David Sheff Quotes

Many think kids have lots of time and few responsibilities. And that's just not true. They are stressed and under pressure.

We put so much pressure on kids to excel in school at such a young age.

It's just become such a business, getting into college. I see that a lot in my friends, their parents were so on top of them about getting into an Ivy League school since they were so young, they were just drilled and drilled and drilled, to the point that they just don't know why they want to go.

I was planning that whole athletic slide into Stanford rather than actually getting a 1450 on my SATs.

I would call universities and community colleges and say, 'I really want to go to college. How do I get to college? What do I do?' And they would say, 'You have to get an application. You have to get letters of recommendation.' It was terrifying. I had no idea what I was doing.

By the time I got to George Washington University, I had been a straight-A student in high school.

The pressure on kids is high to get good grades. In my time, no one cared about it. My father looked at them but he didn't really make much fuss about them.

Message to all you crazed parents desperately hiring tutors and padding your kid's thin resume: Chillax. Attending an elite college is no guarantee of leadership, life success, or earnings potential.

It feels like it's the end of the world if you don't do well on your SATs.

Sophomore records are historically really difficult.

In September of 1960, I was blessed - and I'm not saying blessed in the everyday religious way - when Temple University accepted me after scoring 500 on the SAT. I was 23 years old, and they put me in remedial. I was the happiest remedial person on earth.

A deep river of must-have school mania runs through the chattering classes. There is, of course, the parental adrenaline rush at suburban cocktail parties that comes from announcing one's son or daughter as an Ivy Leaguer.

When I was in high school, I didn't feel like I had to pile on the APs in order to look good to colleges. High-achieving classmates didn't use private tutors.

My mother never asked me whether I wanted to go to college, but told me I was going - to the University of Maryland on an academic scholarship.

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.

I had, before I went to college, I had taken a few years off after high school and really had, I guess in those days, I had no intentions of going to college.

These ivy league students are in the upper echelon of the college boards and had great opportunity in front of them regardless of where they go to college. Its in their very nature and it is something they expect.

Before high school ended, I started applying to college. It really wasn't even a choice because of the brainwashing of my parents.

I turned down a scholarship to Yale. The problem with college is that there's a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you'll never be successful.

My public school teachers did a great job of saying, 'Check this out. You're qualified for this. You should explore these opportunities.' They're the ones who said, 'You know, apply to Harvard. You might be a good fit here.'

Currently, only 70 percent of our high school students earn diplomas with their peers, and less than one-third of our high school students graduate prepared for success in a four-year college.

The SAT plays an important role in helping admissions officers around the country sort out students, well-deserving students from 20,000 high schools that have different curriculums, different grading standards, and different ability to help students get ready for college.

I went to Columbia University because I knew I wanted to go to a school that was academically rigorous. I prided myself on getting good grades, but I also hated it.

I don't remember writing anything until I wrote my college application.

What college is all about is some kind of 4-year game about who is going to end up with the highest grades. And I don't mean to say that academic achievement isn't important. But it is, after all, a means to an end.