Perhaps it is just the reality of job markets. Science (as opposed to engineering or math/statistics or computer science) is not a particularly good job market (particularly biology). A science student earning a high GPA at Harvard may therefore decide that if s/he gets into a top 14 law school, that would lead to much better career opportunities (and the science background could help if s/he goes into patent law if desired).
I don’t think molding yourself is a terribly successful strategy. As I referenced up thread- you could populate an entire small city with the kids who apply to Brown because “it’s the perfect fit for me because I’m so artsy”. And then an essay about how great Brown’s joint program with RISD is (guess what kids- the adcom’s at Brown are aware of their program with RISD). And if the visual arts aren’t enough- a paragraph gets thrown in about the performing arts too.
If this is genuine- i.e. the kid really is the “arty kid”-- and the kid’s applications are going to Brown, Muhlenberg, Sarah Lawrence, Bard, Skidmore and his/her own state flagship (which is very likely to have fine programs in both the visual and performing arts) then Blossom is willing to sign off on that.
But I’ve interviewed a LOT of kids whose alleged first choice was Brown because they were artsy, and then Penn because they might want to go into banking, and then Dartmouth because they loved to ski and were really outdoorsy, and of course Harvard because “it’s Harvard”, and then Barnard because their mom and GC told them it was easier to get into than Columbia, and then a whole string of random “safetyish” schools which the kid hadn’t visited and even some where double majoring in one of the arts AND the other interest would have been very, very tough. And when I lived in the midwest and one of the public U’s had (at the time) what was likely one of the finest modern and contemporary dance departments in the country, and I’d interview a modern dancer who was applying to a different public U “as my safety”-- wow. But Brown was the first choice because hey-- they’ve got a lot of boho people and I’m boho.
This is why the molding isn’t the way to go. By age 17 even the kids who have 30 different interests and directions can figure out “an authentic me”. It might not fit you into a neat bucket- and that’s ok. Better than stuffing yourself into the artsy bucket, or the biomedical bucket (why is that so hot this year?), or the AI bucket, or the behavioral economics bucket because the college you like has a really good reputation in that area so why not sell yourself?
And for the kids who really don’t know enough about what they like and who they are- go to a political rally; pick up trash along the beach, volunteer to catalog your local historical society’s collection of Houdini ephemera. But randomly picking an identity as a shortcut to get into college-- I think this is the trigger for the burnout and stress we are always reading about.
I read the earlier comment by lookingforward, “If you want in, you should try to understand what it is they seek. Be that sort,” and could not agree with it.
Then I read the follow-up, " ‘Be that sort’ who tries to understand, is open to that, able to look, observe, process." Sure, I would agree with that completely. It is practically the definition of an intellectual.
But the cynic in me still thinks, “Oh, yeah, like that will work.” Because all of the understanding, openness, ability to observe and to process observations is still disconnected from the “doing” that has received so much emphasis previously. It does not seem as though it would be enough.
Great post, blossom, #241.
With regard to your earlier post, the families spending most of their extra-curricular time on athletics are quite rare around here. There are a few, but they are outnumbered by the art, science, and natural history museum-goers, families that go to historical re-enactments (and may even participate), families that go to aquariums and national parks, and families that go to orchestra performances, plays, musicals, and choral performances. So a student who did the things you suggest would not be at all unusual here. What the student had learned from the experiences might be unusual.
There have been a lot of excellent posts here and it has been very enjoyable to read. You don’t need to win contests to get into Harvard. Most of the students there were never enrolled in any contests
Quant, I should move to your neighborhood.
And Collegedad- I agree with you. I’m not sure where the contest trope began but it is both inaccurate and probably a decade out of date.
I have never had a child apply to Harvard or similar, but I have had kids with only a small handful of focused ECs be invited to multiple competitive scholarship weekends and then awarded them. I obviously can’t say for sure, but I suspect it was the fact that their interests have been authentically them and demonstrate commitment to pursuing something to a high level on their own that probably stood out.
My Dd who loves languages, for example, completely self-taught herself to fluency in French. She was determined. As she studied grammar textbooks, she also watched movies in French that she knew in English. Then she moved on to novels. (She read the Chronicles of Narnia in French bc they were on a fairly low level and she was familiar with them in English.) She progressed to watching unknown movies in French and reading Perrault and Maupassant and eventually progressed to Hugo. The day she was sitting on the floor building a puzzle while watching a French movie, I realized she had succeeded. Multitasking with full comprehension=success!
For Russian, one summer she spent her free time translating a Russian fairy tale into English. She didn’t just translate it; she tried to stay true to the meter and internal rhyme of the original.
Those are not “out there” activities, but ones she absolutely loved and did for no one other than her own intellectual satisfaction. I think that her love of learning probably shone through in her applications. And, she didn’t do them to prove anything to anyone. She would have done the exact same thing if no one else ever even knew.
I don’t know about admissions to elite schools, but I think honest intellectual curiosity is one of the traits scholarship committees look for, not some magical CV recipe.
"But the cynic in me still thinks, “Oh, yeah, like that will work.”
So?
This thread isn’t really about one judge. You made a point based on a misinterpretation of what I wrote, to your advantage. You admit you know little about this…I’ll stop there. But as ever, if the response is continued cynicism, we all are stopped.
Mom 2, how would you ask a kid applying to a tippy top to show intellectual curiosity? Show, not just tell. Other than contests.
But there can be legimate reasons to be an “arty kid” that applies to Brown, but to none of the others.
My D considered applying to Brown/RISD as a combo art and science kid. When she was a high school freshman at her first National Portfolio day, the RISD evaluator thought she was an older student, loved her drawings, and encouraged her to apply. Made her day! But she also loved neuroscience and spent three summers performing research at a top 5 medical school. None of the other schools you listed have a medical school where she could have continued her research in college. My point is that kids are not one dimensional, but can have multiple interests.
@lookingforward Dd created a very non-professional zeemee page. Not sure if schools looked at it or not. She incorporated her fairy tale translation, some recitations she did, etc.
But how do kids show that curiosity?
Many on CC think it’s a de facto conclusion when a kid takes umpteen AP in his hs. Yet several TT dean’s are on record saying it’s not an AP arms race. MIT is on record noting it’s not about being unilateral.
And this is about adcoms/decision makers, who deal with the whole app. They rely on interviewers, who get the face to face look. But the whole app is key. It’s not simply a resume.
LF, I think I get your question now. Not sure, though. APs and classroom work are not even close to what I am describing. These are things not connected to schoolwork but done simply bc they want to know. Ds, for example, used his own $$ to buy just about every single Great Courses’ physics lecture produced. (I have no idea just how many physics/ astronomy lectures he owns.) When he DE at our local U, the profs would lend him books from their personal libraries bc he would go to office hrs to ask questions that were beyond the scope of the class. I suspect those office discussions were mentioned in their LOR.
The delineation in my mind is the difference between learning what you are expected to learn or enrolled to learn and making an A vs simply pursuing learning bc you want to know something. Self-teaching is something my kids do all the time. They don’t have the idea that it takes someone else to teach you what you want to know. They know they can find books, videos, opencourseware, something somewhere that can open the doors to what they want to know.
I can’t remember ds’s essays anymore. I know he wrote about thought experiments for one. Dd wrote one describing how she wanted to learn French in 3rd grade but didn’t have anyone to teach her, so she just started trying to learn it. Basically, where there is a will there is a way. But…maybe this is key. My kids aren’t maxed out on coursework and ECs. (My kids ECs are definitely minuscule and not an impressive list of accomplishments.) They have leisure time and use that time to pursue whatever they want to pursue. Not all of my kids are like those 2. My oldest used his free time to pursue his girlfriend or was always building something. 
He has a very different personality and is a tinkerer. (He still constantly builds things and just built a pretty amazing outdoor pizza oven/ smoker and that girlfriend is now his wife. 
)
I am not conveying my thoughts well on the forum, but there is a very significant difference between classroom academics and scheduled activities and what I am poorly describing. For me the distinction is obvious bc starting as toddlers, a parental goal has always been self-entertainment. My kids are some of the few I know whose days are not consumed by school, followed by lessons of some sort, sports activities, or adult directed time use. When there are large amts of time to fill and no couch potato tv, video games, surfing the net, etc…what are they doing with their time?
Oh well, just ignore me. They haven’t ever applied and been accepted to elite schools anyway. (Bc it is not quantitative it probably seems pointless and not “good enough” and therefore dismissive by CC standards. But it is the essence of who they are as learners that has seemed to matter when they have been at interview weekends. Intellectual curiosity is the term that has been used to describe why they were invited.)
So, I have a question for you, lookingforward. If an applicant is the sort “who tries to understand, is open to that, able to look, observe, process,” is that really enough in the absence of “doing” in connection with the interest areas? I would not have thought so, based on your previous posts. But perhaps I have misinterpreted them also.
I understand that it’s not the case that the person with the most APs “wins.” I believe that Stanford used to say that on their admissions site, and MIT did the last time I looked at its site. This totally makes sense. Piling up APs (in the “collect 'em all” mode) is not sensible intellectually.
What is not clear to me is whether taking post-AP courses in a focused interest area or two at a university is regarded as “just taking courses,” or whether it carries any actual credit with regard to admissions (I know it can carry college credit, depending on the college and the courses). A comment on this would be useful to improve the accuracy of chancing (certainly for the proto-theoretical physicist, probably for students with a few other career aspirations).
Your children’s intellectual interests sound wonderful, Mom2aphysicsgeek! (I am certainly not going to ignore one of the posters whose views align with mine–however counterproductive for admissions and chancing that might be.)
I predict that your physics-minded son will “blow the top off” the grad school admissions, even though theoretical physics is quite competitive. Your daughter also sounds like a budding intellectual. (I am smiling now, because your post reminded me of my own days attempting to learn French on my own–not as early as your daughter, but before high school. I never got much beyond “The pen of my uncle is on the bureau of my aunt.” I won’t embarrass myself by trying to spell it correctly in French now.)
Teaching oneself from books and resources that are on the internet and CDs/DVDs is exactly the skill that a theoretical physicist needs to develop. Throw in journal articles, and you have the “complete package,” with someone who is way ahead of the game. That is exactly the path that Richard Feynman took! I know that he taught himself calculus before his school covered it, in order to solve problems he wanted to solve. At the moment, I can’t recall whether he checked out the book “Calculus for the Practical Man” from a library in New York City, or whether that was the title he gave his own notebook.
The proto-theoretical physicist and the intellectual daughter that Mom2aphysicsgeek has been describing are great cases in point of students who would be perfect for what a university “is,” following the definition of a university. They apparently have not applied to elite schools. I predict that their education will be/will have been excellent anyway, because they are self-driven learners. But what would others make of the admissions odds of students with a profile like theirs, if they applied to “top” schools, taking the “definitely minuscule ECs” into account? I hope you don’t mind this question, Mom2aphysicsgeek? I will retract it, if you do.
Mom2, I think you come as close as one can to describing spark. It’s not conventional. Your family education context was/is a bit different, but your son and daughter sought to expand, not just do the usual. Their educations weren’t limited to what pleases a typical, traditional high school administration.
QM, I can’t get you to see this differently than you do. Again, I’m not sure why your questions and concerns seem to mix my statements. And this thread wasn’t meant to teach or clarify to any one poster, to the exception of others, or go so off the original topic.
For any competition a kid enters, he/she should try to learn the expectations. No, for an admit to a tippy top US college, it isn’t laid out on a platter.
So, lookingforward, does that mean that the chances of Mom2aphysicsgeek’s kids, for admission to a top school, would be good?
You could probably get me to see differently if you explained that the “minuscule ECs” and lack of the “doing” that you have been pushing in most of your previous posts would be compensated by the “spark,” in the eyes of the “top” school admissions committees. In your previous posts, I had not detected that someone who was just a thinker, and did not have a track record of objective accomplishments to back it up could pass the bar for “top” schools. But I am delighted if that is the case!
Lol.
Might benefit you to actually go back over what I do say. (But please, not bring it back for me to clarify, again.)
When you take a phrase or two, add it to another phrase or two, you really, imo, convolute what I advocate. Doesn’t help others.
@QuantMech I should also clarify that when I say my kids have only a few ECs that that doesn’t mean that they aren’t actually pretty stellar ones. My Dd, for example, does have both regional and international awards for Russian and represented the US at an international Olympiad. But she also has no APs, no significant leadership roles, etc. Her activities were focused but significant. Our approach to education is pretty untraditional.
Those ECs are far from “minuscule,” Mom2aphysicsgeek! You were being extremely modest. (I admire that.) I wanted to ask about students who did not have that sort of major recognition, though, who just pursued learning.
lookingforward, I will follow your request not to quote you, but there has certainly been an emphasis on “action” and “doing” throughout your advice posts, as well the suggestion to “get out there” in the community. A student who spent time reading and learning (and perhaps pencil-and-paper or computer-based problem-solving)–but not participating in any of the examples you have listed from time to time to illustrate what students can do, connected with their interests–would not seem to me to cross the bar for “doing.” Yet that would be fine preparation for a future in many of the areas of academe. (Not all areas, it doesn’t fit the MIT profile nor future engineering anywhere, I get that–but still many areas of academe.)