<p>I’m also bewildered at the concept of a “parent brag sheet”. At our school the students, not the parents, submit their list of activities and interests. This sounds like institutionalized helicoptering. What could any parent add to student’s own submission other than “trust me, my kid is really great”?</p>
<p>My daughter put it on her resume. When she went to her one alumni interview, the guy asked her about what? Her travels.</p>
<p>MommaJ, at the point when my son was supposed to be filling out the info sheets for the GC it was like pulling teeth to get him to say anything about himself, much less things like “three adjectives to describe yourself” or “what I’m most proud of”. They asked the parents similar questions and whether we had anything else to say. One of the things I mentioned was that my son had had a 504 plan for extra time in middle school, but had chosen to drop it in high school and that could account for some of his weaker grades.</p>
<p>Travel can be a good thing to talk about in interviews.</p>
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<p>Agree with this. Traveling itself should not be the focus. But travel experiences can be incorporated into an essay, for example the diversity essay on the common app. Also a good conversation piece with admissions people. My D leveraged into why she is interested in a particular major.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, admissions does not want to hear specifically about teen trips and “what I did on my summer vacation” kind of essays.</p>
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<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>Parent brag sheets? Never heard of those in this process. At our school, the students should have an activities form (like a resume). D mentioned her major international group trip on her activity sheet, and listed the particular learning experiences on it (e.g., archaeology dig, etc.).</p>
<p>Two of my kids went to a school where the guidance counselors had limited time with students, and didn’t meet with parents of kids who din’t get in trouble.
They asked for parents perspective by requesting parent information sheets in spring of junior year. It asked things like what are your child’s strengths; what accomplishments are you most proud…
The kids filled out activities sheets.</p>
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Our high school uses them to give the GC’s more information for recommendation letters.</p>
<p>They’ve found that many teenagers get very shy when it comes to talking about their accomplishments or their personality traits, or saying anything positive about themselves, really. So it gives the GC’s a different color on what they know of the student.</p>
<p>We did the College Karma/StatsEval thing with our friendly CC experts, and I asked the same question about travel. Was a particular concern with S2 since he was looking at IR programs. They advised against writing about travel.</p>
<p>S2 did manage to incorporate our cross-country camping trips into his Common App activity essay on cooking!</p>
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<p>Our school does this. Our parent form even asked for the child’s weaknesses. I do think this information helps the GC develop a fuller picture of the child. While individual teachers may know your child well, the GC (who is also required to write a LOR) may not.</p>
<p>We have also traveled extensively with son. I put that in the parent’s sheet and explained what he liked to do while on these trips. For example, son never passed a history museum he didn’t want to go in to and explore. This isn’t something the GC (or a even teacher) would know but it showed his love of history. Also, he took Latin for 6 years and knew a lot about ancient Rome and did a lot of planning of our trip there. </p>
<p>The forms are just a way of giving the GCs and teachers a peak into a side of your child’s personality they might not usually see.</p>
<p>While I agree that parents who send their kids on those service trips to foreign countries are ridiculous, there is a difference if the kid goes to the same location year after year and shows his/her interest through other activities. How ignorant of me to think that not everyone travels all over the world, not even those applying to “elite” colleges. I guess we missed the books on how to please adcoms with your essay and my daughter just expressed those things that matter to her. One of her essays was about being the wealthiest kid in our town and the pluses and minuses of that situation. This is where she brought up the traveling and included taking friends on some of these trips, etc. Didn’t know it was “common” and “overdone!”</p>
<p>We also have the student bios written by both the kids and their parents for the guidance counselors. Even though it’s a small school, for some reason our guidance counselors can’t seem to keep the kids straight (incompetence?) so at least they ask for detailed information to enhance their recommendations for their part of the college application.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone! As you can see, everyone has a differenct opinion on the subject. The parent brag sheet is just a standard form our HS uses to provide GCs a more comprehensive view of the student outside of what they know of themin school. The kids have to develop their own resume but the parent sheet is used for the GC recommendation. I guess each school does it differently…in terms of where my D is applying, her choices are limited by her desire to pursue arch. She doesn’t want to attend a pure art school (RSDI) or a pursue a technical track (RPI). She wants to pursue a designed-based program that will also provide her the “college experience”. Most of these types of programs are at big universities and they will initially weed out based on GPA and test scores. The next items they will look at is her portfolio, community service, recommendations and just her overall ability to handle a heavy art studio/science workload. I think that we will weave in her travels as part of her portfolio - Turkish ceramics, Gaudi-inspired jewelry, and mosaic of Venice will tell the story on their own. Thanks everyone.</p>
<p>Archie,
Take a look at Trinity University in San Antonio; I didn’t focus on it as it wasn’t DD interest, but IIRC, they had architecture and the ‘college experience’.</p>
<p>I suppose this is off topic but…
If a 17 year old high school student is presumably literate enough to apply to college - what is the rationale for the GC to get info from the parents?
I am having a little difficulty getting my head around this. sigh.</p>
<p>archie12 - where is your daughter thinking of applying?
A young lady who went to hs with my kids is at Penn State - architecture. I don’t know if ‘extensive travel’ will help your daughter’s application or not but this young lady did not grow up traveling around the world - or the US for that matter (not that there is any architecture worth admiring in the US - lol).</p>
<p>momof4 - parents will write things about their kids that the kids will either be embarrassed about or think is unimportant or doesn’t realize it’s unique, etc. For example, a kid might be an incredibly diligent, hard worker (at work, school, life) but just assume everyone is like that, while an adult (parent), who has a bigger picture, understands how uncommon that attribute is. Of course it very well might be slanted coming from the parent, but hopefully the guidance counselor can put it all in perspective. Does that help?</p>
<p>Archie - We lived overseas for a few years so the kids definitely had a lot of trael under their belts. oddly, we didn’t even think of mentioning it in the brag sheets. However, both kids wrote about travel in their essays - D specifically wrote about different styles of houses of worship around the world. She was accpeted into 2 arch progrmas and 2 design programs - most with good merit money. S wrote about</p>
<p>amtc - not buying it. If the kids don’t think it’s important to mention or they are too humble to mention then why should the parent overstep this?<br>
Look, if the parent feels these experiences are important, they can simply brief their kids and then leave it up to the kids to communicate their experiences.</p>
<p>Why does the GC even need to know this?Are they now writing kids’ essays?
This thought just occurred to me - maybe the GC’s asking for parental input to corroborate the self reported info by the kids? More of “parental verification” to prevent kids from making up stuff?</p>
<p>Sorry, but I am in the dark. What is a parent’s brag sheet? We never had one of these when my D applied to college.</p>
<p>Lots of very bright kids have not travelled. It definitely isn’t a prerequisite to be an architect however all arch programs require at least one semester abroad. Many are based in Rome and Florence however some programs are moving their semester abroad to cities that are facing similiar urban development challenges to cities in the US as well as being very progressive in design - like Berlin. D’s travel experience comes in handy as she is researching different programs because she has real life perspective on the cities she is likely to study in during the program - for example, her latest comment was “I’m leaning towards xyz program because they study in Geneva, Berlin or London. I love Italy but they don’t even wake up in Rome until 11:00AM. I think I want to go to a more urban and modern city to study.” So, as a parent, I can argue about the merits of study the past and applying it to the present but she definitely has a preference and a point of view. My reply, “Good point. But you really don’t have a decision to make until you get in to a program and trust me, if the only program you get in to studies in Rome, then you will love it when the time comes.”</p>
<p>I also want to comment on the service trips outside the US - my youngest D goes to a Catholic HS where serving the underserved is drilled into their heads all day, every day. Her school is located in a very poor community and is very diverse. During the school year there are a number of local service opportunities but not during the summer months. The school has been trying to develop programs here but the local communities can’t support the volunteers because they have no one to oversee the projects due to all of the cutbacks. So, in our area, you can’t even volunteer at the hospital or assisted living because they have no one to oversee the kids…as a result, many are going on a mission (service trip) outside the US. If they want to go and they can’t afford it, they are given a scholarship through generous donations and fund raising.</p>
<p><a href=“not%20that%20there%20is%20any%20architecture%20worth%20admiring%20in%20the%20US%20-%20lol”>QUOTE=JustAMomOf4</a>.
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<p>hmm…and you live in Pennsylvania?</p>
<p>Clearly we will have to agree to disagree on this point but the reason guidance counselors need this info is not to verify the students info but to be able to write THEIR recommendation to the college. Guidance counselors have to include a recommendation for each school the student is applying to, this just helps them do that.</p>
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<p>Of course not - but they are writing a counselor rec for every kid. Some counselors just do a form letter but some actually take the time to highlight a few of the kids strengths. The parent letter helps them do this. At our last school (overseas International school) the counselors even had something called “the junior interview” which was a meeting with the counselor, kid and both parents.</p>
<p>Actually now that I think about it when I was a junior in HS (large public school in Texas) we had a similar meeting with counselor and parents.</p>