[81alum]

My daughter is a student at Gunn and knew one of the young men. 

Not that it matters, but there have been 3, not 4 suicides at Gunn this year.  The fourth suicide was at Paly.  What adds to our concern is that this is the second suicide cluster in recent memory.  In 2009 there was a similar cluster with identical headlines.  Many of the students and parents at Gunn today had siblings or older children who were traumatized by the 2009 incidents--or at least we all experienced the town's angst over this once before.

The new information from this particular article that I did not know includes the fact that there were 50 Gunn kids in counseling for serious suicide ideation.  I'm not sure how the author even found that out--that seems to be privileged information.  Also unknown to me before reading this article was that one of the young men who died was traumatized by a previous suicide--the cluster effect was quite real.  I am not very happy that the names of all four victims were published.  The local media has mostly been avoiding doing that unless the family makes a public statement, although identities do become known.

A great deal of argument has raged over whether academic stress was or was not related to the particular suicides involved.  I think that is not a terribly productive debate.  This article does a better job of showing the very serious problems in the overall atmosphere of an elite college-prep school.  In my mind the atmosphere has been terribly distorted not by the school so much as from two other factors. 

1) The parents.  The parents of children at Gunn are almost all very high achieving individuals who bring enormous pressure on their kids without even trying.  We live in a society where children are expected to exceed the accomplishments of their parents--or at least to do as well.  That is simply an unreasonable, intolerable expectation in a place where virtually all the parents are among the highest achievers in America.  It reminds me very much of my freshman year at Stanford when I suddenly became average.  My attendance at a parent meeting about college admissions was revealing--the overflowing crowd and the barrage of questions about "how high an SAT does my child need for Harvard" etc.  When the CSU was discussed the parents looked at the floor and shuffled their feet, and not a single question came up.  When they got to the Ivies it was like a trading pit.

2) College admissions.  College admissions--especially to Stanford--is wreaking a horrible toll on these young people.  In 1977 I applied and was accepted to Stanford without a single AP course and coming from a rotten school without a strong college preparatory curriculum.  In the last month my daughter has taken the SAT, three AP exams, and is about to complete 2 subject tests--in between all of her normal finals, projects, and the normal avalanche of end-of-the-semester extra curriculars.  She has friends who took half a dozen AP classes.  These kids work much, much harder than my college students and most of them lack the maturity to handle it.  When your friends seems to be doing more to pad their resume than you are, even a reasonable kid begins to feel the gnaw of self-doubt.  What the students said in the article about the competition for college admissions is absolutely true--it has become the all-defining prize at the end of the high school experience. 

I wish that the elite privates and publics would reform their admissions process.  1) Follow Duke's example and refuse to consider more than 3 AP classes from a given student.  In addition,  2) refuse to consider more than 2-3 extracurricular activities from any given student.  3) Consider either GPA or SAT scores but not both--give students a chance to show their merits in alternative ways but do not make them think their chances of admission become 0 if they get a B.  My daughter got a 2300 and told me "that is the lowest score I would accept without retaking the exam."  Good grief.  The perfectionism is rampant.

I am sorry to say that Stanford's admissions process has become one of the worst drivers of this kind of behavior at Gunn--to the point where Gunn counselors beg students not to apply to Stanford.  Last year 17 Gunn students were admitted to Stanford, and we were told 16 of them were the children of Stanford faculty.  I do not know how many were denied, but a great many outstanding Gunn students were among them.  Nearly everyone in my daughter's circle began their high school years in awe of Stanford and thinking that if they did well academically they could go there, the way (many of their) parents did.  Wrong. 

Here is the speech that I think says it all, from the Gunn valedictorian in 2012, a wonderful, outstanding girl who almost did not make it.  Almost no one in the audience knew what she was going to say.  It still brings tears to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63AJioJk...e=youtu.be

[81alum]

My daughter is a student at Gunn and knew one of the young men. 

Not that it matters, but there have been 3, not 4 suicides at Gunn this year.  The fourth suicide was at Paly.  What adds to our concern is that this is the second suicide cluster in recent memory.  In 2009 there was a similar cluster with identical headlines.  Many of the students and parents at Gunn today had siblings or older children who were traumatized by the 2009 incidents--or at least we all experienced the town's angst over this once before.

The new information from this particular article that I did not know includes the fact that there were 50 Gunn kids in counseling for serious suicide ideation.  I'm not sure how the author even found that out--that seems to be privileged information.  Also unknown to me before reading this article was that one of the young men who died was traumatized by a previous suicide--the cluster effect was quite real.  I am not very happy that the names of all four victims were published.  The local media has mostly been avoiding doing that unless the family makes a public statement, although identities do become known.

A great deal of argument has raged over whether academic stress was or was not related to the particular suicides involved.  I think that is not a terribly productive debate.  This article does a better job of showing the very serious problems in the overall atmosphere of an elite college-prep school.  In my mind the atmosphere has been terribly distorted not by the school so much as from two other factors. 

1) The parents.  The parents of children at Gunn are almost all very high achieving individuals who bring enormous pressure on their kids without even trying.  We live in a society where children are expected to exceed the accomplishments of their parents--or at least to do as well.  That is simply an unreasonable, intolerable expectation in a place where virtually all the parents are among the highest achievers in America.  It reminds me very much of my freshman year at Stanford when I suddenly became average.  My attendance at a parent meeting about college admissions was revealing--the overflowing crowd and the barrage of questions about "how high an SAT does my child need for Harvard" etc.  When the CSU was discussed the parents looked at the floor and shuffled their feet, and not a single question came up.  When they got to the Ivies it was like a trading pit.

2) College admissions.  College admissions--especially to Stanford--is wreaking a horrible toll on these young people.  In 1977 I applied and was accepted to Stanford without a single AP course and coming from a rotten school without a strong college preparatory curriculum.  In the last month my daughter has taken the SAT, three AP exams, and is about to complete 2 subject tests--in between all of her normal finals, projects, and the normal avalanche of end-of-the-semester extra curriculars.  She has friends who took half a dozen AP classes.  These kids work much, much harder than my college students and most of them lack the maturity to handle it.  When your friends seems to be doing more to pad their resume than you are, even a reasonable kid begins to feel the gnaw of self-doubt.  What the students said in the article about the competition for college admissions is absolutely true--it has become the all-defining prize at the end of the high school experience. 

I wish that the elite privates and publics would reform their admissions process.  1) Follow Duke's example and refuse to consider more than 3 AP classes from a given student.  In addition,  2) refuse to consider more than 2-3 extracurricular activities from any given student.  3) Consider either GPA or SAT scores but not both--give students a chance to show their merits in alternative ways but do not make them think their chances of admission become 0 if they get a B.  My daughter got a 2300 and told me "that is the lowest score I would accept without retaking the exam."  Good grief.  The perfectionism is rampant.

I am sorry to say that Stanford's admissions process has become one of the worst drivers of this kind of behavior at Gunn--to the point where Gunn counselors beg students not to apply to Stanford.  Last year 17 Gunn students were admitted to Stanford, and we were told 16 of them were the children of Stanford faculty.  I do not know how many were denied, but a great many outstanding Gunn students were among them.  Nearly everyone in my daughter's circle began their high school years in awe of Stanford and thinking that if they did well academically they could go there, the way (many of their) parents did.  Wrong. 

Here is the speech that I think says it all, from the Gunn valedictorian in 2012, a wonderful, outstanding girl who almost did not make it.  Almost no one in the audience knew what she was going to say.  It still brings tears to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63AJioJk...e=youtu.be