<p>I texted D to ask her what three she’d choose to have a GC put on her rec. She said “callous, scheming, competitive.” I nearly fell out laughing.</p>
<p>Yeah, zoosermom. You can legitimately add “funny” to her list.</p>
<p>I always say she’s a little weird! She just likes to occasionally get a rise out of people, and I have to admit that the response to something like that could be hilarious.</p>
<p>marite- I totally agree with you on who is making the outlandish demands. (See my earlier posts on who is making the demands.) When I take a look at the students from my kids’ hs who got into the ivies, CalTech, and MIT, I notice they are the ones who met the outlandish demands. By outlandish, I mean: straight A’s in AP and college courses (taking an overload each year), winners of national competitions in a variety of academic areas including multi-year research projects, sports, music, high SAT/ACT scores, club officers, community service, etc. - all from one kid - and lots of them are meeting these demands. The kids who scored high on the SAT and ACT and have straight A’s but did just a few ec’s ended up in the next tier down (still top schools, just not the tippy top). It might just be a misinterpretation on my part, but it seems like the kids who got into the top schools from my kids’ hs were asked/chose to do more than most adults do during their day. I also wonder if part of the equation is that my kids’ hs is super competitive - kids who would normally be considered for the top schools are overshadowed by the “superkids” in their classes. It was just an observation, not meant to offend anyone.</p>
<p>colmomto2: What you described is precisely my impression of our competitive HS. </p>
<p>In addition to straight A’s in challenging classes and top test scores, the highly elite-bound kids are never minimally involved. They are typically leaders or office holders in their clubs/organizations and/or medalists in this or that national competition. </p>
<p>I asked my daughter how her Harvard-accepted classmate did it all. “He doesn’t sleep,” was her reply. I believe it. </p>
<p>As you say, could be a function of our competitive caliber high school. </p>
<p>zoosermom: That was a riot!! Your daughter sounds like a real pistol!!</p>
<p>colmom:</p>
<p>My kids’ school is not supercompetitive. It has its share of students who get into top schools, but it is urban, diverse, with a large population of ESL and low income, first-generation students. S1 was not straight A student, with umpteen APs. But he got into some top ten schools. I don’t know exactly what his teachers and his GC saw in him (says his mom, fondly:)) Could it have been his lack of pushiness? I remember the teacher at his daycare center who described him as the original pacifist, by which she meant he was uninterested in competing or fighting. His college selection reflected his interest in schools that had a Quakerish feel to them. His essay was about learning to agree to disagree.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think it is this lack of sleep that puts some kids on their last nerve; hence, the near-nervous breakdown mentioned in one of my earlier posts.</p>
<p>Often, imbedded within admission information materials are clues to what they value in prospective students. My son and I found the following for his school:
- curiosity
- passion for ideas
- dedication to learning
- sustained commitment and accomplishment
human qualities: - leadership
- creativity
- sensitivity
- tolerance
- compassion
- integrity
- sense of humor</p>
<p>Along with the required brag sheet, my son wrote (with my input) a letter to his GC containing these in the same bulleted format asking GC to consider including examples if he felt son possessed any of these traits/characteristics. S went on to gently remind GC of several instances that might help refresh his memory, especially since some of S’s most important EC’s are outside of school. The letter still ended up sounding rote.</p>
<p>Fortunately, his teacher recs were quite good and expressed not just S’s attributes but that he brings out the best in those around him.</p>
<p>In any case, if I were in admissions, I would be more interested in reading examples than adjective strings (which are probably only scanned, at best), parlaying into a better admit chance.</p>
<p>My S, who was at Harvard, never got anywhere near a nervous breakdown. He slept until noon on weekends, because he is a night owl (I tried calling him at 1pm one time and got my head chewed off). At the same time, he never set going to Harvard as his goal.</p>
<p>marite - I keep hoping that the my S’s friends who got into the ivies, CalTech, MIT will learn to relax a little when they get to college. Maybe being away from their parents and seeing how other “smart” kids work and succeed will help. They’re really nice kids, just overworked.</p>
<p>Colmom:</p>
<p>My point in post 66 is that not all colleges look for the super-competitive, driven, hard-charging student on adrenaline. I have to believe that the colleges that admitted S1 saw value in an applicant whose essay was about learning to agree to disagree (very helpful in college classes!)</p>
<p>We’ve observed the same as colmomto2 and je<em>ne</em>said_quois about the Ivy admits from our hs. They’ve done it all. Who knows if that’s WHY they were accepted to elite schools. After all, it could have been due to one especially impressive EC among their many, or a certain personal attribute. But I can say for certain that they weren’t rejected for being overachievers either. So that’s why kids around here think that doing something purposeful during every waking moment is what colleges want to see.</p>
<p>As for who’s expecting this, I think the general society is. D is a state and nationally ranked athlete. This means she is training every day of her life except for maybe 5-7 days between seasons. Other kids in her sport do have more time than she does because they don’t qualify for the sectional, group, state, and national competitions so their seasons end a month to a month and a half earlier. Nonetheless, reporters always ask D what else she’s doing. So she mentions that she has honors and AP classes which keep her busy, but then they still push and say “No other sports or clubs?” Huh? She has learned not to allow this to make her feel inadequate, but it’s tough when right after that the same reporter does a feature on a girl who’s state ranked in 2 different sports (for which she trains simultaneously part of the year), has a 4.5 GPA, just got her GS Gold Award, and sleeps 7 hours every night without fail, etc. etc. Her family says her only flaw is that her bedroom is messy.</p>
<p>GFG- take this stuff with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>I’ve got nieces, nephews, young cousins at HYP Cornell and Penn, and my own son who graduated from MIT a couple of years ago (and a few recent grads from the other schools). Only the one at H was the uber achiever you are describing (and it was self-selecting- he though P and S were too “laid back” for him). The one at P (admitted to H and Y as well) thought H was “noisy” and Y was “crowded” so he picked the wide lawns and suburban location in NJ. Hardly an intense, competitive kid!</p>
<p>The rest were a mixed bag. I have no doubt that if some lame reporter wanted a story, they could have found one. But family knows the real deal- so trust me, these kids were not out curing cancer or winning Pulitzers at age 17. But each of them did have one “thing” that they were really into, plus good scores, grades, etc. and all of them read voraciously. </p>
<p>So relax, your D will be fine. I don’t think “general society” expects any of this. I think some overwrought parents create an arms race of EC’s and everything else, and you feel like a chump for not participating. So go tell your D to read a book for fun- and you’ll all be better off for it.</p>
<p>Blossom, sometimes I used to worry when S spent time reading news articles when there was a lot of homework to be done. But when college interviews rolled around and he was asked for his opinion about current events, it became clear that this was a wise use of time for that reason on top of the obvious importance of being informed.</p>
<p>And don’t forget that kids who read the newspaper don’t need SAT tutoring! A time saver right there.</p>
<p>Historically, the Ivy-bound kids from our HS are the ultra-achieving type. When my daughter wanted to attend schools in that league, or slightly below, we felt those were the hoops through which she had to jump. Why would we think otherwise? So she did, and did not get the results she expected. Talk about feeling like a chump! </p>
<p>I can tell you we have changed our tune. We’re encouraging the rest of our children to do what they love, take classes they enjoy, and let the college admissions chips fall where they may. Life is just too darn short to sacrifice those precious years, and for what? </p>
<p>Here are my adjectives for my '08 daughter:</p>
<p>True and safe: compassionate, scholarly, inquisitive </p>
<p>More true but risky: guileless, intense, quirky</p>
<p>Good luck with your questionnaire, GFG. Your daughter sounds like a true stand-out who ought to obtain excellent results next year. (I think she’s a junior.)</p>
<p>Thanks, je ne sais quoi!</p>
<p>What do you all think of the word “balanced”? The concept of well-roundedness seems to have fallen out of favor. Does it now imply a lack of directed passion or a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none quality? D feels that moderation and balance is key to who she is: a good student but not a nerd, a good athlete but not a jock, and a social kid but not a crazy partier.</p>
<p>Secondly, do you think these 3 adjectives should reflect different qualities than what could be assumed from other aspects of the application, or should they encapsulate them? I’m thinking the former. I mean, if she’s a top athlete, what does she gain if I put “competitive” as one of the words. That could be assumed.</p>
<p>My S, too, got off the hyper-achiever track and went for a few ec’s that he enjoyed. Still, he works hard at his academics (meaning he takes them seriously, not that he struggles with the content), and he’s ended up highly ranked at his competitive hs. He didn’t make it into a super elite school, but he ended up in a top school for his area of study and is very happy with his choices. He still is amazed at what some of his friends have been able to accomplish. We’ve simply discussed that his “nationally recognized” achievements will come later in life. Don’t know if this is a truism, but he seems content to take things at a slower pace than many of his friends. I guess that’s why I was so stunned to read that “hardworking” could be construed to mean “struggling”. At our hs, “hardworking” is code for “no time for sleep because of all the things I have going.”</p>
<p>GFG:</p>
<p>One can overthink these descriptors. “Balanced” somehow does not strike me as easy to decode. Well-rounded may be overused, but people tend to know it means that the student excels in a number of field. Balanced seems more about emotional balance. I could be wrong.</p>
<p>I’d go with “top athlete.” It’s two words, I know, but it encapsulates many different qualities: committed, competitive, hard-working, goal-oriented, good time-manager. If you can pair this up with some adjective that underlines your D’s academic abilities “creative, intellectually curious” that would be a great way to show that she is well-rounded :)</p>
<p>
I’d construe that as “having no life.” 
Now, S2 spent his Sunday mornings at a math enrichment program, but he had a blast in it and that was the only reason he would contemplate getting up at 7:30am on a weekend. For him, it was not work; it was fun.</p>