NHS is a joke at D’s school. She was in NJHS and we saw lots of shenanigans with respect to mandatory community service hours. And the meetings were just about signing in and out. No activities. I told her not to bother with NHS, as a club in name only is a waste of time. Now she can volunteer where she likes to when she has the time. I am enjoying watching her develop personal causes and finding opportunities to get involved or donate on her own with no pressure of getting X community service hours. We don’t even track hours, although due to calendaring, we were able to get a good estimate of how many hours she’s done. She dislikes all the questions about whether she’s volunteering for community service credit. And she never signs in or out our needs to get any log signed. That’s as it should be, imo. Service should be a life long pursuit.
@RightCoaster the smartest kid at my DS17 class got deferred from MIT and he is off the charts. I’m not sure what it takes to get in there. Same situation last year and she was a legacy. Just brutal…
@Mom2aphysicsgeek, interesting video and article. I had not heard about this initiative. I don’t really expect a big change either. I don’t see how this will make Harvard any less selective even if they actually follow through. It will just change which kids make up the 5%. It will change the way in which kids game the system. Instead of joining school clubs and making their way to president, they’ll grind through volunteer hours. Admittedly volunteering is a great thing, but I don’t really see how it reduces stress. It just pushes it to a different area. And I think those poor AO’s can look forward to many more essays about “my summer service trip overseas where I learned more from the locals than they did from me.”
i.e. community service.
I think this is why D17 might get into some of her reach schools. She is truly passionate about her causes.
But S19 not so much. S19 had a thought of MIT a few years ago, but quickly has realized that he has a better chance of winning the lottery.
Now that I continued reading, I agree with @thermom and @RightCoaster who communicated some of my points better and added others.
I guess I do have a personal beef since D has no service hours outside of what was required for school. She enjoys her hard classes, but she spends a lot of time studying because her processing time is slower and she works incredibly hard. Her EC’s (three martial arts or related activities at the same studio) pretty much take up the rest of her time and I know they are great for her mentally as well as physically. She’s definitely committed to making the world a better place. That’s why she wants to go into renewable energy. She also tried to start a club at her school to raise awareness about people with mental differences (like autism, mental illness, learning disorders, etc.) But are colleges going to care if she put “I tried and failed to start a service club” in her resume. Maybe I’m biased, but that bugs me.
Also, this may help some poor kids who go to crappy schools and can’t afford test prep. But those same students often have to work long hours or take care of siblings. Hopefully they would take that into consideration.
S19 keeps asking me to buy lotto for him. He is onto something =))
+1
@RightCoaster - is the goal to get into NHS, or to be a good person and have a good life?
IMO, it’s the kids that lied that paid the price. (And I think you realize that, and you were just stating what your child thought.)
I don’t know about you, but I only became a realist once I started the college application process. Previously I had no idea that pretty much every single school has gotten so much harder to get in to. IOW, pick the tier that you think your child should go to, and then subtract 1 (or 2).
Study after study can be made but Colleges are going to act in their self interest and so are Deans of Admission.
NHS at Ds school -“we go to the required meetings and talk about the next required meeting”.
Total joke. It’s stupid. Parents forge volunteer hours. A group of top 10 kids are talking about revolting and not wearing their white collar NHS thingie to graduation just to show how ridiculous the whole thing is.
@thshadow yes, paid the price by not getting to joining a group that is organized to help kids participate in charitable ways. My son wasn’t going to join for the “prestige” of joining, he just thought it would be a good way to keep doing some honorable community service type of work with some school friends. Anyways, he did manage to organize his own charitable doing, and joined in on some town community service, and tutored at school. That was more than enough for the schools he applied to. He didn’t need a bazillion hours of community service, just a way to show schools that he did volunteer I some useful way and understands the concept of helping your community.
Pretty boring week of mail for son17. I think he got one or 2 pieces of snail mail from random colleges of no interest,
and just got a bunch of “OMG deadlines are the 15th!!” type emails from colleges he has no interest in.
Interestingly, he got about 10 emails from random crappy DII schools with LAX programs that wanted him to contact them asap and fill out apps because they still needed to fill out their squads. He had to register for the NCAA clearinghouse a while back and all the coaches get the kids info and hound them if they need kids. Mostly just a bunch he has no interest in.
Nothing in the mail from schools we applied to, no emails with updates or anything. Crickets!! Boring!!
Kids have a long weekend. Heading up to go snowboarding for a few days, supposed to be nice in the mountains this weekend, yay.
In terms of financial aid, just have the kids get married. Arranged marriages (often for financial reasons) are common in some cultures. Do the same for financial aid purposes. Don’t need to live together or even like each other. Then after college get a quickie no fault divorce. Could also have a child but that is permanent. 
Pretty boring week of mail for my son also. Just things from schools he was admitted to EA. He started unsubscribing from schools emails he hasn’t applied to so isn’t getting many emails either, seems to be winding down until Feb 1st for UMD and then March for the rest. Have a great long weekend everyone!!
Since there’s been some chatter here about what it takes to get into MIT, the anecdotal evidence I have is the one kid I’ve heard about from our HS that got in this year took AP Calc B/C as a freshman. Probably has a math major or minor by now. Several NMSF kids did not get in.
While we wait for college decisions, those of us with kids already in college have also been going through the annual January stress known as lining up housing for next year. So you have that to look forward to.
We had 2 kids get into MIT this year. The first is an average excellent student. My daughter was quite surprised she was accepted when many ranked higher than her and with higher test scores were rejected. The other is a superstar, very young, and mischievous (I’ll leave it at that :))). Both are URMs. One is wealthy. The other comfortably upper middle class.
ADMITTED!!! <:-P
Just kidding. Just wanted to liven up this party.
Congratulations, @STEM2017! Where?