If you happened to be from a family with the cubic dollars...it's the admissions office that would be doing the ass-kissing!

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2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
2001 CLK430 Cabriolet (80K) - Wife's car
2005 BMW 645CI (138K) - My daily driver
2016 Mustang (32K) - Daughter's car

I don't think I could push my kid like some of those parents. What do you guys think? Based on my personality?

I can't do the ass kissing either, I might be able to swing the dollars though....

Maybe when he's 15 I can ask myself if he's Harvard material.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

True by then you will know if he has the "Right Stuff" or not.......not everyone does.....

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Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Just caught "Office Spaces" on TV yesterday, and figured out where your avatar came from! Not as gruesome now that I've seen the context!

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2009 ML350 (106K) - Family vehicle
2001 CLK430 Cabriolet (80K) - Wife's car
2005 BMW 645CI (138K) - My daily driver
2016 Mustang (32K) - Daughter's car

Our Friends kid is going to Yale - pre-med and will go to medical school there, I'm sure. She got 1580 on the SAT's and they didn't care. "everyone applying to Yale has 1500-1600 on the SATs, what did she get on the SATII." She had not taken them at that point. but of course did and was accepted.
She was a gifted child top in her class at a private school here in the DFW area. But she will have to work hard in the "bedside manners" class. No personality what so ever. One of those brilliant kids with no personality.

Dave

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1970 220D, owned 1980-1990
1980 240D, owned 1990-1992
1982 300TD, owned 1992-1993
1986 300SDL, owned 1993-2004
1999 E300, owned 1999-2003
1982 300TD, 213,880mi, owned since Nov 18, 1991- Aug 4, 2010 SOLD
1988 560SL, 100,000mi, owned since 1995
1965 Mustang Fastback Mileage Unknown(My sons)
1983 240D, 176,000mi (My daughers) owned since 2004
2007 Honda Accord EX-L I4 auto, the new daily driver
1985 300D 264,000mi Son's new daily driver.(sold)
2008 Hyundai Tiberon. Daughters new car

THe was Clintons expaination for avoiding Military service.....

kiss enough butt to cover your own butt....at least Dbya did his service..unlike CLinton...the male Jane FOnda

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thats what I have been telling people that thought it was truely violent.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thats fine and dandy if you want to raise another Bill Clinton..... I don't. One was too many.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

If the kid's anything like me that juicebox will be filled with oil!

He's not gonna learn that from me, no siree.

But he's a boy. Don't boys show their affection by playing pranks on the object of their desire?

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

By HUBERT B. HERRING

Published: April 17, 2005

FOR many parents of high school seniors, this isn't just the season of that nail-biting, soul-searching, wallet-weighing decision about where that suddenly adult bundle of joy goes to college. It's also the season of wondering where on earth the Fafsa gremlins got that bizarre E.F.C. number.

For the uninitiated, here's how it works: parents, hoping against hope for a bit of scholarship help, fill out personal financial data on the government's Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And soon - very soon, if they do it online - they are blessed with what some highly creative computer considers a reasonable "expected family contribution."

When parents see this number, a common reaction is stunned disbelief. How, they ask, could any reasonably intelligent computer look at their assets and income and expect them to shell out that much for college? Should they, perhaps, not eat for four years? Should they move to the nearest park bench for the duration?

Unfathomable as it may be, though, that E.F.C. is a powerful number. The numerous colleges that vow to "meet demonstrated need" use the E.F.C. to measure that need. Some have their own formulas, but when they follow the Fafsa number strictly, and if the expected contribution is $20,000 and the college cost $32,000, "need-based" aid is $12,000. But if the expected contribution is $32,000 - and such a number is quite possible for families of relatively modest means - the college aid office is likely to turn down a family's request for help.

This system, left alone, would populate campuses with the rich, who can write big checks and feel no pain, and the poor, who qualify for substantial aid. Many colleges realize this and award a variety of academic scholarships, also known as merit aid - basically charging the better students wholesale.

This can give rise to some wrenching choices. Suppose a student gets into a top school, with no merit aid, and a quite decent school that has less of a name, with substantial merit aid.

The instinct of parents to want "the best" for their children can be overpowering. Parents don't want to have their offspring, who in all likelihood have questioned their competence as parents in recent years, now accuse them of cutting corners, of being cheapskates, on so vital an expense. But where do parents draw the line?

Say the choice comes down to two schools: one, which offers substantial merit aid, would end up costing $20,000 a year, while the other runs $40,000 and offers neither merit aid nor, because the parents' estimated contribution is fairly high, need-based aid. The second school may or may not be better - how can one really know? - but it does have the bigger name. Do parents bankrupt themselves to go for the name? Do they eat beans in some rusted trailer in retirement to have their pride and joy have that little frill on her résumé? Or do they say: "Look, kid, college is a privilege, and be thankful that we're paying anything. And, by the way, clean up your room."

And never forget: to teenagers, a brand name - whether of jeans or colleges - can be a blindingly powerful lure.

Parents could, of course, take a coldly practical approach and think of the "name" college as a better investment, and graduates of top schools have indeed been shown to earn more - up to 30 percent more, in some studies. But that raises two questions: First, will that presumably richer offspring, in return for the largess, bring alms to her parents when those benefits eventually roll in? And, more to the point, is the idea really valid that a prestige school automatically means higher income?

Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist and New York Times columnist, has studied the issue and questions the validity of this. "Students who attend more selective colleges," he wrote in 2000, "are likely to have higher earnings regardless of where they attend college for the very reasons that they were admitted to the more selective colleges in the first place." In other words, intelligence, like cream, will rise to the top. But definitely go to college, he stresses; that's "more important than where you go."

That's not to say it isn't important to go to a decent college, but in an essay in The Atlantic Monthly last year titled "Who Needs Harvard?" Gregg Easterbrook (Colorado College, class of 1976) argued that "any of a wide range of colleges can equip its graduates for success." Part of his reasoning is that there has been a "profusion of able faculty members" but only a finite number of top schools for them to funnel into. As a result, the pretty good schools "have gotten much better, while the great schools have remained more or less the same," narrowing the quality gap considerably.

And if the goal is graduate school, Mr. Easterbrook asserts, the elite schools are no longer the "exclusive gatekeepers," as more and more schools feed students into advanced study, even at top graduate schools.

Mr. Krueger, a product of the Ivy League, asked recently for his latest thinking on the value of elite schools, reiterated his skepticism about blindly going for the "name" school. "I think it is very wrong," he said, "to advise students to automatically go to the most selective or elite school that accepts them, without regard to the match between the particular student's interests and personality and the school's strengths and weaknesses."

The next hurdle, of course, is explaining all this to a teenager obsessed with sporting a sweatshirt with a high-status college name on it. Well, parents can always buy the "name" sweatshirt but send her to the affordable college.

Hubert B. Herring is even now weighing the pros and cons of prestigious poverty in helping guide his daughter toward college.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/business/yourmoney/17college.html?

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

My daughter is currently a sophomore at Harvard.

I don’t think we did anything “special” in raising her. She graduated high school at the top of her class, SAT 1520 (me, a run of the mill 1050, 35 years ago). No tutoring, no pushing, no hectoring. She was completely self motivated. Outgoing, she was student body president in her senior year. I think attending an all girl private high school was very instrumental in helping her stay focused. My best guess as to why she got the Harvard offer, besides just being in the qualifying pool, was the strength of a personal interview with the Harvard rep and the recommendations from the school staff. We were turned down by Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, etc.

We did the piano thing and she enjoyed that. Even just listening to piano music is great for the brain. The best thing I think she got out of piano lessons was what I call, “trial by fire”, that is learning a piece and performing it in front of a small audience.

After getting the Harvard acceptance, my initial feelings were mixed, similar to the proverbial "mother-in-law going over a cliff….in your prized 300SL". My pragmatic side said, just go to the local UC (University of California). Much cheaper. But the simple bottom line was, she earned it, and we were happy to do whatever we could to send her there. There were no substantial enough argument to not go. She is having a wonderful time there. Our only advice upon leaving her there was “work hard, play hard”.

My advice to you would be

1) Encourage your kids to read A LOT.

2) NO television in their rooms.

3) NO computers in their rooms.

4) NO one on one dating.

5) Start saving $.

glenmore