Parent needs help because of my Overachieving Son

Parents Forum
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To parents or students that was or is in a similar situation,
My son just started 8th grade. He’s always done well in school and last year got perfect scores (math + language arts) on the California State test for his grade level. A relative told us if he does well in PSAT, he might be allegeable for scholarships, so I had him take the practice PSAT tests on collegeboard.com. I was surprised to see that he scored in the 95+ percentile on both tests, then I started having him take practice SAT tests, and he’s been getting 1550+ out of 1600 for the 3 tests that he took.
I’m not here to brag about what a smart kid he is, because I know that there are plenty of SMARTER kids out there, plus being too bright without the right personality traits can be more of a disadvantage than an advantage.

I am here to ask for advice because his abilities now push us to worry about his future. My wife and I are atypical Asian parents because we did not intent to push our kids TOO hard academically. We ask them to do well in school and did not expect them to get into a top college. But, because my son has so much potential, it’s only reasonable to want to maximize his capabilities and to believe he will be able to get into a top college which in terms equate to $40+K per year tuition.
My son is really interested in Math and Probability. He hasn’t taken Physics yet, so I’m not sure if he’ll be interested in that subject but because we live in Southern California he is shooting for Caltech and Harvey Mudd; it’s a long shot but does it doesn’t hurt to aim high.

Questions I wish someone can advise me on…
Q. Any helpful suggestion on getting into Harvey Mudd, Caltech or MIT.
Q. Where to find scholarships?
Q. Is there a way he can take college classes in high school which can count towards his college credits? This way, he won’t have to go to college as long which would cut down on the cost.

To sum things up, we need help because if he does get into a top college, we hope to not have to shell out too much $$.

Any recommendation/ suggestions will help.

Thanks so much for your time and help.

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Your post is very reasonable. Your son sounds great and I think it’s reasonable for you to ask these questions. Please remember that 5 years from now, your son will be very different and his interest might have changed, but I certainly recommend fostering a love a learning, which you seem to have done, rather than a love of achievement. I think the former is much more likely to lead to success and happiness. Self motivation is always more sustainable than externally driven motivation.

I think it’s really important to not fall in love with particular schools because admissions to these schools are hollistic, meaning that he could do everything right and still not get in. It’s critical that his dream not be of a particular college, but of a direction in life. There are many paths to achieve the dream life. This way his dream is totally within his control and does not depend on the whims of hollistic admissions committees.

There are several approaches that I think are reasonable to consider in your situation. There are two fundamental strategies with variations on each

  1. compromise on the cost - if the net price calculators suggest that you will be full pay, expect to be full pay and choose the college that best fits the student’s interests and temperament. This may involve parental loans, etc. Of course look at scholarships too, but the primary determinant of the college will be the one that best fits the student.
  2. compromise on the college - choose the best college that fits into your financial parameters. In addition to financial aid which you can guestimate from the NPC, some schools are more generous with merit scholarships than others. Schools like Alabama and Pittsburgh give out many full tuition scholarships and full rides.

You have a long time to decide on which route works best for your student.

I think it’s worthwhile to figure out what your financial parameters are, and how likely they are to improve. Given your current level of income, you can run net price calculators at each school, and see how much financial aid you would get if he had to go today.

A couple of other things to think about: If your son takes enough AP credits, he can apply to Oxford of Cambridge in the UK and their programs are only 3 years. That saves 75%. If you are in California, you have access to many fine UCs that are also a great deal.

I think it’s great to have high hopes for your son and learn how to navigate the landscape, but I applaud you for not putting so much pressure on your son that he hates his life, as so many kids have complained about here.

Good luck.

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Why? Your son is the SAME kid he was before he took all of these practice tests. Same kid.

There is no magic here. He will need a strong GPA, and strong ACT or SAT scores…and great LOR.

The best merit scholarships come from the colleges dorect,y. The schools you have listed do NOT give merit awards, only need based. Do you have financial need? Will you have it in four years when your kid actually goes to college?

In HIGH SCHOOL (right now, your 8th grader is not in HS), there might be opportunities for dual enrollment classes with a college. Check with the high school about that.

Not enough info here. For need based aid…your income and assets will be considered. Do you have sufficient,y low income to qualify for need based aid?

For merit aid, colleges that give it (and not all do), the kid’s SAT or ACT score will matter, as will his GPA.

You have listed three colleges for engineering STEM types of majors. Your son is an 8th grader…who might just change his mind about a career or college that focuses in this area. I think you need to be MUCH more open minded.

Are you from CA.

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Every college must offer a net price calculator to help you estimate costs. Obviously if you fill it out today it will be subject to change but give them a try for the schools you listed. Go to the financial aid section of each school website and search for it.

If your child decides to use national merit status to pursue a full scholarship, he will need to choose a college that offers that. There is plenty of time to research, but you should understand that most scholarships are offered by the colleges themselves. Choosing schools that offer big scholarships for academic achievement means means looking lower in the college rankings.

Large “outside” scholarships that are portable to the college of your choice are fewer in number and highly competitive. In addition, if you had qualified for financial aid from the university, colleges often reduce their own aid by all or part of the amount of the outside scholarship.

The state of California has some of the best public universities in the country, and attending in-state is an amazing bargain for the quality of the education offered.

If you decide to pursue early college credits, the UC system will be even less expensive. The higher ranking colleges limit the number of early credits that freshman may enter with. MIT, for one, accepts no early college classes for undergrad at all. You high school counselor is your best source of information for what early college programs are available locally.

Finally, having money gives you options. You should start a college fund and save as much as you can.

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The responses you have received are excellent. Large scholarships do not exist at tippy top schools and are extremely, extremely competitive at the slightly lower than tippy top schools. For those lower ranked schools that do offer large scholarships, excellent educations can be had without destroying your family’s financial security. Many of those schools will allow students to bring in their DE credits and use scholarship $$ toward grad level courses. So if your ds graduates from high school having taking 300 level classes, he could enter as a freshman and take 400 level courses and move right on into grad level courses as appropriate.

That is a different path than entering into advanced level classes at top tier schools as a freshman, but the education is still solid and will equip them well for whatever path the opt for next. (Funded top grad programs, for example. :slight_smile: )

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Since you live in CA…I would suggest adding Cal Poly SLO to your list.

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  1. Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD are "top colleges" by any rational standard, so you won't have to pay Harvey Mudd tuition to send your child to a top college.
  2. Your real dilemma in the future may be whether he accepts a substantial scholarship to attend a college you might not otherwise consider (e.g., University of Oklahoma, University of Alabama), vs. paying something affordable but substantial for UCLA or Berkeley.
  3. You should familiarize yourself with the actual financial aid policies at Mudd, Caltech, MIT and Stanford. For many families who make too much to be financial aid candidates at most colleges, elite colleges (if your child is admitted) are the most affordable option, because they offer significant financial aid to families making over $100,000 per year. Owning a business, or having substantial investment assets, may affect that, however. You need to look school by school.
  4. When the time comes. As others have said, kids change a lot between the time they are 13 and the time they are 17 or 18. Your child's performance on practice tests in 8th grade is very impressive, but don't assume that his path through high school will be smooth.
  5. It's OK to start thinking about college, and educating yourself about it, but you have a much more important challenge ahead of you: keeping your child engaged and learning over the next 5 years. Precisely because he's at such a high level now, the biggest danger he faces is probably getting bored and checking out of formal education during the next few years.
  6. Anything you do mainly to improve his chances of getting in to Caltech or Stanford is a huge gamble that you could lose, regardless of your son's abilities. But the things you do that make him a more engaged, happier, more secure, better educated person now will stay with him and help assure his success for his whole life, no matter where he goes to college. Plus -- that's what will make him the most attractive candidate possible for every college, including elite colleges.

So focus on his education now, not his college applications four years from now.

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Thanks so much. Your views and advices offer a different perspective which we need. Appreciate it!!

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A lot of parents don’t start looking at this until the summer between junior year and senior year of college. I think that is a little late in the game when it comes to considering what your family can or cannot afford to pay each year for your child’s college education.

Re: is there a way your son can take college classes in high school which can count towards his college credits?
Yes, but it depends on what university he ends up at post-high school. Schools like Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd, Stanford, other Ivy League places will expect you to have taken AP classes (along with taking the AP exams) but they will not necessarily let you count those AP credits toward their own college’s graduation requirements.

Cal Tech is a good example of this. From what I’ve read, at Cal Tech, you aren’t allowed to declare a major until the end of freshman year. EVERY freshman student takes the same classes. And pretty much EVERY freshman has stellar grades, stellar ACT/SAT test scores, and got stellar scores on the AP exams (especially the math & science ones). EVEN THOUGH you passed those AP exams in math & science, you will not get any college credit for them at Cal Tech because Cal Tech wants you to take their versions of those classes.

The above is not true at EVERY single university/college across the country, though. A LOT of universities will give you college credit for passing AP exam. The best way to find out if a specific university will give you college credit for AP Exams is to go look it up on that specific college’s website. They will usually have a list of the various AP exams and how many units you will get credit for a 3, 4, or 5 on that AP exam. It usually also says whether you’ll get credit for a specific CLASS at that college or if it goes toward fulfilling a general ed requirement.

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Re: your question on suggestions for how to get into Harvey Mudd, Caltech or MIT -

It really depends. It depends on a couple of key factors:

  1. What is a good fit for you financially
  2. What is a good fit in terms of academics, interests that your child has, campus environment, etc.

For example, the campus culture of 1 turbo STEM school can be VERY different than that of another turbo STEM school. MIT is rumored to be a pretty stressful place to be as an undergrad. Harvey Mudd and Cal Tech are equally as challenging, but their campus cultures can be very different than MIT.

Does your son have any reasons why he’s mentioned wanting to go to Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, or MIT? Or is he talking about those schools just because his friends are talking about them?

I think that 8th grade is a bit early to be taking anybody on college campus tours, so don’t go down that road yet. If you want to get an idea of the caliber of students who get accepted to those 3 STEM schools, you can first go to each college’s website and look up their CDS (Common Data Set). Every university has it somewhere on their website. It will list overall stats for the students accepted into the freshman class at that school. For almost all students, Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, and MIT are reach schools.

Some things to consider when examining different colleges:

  1. Reach, Match, vs Safety schools
    Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, and MIT will pretty much be a reach for almost everybody.

A Match school is one where it’s a match for you financially, it’s a match for you in terms of your GPA, test scores, & other criteria (i.e., your GPA & test scores fall between the 25th & 75th percentile range on the Common Data Set doc for that college), and it’s a match for your kid in terms of the TYPE of school he’s looking for (i.e., offers the major(s) he’s interested in, likes the campus, could see himself being happy living there for 4 years, etc.).

A SAFETY school would be one where:

  • you can DEFINITELY afford it and not have to sweat the financials
  • you KNOW that you will get admitted (i.e., your GPA & test scores are ABOVE the 75th percentile on the Common Data Set for that school)
  • you will be happy, satisfied, or content going to that college for 4 years if you don’t get in anywhere else.

If ANY of the above 3 are a “no” on the safety school, then it’s not a true “safety.”

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My two cents: you need to be thinking more about HS than college at this point. Will your HS offer a curriculum and cohort group sufficient to challenge, interest, and inspire your son? If so, encourage him to take advantage of those opportunities, including activities that might interest him (not to build an impressive cv, but to figure out what he likes). IMO the biggest advantage bright kids have in HS is that they can explore topics at sufficient depth to start identifying true academic interests that may carry over to college. That’s invaluable when you get to the point of building a realistic list of colleges.

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Re: Where to find scholarships?

It depends.

You should do some research on the National Merit Scholarship program. There ARE universities that will give a National Merit Finalist substantial merit tuition scholarships. But those schools are NOT Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, and MIT. Ivy League schools won’t give you merit tuition scholarships for that either. What you WILL see is that a LOT of the accepted students at Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, and MIT are National Merit Finalists or Semi Finalists. Same thing at Ivy League schools.

Also, the following thread might be helpful:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/52133-schools-known-for-good-merit-aid.html#latest

So, for example, let’s consider a couple of possibilities from that thread…
University of Texas - Dallas, University of Alabama, and University of Alabama-Huntsville all give substantial merit scholarships automatically for students with high GPAs and test scores. I’m talking like full OOS (out of state) tuition scholarships. Renewing those scholarships usually requires the student to maintain a certain GPA (generally speaking, it’s usually 3.0, but at various schools it can be a little higher than that. It really depends).

But should your son go to one of those schools? It depends. Depends on the campus environment he’d be happiest in. Depends on what his interests are. For example:

  • Is your son going to major in mechanical, electrical, or aerospace engineering? Consider UA-Huntsville. Especially if your son is a US citizen. Huntsville has a large industrial park very close to the college campus and there are a lot of internship opportunities for engineering majors.
  • Is your son going to major in CHEMICAL engineering? Then target a school that is stronger in chemical engineering. Especially if he wants to go into the mining or petrochemical industry after graduation.
  • Is your son a computer science person? Super duper into coding? UT-Dallas might be something to consider as a safety.
  • Does your son want to stay in state in California?
  • If he decides that he wants to go out of state, WHERE out of state? What part of the country? Urban, surburban, or rural campus?
  • How easy or difficult will it be for him to get to an airport to travel home on breaks?
  • How easy or difficult will it be for him to get around without a car? etc., etc.
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If you aren’t familiar with AoPS, you might want to look into their courses. MOOCs might be something he might enjoy as well.

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For now, maybe just encourage your son to pursue his interests. What does he like to do in his spare time? What does he get REALLY excited about? I guarantee you that he could turn one of those into something really fun & exciting that will also work out well for him on college applications.

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OP- I have one son who graduated from MIT (and loved every minute of it) so I’ll share with you my perspective on what you should be doing now.

1- Work as a family to figure out the right mix of academics, just being a kid (throwing a ball in the yard or playing with the dog), family responsibilities (to elderly grandparents or other relatives), community obligations (church or other volunteer work?) and plain old vanilla chores. The mix will change (junior year is a time crunch) but unless you guys prioritize these other things, you could end up with the kid whose entire life for 5 years has been studying and test taking. And you don’t want that.

2- Figure out (again as a family) the kind of activities you can all enjoy which also foster some interests your son has. Museums? Hiking?Aquarium? Building and flying kites? A lot of my kids interests grew out of stuff we did as a family-- even non-intellectual stuff.

3- Make sure he reads. Cannot stress this enough. Fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers. He will be an interesting person by the time he’s a HS senior if he gets interested in the world.

4- Keep an eye on his classes and schoolwork and relationships with teachers without hovering. We had one year where my son was not put in the highest math level in his grade. I called the school and played phone tag with them, by the time we talked they claimed it was too late to switch (which was crazy but there it is). I was really aggravated and it took me years to realize that it didn’t hurt my kid one iota. He loved math, plain and simple, and ate it for breakfast lunch and dinner no matter what was going on in class or how the other kids were doing. So pushing is sometimes a mistake…

5- Sit down NOW with your cancelled checks, bank statements, last few years of tax returns. You don’t need to account for every single penny but it sure helps to have a head start in figuring out exactly what you can afford. Do not make the mistake that so many make to say “I can afford 15K per year if my kid goes to Southern Kentucky U but I’ll find the money if he gets into CalTech”. Where are you finding that money? The sofa cushions? It is MUCH easier to put the family on a budget now than to try and scrape a huge amount of dough out of your standard of living when your kid is a senior. And if he ends up with a great merit scholarship, having money STILL gives you more options.

6- Enjoy the ride. They grow up really fast and you don’t want to look back on your son’s adolescence as one long slog towards college.

Your kid sounds fantastic.

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Lots of good advice above. I would only add that he is quite young so let your son’s interests and goals evolve naturally and try to go with the flow. I can see a kid like your son developing an interest in computer programming, engineering, medicine, or many other things. Do keep in mind that if private schools don’t work out, as a CA resident you are fortunate to have some great public options such as UCBerkely, UCLA which could allow your son to reach his full potential.

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@JC1228, reading your post reminds me in your shoes four years ago, a giddy and proud dad, unsure of what to do with what I thought was a genius in my hands. How time flies, my son just went through the whole process. Here are some things we learned along the way. I intend not to rain on your parade, but to help your put things in perspective.

There are a lot of kids, especially Asian kids, who can do what your kid did, which is excelling in standardized test even at a very young age. I have followed closely those kids (36 ACT, 2400 SAT scorers and NMFs) in my son’s high school. Last season, among the 16 NMFs, none got into HYPSM, the majority (10) attend out state flagship university, one attends Northeastern with merit, one attends University of Oklahoma with merit, one attends Vanderbilt with full tuition scholarship.

If your kid sets his eyes on one of HYPSM, he needs to do a lot more than getting 4.0 GPA and acing the ACT or SAT. He needs to be a special individual doing unique things. Be aware that there are no merit scholarships at those schools.

If he aims for merit scholarships at the top 20 schools, schools like Duke, Vanderbilt, Emory, WUSTL, and Rice etc. he has a shot, but never guaranteed. He will need stellar recommendations and killer essays.

If he is (you are) happy with attending schools that offer full ride or full tuition scholarships to NMFs, then he is set.

My advice to you and you kid, forget about ACT or SAT for now until his junior year, let him be what he wants to be, do what he loves to do.

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Can’t add a lot to what others have posted. Good news your son tests well. That is one hurdle you won’t have to worry about. FWIW my kid applied to Caltech, MIT and Harvey Mudd. He was waitlisted at Harvey Mudd and rejected by both Caltech and MIT. He did get into Harvard and Carnegie Mellon for Computer Science. He went to CMU and loved it - I think it may have ended up being a better fit for him than MIT would have been.

Generally speaking merit scholarships are at school that want to attract high stats kids. So you have to look a little further down the totem pole to get one. You need to decide what you can afford and whether you can save more now for what you would like to be able to afford.

The best advice I can give is to encourage your kid to look for things to do outside classes. He should join a few activities in school, but also look for things outside school. My son did an academic team and Science Olympiad in school. Outside of school he explored his interest in computer programming in many different ways - from looking at MIT’s opencourse ware, to programming a mod for an online game that ended up getting reviewed by a gaming magazine (and here we thought he was just wasting his time!), to doing both volunteer and for pay computer projects, one of which ended up in a permanent part time job by the time he was a senior in high school. We didn’t push him to do any of this, but there were some opportunities that we helped make happen. (I asked if he could do some job shadowing at the company that was so impressed by him they hired him. A colleague of DH’s was complaining no one in his lab could write a model for analyzing proteins and my husband said he thought our kid could do it.)

I think our kids biggest drawback was that he is pretty one-dimensional - everything he did was related to computer programming. But that is who he is and he would have been unhappy if we’d made him play in the band, or do a sport. And I think by and large kids end up where they belong - and at least for my kids there were a lot of colleges out there where they could have been perfectly happy and excelled.

I also second the advice to keep reading for pleasure.

20

Since he only in 8th grade, you have some years before he goes to college.

In the mean time, you can do your financial planning to figure out what you can afford. You can run net price calculators on college web sites to see what financial aid may look like. With some years to go, you may be able to alter your financial habits somewhat to increase the available money for his college. If he has younger siblings, do not forget college funding for them. Note that less strong students could cost more than stronger students who earn large scholarships or admission to super-selective colleges with the best financial aid.

If you are California residents, the state universities (UCs and CSUs) provide plenty of good options at lower cost than most academically comparable private schools.