Need help with ECs - may be missing the window

Applying to College
1

Hello all. We currently have 2 in college already, and starting to get a little more serious about #3 as she is now in her sophomore year.

Right now, here grades are extremely impressive. Even as parents, she is exceeding our hopes in that regard. She is currently on pace for a 4.0W, 5.0UW. She took all honors courses as a freshman and killed it. So as a sophomore we pushed her to take 3 APs (including AP Bio, the toughest of them) in addition to several other honors courses, and she is still getting straight A grades. At this stage, with the right parental guidance, she may be one of those kids who has the ability to get into any college. At least a chance anyway. While I felt I really helped my older two girls achieve a great fit, top 30 college guidance is out of my area of expertise.

My main concern at this age is ECs. She plays soccer for the high school and also for a club team all year round. This is nice and all and itā€™s what she enjoys, but I donā€™t feel it is quite enough. I read so many posts and articles about kids who nearly cure cancer as their EC.

I guess I am a bit skeptical when I hear about 14 year olds who on their own had the vision and the knowledge of how to start charities and spawn multiple chapters of it, or who put themselves in position to teach courses at a local library. It just feels like there were parents involved here to help push and drive the ECs. In addition, my own anecdotal experience with my older kids was that some of them had parents who made most of the EC magic happen.

My daughter pretty much does soccer for hours many days a week, and homework for her very tough course load is hours each day. She has a little bit of time in between all of this, but not a lot, so itā€™s not like sheā€™s wandering around thinking of what she can do for better ECs.

In terms of passions, she doesnā€™t have anything that strikes her. Sheā€™s very good at math and science, but tutoring may not exactly be a super fancy or original EC. Sheā€™s not interested in robotics (seems a popular one these days among many top student kids), or coding (sheā€™s getting an A in AP Comp Sci, finds it interesting, but knows she will not go down that route). Not at all interested in drama/music/art (like my middle was). She also says she hates physics (which I find amusing since sheā€™s never taken it, outside of a brief intro in freshman science).

Some things I think she has shown natural interested in:
Genetics/Evolution
AP Human Geography (she is loving this class, although she also loves the teacher so that may be it)
She does enjoy sci-fi movies (Interstellar was one example)

So my question is, the clock is ticking, where can one go to come up with good EC ideas that she can execute? Taking into account she not super extroverted. Sheā€™s very good socially, but one of those kids that doesnā€™t want to give presentations in class or be bold socially.

As I see it, she needs to be going on this now, as she has the remainder of her sophomore year, the following Summer, and her junior year remaining for ECs. By the time Senior year is upon you, you are already applying so itā€™s too late.

Do we consider one of those college advisors for money programs? For my older two that didnā€™t seem worth the cost. How do you spur a kid on for specific ECs who isnā€™t quite yet motivated (as a young sophomore who just turned 15 last month) outside of just playing soccer and doing all of her coursework well?

Thanks!

2

She has a huge commitment to one EC. That is very good.

Are there months when she is not actively playing soccer?

She could get a part time job at a sporting goods storeā€¦jobs are a good EC.

She doesnā€™t need a super fancy original EC. Many kids donā€™t have super fancy or original ECs.

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Firstly, congratulations on having what sound like great kids! :slightly_smiling_face: Secondly, please donā€™t twist yourself or have your daughter feel like you need to mold her to please Admissions Officers at selective colleges. Grades and transcript (course rigor) are the number one important thing, so keeping up the good work on that front is priority #1.

Having said that, sports are a good EC - Iā€™m assuming your D is not recruitable or you would have mentioned it, but would she like to continue playing at the club level in college? Also does she have (or might she get) a leadership role (captain, assistant captain) for soccer? That counts as well.

Does she like to write? There are outlets for student writing (Scholastic, etc.) as well as in-school publications (newspaper, yearbook) where she might round herself out a bit more.

Local community service organizations she might volunteer? Libraries, churches, community centers, etc. frequently have opportunities for teens. It doesnā€™t have to be curing cancer to show she cares!

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My 18 year old played varsity and club soccer (captain), winter and spring track (captain), worked PT starting at 14 (garden center so full time summers), babysat, tutored, taught ccd, was involved in peer leadership at church, was a member of CORE (student ambassador), in 3 honor societies and was an officer in 2, got volunteer hours at events like clothing drivesā€¦ She had zero interest in the school plays which her older siblings participated in every year (even though she was in the top choir and danced for years, they want what they want). She did break a school track record but her ECā€™s were pretty unspectacular, all of my kids participated in a lot but nothing unusual or impressive. They enjoyed what they did.

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You donā€™t. You let her decide what she is interested in, which is soccer.

You are effectively asking in this post how you can manufacture a superstar student who does it all, in the hopes that your daughter might be able to get into a tippy top school. As it is, your high-performing dsughter is going to have many great options, but they might not be HYPS.

Iā€™m not seeing anything in this post that says ā€œmy daughter is desperate to get into Stanford and wants to do something besides play soccer.ā€ Iā€™m seeing a parent who wants her child to do more than what she is already doing. Let her do what she enjoys doing: playing soccer and doing well at school. The rest will fall into place. If she is going to take up new interests, let her do so. Trying to get her to be interested in robotics or physics, when she has zero interest, will surely come across as insincere at best and fake at worst.

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This!

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A part time job or weekly (or summer) volunteer gig. The soccer is the main one, and having a secondary one gives you something else to add to that section - but I think mainly they want to see that a really great student isnā€™t spending time ONLY studying and involves herself in something more. These kids are too young to all have found their lifeā€™s passions, itā€™s ok.

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This is anecdotal, but D20 was invited to a couple small MIT AO meetings her freshman and sophomore years of HS; this is the advice they gave her: ā€œplease do not give us the application you THINK we want to see. We want students with a true passion for what they do.ā€ The AOs got quite annoyed when parents asked what ECs or APs their student should do/take. They said they receive thousands of apps with perfect scores/grades and laundry lists of ECs; one more like that will not stand out.

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There are probably no ā€œmonthsā€ when she isnā€™t playing soccer, but there are periods between the seasons. Usually, time off is between each of the 4 seasons (Spring, Winter, Summer, Fall). Summer is best just because aside from the soccer (which usually at that time is 3 times per week), she would be free. Too young to drive though so a bit of a challenge there for us since we both work.

Being young also hurts her on the job front. Sheā€™s a late birthday, November, so she turned 14 as a freshman, turned 15 last month. Here in our state, they tend to require 16 years of age for a job anywhere. She probably couldnā€™t work a job until the Summer but I know she would be game. She might not be old enough though. She also will not likely be driving until Senior year of HS being young.

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This is something she will 100% do. She spent a few summers doing Top Soccer, which is a program to help disabled children play soccer. But she will likely do several other things like this. These are great, but many kids check this box, and itā€™s not like winning a science fair or being on a championship debate team, etc :slight_smile:

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If you are in CT, kids can start working at 14 with working papers, here in NJ the employer fills them out and then the school nurse takes care of it. Here the drinking age is 17, so my kids found employment that they could walk to if they had to. My high stats kids knew they had to chase merit, not apply to reach schools, so that tuition stayed close to $35,000 a year all in.

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I guess that is my struggle, as I know most of the kids with fancy ECā€™s did exactly that: manufactured them. Pretty much all of the families we knew/know who did have kids who went to top schools, the parents created an image for the kids with them. The kids didnā€™t beg to join the robotics and debate teams, the parents told them to (or made them, and they did. In fact I canā€™t think of any kid/family we know where the parents didnā€™t drive the ECs to some degree.

Sure, from time to time you come across a one in a million kid who really does something amazing entirely on their own in a vacuum, but the majority of the kids with the EC stories you read about, didnā€™t come up with it at all on their own. Once they got into it, they enjoyed it, and leveraged that for their college admissions.

I wouldnā€™t want her to do anything she isnā€™t actually interested in. The trick for us is finding some things that she is interested in and helping her with the ideas on how to amplify that interest.

13

I totally get this. I really donā€™t want her to pick ECs she doesnā€™t like or care about. Iā€™d rather have her go deep on something she loves, even if itā€™s not considered fancy or typical. The soccer isnā€™t likely to work in the sense that she has no desire to be a captain, and she likely isnā€™t winning any fancy soccer awards for all-state teams and such. Just a kid who plays.

The trick is having a kid, in a pandemic era (where people tend to not leave the house much), who is busy with soccer and homework, figure out another interest. Currently nothing really pops out for her. But I am sure there are ideas she would like.

14

I think that your daughter is already doing very well. I would not push her to do more.

We put way too much stress on our high school students. There are way more high school students in the US who are currently being treated for stress related illnesses than there are undergraduate students currently studying at Ivy League or equally highly ranked universities.

We had a daughter who was academically excellent but limited in ECs. She did not go to an Ivy League university. She did however go to a university that was a very good fit for her and where she excelled (very high GPA, very rigorous classes, very good research experience). She is very well set up for graduate school whenever she gets around to applying (which will need to be after she decides what she wants to apply for).

Your daughter does not need to try to match the requirements for admissions to Harvard. She can live her life and find a university that is a good fit for her. There are hundreds of very good universities and liberal arts colleges in the US. ā€œSoccer, rigorous classes, great grades, and good referencesā€ is enough for the vast majority of them.

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She is so young, she isnā€™t ā€œdesperateā€ to get into any college. She has no idea whatā€™s ahead. At this point in her life, sheā€™s just looking for guidance. She doesnā€™t think she is good enough for any top school, even though her grades and abilities actually say otherwise.

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OP- I actually had someone tell me (my kid was 9) that heā€™d never get in to a ā€œgood collegeā€ since I wasnā€™t interested in forming a carpool to shuffle the kids to karate.

Two working parent home. Kids got off the school bus and did their homework, colored, played outside when the weather was nice. Middle school- same drill. By HS they were able to participate in school-related activities because the parental involvement was minimal, and they got jobs (fast food, answering phones in a doctors office, nothing glamorous). We did do CTY for several summers which they LOVED- a real peer group with the other kids, some fantastic classes with astonishing faculty.

Kids exceeded our expectations in admissions. Colleges are- at the end of the day- academic institutions. Juggling and collecting butterflies while building orphanages in Haiti is terrific- but so is being your authentic self, taking advantage of every opportunity that comes your way (and not manufacturing opportunities which are impossible to achieve based on where you live or family constraints).

I confess that I donā€™t know what having an athletic kid might have meant for us as a family- my kids were the types to get ā€œbest attitudeā€ awards, not best athlete awards. One kid was on the track team during HS but had a ā€œspecial arrangementā€ with the coach NOT to show up for meets. So got to work out, got the pants and the shirt, wore the jacket to death, never ran competitively (and this activity didnā€™t make it to the college apps- are you going to brag that you are so slow that your coach wants you calling in sick?)

I say let your D be your D. That might mean a little more conscious effort around family activities- does she like hikes in the woods or visiting museums? Aquarium vs. theme park? (kids who live theme parks discover that they DO love physics). Can she cook or does she want to learn?

And does she read? New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post? I know HS kids who have found their lifeā€™s calling in a general interest publication (young neighbor of mine who is a rising star in the sustainable architecture field who discovered the subject in a New York Times article; a relative who had no real direction in HS who followed stories about Imelda Marcos, Holocaust Art restitution, the hunt to locate Yasser Arafatā€™s millionsā€¦ and finally put the pieces together that he wanted to be a forensic accountant!) So read, read, read. Thatā€™s where the pieces can start to fall into place about ā€œoutside activitiesā€ or academic direction!

Your D sounds great.

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Thanks for the feedback, and this is likely the route we will end up taking. We entirely get that her prospects will be great either way, and many schools are a great fit. In fact, I went to what is ranked a weak college, and it turned out great. My main point is, are we as parents doing enough to help guide her to take advantage of her full potential. Or will she be penalized because unlike many other top students, she didnā€™t ā€œbuild her resumeā€ properly.

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This is my favorite reply, thank you! I was laughing about the career-deciding carpool story!

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This is so true ā€¦ and yet every news article I read about a kid who got into (insert top 30 school here) always has the kid knowing their lifeā€™s passions at age 14 (or seeming to). Whether they are starting a relief fund in Haiti, taking medical exams at age 9, or some other eye-raising thing that you just canā€™t imagine a kid doing alone.

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Others have already given good advise.

One thing I keep hearing is that kids donot need to do lot of EC but instead do few ECā€™s that you are passionate about in any area for long period of time and pursue leadership roles in them like in sports, fine arts, school clubs, competitions etc.

One more would be community volunteer- again does not have to be fancy, local city library and teen court has lot of volunteer opportunities for 14 years olds (circulation, coordinating kids program activities, organizing holiday events, Tutoring, being a juror, prosecutor etc).

When it comes to applying to top colleges apart from having stellar stats, the important thing is how do you tie all the ECā€˜s and subjects you have pursued last 3 years of HS to tell your story in different essays.

Your daughter is already doing everything right, just let her choose other ECā€™s she wants to pursue either inside or outside school.