hometown to sell insurance or work at Home Depot.
More or less only the wealthy attend high end colleges (like U-M) because it takes lots of money to GROOM a kid that can get into these colleges. "Punishing" these rich kids with goulash and humid dorms seems silly. The kids at U-M in '15 run circles around the kids that were there in '85. Further, cut the comfort and the sharpest kids have the options to funnel to schools that offer the comfort they're used to.
"Why pay someone a living wage with job security and benefits when you can rent a young and desperate academic for pennies and get rid of them at will?"
Why do so many sharp grad and PhD-track people put themselves in a position to be exploited? Why do so many college girls aim in education, only to complain 5 years later they can barely afford their VW Jetta lease payment? This information is avail all over, yet over and over people continue to pursue these tracks. Who's the real dummy?
Sidebar: 90% of undergrads don't deserve to be taught by PhDs. There's an opportunity cost and it's a waste of the PhD's life to waste all of that time on so many naive and lazy teens. Adjuncts are often better teachers; whether they should get better comp and benefits is an entirely different topic.
Ad hominem attacks tease out your insecurities and the terminal chip on your shoulder. I safely assume wealthier, more conditioned and confident private and parochial gentlemen have made you feel academically and professionally inadequate from age 18 onward. Remember, this back and forth began because you chose to exaggerate and repeatedly double down on the outcomes of your completely mediocre public high school. I don’t get any satisfaction in correcting you, I just wish parents would suspend their defensiveness, get informed, and understand just how pathetic the education and grooming their children are receiving is. The fact remains, most public educated children in Michigan are being groomed…to drop out of college & flip burgers. While your education slashing politicians send their offspring to tony private and parochial schools...to become the next generation of leaders.
"In 10 years my daughter will be graduating from high school, followed four years later by my son. My wife and I make far more than my parents ever did, but our ability to pay for their college education will be less than half of my parents'. That's fucked up."
Two parent, highly-educated family, I presume living in a very strong school district? There's zero reason why you should be stressed about paying for college. You should easily be able to groom your high-SES kids to earn serious scholarships. I have a few friends from high school that got full rides to Oakland U and MSU, and they were by no means brilliant. There's a ton of merit dough out there. With Michigan's sagging schools, it's easier than ever to be a top 5% student. U-Detroit gives $25,000 to every kid that has a 3.5 GPA and a 30 on the ACT.
Fiscally sound in theory, but we can't discount the power of the ethos. And good luck networking. And the rest of your kid's life they'll be the insecure person who never had the dorm/Greek/welcome week/football experiences. I work in education and honestly don't know anyone sharp who has done this, or would subject their children to this. In fact, research shows when sharp (overmatched) kids end up at a local crappy college, they tend to regress academically. Don't do this to your kids. Take out loans and press them to finish in four years. That's where the real savings are: graduating on time.
"My wife and both my sons are docs. My advice to my kids would be to finish their training, bite the bullet and spend two years at Ross or Wharton or Harvard B School." Success is relative. But you and your wife with MDs and raising a pair of MD children makes you a 2015 Norman Rockwell painting. Are there families with more money? Sure. But 99.99% of all families dream of what you have.
What do you mean by "finish their training..."? As in finish MD and then pursue an MBA instead of residency? To do?
Half the incoming freshman at UM dream of becoming doctors. The issue isn't lack of projected income, student debt or tort reform -- most just can't hack it. Doctors are STILL leaders in their community and make very comfortable livings. And every medical student/resident I know has a parent that's a doctor. If it was so horrible and bleak why would they groom their kids to follow in their footsteps in 2015?
Yet U.S. medicals schools are opening up all over as more and more gunner kids grind to get in. The narrative that doctors don't make money anymore is pure BS. It's the most lucrative, prestigious and secure occupations in the nation.
If admins are so dull and overpaid, why don't you become one? Every ivory tower PhD or MD in a hospital spews this stuff. If they're such dimwitted easy marks, take their job.
The most ignored factor in college expenses is that the average public-educated Michigan kid now takes 5-6 years to graduate, if ever. Literally less than half the kids that go to MSU finish in 4 years. Two extra years to finish is 50% more in cost of attendance and two years out of the work force, a $150,000+ opportunity cost.
If your kid finishes U-M *on time* you're looking at $105K total. Last I checked, the average starting salary of an LSA econ major was like $57K. Ross or CoE was like $75K. The average kid leaves U-M with less than $22K in loans. Please spare me that $20 grand is impossible to pay on a $75K salary. Don't lease an Audi, don't rent a single apartment in downtown Chicago or Dupont Circle or SF, and don't blow your checks on sushi and exotic trips to Istanbul, and you can repay $20 grand in two years, EASILY.
I've teased out that you're talking about Traverse City, with West opening in 1997.
The average ACT from both high schools is 21 and less than 25% of each class are deemed college ready upon graduation. (Non-hooked applicants need about a 30 on the ACT to have a chance at U-M these days.) TC is one of the highest concentrations of wealth in Northern Michigan and the outcomes of the publics are terrible. For comparison, Birmingham Seaholm's average ACT is 25 and 50% are college ready.
"Feeding the U," a 2010 Michigan Daily article on U-M feeder schools makes no mention of TC schools. In fact, #17 on the list is Birmingham Seaholm, which only sends <38 per year. Please tell me how your inferior in every measurable way alma mater(s) send nearly the same? They don't. I'd bet the Traverse City public highs send <5 each, annually.
Seeing how there isn't a "Northern Michigan" school with anywhere near that enrollment these days, your stats are decades removed from relevancy (assuming your recollection is even accurate). Decades of Michigan brain drain, the economy imploding, public primary and secondary schools in shambles, the auto industry is a fraction of what it once was, college admissions is global, employment is global, U-M is 50% non-resident, everyone has a bachelors.
"I know people who went to Michigan who haven't achieved the kind of success you constantly try to sell on this board. And I know people who went to mid-level schools who have achieved great success."
I encourage you to consider the SES of the wildly successful "mid-level" alums you claim to know. I know a few successful "mid-level" alums too. Of course all of them attended $10K-25K/year private schools or premier publics like Birmingham, East GR, Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills. All hail from upper middle class, two parent, both equipped with graduate level degrees, homes.
The average public high school in Michigan sends maybe 1 to 3 kids to U-M each year. The premier privates and publics send 60-100.
You're going to call me a troll, yet then use either an exaggerated or at the very least out of date "Northern Michigan [public high] school that sends 25-30 kids to UM and 100+/- to MSU every year" to counter me?
I'm not trolling. I'm not generalizing. I'm not a snob private booster.
I'm simply discussing the very real issues with public education in the state of Michigan. The average public kid in Michigan never has a chance at any ascent, and will likely regress in social class. I could drown you in data to support everything I've stated, but none of you will read it and the truth only makes people defensive and uncomfortable. What makes me uncomfortable is how the state I grew up in is largely doomed moving forward and the youth left are in homes too dull to realize it.
Telling kids what to study at college is crazy. Telling kids where they can go to college is fine, to me. I knew some really smart dumb broads in high school that followed slacker boyfriends to crappy colleges. There's no chance I'd pay $60K per year for my children to attend safeties because of a pothead boyfriend or "that's where all my friends are going." Shoot for the best, but once there let them pursue what they enjoy.
"All public schools have good students..." says guy who sends his kid to a top 3 premier district in the state of Michigan. Honestly, you're in a bubble completely oblivious to how dire the average public school in Michigan is. Majority of the kids in Michigan publics won't finish college before age 24. Average publics are full of bad influence slackers who normalize behavior in your kids, e.g., it's O.K. to attend community college or CMU and its O.K. to take six years to finish a communication degree.
If you live in Michigan, outside of attending an Ivy, U-M should be the target for your children. It is not difficult to groom your children for U-M and it's a remarkable value for residents.
The State of Michigan's public primary and secondary schools are a laughing stock. In education circles it goes by Mich-issippi. Your major politicians live in some of the best public districts – e.g., Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, Ann Arbor – yet send their children to tony privates – e.g., Country Day, Cranbrook, Catholic Central, Greenhills. It's no wonder why they keep slashing public school funding.
The major public feeders to U-M are: Ann Arbor, Northville, Novi, Troy, International Academy, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, Rochester. Kids from non premier schools have tall odds to even get into U-M these days, and once there tend to struggle to hack it and find it difficult to gel with more affluent & conditioned alpha kids.
How do you train your kid to become or mesh with the "leadership class" if s/he isn't around them? Kids' peer groups are pivotal to their outcomes. "Show me your friends, I'll show you your future." I could cite all kinds of data but I'm on my cell phone in an airplane. Put your kid in a dull school full of provincial families and there's a VERY strong chance they're going to be dull and provincial. Put them in a wealthy gunner school with cosmopolitan families and they'll be pick up the "language" steeping in the ethos.
1. Highest educated parents produce the highest education kids. 60% of the kids who score above a 28 on the ACT have parents with graduate-level college degrees.
2. Read CONSTANTLY. Families who read constantly produce gifted kids, period. Age 2-3 onward.
3. Strong school, preferably private. Privates are not guarentees, just safer bets is all. There are less than five public high schools in Michigan I'd be comfortable with sending my children to.
4. Strong peer group. If your kid has gunner alpha dog friends, they're going to be successful. If your kids do not have gunner friends, it means they've been REJECTED by the gunner alpha kids. Parents don't realize kids sort themselves pretty efficiently. Too often parents rationalize or make excuses for why their kid fell in with bottom tier slackers.
5. Nearly 4.0 GPA = cool car. No problem leasing my kids nice vehicles if they handle business in the classroom and with extra curriculars.
Sounds like big fish, small pond, i.e. you're probably misremembering their ACT and their GPAs were inflated at a subpar public. There is no way this was a top ranked Michigan public school e.g., B Hills, Novi, Troy, Birmingham, Rochester, Grosse Pointe South. No BS, every middle of the pack kid from my high school raged their ass off at State and COASTED to a 3.6-4.0 GPA.
PS
There probably aren't more than a couple dozen 33+ ACTs at MSU.
Recent Comments
You didn't make this thread to talk about your "safety" (or whatever), you made it to faux-coy brag about doing an iron man. Congrats, annoying iron man guy cliche. I'm sure everyone at work can't wait to hear all about it...like they've heard about your training and diet each day for the last six months.
I was pulled over by an Ohio Trooper for 10-15mph over once. He let me go with a verbal warning. But I was driving my older brother, an Ohio resident, home from a DTW flight. So I guess the takeaway is feel free to casually speed, just have a guilt-trippy story to share and an Ohio resident with you.
"wealthy parents of over-achieving brats"
Class-envy takes are so edgy. Who talks like this, seriously? Making fun of kids for being gunners. It's cooler when blue collar kids smoke dope and play videos games all day and talk about their high school football career for the rest of their life.
"These tended to be incidences where the candidate falsified a record or lied on their employment application." Any interesting examples? Are we talking stretching the truth or outright lies?
Nobody claims nobody from State makes coin. But no teenager dreams of designing boxes. You end up at State and it becomes a decent option.
"Both times sounded like reasoning after the fact." Attemping to rationalize.
Yeah, those are reeeeally exclusive aims, bud. Every scholar I knew in high school couldn't wait to major in packing and crim justice. And if a sharp teenager dreams of being a hotel kingpin, they would go to Cornell.
Choosing an inferior, cost-neutral undergrad teases out poor decision making, inability to see the big picture, character flaws, & lack of competitiveness.
You can't grow up in SE Michigan and not know a few hundred State girls.
As someone who's bedded more than a few, they are not hot; they're trashy, obnoxious and lack self-awareness for how low their capacity is. The good ones with a head on their shoulders transfer to UM after a year or two.
Lol @ logistics. And MSU kids would have gotten into Ann Arbor if they weren't "Soo hungover when they took the ACT. Insane banger the night before..."
Nobody was excited for Adidas.
1.
Most insufferable people:
1. MSU meatheads and vacuous bimbos telling people they got a 32 on the ACT and chose MSU over UM. And/or anybody that says MSU has prettier girls.
1b. Eastern kids thinking they're UM affiliated. Dude, you don't go here, party at your own college.
1c. Dearborn and Flint satellite sidewalk fans who tell everyone they're "Michigan alums."
Crepes @ Cafe Zola. the Blintz:
"Filled with cinnamon-scented farmer cheese and topped with brandied cherry preserves, crème fraiche, and powdered sugar." So delicious.
What would be your first choice? Petroleum or bio-chemical engineering are express tickets to $100K salary, are they not?
Why'd she go to MSU over OSU or Miami...or UM? Vet?
Ha touche.
- MSU: Too many to count. Unless they went to medical school (i.e., top 1% of MSU undergrad), they're dull, desperate (gold digging), provincial and wanna-look rich tacky trash. Perpetual sorority girls who slut around in Chicago for a few years before getting fat and having kids. They struggle to make non-Sparty friends.
- OSU: Slightly more sophisticated than MSU girls.
- ND: Always great families. Really, really sweet girls. Naive to a fault, but true...humanitarians (noblesse oblige?). I don't know why I'm supposed to hate this college, the girls that I've dated from here aren't super models, but from really remarkable families.
- Northwestern: Alpha girls. Pretty, polished & cosmopolitan. Won't let a relationship come between their ambition. Will straight break your heart and walk away to take a promotion across the country.
With regard to sports, only the MSU girls seemed to really care. Probably just an excuse to get wasted and wax nostalgic about their physical peak in life.
Anyone from Metro Detroit or who has lived in Chicago has probably slept with a Spartan girl. Easy pulls, intellectually shallow, lush, usually obnoxious. To spot them in the wild just look for 20-somethings in Lincoln Park, fail miserably in their quest to look rich, with over-bleached teeth and orange fake-baked skin, still acting like a perpetual sorority girl.
You still sound slightly bitter about the MSU girl. Is she still hot or something? Most Sparty girls look washed up at 23, as their faces and thighs load up on late-night carbs in Chicago.
Where'd the ND masters student go to college?
"The Kalmazoo Promise is undoubtedly a promising initiative. However, roughly half of the students who received funding still don't have a degree. That's a major issue. Throwing money at academic underachievment can help, but it's no silver bullet."
Bingo. Kzoo publics are so atrocious these kids just go to college for the hell of it, nowhere near college ready. The concept of graduating high school "behind" (i.e., not college ready) is very alarming. Why? 90% of the kids aren't one or two years of math behind, they're FOREVER behind. You can predict with 90+% accuracy whether or not a 14-year-old will graduate from college, let alone a 17-18 y.o. who has an ACT score in the teens...
That said, pehaps the long-game goal is the Promise brings in a deluge of two-parent, college-educated homes into the district. Significant raising the tide over the next 10 years or so. When you raise the tide, you hope the lower-born students benefit from steeping in an environment with peers who have higher expecations.
You're highly unlikely to achieve social class mobility if you start at a CC. The theories as to why include your network suffers dramatically (missing half the time on campus, including very important first and second year rhythm of peer groups forming), transfers likely aim in something less competitive/lucrative, and less affluent kids rarely know how to speak the "language" to mesh quickly and form tight bonds with professors and affluent peers.
Look, there are always outliers, but the plural of anecdote isn't data. I personally wouldn't recommend to any family with teens to test the odds of them "making it" out of a CC. Further, the ethos of a 4-year university can motivate immature slackers, i.e. rise with the tide.
The plural of anecdote isn't data...but by all means, cling to those outliers, old sport. For every CMU or WMU grad with a new Ferrari there are 5,000 students who dropped out and moved back to their provincial hometown to sell insurance or work at Home Depot.
More or less only the wealthy attend high end colleges (like U-M) because it takes lots of money to GROOM a kid that can get into these colleges. "Punishing" these rich kids with goulash and humid dorms seems silly. The kids at U-M in '15 run circles around the kids that were there in '85. Further, cut the comfort and the sharpest kids have the options to funnel to schools that offer the comfort they're used to.
"Why pay someone a living wage with job security and benefits when you can rent a young and desperate academic for pennies and get rid of them at will?"
Why do so many sharp grad and PhD-track people put themselves in a position to be exploited? Why do so many college girls aim in education, only to complain 5 years later they can barely afford their VW Jetta lease payment? This information is avail all over, yet over and over people continue to pursue these tracks. Who's the real dummy?
Sidebar: 90% of undergrads don't deserve to be taught by PhDs. There's an opportunity cost and it's a waste of the PhD's life to waste all of that time on so many naive and lazy teens. Adjuncts are often better teachers; whether they should get better comp and benefits is an entirely different topic.
Ad hominem attacks tease out your insecurities and the terminal chip on your shoulder. I safely assume wealthier, more conditioned and confident private and parochial gentlemen have made you feel academically and professionally inadequate from age 18 onward. Remember, this back and forth began because you chose to exaggerate and repeatedly double down on the outcomes of your completely mediocre public high school. I don’t get any satisfaction in correcting you, I just wish parents would suspend their defensiveness, get informed, and understand just how pathetic the education and grooming their children are receiving is. The fact remains, most public educated children in Michigan are being groomed…to drop out of college & flip burgers. While your education slashing politicians send their offspring to tony private and parochial schools...to become the next generation of leaders.
"In 10 years my daughter will be graduating from high school, followed four years later by my son. My wife and I make far more than my parents ever did, but our ability to pay for their college education will be less than half of my parents'. That's fucked up."
Two parent, highly-educated family, I presume living in a very strong school district? There's zero reason why you should be stressed about paying for college. You should easily be able to groom your high-SES kids to earn serious scholarships. I have a few friends from high school that got full rides to Oakland U and MSU, and they were by no means brilliant. There's a ton of merit dough out there. With Michigan's sagging schools, it's easier than ever to be a top 5% student. U-Detroit gives $25,000 to every kid that has a 3.5 GPA and a 30 on the ACT.
Fiscally sound in theory, but we can't discount the power of the ethos. And good luck networking. And the rest of your kid's life they'll be the insecure person who never had the dorm/Greek/welcome week/football experiences. I work in education and honestly don't know anyone sharp who has done this, or would subject their children to this. In fact, research shows when sharp (overmatched) kids end up at a local crappy college, they tend to regress academically. Don't do this to your kids. Take out loans and press them to finish in four years. That's where the real savings are: graduating on time.
"My wife and both my sons are docs. My advice to my kids would be to finish their training, bite the bullet and spend two years at Ross or Wharton or Harvard B School." Success is relative. But you and your wife with MDs and raising a pair of MD children makes you a 2015 Norman Rockwell painting. Are there families with more money? Sure. But 99.99% of all families dream of what you have.
What do you mean by "finish their training..."? As in finish MD and then pursue an MBA instead of residency? To do?
Yet U.S. medicals schools are opening up all over as more and more gunner kids grind to get in. The narrative that doctors don't make money anymore is pure BS. It's the most lucrative, prestigious and secure occupations in the nation.
If admins are so dull and overpaid, why don't you become one? Every ivory tower PhD or MD in a hospital spews this stuff. If they're such dimwitted easy marks, take their job.
The most ignored factor in college expenses is that the average public-educated Michigan kid now takes 5-6 years to graduate, if ever. Literally less than half the kids that go to MSU finish in 4 years. Two extra years to finish is 50% more in cost of attendance and two years out of the work force, a $150,000+ opportunity cost.
If your kid finishes U-M *on time* you're looking at $105K total. Last I checked, the average starting salary of an LSA econ major was like $57K. Ross or CoE was like $75K. The average kid leaves U-M with less than $22K in loans. Please spare me that $20 grand is impossible to pay on a $75K salary. Don't lease an Audi, don't rent a single apartment in downtown Chicago or Dupont Circle or SF, and don't blow your checks on sushi and exotic trips to Istanbul, and you can repay $20 grand in two years, EASILY.
I've teased out that you're talking about Traverse City, with West opening in 1997.
The average ACT from both high schools is 21 and less than 25% of each class are deemed college ready upon graduation. (Non-hooked applicants need about a 30 on the ACT to have a chance at U-M these days.) TC is one of the highest concentrations of wealth in Northern Michigan and the outcomes of the publics are terrible. For comparison, Birmingham Seaholm's average ACT is 25 and 50% are college ready.
Source: http://archive.freep.com/interactive/article/20140707/NEWS06/140706002/…
"Feeding the U," a 2010 Michigan Daily article on U-M feeder schools makes no mention of TC schools. In fact, #17 on the list is Birmingham Seaholm, which only sends <38 per year. Please tell me how your inferior in every measurable way alma mater(s) send nearly the same? They don't. I'd bet the Traverse City public highs send <5 each, annually.
And here's some light reading, highlighting the state's publics circling the drain for 20 years. "Pure Michigan is Pure Decline" http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/09/23/pure-michigan-econo…
Seeing how there isn't a "Northern Michigan" school with anywhere near that enrollment these days, your stats are decades removed from relevancy (assuming your recollection is even accurate). Decades of Michigan brain drain, the economy imploding, public primary and secondary schools in shambles, the auto industry is a fraction of what it once was, college admissions is global, employment is global, U-M is 50% non-resident, everyone has a bachelors.
"I know people who went to Michigan who haven't achieved the kind of success you constantly try to sell on this board. And I know people who went to mid-level schools who have achieved great success."
I encourage you to consider the SES of the wildly successful "mid-level" alums you claim to know. I know a few successful "mid-level" alums too. Of course all of them attended $10K-25K/year private schools or premier publics like Birmingham, East GR, Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills. All hail from upper middle class, two parent, both equipped with graduate level degrees, homes.
The average public high school in Michigan sends maybe 1 to 3 kids to U-M each year. The premier privates and publics send 60-100.
You're going to call me a troll, yet then use either an exaggerated or at the very least out of date "Northern Michigan [public high] school that sends 25-30 kids to UM and 100+/- to MSU every year" to counter me?
I'm not trolling. I'm not generalizing. I'm not a snob private booster.
I'm simply discussing the very real issues with public education in the state of Michigan. The average public kid in Michigan never has a chance at any ascent, and will likely regress in social class. I could drown you in data to support everything I've stated, but none of you will read it and the truth only makes people defensive and uncomfortable. What makes me uncomfortable is how the state I grew up in is largely doomed moving forward and the youth left are in homes too dull to realize it.
1. Highest educated parents produce the highest education kids. 60% of the kids who score above a 28 on the ACT have parents with graduate-level college degrees.
2. Read CONSTANTLY. Families who read constantly produce gifted kids, period. Age 2-3 onward.
3. Strong school, preferably private. Privates are not guarentees, just safer bets is all. There are less than five public high schools in Michigan I'd be comfortable with sending my children to.
4. Strong peer group. If your kid has gunner alpha dog friends, they're going to be successful. If your kids do not have gunner friends, it means they've been REJECTED by the gunner alpha kids. Parents don't realize kids sort themselves pretty efficiently. Too often parents rationalize or make excuses for why their kid fell in with bottom tier slackers.
5. Nearly 4.0 GPA = cool car. No problem leasing my kids nice vehicles if they handle business in the classroom and with extra curriculars.
Sounds like big fish, small pond, i.e. you're probably misremembering their ACT and their GPAs were inflated at a subpar public. There is no way this was a top ranked Michigan public school e.g., B Hills, Novi, Troy, Birmingham, Rochester, Grosse Pointe South. No BS, every middle of the pack kid from my high school raged their ass off at State and COASTED to a 3.6-4.0 GPA.
PS
There probably aren't more than a couple dozen 33+ ACTs at MSU.