<p>I am wondering if my daughter is on the right track as she enters the high school years. I would love input. We homeschool btw. She took the SAT with Duke Tip in 7th and did very well. She is very bright. We have the opportunity to take online courses and AP classes starting in 9th grade. </p>
<p>My question is about extracurriculars and her potential "stats" to apply to very competitive universities - ivy, one public ivy and various scholarships to different less competetive universities. She had danced in a pre-pro school for 8 years and had to quit this spring due to injury. She will have even more time now to devote to her extensive volunteer interests, but I wonder if she is well rounded enough? </p>
<p>Goals for high school:
-well on her SAT
-about 10 APs online
-verify classes I teach with SAT2
-rigorous course load including, 4 years Latin w/ AP, 4 years Spanish w/community college, math through AP Calc. BC etc.
-extensive volunteer hours - already volunteers in nursing home and will continue throughout high school, she helps her brothers Special Olympics track 1x a week, tutors reading in middle school special ed classroom, and she is a mother's helper to several families with special needs children as well as her two profoundly disabled older brothers and I have MS - she will be able to document at least 400 to 500 volunteer hours
-running 5k and 10k races - may enter as unattached in USATF events
-4 years piano (12 yrs. overall) with festivals and guilds
-4 Christian Youth Theater
-4 years leading homeschool teens book club - reading "The Great Books" together. I started it in 7th grade but she is taking it over. Large crowd of devoted learners...</p>
<p>She wants to major in either English Lit or Pre-Med. I know she could develop interests more as she decides which way to go. She will pursue summer programs through Duke Tip and others. I just wanted a rough idea of how her stats look considering ballet/dance is completely out of the picture now.
Thanks.</p>
<p>One thing to focus on in the HS years would be leadership experience - elected position (President or VP) of a student organization. That might be harder for her since she is homeschooled but maybe there are some youth organizations within your community.</p>
Wow!! That is a lot on a 13-year-old’s plate. It looks like life has been challenging for the family. I don’t want this to come across the wrong way, but you have something right there to build and expand on. </p>
<p>Will she continue to be home-schooled through high school? I think that “well-rounded” can be a curse, with too many kids trying to do a little bit of everything. One or two really in-depth and focused passions are plenty. </p>
<p>From a leadership perspective, would she be interested in starting a sports league (soccer, t-ball) for disabled kids? Someone started that in our town a few years ago, and it has taken off in a huge way? She would certainly bring a lot of personal experience and empathy to a program that few others could.</p>
<p>Pre-med is not a major; it is a set of courses that can be taken alongside any major. She can major in English literature while taking the pre-med courses.</p>
<p>However, colleges do expect students to have a baseline of high school level work in many subjects. This does not necessarily mean AP or college level in all of them. Someone majoring in English literature while taking pre-med courses does need a high school background that prepares them for college level study in the humanities and sciences.</p>
<ul>
<li>4 years of English</li>
<li>math through precalculus minimum, calculus desirable if available</li>
<li>3 years of history and social studies</li>
<li>foreign language proficiency equivalent to high school level 3, with higher levels desirable</li>
<li>science including all of biology, chemistry, and physics</li>
<li>art and/or music</li>
</ul>
<p>Home schoolers may want to check the colleges on how to show equivalency to regular high school course work.</p>
<p>Will she get exposure to diverse thinkers? Will she be able to challenge your views and learn to think for herself? It is important that she does activities that interest her, not just make for a good sounding resume. Don’t forget physical activites along with art and music for relaxation and stress relief. I hope you have professionals teaching as there is a lot more to learning than just using books. I hope she has adequate access to real science labs, not just someone’s kitchen. I hope you don’t impoverish her mind by not allowing her to be exposed to ideas contrary to her own. By now you have given her a firm foundation in your beliefs- she should learn to deal with the real world as well. “Street smarts” if you will.</p>
<p>I agree that colleges aren’t looking for “well-rounded” in the EC arena. I once heard an Admissions Officer (from UC Davis) say that they’re looking for a well-rounded freshman class but “angular” students – individuals who have a few well-developed ECs. Look at it from the university’s perspective: A class of students who’ve pursued a few interests in depth make for a more interesting and diverse student body than students who’ve dabbled in multiple activities. Quality, not quantity.</p>
<p>I don’t think well rounded in general was exactly what I meant. I am worried because her ballet was her “depth” activity. In high school she would have danced several hours 6 days a week with several performances a year with professionals. They also compete in ballet and contemporary and win awards regionally and nationally. Even in middle school my daughter did much of the above 4x a week.</p>
<p>I am not worried at all about academics. I just put some basics on my post to give you a general idea of where she is headed. We are doing extremely well in that area, and I know what I am doing.</p>
<p>My post was mostly about extracurriculars. I think the leadership point was a good idea. I’m not sure how she could develop that. She has started this book club that is very successful. She is a “leader” in every sense of the word, but I don’t know that she will be elected in that capacity. Something to think about… </p>
<p>I hope she has adequate access to real science labs, not just someone’s kitchen. </p>
<p>You know this can be done successfully. We ordered the Chemistry lab kits the AP teacher suggested. My homeschool son is on track to make a 5 on his AP Exam ( his final exam he took last week, which was a released exam, he scored enough on the mc and the first 2 questions to get a 5. He could have left the others blank!!) Our local high school has 22 in their AP test and only a couple are going to take the exam. Not one got higher than a 3 last year on it. So who is doing a better job???</p>
<p>Several people who have done kitchen labs have gone on to be dentists and doctors. My husband is a surgeon and supervises our little kitchen labs</p>
<p>Sorry op, that just made me mad. I think you should concentrate on the leadership by highlighting her heading up the special needs program at church. That sounds like a great start. If she organizes fund raisers for Special Olympics or something like that, then that would be awesome. I think a concentration on that, especially with her sibling would look really good. Colleges want kids that are passionate about what they are involved in.</p>
<p>High school will be a time when her interests may change. She may discard activities and interests that originated in the family (such as work with special needs children) or to please parents. This is a necessary stage of development. She needs to find her own way. </p>
<p>I think you might need to let things happen, and then support whatever direction or “passion” she comes up with. If she has disabled brothers at home, she might just as easily want to work in a different area, eventually. It can go either way.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about the “well-rounded” issue. Other posters have said it: schools are looking for an interesting mix. Don’t even mention doing things to get into college: it sets up a pretty sick dynamic for some, with “getting in” as a goal that creates depression once kids are actually “in”.</p>
<p>I don’t know what her injury was, but wonder if dance is really over for her. Perhaps it is, for physical reasons. Was dance something she really enjoyed, or was it an activity that started in childhood, that she was good at and that adults expected her to do? Is she missing it a lot? I have a daughter who danced for many years, including a professional company in high school, quit for a year, then went back to it in a different way. She is in a college where she can major in dance, but mainly from the creative end of the field rather than the technical.</p>
<p>My only other comment would be not to overdo the academics. Leave enough time, space and energy for her to generate ideas on what she wants to do outside of academics. A period of inactivity can inspire. Slowly limit your own role in activities to driving the car!</p>
<p>I agree, colleges want to see a few EC’s that they have done all 4 years or close, in high school with progressive leadership responsibilities. I don’t know how you will find time to fit anything else into her schedule but is there one or two of those activities that she could join some kind of a local club for and work her way into an officer position? Maybe she could serve on the board for the local Special Olympics program?</p>
<p>One of the kids in our kids’ class at school has it in her head that colleges want to see a huge laundry list of “stuff”. She has probably 20 activities/sports on her “resume” right now as a junior, however, other than student council, she hasn’t been with anything for more than one year. That is going to hurt her in the long run. For your DD, cut back on a couple things so she can devote more time to the things she likes the best and take on more responsibility as she gets older. That will help her MUCH more in the college application process.</p>
<p>You might try PMing or searching posts by sbjdorlo. Her son is a homeschooler with an impressive resume and a list of elite acceptances in the last round. I don’t think he was a dancer but maybe she could give you some relevant insight.</p>
<p>She doesn’t have to be elected to something to show leadership. I also think that these four years are a time for her to explore her interests. While it’s fine to say schools want to see depth, they also want to see curiosity and risk taking. That may mean she tries some things and quits them. </p>
<p>At this point, your goal shouldn’t be to point her at competitive colleges, it should be to make sure she the next four years are stimulating and personally rewarding for her. She sounds like a very smart, motivated kid, and I’m sure if she follows her interests, the college stuff will fall into place by the time she gets there.</p>
<p>I’ve heard many times that when discussing applicants, adcoms only really refer to two extracurriculars, like the oboe playing football player, the math club president runner,etc. Just keep that in mind.</p>
<p>Another great way to show leadership is to organize something. work to organize a 5K, get on the Committee for a local Relay for Life, etc. It shows the organizational skills and will help the student grow. Showing independence and maturity is an attractive quality.</p>
<p>You may want to find the thread about Chelsea Link, a homeschooler with an interesting HS resume who made national news with a raft of elite acceptances. Her mom posted some great advice on the thread about resources they used during her HS years.</p>
<p>I hate posts like this, because really there is no one answer. Some kids are well rounded and will do best doing a bunch of different things and others are more pointy and are better off doing really, really well at just one or two things, maybe even related things. Neither of my kids did anything specific for leadership, but my younger son, for example, taught origami classes at the senior center. This grew out of a hobby that turned into a small business and when he was looking at doing some community service work this was a skill he could offer, but he never planned it ahead of time. I suspect that what he did looked a lot like leadership to the admissions committees though he never thought of it that way. His other main EC essay also came out of serendipity. He needed a community service activity to fulfill a government requirement and ended up helping archive neighborhood association papers from the 1960s on. He learned a lot about a fight to keep open classrooms in our local elementary school and wrote about what he learned from the project. My best advice is to follow your interests and if you do something a little off the beaten path - so much the better.</p>
<p>I may be in the the minority on CC, but I really think parental involvement in ECs (selecting, guiding, participating) is not appropriate. ECs should be driven by the child’s interest. EC’s are one way children learn about themselves. I would say my D has learned more from her ECs that in her classes. However, every EC was chosen by her without a view of what colleges want. Often with my protesting that she doesnt have time. She should be free to choose, and free to quit activities. This freedom will help her to learn about herself without risk. </p>
<p>You D sounds like a smart and great girl. I would relax about the ECs. There should be a fun and enjoyment element to these things and (IMO)- no parents allowed.</p>
but maybe she could give you some relevant insight.</p>