<p>I am curious about parents input on a candidate with this kind of profile, based on veteran CC members observations through the years. My son attends a private prep school in the South, and is extraordinarily bright. He takes the most rigorous courseload, heavy on science and math, and his grades are superb (straight As and A+). His PSAT scores are tip top (231). He is great at standardized tests in general, and I anticipate his SAT and/or ACT scores to be high. He is finishing his sophomore year.</p>
<p>He is involved with the school math team (which does very well at the state and national level), but no other school or outside of school extracurriculars. In his free time, he watches sports, plays video games, reads. This is what he does all summer. I have suggested countless activities for him, to no avail.</p>
<p>This is not a chance thread, but instead a request for general wisdom on how candidates like this fare, and possible schools that my son should consider. Are there challenging schools that focus more on statistics and numbers and are OK with a kid who is weak on his ECs? Or is every school in this day and age expecting the whole package, grades, scores, and strong ECs? In my era, the early 80s, a kid like this would have definitely been accepted at his choice of schools. I get the impression it is not so in this day and age.</p>
<p>Depends on what his choice of choices happens to be. If he doesn’t play sports or an instrument or something that occupies his time outside of the the classroom, I’d encourage him to look for a job for the summers. Most colleges just want to see that kids do something besides school. There’s usually a minimum of 8 hours between end of school and a reasonable bedtime so plenty of time…and in the summer there is all day and evening. Jobs are excellent ECs for any soon to be college student.</p>
<p>What colleges is he interested in? if he wanted to go to an Ivy league school, for example, High GPA High SAT are a dime a dozen. What makes him stand out? If he wants to go to a state school then I think they would be very glad to have him!</p>
<p>Also you contact an admissions counselor for potential schools of interest and see what they think.</p>
<p>If he loves math, can he make that into another extracurricular? Tutor younger kids in math?
Also, can he show leadership on the Math team?</p>
<p>He is obviously a very smart and talented kid. His ECs aren’t weak, they’re fine. Very good, in fact. He sounds like the kind of person who will do well in whatever interests him. The fact that he has time to pursue personal interests is a good thing. No one is a shoo-in for the tippy-top schools these days, but he sounds well on his way. </p>
<p>My advice would be to encourage him to follow his interests in his pastimes but also to think beyond the video screen because it does feel good to be involved with other people. But with his grades and scores in combination with strong math team involvement, I don’t think there’s a compelling reason for him to participate in ECs just to create an adcom-approved resume. </p>
<p>No sports, no instruments, only minimal community service that is required by the school. He tends to be a loner but not in a disturbing way, just an extreme introvert.</p>
<p>Most of the top kids in his school go to the top schools along the Eastern seaboard, and the southern schools. Duke, Vanderbilt, UNC Chapel Hill, UVA, Emory. Penn and Princeton might be as far north as he would consider. </p>
<p>We will start with the counselor next year, but thought it would be good to look at some schools this summer and get him to start thinking about these things so he can motivate himself this summer and next school year.</p>
<p>Yes, kids with high scores and high grades are a dime a dozen in the applicant pool at many of the most selective schools. I was wondering if there were schools known for emphasizing the scores and grades. Like maybe University of Chicago or Johns Hopkins. I just read a blurb today about Yale, and a student was saying that every single classmate of his has something extraordinary that he has done. My kid is really smart, but he hasn’t done anything extraordinary (yet, and probably not before college).</p>
<p>What would he like to do in terms of job or outside involvement or independent study? Would he be interested in pursuing an internship? Doing some kind of independent study? ECs are his chance to be and do what he wants. Encourage him to take advantage of that!</p>
<p>This actually sounds like a very similar situation to one of my friend’s older brothers. He took the hardest classes available, had great grades, awesome SAT scores (perfect math), but his only extracurricular was varsity tennis and key club. His top choice was MIT and he applied early decision and was deferred and was eventually waitlisted/denied (I’m not exactly sure which my friend never told me, all I know was that he didn’t go). He did however get accepted to UVA (our state flagship) with a very good sized scholarship. When talking with his mom about college she was telling me that their private college counselor told them that she thought that he didn’t get into MIT because of his lack of extracurriculars… I hope this little story kind of can show you that extracurriculars really can make a difference when it comes to competitive schools</p>
<p>I’m surprised the private school doesn’t require ECs. The ones around here require either a sport or some other activity each term. If you are not playing a sport, you could be in the school play, play in the school music ensembles, do a habitat for humanity trip, tutor inner city students…something. </p>
<p>I have made suggestions for a year and he has very little interest in developing that side of him at this point. At least he is doing great on the grade and testing side of the equation. So assuming that his ECs will be his weak point, just wondering what schools to focus the attention on. He will contribute his smarts to any school, and his stats, but won’t necessarily be that well rounded candidate.</p>
<p>With high GPA and very high standardized test scores, he will be an attractive candidate for state university Honors Colleges. Since you mentioned math, has he taken any of the exams for high end math students such as the AMC and AIME? These are generally administered through the school, and if he goes to a high end prep school, I would think they would be quite familiar with these exams. UChicago and Johns Hopkins and a number of the schools you mentioned that the top kids go to from his school will look for some very high stats kids because that type of student also helps the college stats that are reported. He needs to apply broadly because you won’t know which of the schools will grab him solely because of his numbers.</p>
<p>You can tutor kids, volunteer someplace like you already do) a senior center, school, daycare), you can do things like debate, mock trial, chess club, robotics. Look and see what kinds of clubs your school has. Your youth group would be considered an EC. </p>
<p>Some kids are on Boy or Girl Scouts. </p>
<p>Sitting at home playing video games is not an EC. Actually sitting at home doing most anything would not be considered an EC. </p>
<p>I’m still surprised the OP’s son’s prep school doesn’t require EC involvement. Really surprised!</p>
<p>This sounds like me, except I would have described my extracurriculars as decent rather than weak. 2360 SAT, 36 ACT, 4.0 w/ 11 APs, many 800s on SAT2, Southern prep school, math/science-y, etc.</p>
<p>As far as reachy schools go, I applied to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Vanderbilt, and UChicago. I was accepted at Vanderbilt with a full tuition scholarship, accepted at Duke w/o a scholarship, waitlisted at Harvard, and denied everywhere else. You can probably guess where I’m going.</p>
<p>I say look into public schools with guaranteed/nearly guaranteed scholarship programs and good honors colleges first, for safeties and potentially matches(in terms of the scholarships). They generally don’t care as much about extracurricular activities. I’d definitely suggest Vanderbilt as a potential candidate; of the students I know going there from my school, unhooked applicants had high scores and grades, but not necessarily great ECs. Your son could be a contender for the Cornelius Vanderbilt (full tuition) merit scholarship there, which as far as I can tell is evaluated first on a stats-based level, and then the top half overalkl get the scholarship from those that remain. </p>
<p>I don’t think Uchicago would really be so eager just to grab a high-stats student, from personal experience :)</p>
I wouldn’t call math team achievements that are impressive on a state/national level a weak EC. Quality of ECs are important, rather than quantity. </p>
<p>Answering your question, different colleges place different degrees of emphasis on ECs than others. Some highly selective colleges will admit near all applicants with top stats, and reject nearly all applicants with mediocre stats. A good example is Vanderbilt, which fits with huehuehue32’s post above about getting a full tuition scholarship at Vanderbilt while being rejected to all but one of the other reaches on his list. There are other colleges that place less emphasis on scores and a greater emphasis on achievements out of the classroom, passions, personality/character, and other non-stat qualities. For example, MIT’s CDS ranks personality/character qualities as more important than GPA, test scores, or any kind of stats. MIT’s website has a good summary of how personality/character can be more important for admissions than stats at <a href=“What we look for | MIT Admissions”>http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match</a> .</p>
<p>The list below shows some for some <15% overall admit rate colleges, with the acceptance rate among Parchment members who had a 3.95+ GPA while taking many APs and a 2350+ SAT (near perfect stats) that applied RD in the last 4 years and were not a URM. I’ve ranked them in order from highest to lowest overall acceptance rate this year. Note that the rate of high stat acceptances is only loosely correlated with the overall acceptance rate. USC also had a 100% acceptance rate among this high-stat group, but was not included in the list because their overall acceptance rate is slightly over 15%.</p>
<p>Rice – 94%
Cornell – 65%
Vanderbilt – 100%
Pomona – 60% (100% male and 0% female, small sample size)
Duke – 86%
Olin – 37% (small sample size)
Chicago – 64%
Caltech – 56% (small sample size)
MIT – 29%
Princeton – 40%
Harvard – 33%</p>
<p>Chicago might like him, they traditionally are drawn to more intellectual and quirky types.</p>
<p>I just graduated from Penn and I definitely didn’t think my extracurriculars were impressive at the time. I was very focused on music and science olympiad but I was just another violin and member of the science olympiad team. I think my essays are what got me noticed. My scores and grades were fine and I went to a very competitive school so I think my letters were probably decent but not great.</p>
<p>Kids like your son (and myself) often do a lot better in grad school admissions where it is based on actual merit and potential rather than superficial things.</p>
<p>Thank you to all who responded. This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. It sounds like the top schools in the South (Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt) like the high scoring kids. Maybe this is because their applicant pool, although incredibly strong, doesn’t have every Tom, Dick, and Harry nationwide who is a high achiever applying (which probably happens more in the applicant pool of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford)? Perhaps because of geography and Ivy League fixation, or anti-South bias from the NE in particular.</p>
<p>My son’s math team is a year round commitment with a good amount of involvement. I wrote out of frustration with my son’s summer plans, which include a lot of sleeping and relaxing. He is not fixated on the ivies and would probably prefer the sports scene at a top notch state school or a school like Duke or Vanderbilt, since most of his non-math interests revolve around sports (as a fan, not as a participant). </p>
<p>I would suggest: apply to the schools your S wants, including Ivy. You never know. Friend’s D with similar stats was accepted to Cornell. Had done a JV sport freshman year, and then quit. No ECs. Parents forced her to get a part-time job senior year (for college aps), so she worked 1 eve/week. She was accepted to Cornell, and received a bunch of waitlists at other top schools. So you never know!</p>
<p>Don’t rule out foreign schools, like Edinburgh. American schools started considering EC’s and ‘leadership’ as a way to keep the Jews out, and many foreign universities consider ECs a distraction at best.</p>