Colleges for the "Brilliant Underachiever"?

Parent Cafe
41

<p>My 2 S’s represent the Hardworking Overachiever and the Brilliant Underachiever. HO was only “reasonably smart”. He just always worked so hard. He has a 3.5 GPA at a state university and holds great leadership positions there. Everyone likes him and he will undoubtedly be successful in his chosen career as an Air Force officer. </p>

<p>BU frequently pauses from work on his AP Lit class to say, “Hey, Mom…if there were a black hole and then blah-blah-blah”. The funny thing is he hates science and loves to write. He just is so easily distracted!!! He is extremely intellectually curious, though I’m not sure that will show up on his apps. He’s applying for film production, and his resume will show that he’s had a lot of success in that and worked hard on it. What it won’t show is that he was writing screenplays when he was supposed to be working on chemistry. Just like many other BU’s, he works hard on what he wants to work hard on. I agree with NewMassDad that that’s a problem.</p>

<p>He is home schooled and is taking most of his courses dual-credit at the cc this year. In 2 classes he told me were “easy A’s”, he made a B and a C. Why? He didn’t turn his homework in on time.</p>

<p>So what will happen in college? I don’t expect the same grades that his HO brother gets. I just hope he can keep it together enough (without me there to nag him) not to flunk out. He’ll either be wildly successful one day or he’ll be trying to move back home because he doesn’t have a job. ;-)</p>

42

<p>Not sure about orchestragirl, my bundle of contradictions….
Underachiever?/slacker?/Marcher-to-different-drummer?/none of the above?</p>

<p>2210 SAT, 3.8 UW gpa, strong humanities, accomplished writer and serious musician. But I would not call her an overachiever. Her hard work tends to come in fits and starts, and it’s then very focused, efficient, and almost always produces excellent results. She procrastinates, she’s disorganized, forgetful and often lazy. In some ways, I would consider that a broad definition of an underachiever. BUT… here’s an example of why I think these categories are not nuanced enough:</p>

<p>She’s not a math/science kid at all. She’s delighted when her math work pays off with an A, but she’s perfectly satisfied and at peace with a B. Her math scores (660 on SAT, 670 on subject test) are, I think, consistent with her math grades. Now, I’m pretty sure, if she’d put in a lot of extra effort – maybe with a tutor, hours taking SAT practice tests, multiple test retakes – that both her math grades and her test scores would have been higher. But she’s got a pretty full schedule, with music being her most passionate and time-consuming EC. And she also chose to take five years – instead of the required four – of the highest level math courses offered by her small private school (2 of them APs and 2 honors), because she enjoys the challenge, even when comprehension is hard-won, and has done respectable, if not perfect, work in all. </p>

<p>Now, I don’t think she’s a slacker, she’s done solid work in math. I might call her an underachiever, because clearly there was room for EXTRA EFFORT in this area that she chose not to invest. But it isn’t her personal value system – or that of our family – to require that she be flawless in every academic pursuit. She marches to her own drummer, she’s intellectually curious, she doesn’t shy away from subjects that are difficult, or out of her personal area of interest. I think all of these things are going to be evident in her total package – transcript, test scores, recommendations, and essays.</p>

<p>So I guess my opinion is that all of the elements need to work together to create a portrait of the applicant, hopefully a vivid, accurate picture that really makes all the pieces fit together. We’ll find out what the adcoms think come April….</p>

43

<p>Tokenadult noted in a prior thread," I’d choose the brilliant underachiever over the hardworking overachiever"</p>

<p>Response: How do you know someone is a brilliant underachiever or hardworking overachiever? Do you use SAT scores, which are many times unreliable?</p>

<p>There are several factors that need consideration. First, studies have shown that high school grades are a MUCH better predictor of college success over any standardized tests such as the SAT. Thus, hard working high schools students who do well in high school tend to do better in college than high SAT score students who had poorer grades. </p>

<p>Secondly, from what I have seen, college tends to be about the work ethic and more about a student’s attitude than innate talent. Yes, having innate ability does help. However, I would bet that a very hard working kid will do better than a smarter kid who works a lot less. In fact, I have never met a kid who did well in college and who didn’t work hard!</p>

<p>I have seen this time and again. My daughter and son are great examples. Both didn’t do that well on their respective SAT ( especially my older son). Both worked like dogs in college. My son graduated with honors and almost high honors and my daughter currently has a 3.7. Both have done considerably better than their counterparts who had much better SAT scores. </p>

<p>My middle son had better SATs than both my daughter and older son yet did far worse in college.</p>

<p>Bottom line: As an admission officer, I would want both smart and hard working kids. However, if it came down to a choice, I would take the hard working kid with the great attitude any day of the week over the smarter under achieving kids.</p>

44

<p>The quotation is not correctly attributed to me; I didn’t say it. I agree with most of the rest of what taxguy is saying here, especially, “How do you know someone is a brilliant underachiever or hardworking overachiever?”</p>

45

<p>My S - a talented musician who worked hard to get where he is - used to have kids come up to him all the time in HS or MS and brag, “I could have been as good as you if I practiced.”</p>

<p>He usually just said, “Yep, you coulda.” And let kids interpret it how they wanted. But what came to mind was, “We’ll never know, will we?” Or, “And you’re proud of that why?”</p>

<p>Somehow, “coulda” doesn’t carry the same weight as “did” to me.</p>

46

<p>How to identify a hardworking overachiever? Some look at stress level. They think a kid near burnout or meltdown is overdoing it. Others look at “excessive” perfectionist tendencies. </p>

<p>But I say BS to this. Some kids just thrive on hard work and challenges. Do these kids get into tough situations, perhaps a bit overburdened at times? You betcha. But they thrive on overcoming the “perfect storm” of having four term end papers (instead of finals) due within a three day span, to use a real life example. </p>

<p>I agree with taxguy and tokenadult that we throw out these labels all too quickly. How do we distinguish "underachieving’ from lazy and undisciplined? We don’t. There is no difference. How do we distinguish “overachieving” from hard work? We don’t. They’re the same.</p>

47

<p>

Binx, I’ve actually had parents that I didn’t know very well seek me out at school functions to tell me that about their kid . "I have told little Jane for years that she could do just what your kid does if she’d just work at it. She just as smart or talented or more talented or more athletic. She’s just too lazy or busy or nice (that one was about basketball, LOL) or unmotivated to do it. </p>

<p>I always first thought about that poor kid, and how much that kid must hate my D. Then I’d start thinking about THAT. :eek: It always ended up with me asking D if X was a problem. She’d always say “No.”</p>

48

<p>Reading this thread and all these definitions, I am wondering if there isn’t a difference between HIGH achiever and OVER achiever? (personally I think there might be)</p>

49

<p>From Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh speaking to Mr. Darcy:</p>

<p>“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed delightfully.”</p>

50

<p>RE: Post #45 and #47</p>

<p>When my son was at the end of his junior year in h.s., it was public knowledge at his school that he was ranked number one in the class, although he was very modest about it. A classmate who was a brilliant student (with poor social skills) was very jealous. He wrote in my son’s yearbook for everyone else to see: “If I had worked as hard as you did, I would be #1 right now! The competition will resume in September.” Needless to say, when the other kids signing the yearbook saw this comment, it did not increase his popularity with them.</p>

51

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<p>This reminds me irresistibly of Lady Catherine De Burgh in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when she claimed that she would have been a great musician IF she had ever learned. Elizabeth Bennett merely claims that she could have been a better one if she had practiced more. </p>

<p>I think that we tend to argue over extremes. How can one find brilliance in a student who has never achieved anything because that student never made any effort? That is different from a student who is lopsided and will make an effort in some subjects and do the minimum in others. Some colleges are willing to take a risk on this type of students; I suspect the large majority rightly prefer the hard-working type. </p>

<p>The worst thing parents and teachers can do is to give a pass to bright students and imply that they don’t need to work.</p>

<p>My S was held to higher standards than a lot of his classmates because his teachers knew he could do better and expected him to do better (as did we). In one single semester, he got a B+ from an exasperated teacher who was exasperated at his sloppy reports. But she also nominated him to take part in the Olympiad and for the school’s prize in that subject. He did not ask for a rec from that teacher so we will never know what she would have written about him.</p>

<p>EDIT: Cross-posted with Calreader!</p>

52

<p>Honestly, I find it base and judgmental to label kids “lazy” who are unwilling to play the high school grade game. Maybe they are “undisciplined”, in the sense of not being beaten into submission, but that is a separate issue.</p>

<p>Very bright kids stuck in class with mediocre teachers and mediocre kids are bound to be worn downover time, just by sheer boredom. Not to mention the bullying that often goes on. </p>

<p>I think a little less self-righteousness is called for and a little more compassion. Not to mention a decent gifted education system so fewer kids will end up as “underachievers”.</p>

53

<p>newmassdad wrote: “sorry but I have no sympathy for the brilliant underachiever. They deserve no slack at all in admissions, IMHO. Most of them are just lazy and self centered - see the posts above. Wouldn’t we all love to do just the parts of tasks we like? (sorry, boss, but as a brilliant underachiever, I’ll do the research for this report, but someone else will need to write it. Can I dictate my thoughts?..)”</p>

<p>Hmmm. Just imagine what kind of productivity, inventions, discoveries we might see if the brilliant researcher was allowed to spend his time researching and the brilliant writer documented such!</p>

54

<p>My daughter is one of those hard working kids. She gets great grades, takes a challenging courseload, loves a tough class, and just slogs along. She will never get a 4.0 GPA in a term, and that’s fine with her. She just works and works and works…at the things she loves. Her SAT scores in high school were low compared to her grades, courseload and GPA/class rank. She is simply hard working…and probably always will be. What is wrong with that? And why shouldn’t that be celebrated as much (or more) than the student with the perfect standardized test scores and a less than stellar school performance.</p>

55

<p>“Very bright kids stuck in class with mediocre teachers and mediocre kids are bound to be worn down over time, just by sheer boredom.”</p>

<p>Some kids are. But other kids aren’t. That generalization may apply to many kids, but definitely not to all. I’ve known very bright kids in that situation who found their own challenge. So what if a 5-page paper with 3 sources makes the teacher happy and will get an A – these kids will write a 20-page paper with 10 sources to make themselves happy.</p>

56

<p>Or they’ll write the 5 page paper with 3 sources get the A, and spend the rest of the day teaching themselves Linux and make themselves happy too. :)</p>

57

<p>Or they will get the 20 page paper back with the notation: “Very well written but the assignment was 5 pages in length maximum. Please redo.”</p>

58

<p>It isn’t a matter of celebrating or not hard work. It is what adcoms prefer. And really, it does not have to be either/or.</p>

<p>One of the most brilliant students I’ve met (1550 on the SAT as a 7th grader) was also a perfectionist. Her mom lamented that she would produce three drafts of the first draft of a paper and had to be sent off to bed to prevent her revise it once again. I encountered her once when I’d gone to the K-8 school. She was then in 10th grade(a few years ahead of my S). She was not satisfied that the comments provided by her AP-English teacher were hard hitting enough and had gone back to her 8th grade teacher for comments that would enable her to improve her A paper. She excelled across the board and put forth effort in every class. </p>

<p>As are likely to be the result of a combination of “brilliance” AND hard work unless they are handed out like confettis. But below that, the balance between the two varies quite a bit from student to student and from teacher to teacher. I remember the time when I produced a dull but well organized paper for one of my classes. I was well known for being insightful, creative, etc… but ill-organized. The teacher decided to reward me for finally producing a well-structured paper (never mind that it was probably the dullest paper I ever wrote). My classmates were understandably incensed at what they considered capricious grading.</p>

<p>As for finding a passion outside school such as teaching oneself Linux, that’s why adcoms don’t look at school transcripts only. But an adcom at a tech school will be impressed by a student who taught himself Linux and will not consider that student an underachiever; on the contrary.</p>

59

<p>

This statement, or one like it, appears with regularity in a variety of threads on CC. I probably wrote something like it myself a few years back. </p>

<p>But a year or so ago I went back and reread the most prominent study on the subject - the UC report prepared back in 2001. The problem is that the actual results don’t, in my opinion, support the much touted conclusion. In fact, the data appears to actually support the opposite. </p>

<p>What the study found was that HS GPA was a slightly better predictor of college freshman GPA than the 1600 point SAT, taken alone, in three of the four years studied, and also a slightly better predictor than SAT II’s (as they were then called) in two of the four years. The other years the results were reversed. But overall, a combination of SATI and SATII results was a better predictor than GPA. The difference between the various categories was quite small for every comparison in every year, and was trending in favor of tests scores and away from GPA. The best predictor of all, of course, was a combination of GPA and test scores, but if you had to choose just one, SATI plus SATII outperforms GPA. The proponents of the study managed to create the opposite impression by isolating the separate test forms and comparing them against GPA separately. (I’d be interested to see an ACT vs. GPA study, but I’m not aware of any.)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/sas/research/researchandplanning/pdf/sat_study.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ucop.edu/sas/research/researchandplanning/pdf/sat_study.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

60

<p>It seems to may that being able to focus and work really hard is also a talent, and some students are more talented in this regard than others. I am one of those people, I love academics, and surprise, I am an academic. Neither of my kids is quite of the same temperament, but they do very well, just not obsessionally well as I did. But neither wants to be an academic; I’m sure they’ll succeed in their chosen fields much better than I would because they will routinely have to do tasks I wouldn’t want to. All I want to do is read, write and pass on what I read and write. They are both a credit to their institutions. I think there is a continuum, all the way from the total slacker to the amazing student marite described. </p>

<p>And some kids are very very creative. So what if Stephen Sondheim or David Strathairn didn’t have the same grades as classmates. (Sorry, I am thinking of Williams. – And maybe they did.) Their are so many measures of success in life.</p>

<p>Re Curm’s post and succeeding posts: I think one of the greatest gifts I gave each of my kids was to insist that there were both kids more talented and harder workers. If S was disappointed that he wasn’t chair of the violin section I would tell that he could practice more, but even then, he might not be as talented as so and so. </p>

<p>There simply are athletic, musical, and academic superstars. Sometimes all in the same person. If such a child is a classmate of our child we should admire the nova and assure our kids that we love them just the way we are. It’s odious to demand such achievement before a child deserves love. If parents communicate this to their child, then perhaps h/she would not have to be jealous of classmates. </p>

<p>I know the parents here who do have such children love them for themselves and not their achievements, even though they are justifiably proud of their achievements. I can just feel the palpable appreciation of their children for the human beings they are. And I think that’s more important.</p>

<p>It should not pain parents to acknowledge that so and so is more talented than their child, whether it is Curm’s daughter, mammall’s daughter, marite’s son or MotherOfTwo’s son. The world is full of awesomely talented people. Let’s celebrate them.</p>

<p>I do feel sympathy for the underachieving brilliant kid. I have known many of these types, and they often feel frustrated and trapped. Finding a way to access one’s intelligence is easier for some than others. It’s not just a tap that turns on and off. It is soul numbing to always feel one could do better. Yes, we could call it laziness, but for some it’s a real inability to focus and/or confusion about how to. Why not feel sympathy?</p>