Advise to help my kid

Parent Cafe
21

@menloparkmom:

I have noooo idea what you could have meant by '“is that not worth $150,000-200,000,” if you are suggesting that one pay that much for private prep.

My response to paying that much for private prep would be …(I can’t print it here.)

Perhaps you meant the trade off for private prep is well worth it since in the end one pays 150K+ for college anyway? And best to maximize the opportunity to get in to the top colleges?

There are hordes of bright students, and this kid seems like one of them, who self-study for the College Board and ACT exams, develop a discipline in that regard, learn the strategies for understanding the structure and key ‘zinger’ aspects of the exams, and do quite well.

That’s what my kid did.

22

Waiting2exhale
re: Is that not worth $150,000-200,000,

I left off a question mark at the end of that sentance. The “that” referred to what I was talking about in the prior sentance-paying for prepping for the PSAT.
But - to translate it completely for you- I meant that isnt it worth spending a LITTLE bit of $$ for PSAT prep in order to increase the chances of winning $150,000-200,000 in scholarship money?

And no- No one in their right mind would advocate or pay that much $$ for prep.
duh…

23

200K in scholarship money, got it. Understood.

Ok, so everyone does it differently, and I am not one to pay for prep because I pay for secondary school. Even so, lots of parents there still pay for prep, which makes the whole prep school cost that much higher, and I thought that was off.

24

I wouldn’t want the OP to think this is very likely. Except for maybe U of Alabama’s full ride, the tiny number of big scholarships at expensive schools are VERY, VERY competitive.

25

Well, I also paid for secondary [ as well as primary] school, but for a little over $700 DS, with the help of a top scoring Stanford student, was able to score above the Calif NMSF cut off and with his hi SAT scores, become a NMF. That in itself was worth $4000 in NM$ to us over 4 years of college .
He also won a full tuition scholarship at a U that was trying to attract NMF’s to apply.,
which was the main reason why I was motivated to pay for PSAT prep.
Big bang for the buck…
ymmv

26

“Except for maybe U of Alabama’s full ride, the tiny number of big scholarships at expensive schools are VERY, VERY competitive.”

Many colleges are expensive and are likely to get even more expensive in a few years
Here are 58 colleges that currently offer automatic full tuition scholarships for NMF’s

http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/

27

Of course, “Does not look impressive on a college application,” because it’s missing 10th, 11th and 12 grades.

His list is fine, so far. A little more each year, whether that means some responsibility or, if he thinks he wants STEM, add a math-sci activity next year. Let him develop his interests and don’t assume he “needs” awards.

28

Yes… but most of those are not very expensive schools to start with, and the few that are limit the award to tuition. I am not saying that higher scores are bad, and they do increase the chances of scholarship money. But few students cash in at $150,000 - $200,000.

29

Lots of good advice in this thread. I’m responding mainly to the OP. It is very good that your son is trying out different extracurriculars, and that he has very good grades. The #1 goal for him should be to keep engaged, with a strong academic program and a variety of EC’s that suit his own interests and talents. Anything he does by 9th grade could be foundational for more advanced studies and EC’s, but it’s likely that he will select and focus on just a few of them.

IMO he should not favor any EC just because he (or his parents) think it’s the one that will get him into an elite college. Nor should he become a serial joiner so he can count up how many clubs he’s in, or how many hours he devotes to some service activity.

It’s hard to predict that someone will be a leader or an “award winner” in an EC. It’s not just a matter of commitment and time. It takes luck and good family and school support. If that doesn’t come, however, the effort and time devoted to EC’s build out a student’s skill-set and may motivate him to learn some new things on his own.

My older child was not very gregarious, had minimal athletic skill, and was easily bored by makework in school. He never was driven to get the highest possible grades. But he got very good grades, had strong aptitude in math and was verbally sophisticated from early school years. In middle school, he placed 2nd in the state in a math competition. But he didn’t want to be a mathematician. However, this showed that he had a facility, a skill that he might apply in other areas.

In 9th grade he kind of fell into policy debate after showing up at a recruiting meeting in high school. By 12th grade he won a state individual championship (his team finished 2nd in the team competition). This was an activity that slaked his competitive spirit, challenged him intellectually, and allowed nerdiness to flourish in all its glory. It had nothing to do with math, but rewarded logical thinking, deep research, practice, and teamwork. It helped him to overcome his loner mentality.

His second major EC in high school was journalism. He started out writing about sports and ended up as opinion editor of the school paper, which allowed him to have a voice on many matters – some within the school, and some within the community. He won a couple of statewide high school journalism awards for opinion writing.

Aside from debate, journalism, and schoolwork, there was his main hobby: fantasy baseball. Like his efforts in policy debate, it promoted a habit of research and information (data) collecting. He taught himself to use spreadsheets so that he could manage his baseball teams. His early interest in baseball statistics (as data) also stimulated his interest in applied statistics more broadly. In high school he was testing statistical models to determine, for example, how much the size of a city’s population accounted for season attendance, after taking into account other factors (stadium size, team win percentage, etc.). (I helped him to learn how to use a canned statistical program for this purpose. But then he was on his own.)

In sum, we had no big plan for him and he had no plan himself to develop EC’s so that he could get into college. I don’t think he belonged to any school clubs aside from the debate team. But he had three foci in his extracurricular life that consumed an enormous share of his time: policy debate (and politics), journalism, and fantasy baseball. These almost define what he’s doing now in his career, more than a dozen years out of college. And he gets paid for it.

30

@mackinaw: Nice.