irvinehomeowner said:
I actually don't want my kids to be over achievers... if they can pull of 3.0+, that's fine with me.
They can go to junior college and then transfer to a UC or whatever. I'm not sure if the job world is the same but your college degree really only counts for the 1st or 2nd job... after that... it's a lot of who and what you know more than where you went.
However... I would like my kids to go to a high school where they don't have to worry about gang violence or falling in with the wrong crowd. While I know that can happen anywhere.. you can certainly lower the odds. And in a school where most of the students are doing well academically... that helps set the tone for my kids (just as long as it's not TOO academic... which it tends to be in Irvine).
Talyssa has graphrixitis... if she ever plans to have kids... she will see it's not as easy as "It's not just the schools!".
3.0 is actually kind of ...bad grades these days. School is EASY and grade inflation is rampant. I was a terrible freaking student in high school (used to copy AP physics and calc homework at lunch from other people) and I still turned out better grades than that. Also the 5.0 GPA is silly, most kids can't pull a 5.0 because AP classes ARE a tiny bit harder. AS they should be. Whatever happend to B's being good grades? Crazy ass parents who scream and moan when their baby can't get enough extra credit for an A.
As for starting as a Sophmore - I was (as I'm sure you guessed) in with the AP kids, I knew plenty of people who went into college with tons of units. Guess what? It does VERY little for your ability to graduate because units are not a problem for graduating. I don't know anyone who went to college wiht me or my sister's friends who did not have MORE than enough units to graduate -- in fact, most of us (myself included) had to go to the school and petition to be allowed to continue because we had too many units. Most schools give you little if no actual credit for your AP classes - I mean yeah you get units, but they don't let you skip any prerequisites. My friend and I both got a 5 on the AP english test (does it still score 1-5?) and I was able to skip a 'general education' writing class but NOT skip my 6 'fullfills the essay requirement' classes, so it saved me at best 1 class and at worst it took away the option of completeing an easy A class (which I wouldn't have taken becuase I actually LIKED college being a little challenging) - My friend wasn't allowed to skip anything. She got 4 'units' and still had to take the class. Getting a 5 on the AP calc class let you skip 1 math class, but it left you twiddling your thumbs the first quarter because they didn't offer the second level class until 2nd quarter. Colleges make money when your kid goes there - they are not all that invested in helping your kid go there for LESS time.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for AP classes, I think it counts towards getting into colelge SOMEWHAT, but I think if your kids just take 2-3 during their jr and sr year and then have OTHER activities it probably looks just as good, and it wil lmake them better life achievers. Granted I am not an admissions officer, but I imagine that they get millions of the same old same old "this kid took eleventy billion AP classes, and has a 4.9 gpa!" And I'd rather send my kid to music, art, sports classes wiht the extra 200,000 dollars. I'm not saying its stupid to want your kid to go to a 'better' school, I'm just saying that I think if you do the financial math you might be REALLY overvalueing it. We have excellent opportunities for opera, symphony, dance and various other performances an hour north of us in LA. There are artists and art teachers all over orange county and LA, with opportunities to delve deeper into certain mediums or forms than you do in school and tons of galleries and museums.
IF you have the money for both a house in irvine and all that, then awesome, do it. If you don't, how much is the missed opportunities for those classes worth to you vs how much the schools are worth? I don't know the equation for that. But I think I'd rather jet around seeing special exibits and performances (there is a Ring Cycle the met is putting on that is supposed to be amazing, and a Dali exibit in Atlanta that looks excellent - and there are always dance performances in NY and SF that I am sorry to miss)
PLUS the extra bonus is that for the first 15 years your kids wont' appreciate any of these cultural experiences at all, so you can drop them with grandma and grandpa and go yourself. WOO!
I'm sure I think raising kids is easier than people that have them, but I ALSO know that its not rocket science - Its not any kind of science becuase its totally unpredicatable and unmeasurable how kids will turn out as adults, no matter what you do with them. Other than being generally middle class (in my bf's case upper middle class) my bf and I had totally different childhood experiences in every way, and aside from little things we are unbelievably similar. My sister and I share genes and basic parenting (although it does change from child to child even within the family) and we aren't much alike at all. She had tutoring all through elementary and middle school because she was struggling, then went to high school and turned on the A student switch. so really - should you spend THAT much extra money on it? If you can find a school that's decent enough and not unsafe, wouldn't that be fine? I mean heck, you can buy a nice house in the Edison school district for 700, without mello roos and with a larger lot that includes a real driveway and stuff. and its a lot less hot down there. I get the Irvine thing, I do. I just don't get the schools thing - I doubt they are NEARLY as valuable as people seem to think when they say things that make it sound like only Irvine schools will do. And honestly... i kinda doubt that you guys that say the stuff about schools value it quite so much as well. If there was an area that somehow had the super desirable irvine brand and atmosphere and location and all the things IHO likes about Irvine and the schools were crap, you's probably still want to live there and you'd send your kids to private school. I mean, *I* want to live in irvine off and on - I just don't want to pay a premium for it and I like other areas a lot as well.
Which reminds me actually ... how many people on this forum grew up in OC vs moved here as adults? I feel like the people who grew up in OC don't tend to have quite the fear of crime here that other people do but I don't know if that is just a general feeling or just because the only people I know who grew up here grew up in brea and gg and huntington beach/fountain valley and stuff. And whatever you may think about those areas now we used to have a skinhead and an asian gang problem (did they fight each other I wonder? I was young at the time) and its quite cleaned up now... I mean heck, the part of harbor that runs through costa mesa used to be prostitute lane but those days are long gone. So I just find it strange that people feel like a lot of areas outside of south county are not safe enough. Its certainly safer now than it used to be and I still managed to make it all the way to adult hood without getting shot by skinheads or being mistaken for some vietnamese gangbangers girlfriend.