How much did your kids' preferences change between 9th and 12th grades?

Parents Forum
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First of all, 14 is not early in puberty for most males. Average male onset of puberty is 11 yrs old, with a range of 9-13 being normal. Puberty lasts on average 4 yrs, with most of the growth occurring in the last 2 yrs of puberty. So, most boys are almost full grown by 15, might get only another inch or so by 16. Obviously, there are some who are so late that they do most of their growing in 11th and 12th grade, even grow an inch or two in their first year of college, and there are some who are full grown with full beards before they’re out of middle school. But the late bloomers never get to achieve their full potential in high school sports, because their growth comes too late for that.

Early pubertal development is a great advantage to boys for high school athletics. One of mine, a very talented basketball player, hit his full height of nearly 6 ft 5 in, but not until he was 19, maybe even close to 20. He entered 9th grade at 5 ft 4 in, and during that rapid period of growth, his coordination wasn’t that great. So when you say that your 14 year old son going into 8th grade is playing a sport pretty seriously, I’d say that the chances of your son becoming a recruited athlete for a highly selective school are still pretty low. But hey, if he loves the sport, he should keep playing it for all it’s worth, for the fun of it.

As for career goals, it’s been my experience that kids who have a driven focus like this from early on do wind up trying to pursue that interest, or something akin to it if they hit a roadblock. So I’d say the odds are high that your son will still want engineering 4 years from now. Encourage advanced math, and if your school is one of those that had one of those bad math programs, get him a tutor to do traditional curriculum math to catch him up. He should at least be doing algebra 1 this year, geometry in 9th, alg 2 in 10th, precalc in 11th, and calc BC in 12th, if he is planning on applying to highly selective engineering programs, and it would be better if he could get to calc bc by 11th, so that he can show high achievement in that in time for college applications. He is going to be up against kids who had not only Calc BC, but also multivariable calc in high school. If he is unable to do advanced math, he would have a tough time with engineering, and it’s better to know that sooner, rather than later. Higher math ability doesn’t tend to improve with maturity.

I’d also be looking into some engineering/robotics summer programs, and robotics club at school, so that he can see what he likes. The odds of him becoming an engineer are high. The odds of him becoming a recruited athlete are low, and of him actually making his living as an athlete are infinitesimally small. But there is no reason why he cannot do both for the next 5 years. Just don’t focus on the sport and neglect the math advancement and the engineering/robotics ECs and summer programs. It’s too early to choose schools to target for being a recruited athlete, but it’s not too early to feed and encourage his persistent interest in engineering.

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This is the real reason the coach is asking the athletes to come up with a list so early. It’s not that it is actually important to send colleges highlight films in 9th grade, but rather that the coach knows that using sports as a hook for prestigious schools is something that is on the radar of parents in your community, and the coach wants to seem on the ball.

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My experience is that kids who strongly prefer the STEM side early on tend to stick with analytical fields even if it seems like they veered far from STEM in college. So perhaps the future engineer becomes a math-track Econ or finance major, or stats-based political science, etc.

I’ve seen interests change in those ways because the kids don’t really enjoy the BSE requirements, the math gets too hard, or they find they have passion for a field to which they had zero prior exposure.

But I’d probably honor the kid’s current passion for engineering by tending toward schools that offer engineering. All those schools will have other options should interests change in HS or college. It’s just a preliminary list anyway.

I don’t know that I’d be pushing small schools if he likes the idea of medium and large schools.

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Most of our friends whose kids entered 9th grade as strongly STEM kids stayed STEM kids. My son won an award for math in 8th grade with a scholarship to his private school for high school. He had always wanted to be an attorney like his father (as much as he negotiated things and argued his point it made sense BUT he hated writing so
) but had no interest in being an engineer like mom. Came home from camp before 9th grade and said he wanted to be an equine veterinarian. Since that day he has stayed wanting to be a vet (not equine anymore though) and in less than one year he will be one. He started hating math about that time too. Colleges didn’t even hit the discussion table until early 11th grade other than the short meetings the schools had with things to do in Naviance. Until 11th grade we didn’t even know the school he is now at would even be a remote possibility. I would have bet big bucks in 9th grade he wouldn’t end up where he is! Sports also made a drastic change after 9th grade. From football and golf to polo.

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Kid wants to please coach then kid needs to find the schools.

Show them how to find top schools for that sport in D1,2,3.

Dont even look at academics right now as this is to appease a club sports coach.

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Only two colleges that were on his list from 9th grade made it on to the final list.

9th is too early to determine overall fit. Kids actually grow, develop, and change during high school, believe it or not. They are not static genetic algorithms.

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I would not give “fit” any weight at all at this point. Your son doesn’t know, And cannot know, what school would suit him best at this point. So don’t try! You might be able to pick some schools using very broad criteria, like eg “we want to use athletic recruiting to go to the most prestigious school possible” ok then include the Ivies, stanford, the nescacs etc. Or, “we know we don’t want him more than X hours away” and narrow schools that way.

The point is to cast a very wide net at this stage.

I am guessing the OP’s son plays for an MLS Next team; if that’s the case (and he stays on the team for the next 3 years) he is very likely to be recruited. However, in 8th grade it is unlikely that you know for sure if he’s d1 or d3 level material – and that is definitely something that can change.

Cast a wide net!!

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I agree with many others that kids can change a lot and that the coach is pushing a college list too soon. Here are my examples to add to the collection:
Kid1 loved science and thought maybe veterinarian from age 5 on. Even got the top female science award in 8th grade, but looking back there were already signs she loved history. Then in 9th didn’t love science as much(chemistry is 9th), but still did well and got in to AP chem for the next yr. We took a family/genealogy trip to Italy that summer and she completely fell in love with archeology and the ancient world. That was it—complete turn and focus on History ever since. We know kids definitely change majors too so we sought highly selective schools that had a lot of different offerings and did not admit by major/switching is easy . She is a Classics major with an archeology minor. On a sports front: ran XC 7-9th grade. Hated it. Dropped it and spent time focusing on other things/no serious sport in 10-12th. Started running again freshman year for fun. Now is on the Club Running team at Duke and ran her first half marathon. Go figure.

Kid2: wanted to be a professional ballet dancer for a very long time and has lots of experience performing with a professional company over the years. She also has done musical theater in local shows and is concertmaster of her orchestra : very artsy and loves the stage. She has always been naturally very talented in math to the point that the school called us in , in elementary school, to tell us she needed a different plan of further acceleration . She has remained the top math student, per her teachers, over the years. She has never met a hard math class yet. She likes science too. But was going to be a dancer. Life happened and that dream started to not make sense around 9- 10th grade as it typically does not involve college and frankly she realized it wasn’t intellectually stimulating enough. Initially thought chem for college then shifted to Engineering and that became the focus but only highly selective schools that allow some flexibility just in case. She found the perfect match in a dual degree program at Penn where she will get a bachelor’s in Chem and her BSE in Materials Sci Engineering(not declared yet). Sports/activity wise, dance is still the number one love
for now.

They change. A lot. And they usually aren’t done changing when they start college.

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This. When it comes to recruiting, club coaches have a lot of power because they control the narrative. If they describe your kid as uncoachable or worse, that could torpedo your kid’s chances.

If getting recruited isn’t a high priority, then do what you will.

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Kids change enormously during teen years and even later.

My oldest (D) was a travel soccer player for 10 seasons. It was not our expectation (or hers) that she would be recruited but the HS team had crossed our minds. Then in middle school she added dance classes to her schedule and by freshman year she was too busy with dance practice/competitions to try out for soccer or play for the club team. She did get on the school dance team.
Academically, although she took math through AP Calculus AB (and excelled at at) she was not interested in any type of math related career. Because the college she attended (a large, very selective top 30 university ) credited her for the AP class and she tested out of their math requirement, she never took a math class as an undergrad. However 5 years after graduation, she took the GMAT , did well and entered a highly rated MBA program. Again she excelled at the math part of her program and now works in marketing which is a lot of data and analytics. So she is not sorry she took the calculus even at the time she thought she would never use it.

Second child wanted to be an architect from a young age and attended a science and tech magnet HS. Within a year he decided he changed career goals to one which was not STEM related at all. He did stay at the HS and took tons of required science and math classes and did well. His undergrad major was in a social science area. After working a few years he went to grad school in field of study which uses a lot of math, data, etc. No problem with those classes and he was even a TA in a few of them.

So, my take:

  1. Interests change. I don’t think that is a negative thing, in fact it can be good.
  2. Academic interests also change. Sometimes a student falls in love with a field of study he/she didn’t know existed or realizes what he/she though was the thing maybe isn’t for him.
  3. Regardless of field of study a strong foundation in math (and writing) will give you options. Even if you don’t think you will ever use it.

Just my experience.

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I disagree with this. For prospective student athletes, the entire point of creating a large list of schools at an early stage is to identify schools that fit academically as well as athletically. Obviously, the list will change over time as academic interests change and athletic level becomes more apparent. But the schools have to pass the “broken leg test”.

I’m hoping the coach gives his athletes this assignment to make them realize that there are so many schools where they achieve their athletic goals. You can’t just have a list of 5-10 schools where you’d want to play. Casting a wide net early in the recruiting process is critical.

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2% of HS athletes play D1 sports and I think if you include all tiers, it is something like 7%.
If your kid is that good at ninth grade, then you know.
Recruiting is different for different sports and different schools have different resources too.
I know quite a bit about soccer recruiting. If your kid is playing ECNL or academy ball for a top club, yeah he may get a chance at a D1 school. If he is on the second “showcase” team of a mid club, likely not.
Academic interest changes over time. 70% students change majors.

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OP as you can see some posters on your thread are knowledgeable about soccer recruiting, and some are not. You’ll get better advice, I think, if you ask your questions in the Athletic Recruiting forum. You might read all the soccer threads there too (if you haven’t already); I found them to be incredibly helpful.

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My science kid stayed a science kid (engineering). I knew from about 5th grade she’d never be a liberal arts kid and even though she looked at some LACs, we knew immediately that they were not for her. We felt confident that even though the choices would be limited at a tech school, those were the choices she would want. If she left engineering, she’d go to chemistry or math or physics so didn’t need a big English or art or history department.

She was also a recruited athlete. She talked to coaches from D1, D3 and D2 schools, but D2 worked the best for her because she got more money and playing time than D1, and D3 schools were mostly LACs which she didn’t like. She didn’t decide to play in college until the end of junior year so we had to hurry to get the recruiting thing going but she still had lots of options.

My other kid was liberal arts all the way, and there was no way she’d have ever switched to a science or math major. She suffered through any required science or math classes.

So I think more kids stay in their lane and know what they like. I knew in 8th grade. Most of my friends did too, especially those who wanted nursing or medicine. Two of them went to college for one thing but went in a different direction after college; journalist became a chef, and the horse trainer became a court reporter. Can’t call them all at age 14.

Your son may want to put some tech schools on his list like Colorado School of Mines, which has a very good men’s soccer team. The Sunshine Conference league in Florida has Florida Tech, Embry-Riddle, Tampa. Illinois Inst Tech I think is Div 3.

He can totally change his mind about the types of schools he’s interested in, but the coach just wants to get his name and some footage out there. He may go to camps and tournaments over the years and find schools he really likes.

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Here (again) is the link to the athletic recruits area on this forum.

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My kid started high school thinking he wanted to do something STEM. By the time he was applying to college, he was interested in history and maybe economics, which he had not yet studied. (Ultimately, his major.) His middle school teachers didn’t think he was much of a writer, and he had no love of it, but his high school teachers thought he had talent and encouraged it. He ended up taking some creative writing classes in college, and he really enjoyed them and got a lot of positive feedback from profs.

He also made some discoveries about how he learned.

I suspect that you can make a guess about how strong a student your kid might be and pick tiers of schools that way. You’d probably be about 75% right. I’d put getting interests at about 50%. These 4 years are supposed to be about growth and discovery, so you shouldn’t necessary be aiming to get it right.

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Mine has always wanted to be an engineer of some sort, but developed a passion for film/DPA freshman year of college. She’s still a MechE major and loves the math and science of it all, but she started college hell bent on a Biomedical or Forensic Engineering career and now wants to do special effects with a “regular” MechE job as a “backup plan.” We told her to go for it, so she added a DPA minor. Many of the students who started in MechE with her have switched to business. I don’t think they realized the sheer amount of math they would use in every class. I asked her last semester what she was taking; her response was "calculus for heat, calculus for fluids, calculus for design, calculus for materials and coding for animation :joy: Luckily for her, she loves calculus and coding. Even if they remain steady in their passion throughout high school, one class/club/experience in college can send them down another path; we just need to give them the space and opportunity to grow and the skills to handle the inevitable forks in the road.

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I have spent plenty of time on the athletics board. But my question here is really about the academic side, so I think it’s better here.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter whether I think it’s useful. My kid is going to want to do it, because that’s what he does. He very much wants to please his coaches.

But I want to begin how we plan to proceed. I feel like if I say to him “pick based on soccer”, he’ll think that’s how to approach admissions all the way through. So, I want to encourage him to understand that there are lots of things that matter.

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I think there is a piece of wanting parents to be happy, and that having them look like they are preparing for college recruitment does that.

But I also think that part of what is happening with the long list, is that they are saying “you need to be prepared for a variety of outcomes”. I live in an area where parents can be very hyper competitive about where their kid ends up, and I think that coaches want to be able to say “we have included schools at this level of selectiveness from the beginning” when parents are upset they don’t get an Ivy or whatever.

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I’m pretty sure that a year from now, he’ll still be pretty early in puberty, mostly based on his brother and uncles and Dad, but also based on the fact that now at 13 he isn’t showing much sign of it, my guess is he’ll enter at 14 with a lot of growing left to do. But of course that might not happen, which just reinforces my point that 14 is too young for me to be making predictions about what level of play.

He’s pretty ahead in math.

Yes, this is what he does. And I know it’s far from a sure thing. At this point it’s about keeping doors open, not forcing him into a path.

I agree with this. I also think that if I say to him “pick whatever you want based on soccer” it’s going to be hard to dial back in a few years and say "whoa, other things matter, look at academics, look at cost . . . " Better to start how we went to proceed, which is with keeping academics at the forefront.

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