<p>Has anyone read "How to be a high school superstar" by Cal Newport? Do Harvard students think the idea's plausible?</p>
<p>I’m sure it’s plausible as long as the student has dedicated many many hours to his/her EC’s and has been quite successful at the EC’s. Ex: Nationally ranked athlete, musician who has soloed at Carnegie Hall, State/national level positions in clubs, etc.</p>
<p>I really can’t stand the whole Cal Newport fascination.</p>
<p>You can hate all you want. He sells books.</p>
<p>I think Cal-Newport would be a great idea. On the coast, a couple hours north of San Francisco and due east of Chico . . . I’d go there!</p>
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<p>I don’t hate him; I admire him for convincing so many people that he holds some sort of secret to high school success. I pity the people who think they need a book for that.</p>
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<p>FINALLY–I just don’t get it.</p>
<p>the idea behind the book is for young people to not worry tooooo much about being all things at the same time, but it is for you to believe in self, and not to forget that growing up too fast isn’t always good.</p>
<p>Daughter did</p>
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<p>The problem that the book proves is that people need a book to tell them this.</p>
<p>I don’t know who the Newport guy is, but my daughter had a successful application to Harvard with limited but very focused extracurriculars. She basically had nothing but work. She worked in our family store for her whole life; eventually participating in the buying at markets, merchandising, spread sheets, and sales. She never had time for anything else, and didn’t do this because she was trying to look good for college, but just because this was the way it had to be in our family financially. We had never thought of “trying to get into Harvard” it simply evolved from her grades and scores as something viable. We needed lots of financial aid and got it. Good luck.</p>
<p>If your one EC is “member of the hula hoop appreciation club”, then you’re not getting into Harvard. But if you have one HUGE EC, like being a superstar (nationally ranked) athlete or musician on top of being a good student, then you should be fine.</p>
<p>If anyone has any real life example to support the idea of Newport, please elaborate. Thanks</p>
<p>Deja vu… ;)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1002765-anyone-who-got-into-competitive-college-single-ec.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1002765-anyone-who-got-into-competitive-college-single-ec.html</a></p>
<p>hahha I know that jgraider, but I want to know more about it at Harvard forum</p>
<p>I enjoyed his latest book, but no one has to buy the book; he has a blog.</p>
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<p>Due east of Chico would be a couple Podunk towns in the Sierras and then you’d hit Nevada. Not the coast.</p>
<p>My older son got in with this:</p>
<p>Academic Team (qualified for states, but the way you qualify is a joke)
Science Olympiad (team made states, he won 4th and 5th place medals there, 4 years running)
Computer Science activities - he had lots of different things he’d done that all developed out of this interest - it included helping in the senior center computer lab, writing a program that ended up being acknowledge in several published chemistry papers, working for a comp software company on a freelance basis (which included some work for the World Health Organization), modding an online game and getting a write up in a gamer magazine. Both the software company and the professor wrote letters that spoke to his abilities in computer programming.</p>
<p>He also had excellent scores and was in the top 2% of his class at a large good but not great high school.</p>
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<p>This sounds like Cal Newport’s philosophy in a nutshell.</p>