Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): one parent is immigrant who went to college in US
Intended Major(s) - undecided, strong lean toward liberal arts and humanities.
ACT/SAT Scores: SAT 1480, highest score, taken twice
Coursework
All AP or honors classes
Scored 214 on PSAT, which I believe in IL makes him a National Merit Commended Scholar
Extracurriculars
Area of concern…
Played on school soccer team 2 years.
Co-founder of a new club in his school
Essays/LORs/Other
Reading and writing are his strong suits, so not very concerned about essays. He will get good LORs from his teachers.
Budget - COA up to $50k
Schools
He’s had a couple of meetings with his HS counselor and there is a pretty eclectic list of almost 20 schools ranging from Louis & Clark to Dickinson and Northeastern.
Hi all, first time poster (and not a native English speaker) so please forgive any linguistic or otherwise gaffes. My son is a junior with strong academic skills but his EC’s are few, and he does not seem to be all that interested in getting involved in any activities that can be added to his resume/application. He was a freshman during COVID and the whole year was remote learning. It seems like he’s been trying to ‘catch up’ on his social life ever since ‘missing out’ on the first year of high school experience. He is lucky in that he is a strong student, has good study habits and loves to read and write. My concern is his application will suffer when college AO’s look at comparable students and his application is not as well rounded as the others may have. I realize it may be too late to ‘apply pressure’ on him to join a bunch of clubs, volunteer for good causes or get a job (god forbid!). I guess I am wondering if a school that likes his academic record will look down on the relative dearth of EC’s that will result in his application going into rejection or tbd (deferral/waitlist) bin. I appreciate any and all feedback, suggestions or musings, cheers.
A lack of good ECs will likely cause problems at any school that practices holistic admissions (ie, the Ivies, the small LACs, etc). It probably won’t at any large state universities that admit by the numbers, or that have published, automatic merit.
Have him take a look at McGill in Montreal, and perhaps the other Canadian universities.
McGill has a world-wide reputation and especially likes high-stats students and doesn’t care about ECs. They also have different tuition prices depending on whether you are looking for a BA, BS, or Engineering degree – with the BA being significantly less expensive (total cost, including room and board, was about $35k in US dollars a couple of years ago if I remember correctly). When you look at their tuition costs, be sure to 1) choose the correct degree (BA vs Engineering, for example) and b) convert to American dollars. Also they tend to be generous with AP credit, if that is relevant.
I actually find it refreshing and would not suggest urging him to do EC’s solely for college admissions. It is better to follow his genuine interests. He sounds like a good friend.
Does he have any hobbies? Some kids have interesting hobbies and don’t know they can be listed. Collect coins? Hike mountains? Windsurf? Pickleball? Does he work in the summer? Mowing lawns, serving ice cream? Colleges are honoring jobs more these days.
S22 was a kid who had (as I charitably described it) “below average” ECs. His academics were not as strong as your son’s (3.7 UW/4.1W with good rigor - went TO) but he still got into some good schools: UMass Amherst, UConn, Pitt, American and Syracuse. He is a very good writer so his essays were good. Your son will find schools that would love to have him - most state schools give less weighting to ECs - the same for schools in Canada.
You have very good in-state public universities. Good academics is likely to get a student accepted to good in-state public universities even with very little in the way of ECs.
How much this matters is likely to depend upon how the new club does. If your son puts a lot of time and effort into the club, and if the club is a big success (for example, in terms of having students participate and benefit from the club) then this could be an important EC.
You will want to pay some attention to the cost of various universities. I would expect your in-state public universities to be well under this number, but we are not from Illinois. For us Northeastern was way over this number, but you might want to run the Net Price Calculator and find out what it is likely to cost you. If you Google “Net Price Calculator Northeastern University” then you should find a web page that will allow you to get an estimate of the cost. If a student’s parents are divorced or separated or own a small business or rental property then the NPC is likely to be way too optimistic. Otherwise they tend to be relatively accurate.
ECs are relatively more important at the really top schools (Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, U.Chicago level) that get a long list of applications from nearly perfect students, and who need to find a way to distinguish between these nearly perfect students. For other universities admission is going to depend more on grades, course rigor, references, and in some cases test scores.
Overall your description reminds me a lot of our children, one of whom also had a dearth of ECs, and they both did fine in terms of admission and in terms of “how they did once they got to university”. Your son’s strong academics will obviously help with the latter part of this.
In terms of the suggestion above regarding McGill, one daughter with a very similar GPA to your son (and only slightly lower SAT) applied to McGill (and was accepted) and they did not even ask about ECs. There are also quite a few good universities in Ontario, but they might cost a bit more for an international student.
Thank you all for replies and suggestions. He wants to go OOS, but not sure if Canada falls in that category… he wants mid size school, do not know what number that is for him, my guess is around 10k. I am one of those silly parents who thinks school name and ranking are important. Do not ask me why, maybe it’s an immigrant mentality, shiny,expensive objects and all that. But merit is important to us, and the budget is set. My heart skips two beats when I think I may have to spend up to 200k for his undergrad education, and there is his younger brother two years behind him. Anyway, want to take him to see American and GW, Richmond, W&M, may be swing over into NC and visit Wake Forest, Davidson and Elon. I feel like his safeties are marked- UIUC, IU, Miami of Ohio, and we can work on the list of targets and reaches.
He has no outstanding or specific hobbies, just likes to read and hang out with his friends. Has no strong urge to find a job, which p-s me off.
Most likely majors are poli sci or generic business, maybe with international focus. He is good with languages, has been taking French for four or five years.
If you haven’t been to Montreal with your kid, it’s worth a look. I’m posting to give my +1 to all the McGill mentions upthread. It’s perfect for your situation. They literally don’t ask for ECs. Most interesting city in the continent in many ways. It’s a school for adults who want to behave as adults, socially and academically. It doesn’t sound like there is much pressure to continue playing the “collect activities” game (which is a thing at American undergrads…either to make friends or (more usefully) to prepare for med school or other next steps…don’t think it stops after high school).
McGill is good for name and ranking! It’s really worth considering — maybe a visit would help. Montreal is supposed to be a great city to be a college student in.
I know someone from Massachusetts whose daughter thought U.Mass was boring, and wanted to go out of state. She went to UVM. I also know someone from Vermont whose daughter thought that UVM was boring, and wanted to go out of state. She went to U.Mass Amherst. Fortunately both students were academically strong enough to get pretty good merit based financial aid. Both students did well at the out of state public universities. Both sets of parents paid an extra $80,000 to allow their daughters to go out of state.
Fortunately this was in budget for both sets of parents. However, going out of state will cost something.
We were very careful to make sure that whatever we spent for our older daughter, we would be able to spend an equivalent amount for her younger sibling.
We’ve been to Montreal twice, but the kids were small, so doubt they remember anything. I love all things French abut I am not the one going to college. I wish I were…
We have two 529 buckets that we’ve set up for the kids since they were born. The amounts accumulated in those accounts are looking good today, but they fluctuate
Which particular ones. For example, U Iowa has one of the best creative writing, while both Wisconsin and Michigan are very highly ranked for humanities.
There is not really a correlation between acceptance rate and the quality of education that a student will get. Many, if not most, of the colleges with very low acceptance rates have those acceptance rates because they have high ranked majors that are lucrative and are popular among the upper SES for reasons of status.
In general, public universities, even those with very low acceptance rates, put a lot more emphasis on stats than on ECs. I like giving my nephew as an example - he had high school band and one summer internship as his ECs, but his GPA was a 4.0, and he was accepted to UCLA (CA resident).
My point is that UMN, Wisconsin, and Michigan are better choices for any kid than most popular expensive private colleges. It doesn’t matter what the acceptance rates are, it matters whether the colleges have a strong program in the field.
Merit scholarships are most likely gotten at colleges which offer them and where the student is at the high end of the student range in admission qualifications. Since school name and ranking (in an overall sense; there may be differences in specific majors) tend to correlate with admission selectivity, this means that seeking merit scholarships usually means applying down in school name and ranking.
