Advice for incoming middle schooler, yes, middle schooler

Parents Forum
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Hi all,

I have one little kiddo entering middle school soon. To my surprise, a lot of the incoming 6th kids spent summer doing academic drills. During the new student orientation, I met many new families. Everyone is talking about college admission, yes, the orientation for middle schoolers, but parents, families, siblings. The topic is not about activities or facilities in the middle school but topics pretty much all about academic or things-to-do in preparation for college admission.

I am shocked. My own experience (well long time ago, middle school is literally, wimpy kids)
I would like to get some advice here, does everyone start their college preparation, planning from err 6, 7th grade? Does your grade in middle school matter? Why do some families pushing their kids to academic enrichment after school classes (this is really sad) at this point. Is it necessary? would the kids burn out after all? Should kids choose middle school activities based on the “usefulness” on their resume later in high school?

A few examples I heard among parents conversation including:

  1. sign up a club now so that by the time you are in high school, you can easily obtain leadership position
  2. choose elective language class that would guarantee easy ride on AP class in HS
  3. make sure you are in junior varsity team (this is really bizarre)
  4. occupy any possible position that will lead to the leadership role doesn’t matter what that is


Does anything you do in middle school really matter or any advice for middle schoolers? Anything you regret doing or not doing which impact your college admission?

Thanks

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Yes, the chatter can start this early and by no means do you have to buy in. Here’s the deal - you can push your kid into this way of thinking from the age or 11-12, they can check all those boxes, but at the end of the day, the most elite colleges in the land will only accept 5% of all applicants and will reject many more applicants that are also qualified. And those schools may or may not be affordable for your family. And you could end up with a stressed out kid (and parents).

There are many, many choices for nearly every kind of student if you avoid the “Ivy or Bust” or “Top 25 universities or bust” mentality.

In some places kids get placed on an accelerated math track as early as middle school. If you have a kid who’s naturally gifted at math, loves math, and is interested in this fast tracking, now’s the time to do some research about this and if it would be beneficial to your kid. Many families opt out of this and their kids go on to do well in HS and in college admissions.

My advice for my kids was that they should apply themselves to the best of their ability and develop a couple of interests (at least one done in a school setting so they could do something with classmates). That thing could change over time but they had to have a couple of structured activities in their lives. And one of them had to be a physical activity because exercise is important. And maybe get them outdoors on a regular basis.

I’m sure you’ll get lots of opinions on this question. I’m sending my second kid off to college - both had many good choices to pick from. Good luck!

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Let you kid be a kid! I would work on time management skills (getting assignments in on time, etc). Make sure they read and don’t spend hours behind a screen.

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I’m in high school, and as of right now the things I’ve done that will probably help the most with college admissions in middle school were all driven by me without college admissions as a thought in my mind. I haven’t heard of middle schoolers preparing for the admissions process in my area because most people go to the state school, while my family in the Northeast has mentioned this kind of environment.
Kids who do this probably have an advantage but I don’t know how large and doubt it’s worth all the stress and pressure this early.
For now, try to make sure your kid builds good academic habits, reads broadly, gets on a rigorous course track if it’s right for them(such as Algebra 1 in 8th grade if offered), and does activities that excite them and they drive the process as opposed to you or hypothetical AOs years down the line.

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for my 4 kids who did not go to elite schools (although one is going for grad school) - middle school was the time when they really honed in on their favorite activities. Music lessons and camps. competition Dance. club Soccer. club Swimming. baseball (friends kids, not us). Drama camps. Around here (midwest) kids are developing their skills pretty heavy at that time in order to make the team > have involvement in HS, and end up potential leadership opps.

of course in MS your kid can chose new pathways and interests. but its also not a bad time to hone in on skills and interests too. In all honesty, some of our favorite times as parents that we have enjoyed the most have been watching our children do their things and developing their skills.

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No way!! Too early. Any club in middle school will not have any weight in getting elected to a leadership position in HS club. They can also lose interest or change what they like by HS.

Let them play whatever sports or music etc- they actually LIKE. Kids excel at things they like.

I did tons of activities in middle school that I had no desire for in HS. I played soccer, basketball, golf and was on the swim team. I also played piano. Once I got to HS - I joined boxing! I still played golf but gave everything else up. I kept up with music and was in the band. Now in college my main thing is martial arts and piano.

My point is to let kids experiment and evolve on their own. Please do not rush the college process. It brings on too much stress and you have time for that.

There is not a college on earth that cares about what you did in middle school.

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Such a depressing post.

No, don’t buy into the rat race. Do what’s best for your kid. Yes, kid. Your kid deserves to be a child for as long as possible. Doing all those things will not ensure a happy or successful life for your child, so I suggest letting him or her do what they like for the most part. Your child should do his or her best to keep the grades high, but beyond that, they can discover what interests them.

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Crazy! Just parents creating neurotic kids. Colleges also want well-adjusted students, not basket cases who are just about to finally crack after 6 years of pressure and no chance to enjoy teenage years!

No one will care THAT much about club leadership - the depth of personal commitment to whatever cause is more relevant. And of course, clubs will likely reset in high school, leadership will often not pass until every higher grade all had THEIR turn to put in on THEIR resumés.

Oftentimes club leadership is elected; by Junior year the other kids will choose based on personality traits, not what happened in middle school.

Sure, if your child is passionate about a sport, there’s nothing wrong with discussing their interest in JV.

Certainly, if your child is particularly talented, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging them to aim high in that subject - regardless of AP later.

I can’t even remember how many AP classes my daughter took in HS, all with A’s and scoring 5s - without any “tricks” in middle school. AP instructors know what they are doing, the class will teach everything they need to know.

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This is definitely a thing in certain parts of the country.

My advice is about your kid’s academic calendar. To maintain more flexibility, if you can start doing any Foreign Language classes or math, if your kid can hack it, then consider doing so. These two subjects can be started as early as 7th (sometimes 6th) grade, depending on where you are.

For example, your kid might take five years of Spanish (in our area, it’s Spanish 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, then AP Spanish ). They could perhaps do Spanish in grades 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and be done with foreign languages before senior year. (Caveat emptor: if they have to do Spanish again in college, they might not like the year gap. One can get rusty with languages.) Although graduation requirements here only are for 2 years, 4 are strongly recommended, and 5 is just to really help the kid with fluency in another language - never a bad thing. The earlier you start foreign language, the easier it is for the student.

This is the time to try a wide variety of interests in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades. They will change over time. So experimenting now before even hitting high school allows for a more interesting and flexible character - hopefully. There’s no pressure to excel, but explore. Colleges aren’t asking about what your kid did in middle school.

However, having your kid get used to doing things outside of the classroom in middle school develops their time-management skills. And gets them used to what club life would be like in high school.

As has been mentioned, make sure you can get them to do outdoor activities. Better for the eyes, and a great contrast to the hours of sitting down from school. Also have them try different art camps to work with their hands. The YMCA in our area, for example, had some great ones: sewing, claymation, photography. So, have them try different sports and different arts; they will hone in on what they find enjoyable.

I like @abby423’s last paragraph of advice. And what @bgbg4us had to say.

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The idea that you can plan anything for a kid in middle school is one of the funniest things I have read here.

Be happy if your kid survives middle school intact. Forget about doing much more.

Kids of this age group are making decisions based a lot more on emotions and impulses than anything related to long-term planning, and couching anything in terms of “preparing for college” will likely have outcome which is the opposite of what you hoped.

Some kids, especially boys, are not yet close enough to puberty in sixth grade that they you will be able to get them to do stuff that is helpful for high school. As for college? Very funny.

All that aside, I am sorry, but say what? They are 6th graders, for heaven’s sake! Let them have a childhood. Let them learn how to be people, rather than force them to learn how to be good applicants for the “right” college.

The obsession about getting kids into a “good college” is out of control. The idea that so many upper middle class parents have that attending a “good college” is the most important part of the first 18 years of a kid’s life is insane, illogical, and, to be quite honest, extremely toxic.

If parents are more interested in “creating the perfect Ivy League Applicant” from their kid, rather than trying to let their kid discover their own strengths and weaknesses, develop their own interests and passions, and to learn to enjoy accomplishments for accomplishments’ sake, they are, in my opinion, sorry excuses for parents.

At every single stage of schools, be it kindergarten, elementary, middle, or high school, parents should be helping their kid do their best, and succeed at that stage of their life.

@emi722 what you should be doing is exactly that. Make sure that your kid has what they need to do their best in middle school. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore the next academic stage, but only as a continuation of the middle school process. So if your kid really likes math, starting them on the most advanced math available is great, and it doesn’t hurt to think ahead about what courses the kid will be taking in high school that will feed into the kid’s interest.

As for “starting activities in middle school so that they will have leadership positions in high school”? That is ridiculous, because A, in high school, things tend to reset, and B, I will repeat - colleges like seeing “leadership”, not “leadership positions”

In middle school my kid was in math club, and robotics club, and was doing extremely well. She had a bunch of regional math competition awards, as well as regional and state-level robotics awards, and she played in the band. She went to high school, and did not participate in any of these extra curricular activities. Well, except dance, but she had been doing it since first grade, long before either me or my wife even knew about EC’s and their effects on admissions in some colleges.

This was true of all of her friends - things changed drastically after middle school.

In short, planning for college in middle school is a waste of time and money, and succeeding can be worse than failing. Worse than that - it risks ignoring the drastic changes that are happening in (and to) kids at this age, which can have disastrous results.

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To add to this

I have worked with high schoolers for the last ten years. The kids who are most “successful” in college admissions (HYP, etc
) generally fall into two categories.
-They are recruited athletes.
-They are true go-getters and they do all that they do by themselves, without a parent pushing them to do it. They arrange their own schedules and create their own opportunities with little parental involvement, beyond parents paying for things and providing transport.

If your kid is the kind of kid who is destined for a tippy top college, it’s going to be your kid who determines this, not you. Furthermore, the hottest colleges today might not be the same by the time your child is ready to apply, which is in six years. So much will change between then and now.

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These also are go-getters. We forget just how much effort and passion it takes to be good enough to be considered for recruitment. These kids spend hours and hours practicing and playing. They love their sport.

I do find the idea of recruiting athletes for a college to be problematic - being accepted to an academic institute for purely non-academic reasons. However, I cannot deny that these are hard-working, driven individuals, who are in the sport for love of the sport. Most of this is self-driven - parents can drive their kid to practice, but they cannot make them try to do their best.

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Mostly, choose academics as appropriate for the student.

However, if the middle and high school have early and rigid tracking, parents and students may be forced into high stakes decisions (and sometimes competition) for honors or whatever tracks starting in middle school.

While it is true that recruited athletes must earn their achievements, parents often do purchase the opportunity to do so, such as paying for expensive travel teams, additional coaching, etc. that may be inaccessible to talented athletes from poorer families.

On the other hand, lots of parents purchase lots of opportunities in sports for their kids even though the kids do not have the talent or motivation to get anywhere near the recruitable level.

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It will be more difficult now that Rick Singer is in prison


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I thought he is still free, with sentencing pending continued cooperation?

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OP, read this from an MIT admissions person*- and re-read it every September:

Seriously. And do your best to find the parents who aren’t fixated on MS and HS as simply stepping stones to college and hang out with them. There is really important growing, learning and living happening in these years!

Fwiw, Gradschoolkid1 is in a tippy top grad school. As she heads back to campus- excited to be in person!- she was talking about her classmates. She said that the famous college names are well represented- but so are a full range of colleges up and down the ‘selectivity’ ladder, and what differentiates her peers is what they have done, not where they went to college (still, she admits that it’s easier to believe that now that she is out of college!).

ps, I like the suggestion from @PB1961 on developing time management skills, and all the posts that are saying essentially the Montessori maxim: follow the child’.

*the post is old, but evergreen! & Chris is still at MIT, and still pops onto CC from time to time

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The only things I can think of that would make a difference in high school are language and math tracks, my 3 youngest took algebra 1 and Spanish 1 in 7th (I actually had them tutored for the algebra entrance exam, but only because I knew from #1 and #2 that the pre-algebra teacher was horrible (nice guy, but very adhd) and the algebra teacher was amazing.

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My daughter was in a magnet program in middle school. It was sort of an IB program but modified so not called IB.

There was one kid who really stood out, and we had a connection to him because his father had been my BIL. At the 8th grade award night, he won everything. Everything. Sports, music, reading a million words, president’s award. He was a good student, but I think the reason he won everything was that he recorded everything. Every word he read was logged, every mile he walked was recorded, every poster he made or committee he was on was recorded as volunteer hours or leadership. He was good at sports too, but a kid who will probably be no taller than 5’10" doesn’t have much of a future in basketball. Other kids, including my daughter, also received awards at that ceremony but he got them all. (It was truly the most boring ceremony I’d ever been to, just torture).

He knew to do all this because he had an older sister who’d done this magnet program too. He knew the awards existed so he signed up and got credit for them all.

He was the BMOC for middle school. I think he did well in the IB program at the high school and he did go to a good college. So did a lot of other kids.

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I have a lot of opinions on this and have a few more comments after reading other posts


In middle school, I had no requirements at all for my two kids, who did what they liked. Both participated in a few things as middle schoolers. My D did arty things, my S did sports. Once they hit high school, they had to participate in at least one thing for the whole school year.

Neither of them did academic summer enrichment as middle schoolers (my son would have flat out refused, lol), though as a high schooler, my daughter actively sought those opportunities for summer activities. I see zero point in making a middle schooler attend academic enrichment if they aren’t interested in that. The main benefit goes to the person getting your money.

My D loved FL and excelled in it. My son stopped FL as soon as he possibly could.

Re math, my D wasn’t on an advanced math track in middle school. I didn’t know that was a “thing” parents can push for. She had a very successful college experience despite never taking calculus, and today works at a prestigious place.

My son was on the advanced math track. He is a junior in college at our state’s most rigorous public Uni. It remains to be seen where his path takes him. He is nowhere near the kind of academic achiever his sister is, but he is certainly at a least as intelligent as her, if not more so. Getting all A’s doesn’t matter to him. He’s got an acceptable GPA, which my husband and I expect.

My point is that taking advanced math and foreign language isn’t going to make a huge difference in their lives. Your kid will do what he or she wants to do, not what you want them to do. They will find their path. Set reasonable expectations and if you can afford it, provide the means for them to explore interests.

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If you spend some time reading these forums you will find that they are full of neurotic high school kids whose parents emphasized high achievement and going to an elite college. Everything in these kids lives seems to be oriented toward that. There is a lot of panic here when decisions come out and they don’t get into schools that their parents consider worthy.

My advice: Don’t be those parents. Let your kids be kids and do what they are interested in. Value your children for who they are. Sure, you want to encourage your children to do their best, but don’t tell them A’s are the only acceptable grade and top 20 colleges are the only acceptable schools.

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