patrick.net

A message to loving parents who buy $1 mil+ on shacks for the kids. This is no exception in third world countries like China and India - Lots of kids come from rural areas,from very poor families and make to top colleges in those countries and eventually make to good universities in USA.

bubblesitter says

Lots of kids come from rural areas,from very poor families and make to top colleges in those countries and eventually make to good universities in USA.

not true; the quality of a kid's school and teachers overwhelmingly determine a child's academic and professional success. This has been demonstrated in multiple studies.

You may read about anecdotal inspiration stories, but those are the exceptions.

It's not the school itself... it's the parents.

The school districts just get all the credit, but in my experience, the teachers and staff are no better than any other district. The teachers and staff will work just as hard as they need to, as dictated by the expectations of the parents.

So the follow-up is, if you want to turn your area into a fortress, get all the parents together and collectively demand higher standards from the teachers. It's really that simple.

It seems that the town the kid went to school had pretty good teachers. Somehow there are no overpriced McMansions. Ok, I saw some double wide trailer homes maybe... LOL

Nobody is disputing that good teachers help. Its debatable that the teachers in Cupertino are any better then say Santa Clara or Sunnyvale. If anything it has more to do with:
1. New immigrants that move into Cupertino put more pressure on their kids to excel.
2. The kids are already pretty booksmart because their parents had to be booksmart to got out of their poverty stricken country and move to the US.
3. Parents put pressure on teachers to turn the school into an Asian style pressure cooker school.

I don't need a study to tell me good teachers = good students. I just don't think overpaying for a mcmansion really buys your kids a good education.

If you have a study on the relationship between overpaying for a house and academic success, I'd love to see it.

Serpentor says

1. New immigrants that move into Cupertino put more pressure on their kids to excel.
2. The kids are already pretty booksmart because their parents had to be booksmart to got out of their poverty stricken country and move to the US.
3. Parents put pressure on teachers to turn the school into an Asian style pressure cooker school.

A+ or GTFO.

exactly

Serpentor says

A message to loving parents who buy $1 mil+ on shacks for the kids.

what is GTFO?

chip_designer says

what is GTFO?

Get The Fuck Out

I knew a colleague, white, but grew up in a town south of texas, where he was the the minority, since majority was the mexicans, but he got into MIT with full scholarship.

i heard colleagues telling me kids who goes to those fortress high schools, do homework until 2am, very competitive those kids.

the asian parent will not blink an eye when deciding to put their kids into the best school, even at the expense of buying the million dollar crap home in the fortress

even if the kid is slow or not very good academically, still going to a school like that, can dramatically improve his/her chances of getting into a university, and guarantee a decent job.

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status. You don't care if your kid associates with bad , bully kids?

i bet most people who complain of the crazyness around fortress real estate, don't have kids going to high school.

Serpentor says

chip_designer says

what is GTFO?

Get The Fuck Out

haha, funny

chip_designer says

even if the kid is slow or not very good academically, still going to a school like that, can dramatically improve his/her chances of getting into a university, and guarantee a decent job.

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status. You don't care if your kid associates with bad , bully kids?

i bet most people who complain of the crazyness around fortress real estate, don't have kids going to high school.

From your writing, it sounds like you did not grow up here. I think most immigrants associate going to a good high school with success because thats the way they were raised. Except they had to pass a certain national exam to get into the schools in their home country. Getting into a good school puts them in on track out of poverty. If they don't test well, they don't have any chance of success in life. In the US, they think they can buy their way into a good school and success for their kids.

Thats not how it works here in the US. Yes, you stress the importance of academics, most likely your kids will turn out well. They will most likely become engineers and doctors. you don't need exceptional school to get into exceptional college. you can go to a shitty high school, but as long as your kids put in their work, they can get into Harvard or whatever schools they want. In many cases, coming from an moderately advantaged background hurts their chances because 1. they have to compete with their peers, 2. prestigious schools put a premium on students that achieve success despite a poor economic background.

In the US academic success with most likely guarantee your kid mediocre success (engineer, doctors).. But they will always be working for "the man"

To get to the next level, they need to learn personal skills and leadership. Qualities that make them become leaders (Community leaders, VPs and CEO's) are NOT learned from hitting the books in pressure cooker schools, they are learned from living a balanced life and excelling in sports and other activities.

I went to a well known engineering university, and we hard core engineers used to look down of the athletes taking management majors, now I look at my linkedin and all of the former atheletes are VPs and CEOs.

kids in Pressure cooker schools

chip_designer says

even if the kid is slow or not very good academically, still going to a school like that, can dramatically improve his/her chances of getting into a university, and guarantee a decent job.

I'd say it would moderately improve his chances. All and all, it's still a combination of a numbers game (GPA/rank & SAT I/II) and extracurriculars/awards. At pressure cooker high schools, it's a lot harder to be a newspaper editor when everyone else wants to put it on one's resume.

At a small town HS, your less talented kid may be the one who starts his school's radio station and at the same time, since many kids at those Podunk HS don't really try hard, he may even be in the top 10-20% of his class.

End result, with a resume like top 10% / ~690 mean SAT per section along with school or no name township radio station founder, leads to admissions to a lot of places [& even some scholarship money if he's in the top 1 to 5 of his class] vs top 40% / ~690 mean SAT per section / active in 4-5 obviously phony activities like { Glee Club / Science Club / Free Tibet society / LaCrosse intramural etc } in some elite 'burb outside of fill-in [Chicago, NYC, Boston, Philly, etc]. Every other suburban kid looks like the latter applicant, trying to depict a socially conscious, well-rounded individual for admission's sakes. These kids tend to get into middle tier private colleges and wind up borrowing money for it. I wouldn't call that a great accomplishment.

Serpentor says

I went to a well known engineering university, and we hard core engineers used to look down of the athletes taking management majors, now I look at my linkedin and all of the former atheletes are VPs and CEOs.

Well, engineering, unlike most other areas of pursuit, eats up a lot of one's time and energy, just in getting the homeworks done. The key here is that graduates of engineering programs are more and more, starting to opt for careers in management consulting or finance, to get out of that tech track, working for the man, ala senior "techie role" for corporate America.

I've appended here, something from another thread on career trajectories ...
here's one from the MIT class survey (http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/GSS2011.pdf). Realize, MIT is a top tier STEM focused college, not a liberal arts place like Dartmouth or Swarthmore. If you total up the number of recruits from Finance and Management Consulting positions (i.e. Morgan & Stanley, JP Morgan, McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Deloitte, Citigroup), you'll see that those careers make up 40+% of MIT graduates (not attending grad programs). You'll find similar results for the past number of years of surveys.

chip_designer says

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status. You don't care if your kid associates with bad , bully kids?

Yes, I want my kids to stand up to the Bullies. (Or be a bully so he can run for president like Romney. ) They are going to have to learn that life is hard, and they'll need the social skills to handle adversity. If they are sheltered and stuck in the house hitting the book, the best they can do is become a fucking geek engineer that doesn't get laid. If they hang out with kids from a similar background (ie geek kids from geek Indian/Chinese families) they'll never know how to even relate to a 6'5" 350lb former linebacker from Wisconsin. They'll never learn to handle bullies in the work place. I want my kids to be the alpha dog/bitch that know his/her shit but also has the skills to lead his/her pack of geek engineers to do his/her bidding.

Stories like these are fun to read but not nearly as inspiring to the everyman as people think. people who do that are very special people who with a touch of luck managed to exploit their talents and hard work to the top. Not everyone is capable of that, and not because they are too lazy as per the merrikan style ad hominem.

People move to Cupertino for the same reasons rich parents make their kids go to Ivy Leagues, the same reason that Zuckerberg is a billionaire; far greater potential to make connections to a rewarding career. But even then, and even with her; nothing is ever a certainty.

She could drop out or graduate with honors, but until she uses her experiences to do something awesome(attending is not awesome) or make mountains of cash it really means nothing. Luckily for her, her story shows the very kind of drive on needs to break through barriers to success.

I think that everyone here knows that raising "successful" children is not a black and white thing. Success depends on how well parents act like parents, surrounding environment, the school, the kid's friends, the kid's own natural inclinations and unforeseeable events in the kid's life. Certainly, putting your kid into a highly rated school with lots of financial resources where they are surrounded by other kids that work hard will have an impact of some sort. To buy into a school like that, chances are that the parents are riding their ass too.

Take that same kid + parents, and put them into an "average" school in the neighboring district, and it is sort of hard to say what impact that will have. As long as the school isn't loaded with poor children whose parents are never around to make them do their work and instill the importance of hard work, chances are that the kid with "good" parents will do just fine. Hell, one of my good friends went through the EPA school system and saw all sorts of sordid stuff go down (hard drugs, pregnancies, rapes) and she is now happily married, with a masters in Athletic Training (graduated with high honors) and doing just fine. Her parents kicked her ass and kept her straight, despite the iffy high school environment. She of course doesn't want any of her kids to have to go through that, but at the same time it helped shape her into the tough cookie that she is.

In the end, I think that the ultimate goal is to raise self sufficient, HAPPY adults. From my observations, it seems like a lot of parents are shooting for this, but in a sort of blind way where the big answer to all of that is just "making lots of money" and/or "going to a prestigious school." Money is a fact of life in this society and is necessary to get by. It absolutely does NOT buy happiness though. It does buy you options, and it is a parent's job to teach their kid to see the available options and pick the smart ones. Blindly choosing the options that lead to more money in every case isn't really the path to happiness or fulfillment as far as I can tell.

Serpentor says

To get to the next level, they need to learn personal skills and leadership. Qualities that make them become leaders (Community leaders, VPs and CEO's) are NOT learned from hitting the books in pressure cooker schools, they are learned from living a balanced life and excelling in sports and other activities.

I went to a well known engineering university, and we hard core engineers used to look down of the athletes taking management majors, now I look at my linkedin and all of the former atheletes are VPs and CEOs.

Yeah the frat boys pretty much run everything.

Serpentor says

If they are sheltered and stuck in the house hitting the book, the best they can do is become a fucking geek engineer that doesn't get laid. If they hang out with kids from a similar background (ie geek kids from geek Indian/Chinese families) they'll never know how to even relate to a 6'5" 350lb former linebacker from Wisconsin. They'll never learn to handle bullies in the work place.

Yeah I know all about that.

chip_designer says

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status. You don't care if your kid associates with bad , bully kids?

'status', eh?

Would that be 'status' like (Tiger) mom's 'status' in her social pecking order? Would that be the difference between mom's Lexus and her Toyota?

Regarding the "bad, bully" kids, it's a false choice. Not every K-12 that's outside of The Fortress is dominated by "bad, bully kids". I hear this all the time in the canyons of cubicles at work in "the Valley". Parents who are status oriented or clueless or whatever have outsourced their parenting responsibilities to the API of the local K-12.

Because like Serpent saidSerpentor says

From your writing, it sounds like you did not grow up here.

Serpentor says

I think most immigrants associate going to a good high school with success because thats the way they were raised. Except they had to pass a certain national exam to get into the schools in their home country. Getting into a good school puts them in on track out of poverty. If they don't test well, they don't have any chance of success in life. In the US, they think they can buy their way into a good school and success for their kids.

That is right. Their "GaoKao Culture". But this is the USA, not the Far East. And the API is not the GaoKao.

chip_designer says

i bet most people who complain of the crazyness around fortress real estate, don't have kids going to high school.

An (immigrant) engineer explained it to me when a different immigrant complained about the craziness around Fortress real estate. She took me aside and discretely told me that he "was jealous".

Serpentor says

I went to a well known engineering university, and we hard core engineers used to look down of the athletes taking management majors, now I look at my linkedin and all of the former atheletes are VPs and CEOs.

Be careful about titles. There is a great deal of title inflation in certain industries. Hollywood and Wall Street jobs are notorious for abuse of the term VP. If you're not a VP, then you're basically entry level or a step above.

It's not like being a VP at an old-line insurance company, where you've got 2,000 people under you.

Same goes for titles like "Director." Hard to tell if you're middle-management or running the entire company.

And then, there's the title inflation connected with the proliferation of startups, where everyone is a CEO or a CIO or a Chief Something-or-other.

The real litmus tests: How much money are they making, and how many people are reporting to them? Remember to adjust for cost-of-living, and be careful when contractors are claimed. "Oversight" over a contractor often just means that the person has worked with a contractor on a project.

Yeah, I'm cynical. I guess I've just read too many resumes.

yeah, my gf works in banking. I know all about inflated titles and "VP"s. but my former classmates are all in tech or head up hospitals etc....

chip_designer says

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status.

some readers think status is keeping up with the jones. I did not imply that. People of different social classification , if outside work, don't want to mingle together. Talking about the techie/mgmt parents kid with a janitor/gardener/car mechanic parents kids. And this does not happen, so people of similar classification tend to move together, as in fortress neighboorhoods.

B.A.C.A.H. says

But this is the USA

a big pot of mixed cultures.

chip_designer says

chip_designer says

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status.

some readers think status is keeping up with the jones. I did not imply that. People of different social classification , if outside work, don't want to mingle together. Talking about the techie/mgmt parents kid with a janitor/gardener/car mechanic parents kids. And this does not happen, so people of similar classification tend to move together, as in fortress neighboorhoods.

There you go again thinking like a immigrant. I'm guessing indian based on your focus on social classes. Friends for your kids (or yourself) should depend on the person not their economic background. Some of the biggest loser lazy spoiledkids come from advantaged background while a blue collar kid might be a good influence based on their family work ethic. Fyi. Jim clark grew up from a dirt poor family.

Serpentor says

Some of the biggest loser lazy spoiledkids come from advantaged background while a blue collar kid might be a good influence based on their family work ethic.

True that.

Serpentor says

chip_designer says

chip_designer says

and most parents want their kids associated with kids of similar family status.

some readers think status is keeping up with the jones. I did not imply that. People of different social classification , if outside work, don't want to mingle together. Talking about the techie/mgmt parents kid with a janitor/gardener/car mechanic parents kids. And this does not happen, so people of similar classification tend to move together, as in fortress neighboorhoods.

There you go again thinking like a immigrant. I'm guessing indian based on your focus on social classes. Friends for your kids (or yourself) should depend on the person not their economic background.

There you go, thinking like an old-fashion midwesterner :-) !

And yes, I concur with you. From my experience, the whole socioeconomic caste thinking is alive and well, all over elite suburbias, from Boston to DC. The immigrant mindset, from Asia to eastern Europe, hasn't made it any better. Instead, it's now a multi-ethnic polarity (WASPy, Jewish, eastern European, east Asian, south Asian) neurosis. The thing here is that it's not a useful thing, as many soon discover, those neighbors really don't stay friends with you, as soon as you either lose your job or have to re-located elsewhere. My closest friends, after all these years, are more from the low to regular income backgrounds from semi-rural (western MA, Maine, VT) regions or ordinary towns around the cities. I seldom speak to the wannabe nouveau riche "Greenwich CT-to-Scarsdale NY" Gucci/Louis Vitton glutch, outside of work related conferences.

chip_designer says

if outside work, don't want to mingle together. Talking about the techie/mgmt parents kid with a janitor/gardener/car mechanic parents kids.

Dude, you are hilarious. You are making remarks in jest to parody some over-the-top-snobbery and elitist attitudes.

Fact of the matter is, whether you choose to believe it or not, is that I am a techie (though I don't need to boast about it in my handle), my partner is in finance and we and our kids mingle with all types, all of the time. But we are Americans (one of us, an Asian-looking American), fully assimilated into American society and comfortable in our shoes.

Our oldest kid got accepted a couple of years ago to all of the UC's except Berkeley and UCLA, although some of her classmates from our non-Fortress high school did wind up in those places, also a handful went to the Ivies and Stanford. So her non-Fortress high school did not hold her back. She had all kinds of friends from all kinds of backgrounds, as did her friends at those elite universities.

Hey BACAH,

NO STANFORD NO RESPECT! WHY YOUR CHILD CONSTANT DISAPPOINTMENT?!

bimmerman,

Stanford and the other Elites are best deferred for grad school. And in grad school, some majors provide the support for the full time students.

Of all the whining we hear about of those grad school student loan burdens, except for medicine it's only for majors that don't add productive value.

Some of majors like MBA are even anti-productive to our civilization.

No Stanford no respect! This is price you pay for living in poor neighborhood with lazy gwailo parents. Without high API school no prestigious university will accept! Good luck to become doctor or lawyer, the only respectable professions.

B.A.C.A.H. says

Some of majors like MBA are even anti-productive to our civilization.

Amen to that!

chip_designer says

i bet most people who complain of the crazyness around fortress real estate, don't have kids going to high school.

I have more than a few friends who went to Cupertino/Sunnyvale HS, and now their kids are going to the same schools. They too dont understand the crazyness around the fortress RE. So whats changed in the HS or Cupertino what would have warrented such higher prices...

Take it from people who been around here and seen it all...

there isnt anything .. nada..zer0... i dont know whats inside these peoples mind for them to rush and push prices 2-3x higher vs pre-bubble mid 90s prices...

B.A.C.A.H. says

my partner is in finance and we and our kids mingle with all types, all of the time

my god, people really misunderstand others, and add mistake on top of other comments.

I mingle too with my gardener, with grocery bagger , with the contractor bidding on my project, just so I can get a good deal or to not sound cold. I don't want people to hate me.

But do you invite them for dinner at your house? or how about going to a golf range together?

thomas.wong1986 says

I have more than a few friends who went to Cupertino/Sunnyvale HS, and now their kids are going to the same schools. They too dont understand the crazyness around the fortress RE. So whats changed in the HS or Cupertino what would have warrented such higher prices...

your frienthomas.wong1986 says

there isnt anything .. nada..zer0... i dont know whats inside these peoples mind for them to rush and push prices 2-3x higher vs pre-bubble mid 90s prices...

thomas.wong1986 says

Take it from people who been around here and seen it all...

there isnt anything .. nada..zer0... i dont know whats inside these peoples mind for them to rush and push prices 2-3x higher vs pre-bubble mid 90s prices...

You didn't meet or talk to a real chinese or indian who bought a 1 million+ home (in the past 5 years) in saratoga, cupertino

by word of mouth, these people think there must be something very beneficial to kids going to these schools, and therefore warranted to buy a house in there, no matter how expensive it is.

and you did not see anything, nada , zero?

and you are chinese. I am surprised by your comment.

chip_designer says

my god, people really misunderstand others, and add mistake on top of other comments.

I mingle too with my gardener, with grocery bagger , with the contractor bidding on my project, just so I can get a good deal or to not sound cold. I don't want people to hate me.

But do you invite them for dinner at your house? or how about going to a golf range together?

Its you who is misunderstanding. By your definition that is not mingling. That is business, not friendship.

I actually do have friends in the blue collar field, my kickboxing/mma partner is also my mechanic.. (a good mechanic is like GOLD, esp if you have some semi-legal performance modifications in your car, LOL)
There are a few guys in my group of friends that don't make a whole lot of money (social worker)

Yes most of my friends are in the tech industry, just because start of friendships typically start out in school/universities. however, some of my friends came from dirt poor backgrounds, while others have parents who makes Romney's fortune look like pocket change (we didn't know until much later because he was so laid back and modest). Family economic background should not determine friendships. I would not think for one second if my kids wanted to befriend a good hardworking kid who's parents are gardeners or plumbers.

chip_designer says

by word of mouth, these people think there must be something very beneficial to kids going to these schools, and therefore warranted to buy a house in there, no matter how expensive it is.

herd mentality. Sheep. baaahhh. actually more like lemmings "all my friends are doing it, I guess I should too"

Actually most of them have been around for a long time, brought when Cupertino was just middle class. They worked hard to save up the money, rose up though the ranks, and maybe made some money on stocks...