<p>My son goes to one of the top 10 or 20 prep schools in the country, and he struggled mightily for the first 18 months of high school. He always did pretty well on tests, but he was immature, had some executive function issues, and was basically not ready to handle the day-to-day demands of a difficult high school.</p>
<p>As a junior, however, he has matured remarkably and is now at the top of his game. He has an A- average this year (about as good as it gets at his high school) and scored a 2300 on his SATs. He is a three sport athlete and involved in some a few other clubs. His teacher recommendations will be terrific.</p>
<p>I'd love to hear from parents who have been through this. I do not expect that he'll be able to get into one of the absolute top schools because of his slow start, but at this point in his life he is a smart, hardworking, well-prepared kid who would be absolutely bored at some lower-ranked schools. </p>
<p>Any advice on how to make a case for my child?</p>
<p>I don’t know what state you’re in, but I don’t think your son would be bored at a good state flagship school. And I would guess that is still in reach even with a slow start.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for a smaller school, I think some good LACs may want to take a chance on a student who looks like they can do well at a good prep school. All it takes is one.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly, there is one poster, cobrat, who had an inconsistent record from a great high school (Stuyesavant) and still got into Oberlin. You might PM him and ask his advice.</p>
<p>You said he struggled mightily but did well on tests. What is his overall gpa? </p>
<p>Does your school have Naviance? That may be a good gauge of some possibilities. One thing to look for isn’t just the schools where similar kids were accepted (since his sports and upward trend might give him additional opportunities), but to look for colleges that seem to ‘like’ students from your school disproportionately. For example, it’s not unusual for colleges with a particular religious focus to be more generous in their admission of students who attend high schools affiliated with the same church. In the same way, you may find that there are colleges that historically favor students from your school: whether because of a historic tie or because they find the students do well when accepted there. </p>
<p>I would also leverage his qualities. Since he is male and an athlete, I would look to liberal arts colleges, many of which have a plethora of female applicants and need athletes that can fill their teams. I would see if there’s any geographic or ethnic diversity that can help him. I would also think twice about applying ED to a reach because your son needs that extra semester of high grades to help him. Oh, and one more thing: I would have the guidance counselor address the executive function issues outright and explain that your son is now doing whatever he’s doing and has been successful.</p>
<p>Thank you for the compliment However, my experience was from the mid-'90s so things may be more competitive now. I also attended a math/science-centered public magnet where most students tended to gravitate towards universities especially those with strong STEM/engineering departments, not LACs which probably helped me. </p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>What is your son’s cumulative HS GPA? What major(s) does he hope to study in college?</p>
<p>The YMMV advice I can give from my long ago experience is the following:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Write your college essays with extra care and customize each for the specific school & each of their respective campus cultures as much as possible. This is especially important with LACs and LAC like universities like UChicago, Princeton, and Dartmouth. A great college essay will help whereas a bad/perfunctory essay will deep-six one’s chances even if one has superior stats. </p></li>
<li><p>If you can and are allowed, apply to a wide range of schools to have more options. Cast your net wide with assistance from GC and posters here on CC. </p></li>
<li><p>If you had any issues which caused low academic performance, an addendum essay may be appropriate. However, other posters may be better informed as to whether doing so for executive function issues is prudent or not due to lingering possible prejudices against such LDs. </p></li>
<li><p>Have at least 5 or more teachers who know your S well prepared to write outstanding recs which speak to his overall growth and development as a student and person beyond a reiteration of his transcript and GC report. Make sure without appearing to be too pushy that they submit those recs at or preferably before the application deadline.</p></li>
<li><p>If you can get an interview for a given college…especially an LAC, take it and use it as an opportunity to demonstrate strong interest in a given school and how you’d fit/contribute to the campus culture/community. While it isn’t necessary as with my own case with Oberlin, a good interview will certainly help. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Especially if one prepares by doing meaningful in-depth research into each college, come up with a small list of good questions which cannot be addressed by looking at college website/literature, and otherwise demonstrates strong interest in the colleges in question. This will also help the aspiring college student determine which colleges are a good academic and social fits and eliminate ones which ones don’t cut it for him. Moreover, its far easier to do this research nowadays with the level of available internet access which didn’t exist when I was applying to colleges. </p>
<p>Also, whatever you do, don’t ever answer in ways which could convey negative characteristics of oneself. </p>
<p>Exhibit A: One HS friend who is an elite college alum interviewer wasn’t thrilled when upon asking about a candidate’s low GPA, the candidate answered “Because I’m lazy.” or something along those lines. As you may have guessed, the alum interviewer friend strongly recommended against that candidate’s admission in her written appraisal to the undergrad admissions office. </p>
<ol>
<li>If son ends up at a public flagship or a directional, he always has the option of excelling for that first year or two and then transfer to his college of choice. Several HS classmates with worse SATs/possible GPAs managed this successfully.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Another thing to keep in mind is that as a son of immigrants not familiar with the US undergrad application process, I had to navigate most of the process myself. </p>
<p>While it is my opinion that your S should ideally take the lead in this process in most cases, the factor of executive function issues means you as the parent may need to be more hands-on with the process than my parents back then. </p>
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<p>While this is true, he also needs to check to see a given college is a good fit for him in light of his athletic interests & talents. Some colleges may have campus cultures which aren’t as congenial to athletes for whatever reasons as others.</p>
<p>Five recommendations seems like overkill to me. My younger son (now a college junior) had a mix of grades spread out over the years, mostly due to Latin and a freshman chem course. He had very high scores. He got into colleges in the second tier of acceptance rates. (Around 20%.) i.e. Tufts, Chicago EA (they’ve gotten more selective since), Vassar. I wouldn’t get more than one extra teacher recommendation if that, but if your son has done research, or had a job, get a recommendation from the person he worked with. Some colleges like Stanford don’t even look at freshman year grades. </p>
<p>Honestly though, if it’s a top 20 prep school your son’s guidance department will be able to help you much more than we can.</p>
<p>^^^Agree. Five recommendations is too much - keep it to two teacher recs, along with one coach, employer, or other non-academic rec. The quality is much more important than the quantity, in this case.</p>
<p>nwmom, strong upward trend in grades coupled with a most rigorous curriculum is highly valued by colleges. Of course, overall GPA will be looked at but an impressive upward trend will be more helpful than you’d think. Also, make sure he keeps up with his sports and other extracurricular activities. Selective colleges look for kids that are bright, capable, resilient, and with potential. As to what “tier of” colleges he can realistically expect to get into, I suggest you check out matriculationstats.org, and see if you can find your kid’s school there. The data is a little outdated, but when you look at it together with your school’s Naviance, you’d get a good idea of the big picture. From what you have described, if he’s attending a top ten prep school (in terms of matriculation rates of selective colleges), he’s in the ballpark range of an Ivy League school, and should have no problem making his way to a top school (top 25 universities and top 15 LACs). </p>
<p>As for “strategies”, the above posters have given very good advice. I’d like to repeat one point - work closely with his college couselor. Talk about your kid and feed him ideas on how to best present him (he may not take all your suggestions but it won’t hurt). And my experience is that CC’s appreciate your input as long as you are not too “forceful”. Good luck! Feel free to PM. I have just gone through the process so there might be something in my exprience that’s useful to you.</p>
<p>Top prep schools rise and fall on their ability to get kids into top colleges and universities. That is, in large part, why people pay for them. I cannot imagine that we can offer you any advice that would be better than theirs. If you have the sense that he is undervalued by his school, that’s another matter.</p>
<p>Is there some process for conferencing with parents regarding the college application process?</p>
<p>If “top prep HS” has an established reputation at a specific college for producing prepared students who do well at college, then that college will be more generous with applicants that “present an upward trend”. This is our son too. I discovered that the competitive Midwest LACs on DS’ shortlist were very receptive towards him, despite his lower than average GPA and 50% percentile-for-school scores. The admissions officer often noted that DS’ HS “has reputation for great students that we want”.</p>
<p>DS’ HS has half-dozen college counselors for about 300 students. Each counselor really knows strengths and weakness of said student, interests, and likely “good fit”. Counselor’s estimation of “good fit” schools was similar to our own guess-estimate. Counselor also had an established relationship with many admissions staffers assigned to our region, allowing counselor to have frank discussions with many admissions offices. That helped us too, because it allowed us to confirm “suitability” and “likelihood” before DS made admissions choices. Counselor noted importance of “narrative of upward trend”; DS’ significant improvement in academic performance is clearly evident and likely noted by GC and teachers’ letters of recommendation. DS eventually did ED at “best fit” school.</p>
<p>DS also received a nice merit award related to non-academic achievement. He fits median profile for male students at his selected school, a school I wouldn’t have thought achievable prior to the admissions search process.</p>
<p>Do not overkill on letters; it can backfire. Be sure DS demonstrates strong interest in selected schools. Don’t expect an Ivy acceptance or overreach, and frame your search accordingly with GC’s direction.</p>
<p>Is he a good enough athlete to pursue one of the sports in college? High stats athletes get preferential treatment by admissions at many colleges. He would need to get his highlights together and start contacting coaches now.</p>
<p>I should have been more clear regarding recommendations. I should have said have at least five ready so that if one of the 3 recommenders fail to follow through, another can be substituted quickly to avoid a last minute frantic search for alternative recommenders. </p>
<p>I didn’t mean to send 5 recommendations which I agree would be excessive. </p>
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<p>While this is largely true, there’s a lot that is dependent on individual applicants. Also, while they may be better about this than my urban public magnet, some students may be favored for this sort of help than others due to factors such as likeability, consistency of topflight academic performance or the lack thereof, how influential a given parent happens to be from an SES/connections factor*, etc. </p>
<p>The big issue at my urban public magnet was the GCs tended to provide much more help/attention to the top quarter or third of the class over everyone else. Definitely noticed that myself as someone who graduated somewhere in the bottom half of his graduating HS class. </p>
<ul>
<li>From what I heard from a few cousins who attended some of the top prep schools during the late '90s/'00s, children of the wealthy and well-connected such as politicians tended to be given more help/attention in the college application process from their observations/experiences than others. This may vary by school/time period.</li>
</ul>
<p>I agree that your counselor is your best resource here. My son had some transcript “issues” and his final prep boarding school was brilliant at putting him in the best possible light and emphasizing his increased maturity and progress. He had a lot of luck in the admissions process (a few years ago) as a result (also it helped that he was a recruited athlete, although in a non-revenue sport). Many of these highly selective colleges really trust the college counselors at the top prep schools.</p>
<p>My experience with the top prep schools is that the kids like your son often get into good LACs where they have no reason to be bored – the Trinity, Hamilton, Colgate, Kenyon type schools. They also get into honors programs at top flagships like Michigan. This is assuming that they don’t get into their reaches, like Tufts and Georgetown, which they may. Even very bright kids don’t need to go to HYPS to avoid boredom, especially after freshman year.</p>
<p>I agree that the school’s guidance team/Naviance should be a starting point. You might consider working with an outside counselor if you feel they aren’t supporting your student the way they support the top of the class.</p>
<p>My D was in a similar position. Rule #1 for your son is that there can be NO back-sliding. He has used all his “strikes”. We made the decision to address the elephant in the room by discussing the issue briefly in her essay (she is LD) but basically saying, “that was then, this is now–moving on”. </p>
<p>I think your son is in a strong position, considering his SAT’s and his current school. If he finds schools he’s interested in, be sure to visit, ask for interviews and let his GC know his top choices–he/she will get the word out. This may be the time when you really see the benefit of all those tuition payments. You can/should expect lots of personal attention from your school. My D was also in private school and her GC had only 25 other kids to deal with. All essays and apps were done in school. We had a two hour meeting with the GC at the beginning of the process and she gave us a list of places to start looking. Apply EA whenever possible so you’ll have some happy news by the time RD apps are due. </p>
<p>Your son will be fine. All the schools have seen his story before and will appreciate his scrappiness.</p>