Alternatively, one could say “you will rarely again have such large blocks of free time with so few responsibilities, so do not waste it”. If the kid is physically and emotionally healthy doing little, I guess that is OK, but wasting lots of time on video games or TV won’t be OK with me.
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He’s not quite recruitment level, and says he doesn’t want to play basketball in college in any event. He’s looking forward to having a good senior season once he’s fully recovered from his injury and surgery, and I’m sure he’ll play casually with friends, but he doesn’t want to compete even at the club level in college.
He has no opinion yet on BArch vs. BS/MArch. He’s not even certain yet that he wants to pursue the discipline; he’s planning to use the summer academy in part to decide. He’s good at math but not particularly interested in it, so he’s taking AP Statistics next year instead of calculus even though the latter would probably be more impressive to architecture schools. He may let the school he gets into decide what program he pursues — BArch at Cooper Union or Pratt, for example, but BS at NYU.
There is value in down time. I think a lot of young people (and the rest of us too) don’t have enough of it. (I suppose COVID has changed that and wonder what the residual effects will be.)
Note that architecture majors often require calculus, so it may be advantageous to take calculus in high school.
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Yep. From what we’ve seen, though, it doesn’t seem to be an absolute prerequisite. He does understand it would be required if he decides to major in it, and would take it in college.
Sure, that’s an option for some. I personally draw the line if downtime becomes laziness. I don’t see that asking a kid to engage in something outside of schoolwork is making them jump into adulthood.
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A job and the gym work!!
Hmmm…well…house rules in the Thumper household:
Kids had to do one sport per year (not per season…per year) and it could be in school or out of school. It was their choice. We honestly didn’t care. DS skied in the winter. DD was on the swim team.
Music was not negotiable. They could either be in the choir or play an instrument. Instrument was their choosing and we would pay for lessons. We asked them to do this at least through grade 10. Both did it all the way through school.
Both were in NHS and our school and that had a community service requirement. So that was not negotiable either.
That was it.
We had a lot of sports options as you might guess. Between recreation activities like skiing and tennis and things like that…and multiple school sports each season, we didn’t think that was too much to ask.
Our family is musical so some music study made sense. If our kids had wanted to do the school plays or dance or art classes, I think we would have been fine with that too. We just felt that something in the fine arts was important.
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I’d let her fill her time with what interests her. It’ll be up to her to explain who she is on her college apps and how she’s used her time will be part of that. There are kids who do a ton of things for their apps yet have zero sense of what motivates them beyond getting into a “good” school. Imho, that’s no t valuable either. As long as you tell her why you think it’s important, I’d let it be her choice.
You can check in with her about how she’s feeling about how she’s spending her time. Her first installment is “Played tennis because my parents said I should. Didn’t like it because… I learned I need to pick my own activities and think I might like x because…” Maybe she wants a job. It doesn’t have to be school related. Is it possible that there’s something going on with other kids that she’d rather not be part of?
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Another option: Canadian Universities. ECs, letters of recommendations, etc. are not part of the admissions decision process. It’s grades, test scores and that’s it. Schools like McGill and U of Toronto are great institutions and also a great bargain – about the cost of our in-state flagship.
My S23 twins are somewhat like this. They both have stellar grades, are in the top 6/9% of their class and test relatively well. Both are in marching band and NHS and thats it. Thing 1 just isn’t a club joining type of kid. He likes band and that’s it. He got a part time job at McDonald’s last year and has been working 15-20 hours a week since last summer. He’s content with that and I just can’t force him to add anything else he truly isn’t interested in just for the sake of padding his resume. He’s trying out for band section leader, which he has a good shot at. Thing 2 is a little more social and volunteers a bit more but also doesn’t have much outside of marching band (also auditioning for a leadership position). He’s going to start a part time job this summer. Both boys are interested in getting their private pilot license (husband is a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor) and have started classes. This will be the extent of their EC’s.
My rule for them was always that they had to choose one thing (sport/athletics, music, theater etc) and do it well, and also find a part time job. It’s serving us well so far.
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Band + job is not exactly “no ECs”.
Most high school students are not curing cancer, winning national championships in something, or whatever may seem to be overrepresented here on these forums.
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This is what I keep telling myself every time I get on this forum and start second guessing lol. They’re great, well rounded, normal kids. They’ll be fine.
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bingo
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Our rule of thumb was do one thing in school, one thing outside of school. Job is fine. One thing that I think can be helpful is to print out a sample Common Application and think about what you might do to fill it out. My kids did their volunteer work in the summer mostly. Older son had a computer programming job that kept him busy the last year or two of high school. Neither kid did any organized sports so they really did have plenty of down time.
My advice would be that ECs matter in a BIG way. To get in the door you need the grades and/or the test scores depending on whether or not the school accepts them. But there are thousands of kids with amazing grades and test scores. What makes you stand out? Schools are looking for a story and ECs are the way you have of telling it through demonstrated interest and leadership. They are what make you stand out. I have a friend whose child got a perfect ACT score and has amazing grades, but because UCs are test blind, they were denied at the top schools as they didn’t have a good story. They had athletics and limited ECs, but no demonstrated passion. I have another friend whose child has been on athletic path for years and has great grades, but no ECs other than athletics. Denied at every UC but accepted into one of the military academies. ECs matter in a big way.
I think you are worrying about this way too much. If she doesn’t want to do ECs, no reason to force her. My son didn’t do any ECs at all and got into all four of the schools he applied to with some nice merit aid, with a 3.4 GPA and 1350.
Let her live her life.
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Do they really? To some extent - yes. But in a big way? And to the extent that parents obsess over it? Unless the kid gets recruited for athletics which is a real hook I am not sure they play such an outsized role. Most folks I see from the kid’s school seem to be getting in more on the strength of the stats rather than stellar ECs.
This kind of makes sense: exactly what do stellar ECs but not good enough in athletics kid get the university? An athletics / sports team kid (even if it is a not so popular sport) gets sought by the different coaches and the athletic director of the university. A high stats kid influences the different rankings and is in the university’s interest to have that high - as that translates to dollars for the university. If the current flavor for the rankings is some other factor (say number of low income scholarships awarded) that will be prioritized. But why would just demonstrating high amount of commitment on some activity move the needle so much? Having zero activities will stand out and may get rejected even with stellar GPA/test scores - but most applications will have some activities due to the lot of emphasis on ECs for the sake of college applications by parents.
Now the large public universities like UC that you mention, there are more than 100k applications these days and limited staff to look at them. So a huge first cut would be over the GPAs (as no test scores this year) but beyond that the readers of the applications will look a bit at the strength of the curriculum, a bit at the essays (personal interest questions) and then a bit at the extra curriculars. If you see How applications are reviewed | UC Admissions , the extra curricular activities is just one of the 13 factors.
I disagree with you on this one. My kid has very good grades (3.93/4.7), but they’re not over the top compared to others. Good ACT, but not great (32). Athletics for 2 years but did club for the rest. Very successful athletically, but club gave more flexibility. Accepted UCLA, UCI, UCSD and UC Berkeley Regents. Deferred at Tulane. He wouldn’t have got in anywhere if it weren’t for EC’s. They demonstrated progressive interest and responsibility. Presidential Gold Service Award, but that didn’t even matter I don’t think. It was the “I have an interest and I am pursuing that interest in progressively more responsible roles” that did it. I can only come to that conclusion based on the experience of friends in similar situations with even better grades and the only other differentiator being EC’s.
That is excellent GPA for UC admissions: unweighted 3.93 and weighted 4.7. I assume UC capped GPA may be around 4.27-4.3. From my back of the envelope calculations the maximum UC GPA capped would be around 4.33 (12 courses * 4.0 + 8 honors or AP divided by 12 courses from sophomore & junior years). So the GPA is fairly close to the max possible UC GPA. ACT of 32 would correspond to be between 1420-1440.
If the admission was from last year, those test scores are well within the middle 25-75% for either UCLA (4.18-4.31/1350-1550) or UCB (4.13-4.30/1320-1540) - in fact near the higher end of the spectrum. If the admission was for this year, he likely would have been in a better position than last year because test scores were not considered and he has an excellent GPA. In either case he would have got in based on his stats as he had reasonable ECs. Not sure what you mean by “very successful athletically” and whether it would have been enough to be a deciding factor but the GPA certainly seems to have been good enough to have been a deciding factor.
Overall I think we as parents over obsess over the ECs to the detriment of the GPA and strength of the curriculum.
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Probably most colleges primarily select on academic criteria, and at those that consider ECs and other stuff, they are most influential at the borderline range based on academic criteria. For the most selective colleges, the borderline range is at the ceiling of academic criteria, so applicants who have a reasonable chance of admission have academic criteria at or near the ceiling, plus ECs and other attributes to distinguish themselves from numerous other applicants with similar academic criteria.
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