A high school freshman can’t take up ice skating with the hope of winning a gold medal. All indications at the Winter Olympics point to ice skaters in their prime at that age. The competitive skating ship sails early in life.
But getting into college doesn’t work the same way.
There was some discussion among counselors this week about an event that focused on Stanford admissions pitched to children ages 10 and up. For parents with younger children, I imagine there were three different responses.
1. For my 10-year-old? That’s absurd. We’ll worry about that when he gets to high school.
2. We’re going. Cancel all our plans. We’ll take any advantage we can get.
3. Gosh, do we really need to start thinking about that? Maybe we should go? Better safe than sorry.
Group one (who I agree with) and group two are set in their ways. But I feel particularly bad for group three. They’re trying to hang on to their (pre) college admissions sanity. But peer pressure and fear of somehow missing something important push college admissions anxiety down to the elementary school levels–much earlier than it needs to.
It’s never too early to make education a priority. But I can’t imagine most 10-year-olds would enjoy—much less employ—advice about how to get into Stanford. It’s just too early. The only exception I can see is for a family whose origin, community, or circumstances leaves them without easy access to college planning information. If the speaker is knowledgeable and the information is free, I can’t see the harm as long they don’t leave convinced that all colleges are as difficult to get into as Stanford. But in most cases, 10-year-olds and their parents should be concerned with other things.
If you’d like some advice about appropriate preparation for younger students, here’s a past post with advice for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.