My son was a lot like blossom’s MIT was on his radar early on because of Open Sourceware, Media Lab and other stuff a computer nerd is bound to bump into. We also used to joke that even though he was a legacy at Harvard he’d probably be better off at the place down the river. Well the place down the river deferred and then ultimately rejected him. But life went on - I think he may have ended up happier at Carnegie Mellon (#24 on the list!) than at MIT. He’s in his dream job. He did it by getting good grades and good scores and doing the usual ECs plus a pretty impressive set of activities all related to computer programming. (Job, volunteer, helping with research.) We helped him find some of these opportunities, some fell in his lap, others he went after. My only wish for him was to end up someplace where there were a lot of kids who were smarter than him. He got that in spades. Oh and he still has to be reminded to send thank you notes to grandma, but he does do it.
Other kid was much more happy go lucky. He liked history best, but didn’t want to be a historian. He ended up in IR but wanted to be at a school with many good departments. And what made him stand out from the crowd? He started doing origami so he wouldn’t fall asleep in class. He started making earrings so he wouldn’t have to spend money giving birthday presents to friends who were girls. He started selling them because a gallery admired them. He taught a class at the senior center because I said he need to give back to the community. He spun the whole story into a funny essay. There was never a plan for this, just one thing led to another. He graduated a year ago, had two internships, one turned into a job, but he’s actually got something else in mind for the future. It’s something both his education and hobbies have prepared him well for. We’ll see if he makes it happen. Oh and his school wasn’t a top 20 either - though he got into one that was in the top 10 at the time.