I think well rounded kids get reshaped into pointy all the time. Like topiaries. . Cue Edward Scissorhands.
While there are plenty of over-involved parents treating kids like vanity projects, I want to challenge the idea that any parent involved with the decisions about how their teen spends their time is a bad actor. For one thing, activities are expensive, and the scheduling impacts the entire family. Parents should have a say. Plus those darned teen frontal lobes aren’t fully developed and may not prioritize very well. They may not understand they are overcommitting themselves and the consequences of doing so (kid in candy store - they want to do it all). Or kids who are so laser-focused on one thing to the exclusion of important life experiences. Third, I only know about my household, but my kid ran big decisions by us, and wanted our input and blessing. For over-involved vunderkids who can’t say no, parental pruning may be essential and appreciated by the kid. What I am saying is the decision to participate in activities is not as binary (parent v child) as people make it out to be.
There’s no way to really know what the OP’s personal family situation is - she doesn’t even identify her kid as well-rounded or pointy. And fwiw, kids can be both, like sea urchins. Or maybe like those jacks kids used to play with.
as is typical with your posts @CateCAParent, your post is thoughtful and helpful- and I agree completely that the choice isn’t, and shouldn’t be, parent OR child. You and @roycroftmom give some great examples of ways that parents help their kids expand their horizons and grow more fully into themselves.
And if I over-reacted to the OPs post, I will own that and just say that my spidey-senses go off when I see a parent on CC asking whether A or B is the “best” approach to college admissions. As I said in my first post above “best” for what?
Sometimes, when I see a question of “A or B for elite college admissions”, it seems like if someone has to ask the question, the student probably is not a realistic candidate for elite colleges that generally want to see A and B.
There is certainly plenty of pointy here. Our public school lets kids take all sorts of math/science electives in the school year, for example, and just breeze thru some abbreviated English or history course in the summer. I don’t approve, but plenty of kids do that.
I vetoed some extracurriculars that I didnt believe my kid would have the time or talent for. She wanted to participate in the school musical as a senior, and I refused. Enormous time commitment in a field she had zero ability, and she had enough other things going on. Luckily she would have missed the musical anyway due to college interviews.
Thanks, everyone for the great discussion! I love hearing people’s thoughts about this topic. It varies from family to family when I ask it… and people always assume I ask it because I’m doing the opposite of what they think should be done! haha! I did not mean to imply we do one thing or another, and I should have been clearer when I stated my question. It was just a general question not meant to reflect anything personal on my end… just gathering opinions. Also, ‘best’ is a word I should not have used, and I apologize for that word choice. The whole reason I asked the question on CC is:
The parents who are active here are very knowledgeable, and have a variety of experiences with everything under the HS sun, so why not ask the smartest parents online for their opinions?
Where I live, I hear people talk about how their kid did one thing (math/music/baseball), and that was their secret sauce. These same people swear that the days of being well-rounded are over and that an applicant must be a national something to get the attention of ANY top 50 college. That seems wacky to me, but who am I to tell them they are right/wrong?
I have also talked to families whose kids were a national ‘whatever’, got all As, president of several clubs, went to many prestigious summer camps and slammed 13 APs. Is this the reality of ‘round’? Is that even possible? Are these kids even human?
Something I didn’t ask about was the culture of the HS. Does this amazing group of parents think that being ‘pointy’ or ‘round’ (doing one thing vs. doing many things) is influenced by the culture of the school? Where I am, I feel like schools have great sway over all these choices. There are schools where the kids are encouraged to only do one thing but to do it very well. Then there are other schools that encourage kids to do many things… my reality, unfortunately.
I don’t have a dog in the fight yet, but I can’t imagine what hell that hampster wheel must feel like… the pressure these kids must face doing it all, doing it well, and doing it well all the time, regardless of their pointiness or roundness and regardless of college choice.
Being a GenXer I remember not even studying for the SAT. I just took it. I took whatever classes were assigned to me, and if I got a B I didn’t worry about it. I participted, I didn’t participte… no rhyme or reason. I got into top colleges. Those days are done, I think. Or at least they feel done in my neck of the woods. OY! I sound like my grandpa telling me about how excited he was about getting a radio! Am I getting old?
Thanks again, everyone!! Amazing reading as always!!
I do think the high school culture matters. Our local public school is huge. 1300 kids per class, and getting into every club or sport is a competition, so students pick one and commit to it full-time.
The nearby private school is small, requires students to join a team, and encourages students to join 3 clubs.
“Round” means different things at different schools. For HYPSM, yes, your standard in paragraph 3 is largely correct, and most of the students there met that baseline. There are thousands of other great schools where round just means a healthy interest in a lot of things.
I think to some extent yes, the school can make a difference. My D went to a STEM focused HS so she had access to a lot more STEM electives. That said, she also took AP English and AP history courses, DC language, so she hit all the core courses.
Her ECs were a mishmash of what she enjoyed - theater, piano, and sci oly. Lots of volunteerism as well. We completely let her steer that ship. We tried to expose her to many different things when she was young and some things stuck, and others didn’t.
Those days are done…for many people here on College Confidential. Remember that a substantial percentage of people here are or were on this hamster wheel with their kids, myself included (not so much with kid #2). But there are many people here whose kids are B students, or even amazing students who are pointy or round or whatever, and they aren’t buying into the rat race. And really, your kid should decide if they want to be part of the rat race or not. Here’s a thought: you and your kid can say no to the hamster wheel.
You don’t have high school kids yet, if I’m reading correctly. You have a significant influence on your child, of course. If you don’t want your child to be one of the incredibly stressed out and unhappy kids we see here on CC, whose parents push them to apply to schools they really aren’t interested in, and majors they have no aptitude for, you can help your kid by being supportive and letting him take the lead.
We also see kids who feel incredibly pressured by their peers to aim very high. Anyone who has been here on CC has seen posts from frustrated and upset kids who worry about EVERYTHING:
their grades (I got a C, am I screwed for Harvard?)
their EC’s (I only have one EC and I don’t have any leadership. Am I screwed for Stanford?)
their AP’s, or lack of (I’ve only taken two AP’s, am I screwed for Penn?)
their demographics (I’m Asian/white suburban kid and I want to major in CS. Am I screwed for MIT?)
their test scores (I can’t afford tutoring. Am I screwed for Yale?)
And so on. And the parents post these types of comments too.
Meanwhile, the numbers of applications since many of these colleges went test optional in 2020 has soared to ludicrous levels. That adds pressure. Without a hook (something beyond your control), it’s insanely hard to get into HYPSM and their peers. Most kids are unhooked. There’s also nothing you can do about institutional needs because each year, a college’s institutional needs might be different. You might be interested in this: Why it's so hard to get into an under 15% acceptance rate school
The key to sanity and making sure your child has a reasonably happy high school experience is to have a balanced list of colleges. That doesn’t mean Johnny applies to 20 reaches and 1 safety that he might hate. That means doing research and figuring out which colleges might be appropriate for your child based on his stats, your budget, and him liking the school. Don’t apply to a college just because it’s really hard to get in or because of its ranking in a defunct news magazine.
It’s all good @collegemom3717 - I get what you are saying. This parenting stuff is so darned hard, and it is always a good idea to take a step back and remind ourselves what it is all about.
I have a pointy kid who just refuses to be rounded. We have encouraged him to get involved in some other things but he insists that he just wants to concentrate on his point and his school work and there is nothing I can do to get him to think otherwise. From what I have experienced with kids ahead of him, there are very well wounded kids who do great in college admissions, pointy kids that do great, and some that do poorly. So I am letting him be himself, enjoy his spike and making sure he experiences whatever he wants.
I think that depends a lot on what you consider “top colleges”. A kid in North Carolina could definitely get into UNC Chapel Hill with a B on their transcript and not studying for the SAT or ACT, but an out of state student might not.
More seriously, the most selective schools generally aren’t looking for unhooked well-rounded students with no spikes, because there’re simply too many of them. In other words, an unhooked applicant needs a spike (or preferable two) to be noticed by these schools.
A quick anecdote told by an admission officer at an Ivy League college when asked this question:
His short answer is to let kids do whatever they enjoy – if they end up well rounded or spiked it is all good. His relayed one quick story about a student who played the harp and that became the spike that this adcom thought the student expected to help with college admissions. The student had targeted the college this particular adcom worked for and applied ED. As it turned out that particular school had a harp player come the prior year and was not in need of another one so the spike the student worked so hard and single-mindedly to achieve was not of value to the college at that particular time. He said he could only hope that this student truly enjoyed playing the harp and didn’t do it just to help with admissions to this particular college (he did recognize that another college might need a harp player). So this adcom’s bottom line is students should do what they enjoy as there is no guarantee that any particular spike will end up as the “golden ticket” for college admissions, especially if one particular college is targeted.
There is a difference between focusing most or all of ones’ energy on one particular activity, and truly excelling at one particular activity. The latter probably helps in college admissions much more than the former, but I think that bar is higher than many parents realize.
An important point is that the “pointiness” of a kid is something that is part of their basic personality. You can force a kid to have a result that looks round or pointy, but it won’t make them one or the other. There are kids who have one central passion, and spend huge amounts of time on it because that is what they love to do. Other kids have two, or three, or more, and some kids like doing a lot of things, but really do not like putting more than a few hours a week in any one of them.
Forcing a kid with multiple interests to focus on one will likely not result in the kid achieving national-level recognition in that one field. Trying to force a kid with one central passion to engage heavily in multiple other activities will not result in a kid who is good in all of these.
Moreover, kids change their interests, and often the talents change as well. We know that it happens in physical activities as kid grow and their bodies change, but their interest and passion and drives change as well. My kid had state-level awards in robotics by 8th grade, as well as a number of regional-level math awards. She did not engage in either during high school, and essentially lost interest. She was, BTW, a “round” kid, as much as that has any meaning, but that is changing somewhat.
BTW, I agree with others that colleges rarely prefer one to the other. The colleges at which this matter (those 5% of colleges with acceptance rates below 30%) generally are looking for “excellence”, and that can be a kid who is very good at four or five things, even though they do not have national or even state recognition in any, or a kid who has one major passion and has national recognition for it. It also may be anything in the middle, and it also may be that the something else makes the kid interesting for the college.
Your last paragraph is the most important point on this thread. I’ve long said I don’t believe in “spikes” and this is why.
Someone else stated that a kid must have noticeable ECs to get in. I don’t necessarily agree. A great teacher rec is going to make an AO really take notice. Their recommendations are incredibly influential. One, they are one of the most important ways colleges asses character, and two, they are something a student can’t manipulate.
Look at the CDS for HYPSMDJPe. With the exception of Harvard, who notoriously merely “considers” most categories, each college listed recs and character as “very important.” Admissions officers are looking for recs that show exceptional characteristics, students who are memorable, students who are “the best I’ve ever taught”, and so forth. Character comes through in teacher recs, as it can do with ECs and essays, but the teacher recs are the ones that really matter.
. Cue Edward Scissorhands.
