We’ve reached the point in the Lori Loughlin/Olivia Jade Giannulli scandal where it feels like just random people are chiming in and that’s “news.” Lori, Olivia Jade, her sister, and the Huffman-Macys have been pretty quiet for the past week, likely because that’s what their crisis managers told them to do. Thankfully, another professional YouTuber and “beauty blogger/influencer” named Harlow Brooks is here to spill some “tea.” Harlow went to school with Olivia Jade and her sister Isabella in LA, and Harlow says she mostly knew OF them. Harlow’s tea is pretty weak, honestly, but it’s worth discussing. Some highlights:
Harlow wasn’t surprised: “When this whole cheating scandal came out, I’m not going to say I was surprised because we are in that world,” Brooks began, adding that she was going to “share a little bit of my tea… I remember when I was touring the school I saw a picture of Olivia Jade’s sister actually on the wall with the seniors and it was like, ‘Congratulations Bella for getting into USC!’ And I was like, Wow … USC is super hard to get into. Then I remember hearing later that Olivia had also gotten into USC and I was like, Whoa, that’s kind of crazy because USC is very extremely hard to get into. So not only one sister, but both of them.”
The private school system in LA: “There’s a network of five to seven or so private schools in Los Angeles that are $30,000 to $45,000 in tuition every year. The work is literally harder than college. It is insane what these students go through to go to these schools because their parents think that they need to. They want them to go to Yale and Harvard and USC.”
All Harlow had time to do was school, homework & a few extracurriculars: “I would have to get up at 6:00 a.m. every morning and I would leave school at 4:00 p.m. and then I would have six hours of homework,” Brooks, who had a class with Olivia and often saw her in the hallways, said. “It made me think, ‘How is she doing this?’ How does she travel for YouTube? How does she have time to make YouTube videos? An arrangement with the school or something? It just didn’t make sense to me. These schools, your life is literally, 100 percent school.”
Harlow says many of the kids are on ADHD meds or anti-anxiety meds: “It’s all this stress and pressure for no point, except to say that you went to this certain high school, and I think that’s why they go. Because the rich people in L.A. want their kids to go to these schools so they can say they go to these schools so people know they pay $50,000 for their high school. It’s a super weird world.”
Harlow doesn’t believe Olivia Jade had good grades: “Seeing as I am a person who loves school and do really well at school and I couldn’t even handle the workload — I know that she’s publicly stated that she doesn’t like school — I can’t even imagine making it through a school like that if you are not committed.”
Yeah… everyone always talks about their high school experience like it was the worst time ever, but I really enjoyed myself, especially my junior and senior years (in public school). I felt like I had it figured out, I had a part-time job and a heavy school workload and I was taking lots of AP classes, but I loved it. I even felt like I thrived during those years. Some kids are just built like that. Clearly, other kids have different strengths and weaknesses and all that. I guess I just don’t believe that because the private school costs $50K a year, that means the work is so much harder or the homework that much tougher or the hours kids have to put in that much greater. I simply don’t believe it. If anything, Operation Varsity Blues has revealed just how unprepared so many of these kids are for college life and ANY kind of substantial workload.
One thing I do believe is what Harlow says about the competitive-parenting aspect of it, and how there’s a direct correlation between the overzealous and micromanaging parents and the kids needing to be medicated.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
That sounded like my high school experience and I didn’t think it was that bad. People just figured out how to manage their time. You can get a lot of reading done in the car.
I would barf immediately trying to read in the car. It is a wholly unnecessary and inappropriately heavy workload for a kid, or anyone, to be working 18 hours a day.
It’s also really ineffective. Nobody is able to focus and learn new things every day for so many hours. It’s not possible at work and it’s not possible at school either. After a certain amount of time you’re just exhausted.
My oldest three had tons of homework in HS, my younger ones, almost nothing. My older son burnt out after one year at UC and took a break. Same with my older daughter.
My younger daughter didn’t even have Spanish homework. The school’s policy allows teachers, many of whom have read the studies that show homework is largely busy work, to not give homework.
My younger daughter had a part time job and got good grades. She’s now a freshman at a well known four year uni on the East Coast which she loves. My son, currently a junior, is also not stressed by HW. He has 2 AP courses. His grades are based on projects, papers and finals. I can’t understand the schools that give loads of homework. It’s cruel.
I didn’t have that much homework in graduate school! As a former public school teacher, I think 6 hours of homework is ridiculous, unless you were taking all AP classes. I still don’t feel any sympathy for Aunt Becky and her vapid daughters. They cheated.
The problem is that even in high school, in some subjects you really need to do more work after school just to learn the subject.
Language and science and math especially. With languages, you simply don’t get enough class time to actually learn the language without more daily work of some sort. With math and science, you simply have to engage with the work away from the distractions of a classroom to learn anything. Math and physics and chemistry, for example, in my experience demand working out problems on your own and that takes time. That’s where the real learning occurs. Other sciences like biology and geology have an enormous amount of details that need to be mastered before you can even start thinking beyond just the facts. It is unrealistic to assume that students can absorb all that in a classroom.
And anything that requires writing obviously needs time away from class to think and compose. Just reading textbooks and associated materials is simply time-consuming and not easily done well at school.
So for the non-geniuses, this can easily add up to several hours of work each night for those who are serious about the subjects. The so-called study halls in high school were pretty useless for really focusing on any kind of work. Maybe one step forward would be to provide private soundproof cubicles rather than study halls, which were pointless for everybody but those who can focus with chaos and noise around them. I couldn’t.
Also it can help to schedule more in-class time in ways that promote learning better, using computers for help in individual language instruction for example.
But the fact is that learning takes time no matter how you slice it. Americans seem to often have unrealistic expectations with the emphasis on “extracurriculars” (where spending extra hours every day is accepted as normal) and assuming people can just do everything else during school hours so “homework” is unnecessary, when in some courses that’s where you actually learn the subject.
The same problem arises in college. I taught physics at a college and it simply would not be possible for a serious student to do even the minimum work without a lot of extra time each week. The Humanities courses (literature and history) had a similar problem, and they had to schedule classroom time as well as small group discussion time. Students in the sciences had to have time for four classes plus at least one three-hour laboratory each week, and then had to spend more time than that doing work such as writing up coherent lab reports and working through problem sets and trying to make sense out of the text book. I only functioned as a guide, they had to do the real learning themselves.
When I added up all the hours, my only thought was that to have a more reasonable work schedule, we would have to change the expectations about how long it takes to get a college degree so people could take fewer courses per term. There is just so much to do just to get a solid basis for learning more on the job or in grad school. But taking more time means spending more money that is already in short supply.
Yeah, I think this girl must be exaggerating. If they finish at 4pm and have 6 hours of homework, that means they’d be finishing up around midnight each night once you factor in travelling home, dinner, and getting ready for bed. That is ridiculous. Teenagers require more sleep than adults. It is also a provably ineffectual way of learning. Pretty much all of the studies show that as little homework as possible is best. Just make the homework that is given count. Obviously for maths, chemistry, physics and languages you need to practice outside of class. For English you need to read books, plays, poems, etc. But too much and none of it is effective. The Finnish system – usually considered the best in the world – has a focus on free time and little to no homework. I went to a private school in Australia and we had homework; but I also played multiple sports competitively, I was in choir, I did drama, dramatic and musical productions, I did singing and piano lessons, I did debating and public speaking. That all had extra hours attached. There is no way I could have done any of that if I was doing 6 hours of homework a day. And yet I got excellent marks and got into a top university where I got high distinctions and distinctions for everything. So… what exactly is the point?
I had so much work to do in my Masters program that I barely had time to shower for a year (oddly, the PhD coursework was somewhat lighter). 3 presentations per week, one 20-page essay every two weeks, 4 500-page 18C novels to read per week, about 10 super-crunchy theoretical papers to absorb per week and report on… Plus attending 4-5 classes a semester and writing a thesis and giving papers at a few conferences. Oh, and aiming for A/A+ grades so I could get into a doctoral program. Still not sure how I did it.
Aren’t we all given the same curriculum? I know private Catholic schools like Marymount are notorious for being too rigid and competitive probably throwing unnecessary subjects like Chinese, etc. but it’s the same for everyone. These girls were shocked that you need to do some studying in school. A lot of people took part time jobs in high-school and still excel in classes.
Chinese is actually a good subject to teach in high school and earlier. It works very differently than English, so it can help keep your brain flexible.
Plus China has four times our population and is moving on up. Being able to chat a bit in Chinese will be more and more of an asset for many jobs in many different areas.
As a scientific translator, I would definitely recommend that anybody considering working as a translator of any sort learn Chinese if they can. Depending on their area of specialization, being able to at least read Chinese will become more and more important. Back when I was starting out as a scientific translator, Russian and Japanese were considered as especially valuable to know, particularly since Americans were less likely to be able to read those languages themselves but a lot of research was being done in the USSR and Japan. Chinese is a big one now. I actually routinely translate some articles by Chinese authors that were submitted to a Russian journal in fractured English, translated by a mind-reading English-to-Russian translator, and now need translating from Russian to real English. There are huge numbers of Chinese-language research journals out there now, and the only access to most of them is abstracts in highly fractured English.
Americans tend to think languages in general are unnecessary in school, but the rest of the world disagrees with us.
@jwoolman. My friend’s daughter goes to a private school and has been taking mandarin and spanish since the kindergarten. She ‘s now in the 6th grade, reading and writing mandarin and spanish.
I somehow doubt the sisters were working that hard…
Clearly they weren’t or their parents wouldn’t have bribed USC to get them in. As for the high school workload, I don’t know. If you’re spending six hours a day on homework something is seriously wrong with either the school or your time management.
I feel like, in high schools and also certain corporate environments I’ve been in, it’s become a competition to see who can be seen as the hardest worker. The end result of all those hours just isn’t dramatically better than people who are more efficient with their time.
@esmom Yes! So true! When I was in grad school we used to joke about how it was important to do you homework, but just as important to wander by professors’ offices loudly talking about the hours and hours you spent doing the homework. It was the same when I was in high school. I had a couple of AP teachers who were obsessed with being the hardest teacher in school so it was important to never let them hear you complain about another teachers homework, just theirs lol… so ridiculous!
I don’t think you understand how difficult high school can be these days. It is entirely possible to do homework for hours and hours every single day and still not get good enough grades for USC.
I don’t think you understand my point – these people have been exposed as serious cheaters. Not a chance they were doing all the work this other student is talking about it. Their parents paid half a million to get them into college, you don’t think they bought and bribed their way through high school too?
I think that was really her point–these girls got through this very expensive high school the way mummy & daddy got them into USC, through bribery.
Her question about how Olivia managed to do all that she was doing outside of school and also keep up with schoolwork is quite valid. It is not out of line to wonder if they hired others to do certain types of work. That’s not exactly unusual for people with money. There is a market for already written papers for high school and college and it’s not a secret market. Plagiarism is another issue, teachers are now checking out the web with software that can pick up stolen material from a Wikipedia etc. Another problem is advance knowledge of test questions, which is also marketed.
Olivia, her sister, and her parents were caught lying big time and paying bribes just for college applications. In my experience, honesty is not something that is turned on and off like a faucet. If they lied so much about their college applications, hiring someone to do their homework is not a stretch.
I believe this, that Olivia’s high school homework was done for her. As we saw with the cheating for USC, a status school name was important to the family, not receiving an education from ‘the status school’.
They were probably doing the same in high school as they probably did in college…paying people to do their work for them. Maybe it was under the guise of tutors who “helped” them with their work or maybe they just farmed it out.
I went to public high school for two years then transferred to a well known parochial school and all I can say is, believe it. I was getting As and Bs in public school but worked my butt off for my Cs in private school. However, it should be noted that I didn’t have any talents worth anything. I wasn’t good at sports. I heard from several people that certain people that were athletically superior didn’t have to put in nearly as much work.
Jen, I believe Harlow, too. I went to UCLA, and there were kids there who were wealthy and competent. If you weren’t competent, you weren’t going to graduate, and a lot of people dropped out because they couldn’t handle the workload. You could buy a paper (the paper writers advertised in the LA Weekly, If I remember correctly, and put up flyers on campus), but enough of the classes were small enough that the instructor would know that someone else took the test for you. I can see someone getting away with that for big classes of 250 or more, but you can’t fake it in a smaller class, and you can’t fake it when you have to write an essay on the spot. The fakes got weeded out when I was there.
I really enjoyed the last two year of high school, too! I had honors and AP classes, lots of extracurriculars like theater and tennis, and I worked a few part time jobs on and off. It was a lot of work but I thrive on structure and my friendships do best when I see the people in shared activities regularly, which is like a built in aspect of high school.
Sometimes it was too much and I would fall asleep at my desk at home trying to finish all the homework, or be stressed out. It’s part of high school for many people. And I was in a run of the mill public school, nothing fancy. I actually found the college work load more manageable!
This girl spilled some pretty luke warm tea lol, glad she got a check for herself I guess hahahha.
I enjoyed high school, too. But I had the opposite experience. I barely did any work in high school, got good grades and got into a good university…and the workload there was a huge slap in the face. I had to scramble to figure out good study habits. I eventually figured it out but my first two semesters were a little rocky.
@esmom hahaha! Same experience in highschool, except I had an easy time in university as well. And I went to a top school. Here’s what I figured out early: some schools grade on stacks of unnecessary homework while others grade on testing and case studies mixed in with the extras. I hardly even went to class but tested very well and was passionate about the projects and case studies. Highschool and university were great fun for me.
Another tidbit: my younger brother and first cousin got into Harvard twice for undergrad and grad. Coming out of school tho… we all got the same salaries. Starting in low six figures. So was the Ivy League tuition worth it….? They definitely rubbed shoulders with some important people I’ll never hang with but that’s the extent of it as far as I can see.
I went to a private school for middle school and my first year of high school and when I was in 9th grade I realized I either wanted to go to Auburn or a state school, so why waste all this money? My private school was about 10k a year and I can’t think of a single person who went to an Ivy. A lot went to Vanderbilt, UVA, I think one girl got into RISD but the expense just wasn’t justified for what I wanted. I went to public school for 10th-12th grade and I swear the kids in AP classes there were just as competitive and stressed as those at my private school.
I feel like kids at public high schools can definitely be just as overworked as private school kids. Especially in the selective enrollment schools that you ave to test into. It becomes a competition about who can take the most AP classes.
My kids didn’t take AP classes — which I supported (as did their guidance counselor, who said they really aren’t necessary) because I didn’t want them too stressed out in high school. And they got into good universities. Not the elite ones but that was never their aspirations. Plenty of great state schools!
It really doesn’t matter which school you attend. The student has to do the real learning. As one prof in college put it, “The teacher is just the one who got to the books first”.
I went to a mediocre college within walking distance, but there were still some good teachers and a library that had what I needed. Nowadays with the internet, there is no need to go to an “elite school” at all if you are under the illusion that they have better resources. All schools can get you online into databases with everything you can imagine. Interlibrary loan can get you stuff not available electronically.
The rich have sent their kids to elite schools to make business and political connections, not for a better education. George W. Bush was not a good student. He was at an “elite” university for entirely non-educational reasons.
Then there are cases like Donald Trump, a poor student who needed to stay in school to avoid the Vietnam War but did something to get Fordham to tell him to take a hike. Dad spread money around and got him into UPenn as a transfer without the usual requirements, and that wasn’t about the education either. “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had,” said one of his profs who taught undergrad and grad students (shared faculty with Wharton, which is why Trump claims he graduated from Wharton when all he has is a garden-variety undergrad economics degree).
Younger students need better teachers than college students do. If we had a clue about how these things work, we would pay good primary school teachers the highest salaries…
Seeing teens from all walks of life, they are very stressed these days. Some schools have crisis teams for when a student has a meltdown. What the hell kind of learning environment is that? If it’s not the workload or the stress from their Type A parents, it’s dealing with bullying from other kids, worrying about their self-image/eating disorders, self-cutting, gender identity, worrying about whether they will be able to self-support in this economy (or knowing they won’t have the equal opportunity to do that). There are some who will sail through. But for so many, it’s a really stressful life, and they no longer have the downtime to just BE. People who think being a teenager is easier have, I suspect, forgotten what it was really like.
Did you see the follow up video, where she talked about how girls at the school are now threatening to SUE her? For what? She didn’t even name the school, much less do anything actionable. And then a carload full of rich girls in dark sunglasses showed up at her house, to intimidate her or something (Harlow found out they were planning this through an Instagram post from the school newspaper)! They drove up in her driveway, LOOKED at her, and drove away. I had to laugh a little at the teenage strongarm tactics. But, as Harlow calls out, what extreme privilege when your first reaction when someone says something you don’t like is to threaten legal action until they stop saying it? (side-eyes certain government figures– has Devin Nunes tried a drive-by LOOKING?)
Okay, that is freaking hilarious!!
My question is, what damages could the other girls have? She said the school was really hard, and that she wondered about two specific people. She didn’t mention any one else, so I don’t see what they could possibly sue her for.
I love that those girls advertised their campaign of terroristic LOOKING on Instagram. What’s next, synchronized hair flips? Thug life.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! Thug life indeed!!
This is getting so high school gossipy…oh, wait…
Those idiots don’t know what they are talking about. Seriously they have no basis for a legal claim and it will only make the court staff laugh at them.
I’m not gonna watch the video (I have a really low tolerance for the LA-speak of a lot of the YouTube makeup girls, sorry). But the screen grab for the video shows her comparing their skirt lengths? Uhhh what is her point, if you like short skirts you’re not smart?
Yeah that’s the implication.
Not cool at all.
She sucks because she’s entitled, spoiled, and lazy, not because she wears her skirt shorter than the other young women at her school.
That’s a weird screen grab, because I did not see that in either of the videos I watched. I wondered if I missed it when she was talking about the school uniform, and how she naively thought that a school uniform meant the richer kids and less rich kids would be on more equal footing. (She never clarifies this, but while she’s talking about having a Subaru as opposed to the other kids’ Porsches, I’m thinking her folks must be well off to send her to a 40,000$/year private school). I actually didn’t mind those videos so much. She has a bit of a sense of humor, and more of a Northern California accent than an LA one. Not that you have to watch it. Maybe that was in a part of the video that she later edited, but I have a feeling it was probably more about the school uniform and altering it so as to be less “uniform” than about skirt length=less intelligent or capable. Or it could have even been proving that they went to the same school (see, we have the same uniform skirt). I mean, I don’t know this chick from Adam’s housecat, but I think there are a couple of innocent implications for what’s going on there. We don’t know, because it’s not in the video.
Which is weird, because that screen grab wasn’t in the video. I was really impressed with the way Harlow spoke. She seemed poised and down to earth, but I guess that’s the image she cultivates
Actually…. skirt length is a big deal in private school. They have rules about it. We used to have to go into the gymnasium and KNEEL so the school marms could measure how far above our knees our skirts were! When you wear a uniform, skirt length is one of the few things you can do to switch it up. Miss Olivia, like thousands of other girls everywhere, was flaunting the rules to look hot (which is exacty what uniforms are meant to prevent lol).
Yes, I also went to private school. The implication here seems to be “look at how short her skirt is, she’s not smart like me. My skirt is regulation length.” I think there’s plenty to critique with Olivia Jade that does not include the length of her skirt.
Again, the screen grab is not in the video. Just to caution that we all are speculating about what she was trying to say there, and several of us, including me, are making leaps of speculation that would qualify us for track and field scholarships at USC. I think it means one thing, some of y’all think it means another, but it is not in the video.
The standard procedure in my Catholic high school back in the 1960s was simply to keep a belt in your locker and use it to adjust the length of your uniform before you got on a bus to go out into the real world. I assume they were just rolling up the waist. I never did it because I was oblivious to such things, but I do remember skirt lengths mysteriously getting shorter after school…
The accepted length at school was indeed at or below the knee. I once made my brother almost lose control of the car when I innocently asked him, “What’s so sexy about knees?”.
I think it might be because they are wearing the same school uniform? Shes trying to show that “See? I went to the same school because the skirt is the same.” She talks about how she thought the school uniform would level the playing field since there wouldn’t be competition over clothes. Then she goes on to explain how that was a wrong assumption lol.
Didn’t watch the video either, but I wondered if that was more to “prove” they went to the same school… like “Hey look, we’re wearing the same uniform skirt and had the same uniform,” not a comment on skirt length. However, I didn’t watch it, so maybe it is passive aggressive shade on skirt length. Oh high school.
she’s just showing it’s the same uniform since she doesn’t want to name the school
although skirt length in my school was a violation that got detention, if OJ isn’t adhering to the rules in that area, then it’s just one more way that she is not following the rules everyone else is supposed to follow
It’s trying to show they have the same school uniform.
I agree with the other replies, I think it was just to show they went to the same school cause they wore the same uniform, since she didn’t name the school, she likely used that image for a quick reference for the audience she wanted to attract. Nothing to do with commentary on skirt lengths.
I guess i’m naïve. I thought she was showing the skirts to prove they went to the same school, not about the length of the skirt.
Ah, everybody else had the same comment. Nevermind.
Did not watch video…..could it be it wasn’t about length as much as they have the same skirts to show that they went to the same school.
I think so- that she is showing they went to the same school. Harlow is in the other picture in a skirt the exact same length of OJ’s, so it doesn’t look like any shade to me. I did watch the video a couple of days ago and those pictures weren’t in it and Harlow didn’t come across as the type to police skirt lengths (and as I said, hers is identical).
Hmm. I’m sadly too familiar with life at ultra competitive private high schools, and this interview makes me think about the New York Times article about how girls focus too much on perfection/competence when it comes to school. I feel really bad for this girl, and all my classmates who chased the perfect 100 while sacrificing their happiness and mental health, only to see the more strategic B students be just as financially successful 20 years later.
I beleive her I went to an academically challenging high school where 2/3 hours of homework was the norm plus extra reading and community service was semester requirement. My friends in public school albeit smarter and in AP classes didn’t have nearly the workload. The top 10% of my grade went down Ivy League and I am from a Midwest flyover state. However I was well prepared for college and found it easier than high school.
I found college much easier than high school, and I went to a top southern private university. I mean, 4 classes a semester in subjects I was good at, at opposed to maths and sciences. I was definitely well prepared coming from a public high school, and consider college the 4 best years of my life.
My experience was the same. College was certainly work when engaging a subject that wasn’t intuitive for me, but I still excelled because I could put the work in when I wanted and make up my own schedules – even while working full time. But then again, college was also a completely different environment with better protections against intolerance. I suspect I wouldn’t have struggled half as much in high school had my teachers been properly educated on how to deal with my ADHD or if even a modicum of the horrific bullying that went on there was addressed.
I went to a private high school like that. My bus picked me up at 6:30 A.M. and I would get home at 4:30 (on a regular day, not even counting extra curriculars). It was HARD but I loved it, I loved my teachers, the girls I went to school with, the school itself – I received a wonderful education, made lifelong friends (nearly 40 and my high school best friends are still my best friends) and it made college, my masters and law school all seem like a breeze. HA this post made me really nostalgic. But anyway, I believe it 100%
There was a HUGE difference between the curriculum I received at an inner city public school where I was always in AP classes with a high G.P.A. and when I transferred to a high end private college…
I realized that I didn’t know a GOSHDAMN THANG!!!!!!!!!
Lol, Lala. When my kids were young one of the school dads was a professor at Northwestern. They had a special program just for kids who came in from CPS to try to prevent them from floundering.
Although I’m sure even back then that no one would argue that you are one wise woman!
No, I believe her. My elitist school was extremely hard to get into and graduate from. I had classes from 8 am to 5 pm, PLUS atheltics PLUS my extra curriculars. I basically slept 4 hours due to all the homework. My weekends were practice and homework. The last 3 years were taught at uni level so by the time I got into uni I was already used to being traumatized on a daily basis. I would look at first years crying or not being able to deal with 4 exams a week and I would laugh hysterically because that had been my life for at least 5 years. Problem is, many students graduate with the minimum GPA and they can’t get into college at all, or, if they do, they usually just drop put after the first/second semesters. Olivia sounds like a kid who coasts through and only gets in due to money and fraud.
I know exactly which school OJ went to. It is NOT one of the top,schools or one of the heavy workload schools. Put it this way, their biggest name alumnae are Kardashians.
Khloe dropped out at 15 and her parents didn’t even realize it for quite a while. She looked for an online program that she could get through as fast as possible when they did find out.
Kris thought it was a fun fact in an interview when she said all three of the Kardashian girls were caught cheating at their private high school. My mother would have gone to her grave with that information and still felt mortified for the rest of her life.
Yeah, I know the school as well, being from that area. It is certainly not an academic powerhouse. Not to say they don’t have very smart and competitive girls there but it’s not the norm like some other private schools in the area.
If you’re in honors and AP, and say you have six classes a day… six hours of homework a night is not unheard of. I tried to do as much work at school during lunch and free periods as I could so that when I got home from my lacrosse or basketball game at 7pm, I could at least be to sleep by midnight. I slept all weekend long. That’s how I managed.
Looking back, I didn’t enjoy high school like I thought I did. I had lots of friends and a good social life, but 7:40AM the first period bell rang and I was like a night owl. All my best studying or homework was nighttime. I went to a great public school but I did as little as humanly possible school wise in all areas. I just wanted out. I had so many credits built up I was finished everyday by 10:45AM my senior year!!!! DREAM COME TRUE! I hated all the homework, hated the early school time, couldn’t shut my brain off at night to go to bed. I was constantly only getting 4-5 hours sleep. BLAH. I get hives just thinking about high school. One thing I did realize, is that I didn’t have to work very hard to keep it average and that’s what I did! I’m happy I did because I had a great life outside school. I had teacher get frustrated with me because they knew I was intelligent but I didn’t care. Do the work to get a C/B and I’m out. Now if I could have opted for an afternoon start time, I would have enjoyed it more, or participated in more things.
My experience, I live in southern California, is USC isn’t that tough to get into.
UCI is the one that’s academically harder to get into, and the classes are much harder.
Taking good notes and testing well are key factors, if you don’t do those well your kinda screwed. Whether is on the B.S, M.S level. PH.d level depends on what you’re doing
I was wondering how hard USC was to get into. I know UCLA is difficult, but I have a friend who was a mediocre student who went there. This was a while ago, so maybe it’s changed.
I have a friend born/raised in LA has a 18 y/o at a private school they probably go early as traffic is awful could take you 2 hrs in rush hour. But her dad was a USC alumni and her nephew is almost finished there. She said it’s difficult as the school apparently wants foreign students who pay more I think there fees are $54k a year. Her daughter very bright wants to do engineering but probably couldn’t get in. They want a foreign language and not like here in the UK where you can pass GCSE Spanish but open your mouth and have a conversation and a lot of extra things as well. She said many get annoyed as they pay high taxes and not many CA kids can get in well some but not a lot. Her daughter isn’t tied to any area she is willing to go mid west/East Coast northern California.
@ AG-UK
International students are BIG business for University and Colleges. They pay almost 3x the tuition. In Canada, we have a huge amount of International students from India. Professors started complaining that the students weren’t able to keep up with the course load because their English was horrible. An investigation was done and it was found that a lot of the Indian students had cheated their way in by paying off officials in India that administered the “English tests” the universities required. As a POC whose family comes from India, I can tell you a lot of the Indian students don’t even want to study. They come as a way to “get into Canada” and then try to find a gullible girl/guy to marry and make them citizens or they take the easiest classes they can take, get a one year diploma and are given a work permit.
@AG-UK
USC is a private school so it doesn’t get any tax dollars. Perhaps you’re thinking of the UC system. The UCs (UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCI, UCSD, UCSC, UCD, etc) are public unis. They (UCs) charge more for out-of-state and international students.
It has changed a lot. Getting into USC is crazy hard. They have an admission rate of just 11%.
Ok real talk – is USC really that hard to get in to? Or is it particularly difficult for in state applicants? I applied from GA (albeit 17 years ago) and it was pretty much assumed I would get in, with my decent but unspectacular grades.
I got into USC 18 years ago. Also out of state applicant. Good test scores and good grades, but only in top 40 of my class of 300, not in the top top by any means.
Yes, it’s hard now. Up there with the Ivies. Especially certain programs. Some insanely qualified classmates of my kids didn’t get in last year and this year. And I’m not sure how much being in or out of state factors in since it’s a private school. I think everyone starts at the same sticker price.
The thing is, those kids who didn’t get into USC got into other very fine universities. I think there’s a place for everyone, as long as you’re pen to more than an elite handful.
It’s also pointless to go to a big university if you aren’t putting the work in, anyway. My two bachelors degrees were done at moderately well regarded universities, but nearly every masters/doctorate program I’ve spoken to has told me I’d be up for consideration because of my high GPA and career experience. I put the work in, and it shows, so I have no idea why people freak out so much about not getting into the big time colleges – unless, of course, it’s for status.
It really depends on what major you’re pursuing, too, and whether or not you’re going to chase it up to Masters/Doctorate level. Some of the more intensive programs (like medicine) don’t want students crashing out halfway through because of their cost and time investment, so they may push for higher GPA requirements. (And for the obvious reason that, like…you don’t want irresponsible physicians.) My English degree requirements were a little more lax (not by much, mind), likely because I wasn’t going to be killing anybody if I turned in a mediocre short story. However, the Masters program I was looking at was pickier and wanted to see a 3.0GPA at the very least, and that was bottom of the barrel.
But honestly, most of them were pretty blunt with me that anything 3.5GPA or higher was an automatic consideration for the majority of them. If you’re in the 3.8GPA range or above, consider yourself top ranked from the start. At that point, it’s more a matter of the luck of the draw about how many other qualified students there are fighting you for the position and what kind of connections they have. Connections really being the key word, there.
I think you hit on the problem, which is something I heard discussed on the radio yesterday. So many more people are applying for the same number of spots offered years ago. That’s why getting in is so hard now. Just not enough slots, compared to number of applicants, however qualified, at all the elite colleges.
Which is why we really need to stop putting so much glamour on “elite” colleges, anyhow. Neither of my degrees were from elite schools, and it’s never stopped me from working effectively in my field. What the Ivy Leagues really provide in reality is NETWORKING. They give you access to high levels of society you may not otherwise enter.
Veronica S., Yes. I went to a state university and did very well in my field, where people came from a huge variety of backgrounds, from tiny liberal arts schools to Northwestern/Stanford MBAs. It really is a combination of luck and who you know.
The thing is even state universities are becoming insanely competitive because of the sheer number of people wanting to get in. I’d be a borderline applicant now at my own alma mater these days, with my ACT score and GPA.
On one of those entertainment shows they had a clip of one of Olivia’s Youtube vidoes of when she was in high school and she literally says she’s “never there”. So that means she missed a lot of school. I don’t think anyone believes private schools are “harder”. Bullsh*t. Those kids get special treatment. If it was so hard why do so many private school kids not get into these colleges without bribes? Kim and Kourtney went to private school…that should tell you something.
It was just such a relief to hear a high school girl speak in full sentences without saying “like” every other word.
Fun fact: filler words like “um” and “like” actually allow our brains time to prepare for our next statement is going to be in free-flow conversation, as well as provide time for our audience to digest what we’re saying.
That tuition costs of those high schools…Christ. This is why private schools should be illegal. Imagine how much good that money could do when funneled into public programs.
This being said, I don’t really think those workloads are as big a deal as they make them out to be. I’m sure they believe that, since they’re parents have to justify that price tag, but any decently funded public school will provide a good education. Most of those kids aren’t working as teenagers, and they have tutors. It’s really a matter of what you want to take out of it. I went to a decent public school – not exceptional but decently ranked in the region (in the top 50, anyhow), and I’ve done very well in college. I know plenty of rich classmates of mine that didn’t, despite all of the advantages they had. It’s really about the work you are willing to put in. The people who are legitimately disadvantaged are the ones that don’t even have access to properly funded primary education. That’s the base from which everything else develops, and they start behind the rest of us because of it.
oh man I hated school. I look back and still feel the stress and unpleasant feeling of just BEING there. I couldn’t wait to get it done. I don’t know how I managed to even finish.
Watch “Race to Nowhere” – it’s a good documentary about this nonsense and how it’s screwing up our kids.
My kids attended the feeder preschools into my city’s insanely competitive and elite private schools and we left and went to public school. One child would have thrived in that environment and one would have been miserable. I now have three kids in public and one in an incredibly competitive private school. I’ve been in the business world for my entire career and an elite education does NOT give you a leg up in business, with the exception of a few industries (like…investment banking). I am watching my youngest very closely to make sure the high pressure environment is the right place for her. That gold plated degree is not worth sacrificing her mental health.
I totally believe her. I teach high school in a suburban school district and I have a student who is absent every single day (no lie) and yet somehow gets all his credits. I finally found out why: the parents have legal ground to sue the district for something that happened to him at school a few years ago (I won’t go into the details, but it is definitely actionable) and have threatened to. To avoid that, the district just grants his credits whether he shows up or not. That’s just in a public school. I can only imagine the kind of “deals” put together at private schools for underperforming kids.
I read on Twitter (I think?) that Olivia barely attended high school.
So what is going to happen to that student once they graduate? The parents can’t pull that with his college and/or work.
The parents certainly can keep pulling such things throughout college. They can pay other people to do the work and even take the tests in large classes and even bribe teachers or teaching assistants, which is how I think Trump got through school. His own classmates said he was never prepared for study sessions or class and one well respected professor (also on staff at Wharton and writer of a textbook) was fond of saying “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!” every time he saw Trump pop up in the news for one shenanigan or another.
I suspect that at the very least Trump was flunking out of Fordham or caught cheating, and that’s why he had to transfer to UPenn. He was just getting a garden variety economics degree and could have received that at Fordham. He was obviously not interested in academics, so the fact that Wharton shared professors with the UPenn undergrad program was irrelevant. He went home every weekend from both schools but Fordham was closer to home, so it made even less sense for him to transfer to UPenn just for that reason alone. No wonder he told Michael Cohen to threaten everybody not to release his high school and college records. They wouldn’t anyway, but he wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any leaks.
Olivia Jade was just as busy traveling for her work and doing videos in college as in high schools. It is unrealistic to assume she suddenly became strictly honest about doing all her own work in college. That’s not how her family rolls.
My oldest son is in a public middle school that is one of the best in our state and he has a minimum of 4 hours or more of homework every school day. Then on weekends he has several papers or projects he has to complete. He is extremely gifted and advanced placement classes but I feel that that much work is unnecessary for a 12 year old, he literally has no free time at all.
I went to both private and public schools. Many friends attended various private schools in the Valley. My experience with private is that a higher percentage managed to blow off everything, mocking higher education and got away with everything. Public schools had that element as well, however, in addition to anyone with money thrown at the ISD, those without ended in detention and suspension. Those of us in accelerated classes were challenged, most of the time, always having homework. You have students that care and those that don’t and those that ride in the middle. Hindsight is always more truthful and I don’t buy much of anything that comes out of a young mouth lol. If they’re complaining about too much work, I guess they’re not getting enough. Those of us who busted our asses didn’t have the time to posit free time.
Every time I have to talk to a parent about their kid, it’s always the same – time management and organizational skills. Some students have it, other don’t. I’ve started to put agenda calendar in my syllabus under required material for this reason. It’s also on what the student prioritizes whether it be which classes to focus on or how much attention they give to sports/theater/band. And students need to learn to play to their strengths. If the student’s strength is STEM, then why take a Liberal Arts/Humanities AP? And vice versa. A lot comes down to the parents as well.
My mother taught at Deerfield Academy and it was pretty tough. Way tougher than my public high school.
While I’m not a teacher, that much schoolwork sounds like a recipe for burnout.
I can only shake my head. My parents? Could have been billionaires, but would never have agreed to cheat so I could go to a prestigious school. Lol, I can see their faces now, should I have ever suggested such a thing.
There are so many legal advantages to being rich kids, I’m just in disbelief that apparently it’s never enough.
On a side note; I hate the way they pose together. It rubs me the wrong way.
My kids grew up in Silicon Valley and by the time my younger one was going through school, things had gotten crazy. Type A Stanford graduates that demanded perfection from the schools, the coaches and most of all their kids. I find it truly ironic that a few of the most type A parents I knew have kids that rebelled and became complete off the grid hippies, living in yurts and farming and baking for a living. So much for those incredibly expensive high school and college tuitions. Oops.
Ha ha, I wasted my night watching these Harlow vids the other day! I thought she sounded really reasonable & smart for seventeen year old…but then I got to her second video and was a bit suspicious. So, she says there’s an Instagram post from the school which has a picture of her with another with all the girls who want to sue/a gry with her?!! I couldn’t find the post or whatever Instagram is from her old school – it could be deleted but is there even an school newspaper IG account?
Also, she said…she only went to they school for a WEEK?! I mean, how can you really analyse a school if you only been there for a week….there’s not like aWeak tea, that’s like a sip of water, lol. It all made me less likely to believe Harlow even though most of the things she said made total total sense. I dunno now.
“very extremely”
“like”
“literally”
…and so much makeup she looks 25.
My high school was hard, too. Everyone took AP classes and worked their butts off. It was a public school known for its excellence. For me it was harder than college. We still had time for fun, though. I can think of lots of good times from high school.
The amount of HW doesn’t sound extreme for HS. I remember having hours of HW daily. I went to a religious private HS in LA and classes started at 7:30 am and ended at 4pm, except for Fridays. I took all the APs my school offered (tried to get out if AP physics and my principal wouldn’t hear it). Graduated top of my class. I went to an Ivy and my first year was a BREEZE by comparison. So much extra time. Socializing. Only 2-3 exams/papers per class each semester. College wasn’t difficult until I started taking advanced (eg: grad-level) courses.