How my son got into Duke
The worst criticism I’ve ever received from an editor is “it sounds like ChatGPT wrote this.” But as soon as Melissa told me that I thought: she’s right. Unfortunately, she said this about the post I wrote about my son getting into Duke. So I’m trying again because I need to tell you that he was homeschooled since first grade, and he had a traumatic brain injury in high school, and I’m completely thrilled for him that he got into his first-choice college.
And I also need to tell you one more thing. This is a message for everyone who told me I should have just sent him to school instead of spending way too much money on tutors: fuck off. He got a full scholarship. It’s true that I spent a huge amounts of money on homeschooling, but Duke’s tuition is $360,000.
Back to my rejected post about Duke. I was planning to take 500 victory laps which is how long it would take to tell you how great I am while pretending to make it all about my kid and not about me. But I can’t do that because what I learned from hearing I wrote something like ChatGPT is that the more general a person’s writing is, the more likely AI could have written it.
If we write very specific, based on our own experience — with a person, idea or process, for example — then AI can’t know enough about it to write about it.
In the olden days — the 2000s — I accepted guest posts on my blog. I used to tell people that for me to post it they needed to have these three things:
1. A fresh opinion that I can’t find online
2. A personal angle that shows me why they’re writing about the topic
3. A takeaway for the reader to make their life better.
Only about 5% of people who inquired about guest posts could actually meet my requirements for guest posts. Frankly, I can’t really meet the requirements either: Melissa throws out most of what I write because it’s missing one of those three things.
But sometimes I sneak. I tell myself I’m so funny/smart/insightful that I don’t need all three items. Those post never do well. We intuitively know to stay away from stuff that sounds like AI — in fact my blog is evidence that we have intuitively known this even before there was AI. Because before there was AI there was still really shitty writing.
Back when my son first started homeschooling I read that Stanford accepts 5% of applicants but 27% of homeschoolers. It makes total sense. You can’t stand out by doing what school tells you to do. You can only show you’re one of the kids who is good at school. Top colleges look for kids who are remarkable, but most people are scared to be remarkable (and that sounds like, How will you teach math? and How will he socialize? and Practicing that much isn’t good for a kid his age!)
Additionally, college applications give school counselors outsized power over which students in their school get accepted where. But with a homeschooled kid, the parent is the school counselor. This completely undermines the impact of school counselor on the application so the student can shine on their own — no mediator.
You’ll never read that on ChatGPT. Because it’s trained to not say anything controversial.
Someone recommended to my son that he practice writing papers over the summer because Duke will be a lot more difficult than homeschooling.
My son said, “I don’t need to practice. I’ll do the triple AI approach: ask ChatGPT write the paper, tell ChatGPT to rewrite the paper to not sound like ChatGPT, and then use ChatGPT to check the grammar.”
I am so excited to watch my son in this next phase of his life.
Good thoughts on AI. Love this blog. Congrats to your son!
Thanks, Kitty. I’ve been talking with you so long via the blog — it feels like you were there the whole way with me :)
Peneope
How did a white kid from a higher income background get a free ride to Duke? If you don’t mind my asking. Congrats! I am fascinated by homeschooling but my older son won’t listen to me or do what I say so it’s a nonstarter.
We are not higher income. At Duke higher income is above $150K/year. (This is a good time to remind everyone, though, that when women get divorced, their standard of living goes down every single year while they’re raising kids.)
So he got financial aid to go to Duke because you can’t afford it (a totally normal thing for very expensive private universities)? Or he got a “full ride” merit scholarship for being an exceptional applicant?
TLDR: I don’t know. The school hasn’t given him break down yet.
But here’s a bit about how low-income vs merit works:
The College Board promotes low-income high performers to schools because there are not enough of those kids. The College Board also sends schools the names of high performers in low-income zip codes. (I think my kids got on those lists because we have lived in low-income zip codes.) If a college thinks a low-income student is exceptional, they start courting the kid sophomore year – or earlier, with summer programs.
Aid is not divided into merit and need. That’s an old-fashioned way to think about it. Especially because parents don’t determine the need, the school does. An example of my first kid: In order to get to the full amount we needed, Y received an honors scholarship. Those are merit based, supposedly, but the school gives those scholarships to kids they really want at the school who wouldn’t otherwise come.
To that point: Y has a friend who is a track star and POC. She could have been honors but she is not in the honors program because she had other scholarships. (She’s still a top STEM student.) So it’s not cut and dried — is it merit or need.
I think you’re looking for some sort of secret to the whole process, yes?
Being a low-income high performer is like being a high-performer from Idaho. The rules are different because there are so few kids like that applying, but the schools report their percent of low-income students and they report if they have kids from all 50 states. So each kid has a value to the school – regardless of how they pay the kid to go there.
Also, there are relatively few kids who go to Duke from New England and especially MA. And he’s Latino, which is also difficult for Duke to attract.
Did this answer your question?
Penelope
Re: “You can’t stand out by doing what school tells you to do.”
One thing I observed about traditional students transitioning to homeschooling or self-directed learning is that in the first few weeks, they seemingly can’t believe that they are going to be allowed to do whatever they want to do. They spend a lot of time waiting for someone to tell them what to do or tell them “no” you can’t do that. But after a couple of weeks they “dip their toe into the water” and come up with an idea. The parent’s role is to provide resources; supplies, mentors, apprenticeships, etc to facilitate the idea and stay out of the way.
This is SO SO true. It’s actually incredible to watch. School systematically trains kids to assume they don’t have good ideas about what to do with their time. You really see how this affects kids when they start homeschooling. They are often paralyzed. Or they play video games for a month nonstop. This is because they are exhausted from being told what to do with their time so they trained themselves to ignore the instinct to self-direct.
So ironic that colleges are looking for kids who DON’T have this trait.
Penelope
Wow, such a change in your son’s status. Hurray!
I suppose that last paragraph, “My son said…” is him joking because of his self confidence. When I joke it helps to wink or wave a tiny flag or something so people know.
RE STUDENTS In my area the university requirement for a compulsory English test for freshmen—that they have to pay for—began about when people were graduating high school, including their English courses, without years of a second language, after that requirement had been dropped by the university. Coincidence? But they still needed algebra. I got out of paying to take the English test by showing my newspaper clippings to the registrar. (For algebra I took a campus remedial theory course with optional Saturday help classes)
So I think your son is fine. Say, a local media trades course screened out young high school graduates from even applying by having them do an essay as part of their application. A student told me. How sad, but again that wouldn’t apply to your son, praise the lord.
I would add that if he is having trouble around midterms then go see a counsellor, (most students don’t) without waiting until finals. Too many students think they “just have to try harder” when in fact there are skills they don’t know: Such as scheduling recreation time. Also they may attribute themselves as being too fearful or too lazy. A better word is from sports: “too pressured” and of course there are classic fixes for that, as you would know, with your sports background.
RE CHATGTP Another thing a machine can’t do is humour, as opposed to professional jokes. I think that if a professor was asked (frame it as avoiding chatgtp) then he would allow a personal humour voice to an academic paper, if only to break up the prof’s monotony. I do so, for real world presentations and essays, because otherwise “The readers might not be bored, but I sure would be.”
Congratulations Penelope to you and your son! Those are great hurdles to overcome (first choice and full scholarship) and with it a great confidence booster that will help with any future challenges. You did a good job of being a good role model and teacher of resilience for both of your sons. As for ChatGPT, I haven’t used it. I haven’t found it necessary or compelling enough … yet. I can imagine though that the day will come when I do start using it and wonder what took so long.
“Stanford accepts 5% of applicants but 27% of homeschoolers”
Link behind the link is broken so I can’t verify, but I suspect this is comparing two different populations. All applicants are not really the same as “people who can afford to and choose to home school.” I’d bet it’s a lot closer when you compare acceptance rates to paid private schools.
DV, I went back to Penelope’s earlier post and discovered as you did that the link to http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1011320109.html?FMT=AI&pubnum=1511345 was broken. However, I then did a search on that page by entering the publication number 1511345 and found the paper that references the 27% of homeschoolers figure. It’s at https://www.proquest.com/docview/1011320109/C1BF27B9F73B47ABPQ/1?sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses I searched for Stanford and found it on page 28 – 29 of 113.
I love that you found that, Mark. You’re a link-digging master. Thank you so much. I’m updating the link now.
Penelope
Just wanted to say that most homeschoolers cannot “afford” to homeschool. Most of us are sacrificing on one income. It’s a tough decision. I have been homeschooling for 15 years and have many, many friends who have been homeschooling longer. Not sure where the idea came from that homeschoolers have more disposable income. Many of us are broke.
Yeah, I think it’s a problem that homeschooling costs a lot of money but the people who are asking for help/advice homeschooling don’t have a lot of money. I mean, people who have plenty of money can just hire tutors, mentors, and anyone else who can help the kid explore the world to find their place. (I’m thinking here of Siri Cruise or Angelina Jolie’s kids — they have alternative educations that are phenomenal.)
The “homeschool recovery” group on Reddit is huge. It’s kids in their 20s and 30s talking about how poorly educated they were. I expected the people to be talking about super religious parents who didn’t want the kids to be educated. But actually the people who are complaining about having been homeschooled were mostly disappointed that their parents didn’t take more initiative and responsibility as the kids got older. I hear that as parents do not have the mental/emotional energy to be responsible for their kids’ education along with everything else the parent is responsible for.
Congratulations!
That.Is.Awesome! As a homeschooler myself, you make our community proud! And since my kid literally just brained himself on a cement wall, I’m even more encouraged. (I also totally resonated with your old post about neurologists suspecting homeschooled kids might need to be saved, because I couldn’t help feeling the test they gave my kid to see if his brain was still functioning was also doubling as a proof-of-learning test. Anyway. The nurses were won over by home-schooling in the end.) Congratulations!
Oh my gosh!! What incredible news. Congrats to you both!
Also his AI approach! hahha
Big Congrats to you both! Also, I love you posting news on April 1st for spice.
Uni in Sweden is free, you even get paid to go. So it’s devalued in the sense of not really doing much for a resume but you can eff around a lot taking classes just for fun.
I always loved learning and detested proving I had learned it.
Congratulations! Of course your son deserves lots of kudos, but so do you! Parents have to guide their kids’ education. There is so much to do, like picking out tutors and exposing them to new opportunities.
Does this mean that your son is healthy enough to go to Duke? If he needed more time to heal, he could probably postpone acceptance by a year. If he IS healthy, then that is amazing. Is he playing the chelli again?
Congratulations!! So awesome for him!! What is he going to take?
I get annoyed at the middle class saying that university is normal and expected. According to science, only a minority will have an above average I.Q., and so, to me, only a minority could go on to post secondary. (Unless standards are lowered to help people escape conscription)
Dajana above mentions Swedish free education and resumes. Here in North America, visionary Jane Jacobs said in her last book that we have arranged our society to have a degree be a free screening device for Human Resources. I thought: Oh, so that’s why our parents say it doesn’t matter what your piece of paper is in.
I suppose the thinking is that anyone too unsuitable for white collar team work just won’t make it through to graduation.
Penelope, I think your son, used to real world restaurants, will be surprised by how many “children in adult bodies” will flake out on group work. It is never too early to think about how to handle such fellow students.
It’s true, kids with a dead-average IQ of 100 will struggle with post-secondary education. Med students need at least 125. Cops aren’t hired if they have more than 104. It’s a funny metric.
Congratulations to both of you! What do you think was the determining factor/s in his acceptance? Did he have a highschool portfolio? Exemplary essay? His talent and hard work on the cello? As a homeschooling parent I always wonder what I should be doing to prepare for college.
Speaking of Duke and costs, today a Canadian retired teacher told me that a Canadian friend from Duke told him (verified by my web search) that Duke no longer offers an Education ( teaching) Degree because there is not enough money in that field to pay back a student loan.
Wow, the economy has sure changed since my day.
To a Canadian like me, it’s weird how the US undervalues/underpays school teachers. In Canada, schoolteachers don’t have to moonlight like the childless hero on TV’s Breaking Bad does, working in a car wash. Or maybe that’s just Hollywood.
Not just Hollywood, unfortunately. There are parts of the country where teachers mooonlight at Hooters, the gas station, the Dollar Store, Only Fans, etc., in order to cobble together a living wage. It’s obscene.
The US is up against a big and probably irreversible teacher shortage — there aren’t enough people in the pipeline. It goes beyond low salaries; even well-paid teachers are dipping out because of how disrespected they have become (they were scapegoated as lazy during the pandemic) and how unsafe the work conditions are — students hitting, spitting, etc. at each other and at teachers.
This gratifies the right wing here which has demonized public schools and teachers and has long endeavored to get rid of public schooling entirely. So far their outlandish smear campaigns haven’t worked, but not being able to staff classrooms could be a death knell in certain states.
The goal is for all kids to be educated in what the South calls Academies — religious schools that teach intelligent design and creationism, Earth is 6,000 years old, etc. Explicitly Christian and exclusionary. The states don’t impose curricular requirements on them. It’s nuts. Funded by taxes via vouchers. I’m not sure what the other states are going to do. Maybe there will be enough teachers if only half the states hire the ones with degrees and credentials.
That’s interesting about not having an education degree anymore. In most universities the graduate education degrees are cash cows for the institution. There are no scholarships and a lot of people don’t even go into education. I have a hunch that it’s a bunch of rich kids not knowing what to do and really wanting to have kids but feeling it’s not acceptable to say that. If nothing else, you don’t need an education degree to teach, and most people who do research about education reform do not have a graduate degree in education.
Penelope
Congratulations to Z. I’m glad he’s recovered so much from his injury that he will be capable of college work. As an old person, the times when you reported that he couldn’t focus on anything for ten minutes without getting a headache seem not so long ago. College will require a lot of focus, especially in those required courses he’s not excited about. It’s good he has an older brother to turn to for advice.
I wish him all possible success in school, and wish furthermore that his school success be correlated to success in life.
I think about this, too. He went to a college program last summer to make sure he could do the work. So, now we know he can do a limited course load for sure. We’ll see what comes next. A handful of colleges — including Duke — had Zoom conversations with him about his abilities post-car crash. I thought that was interesting.
Penelope
I am so happy for you and your son! It also makes me happy because I am homeschooling my 10 and 12 year old sons and you influenced me, and I keep wondering if I am doing the right thing. ;)
In light of your writing rules, has Google rewarded or punished you in recent years with the traffic it is sending you, relative to the past?
What happens when search becomes entirely AI?
Serious questions I have been pondering as an independent blogger swimming against the tide.
I’ve seen search become AI already. ChatGPT was sending me coaching clients, but I could tell right away that those people weren’t a good match for me. People who read my blog are great candidates for coaching, but I don’t believe they’d use AI to find out how to hire a coach.
I don’t worry that much about search. I think google is really hard to control. Right now there is someone trying to rank high for Penelope Coaching and there’s someone trying to rank for Quistic Test. The way I deal with people trying to outrank me for me is to just be good at being me and keep producing good stuff. Today I think you really have to be a full-time SEO person to worry about where you rank in google.
There’s also the issue that traffic numbers are really inflated from tictok and instagram; it’s really difficult to think in terms of making money from traffic. I think that’s why I’m so protective of my subscriber list = it’s a much different relationship than just picking someone up from a google search. People don’t measure long-term relationships when they talk about content, but I try to keep focused on that so google results don’t drive me crazy.
Penelope