<p>Not all recruited athletes are dumb or have below average stats. I know a highly ranked swimmer at JHU with 4.0 GPA, and graduated top 5% at my kid’s high school. There is a recruited girl soccer player for Cornell class of 2016, she graduate #1 from her class. She knew she had a spot at Cornell since spring of 10th grade.</p>
<p>People like to stereotype…if you are smart, you must not be social (party), good looking, or have any outside interests. There are a lot of 2400, 4.0 GPA students, but a lot of them get rejected by top tier schools because that’s all they do. Once you get to college, you will find your next door neighbor is a talented trumpet playeer, dancer, 1st place at some international science competition. I just watched a youtube that someone posted on the 2012 thread. It was a piano duet played at a state competition, what was so amazing was those two people never even practiced together, they just sat down and played. One of those kids is going to a top LAC.</p>
<p>When my older daughter was a freshman, students used to stare at her when she walked into her math classes. Some guys even made a remark under his breath that my daughter probably walked into a wrong class and didn’t even know it. A pretty, stylish girl, in a high level math class? They quickly changed their mind when she consistently got above the mean on all tests. On the other hand, she said some kids were so smart in her math class, they kicked her butt all the time. </p>
<p>In college you will meet a lot of interesting people, not just smart people. A surprising thing is, one could be smart, interesting and fun at the same time.</p>