Your desperation to try to craft a formula to get your daughter into a thin sliver of schools isn’t very attractive. It’s evident you don’t trust that your daughter has qualities that make her “worthy” of an elite education but that it’s your job to shove her into the right boxes that will guarantee (your narrow definition of) success.
@californiaa - I empathize with your quest to seek out a formula, checklist, or guideline. Having seen my HS Junior S go through some auditions (music), I am currently of the thought that S will “find his fit”. I generally trust judges or admission people to be looking for good fits. I was somewhat attracted to this thread because a year ago, S did not seem to have anything to list for work experience or for volunteer work. S really focused on building his basic skills during that time, and I couldn’t see how he could have time to select an “artificially crafted” activity in those categories while mastering his basic craft. I considered those lacking areas a known and necessary risk. Since that time, those two empty categories have automatically filled themselves in. A teacher asked him to be a teacher’s aide, and he now will walk into a restaurant and make a deal for bringing in a band that he is part of. It is almost like a small business experience that is going on, even though that is not his anticipated major.
GoForth, californiaa has a VERY narrow sliver of “acceptable” schools from her past posts.
Business often requires compromise.
I agree with the group that says that there is no magic formula for college acceptance. One admission officer put it as follows (and I paraphrase): Our goal is to assemble a well-rounded class. That does not mean that each individual in the class has to be well rounded. We look for people who have specific interests and talents as well as well-rounded individuals.
What I heard confirmed to me that there are multiple pathways to college acceptance. The common traits are grades/standardized tests appropriate for the school, strong essays and LOR, and some valuable extracurricular involvement and/or work experience. From what I gather it is fine if a student is involved in any type of EC from academic pursuits, to music, to athletics, to starting a business, to working at McDonalds – it should just make sense in the context of who the applicant is and what is important/interesting to him.
Well, most of that sliver of schools don’t even have business as an undergrad major. I wouldn’t encourage my kid to do anything on that list. I’d encourage them to work and get some real world business experience. Starting a business is one route, working for someone else another. My younger son learned a fair amount working for me. I had him help measure, do some 3-D modeling and work with spreadsheets on the billing. Older son did a lot of computer programming both for professors and for a company that managed databases and also put together interactive websites.
I worked in two restaurants in HS. That experience- plus a degree in Classics- is more useful to me on a daily basis in a corporate career than anything I learned in business school (and it was a top 5 MBA program at the time- I don’t know its current rank).
What did I learn at the restaurants? The customer is the number 1, number 2 and number 3 core element of a successful enterprise. You can have the most creative business plan in the world, you can have blue chip financing, you can have R&D out the wazoo. If you don’t have customers/clients/people who pay for your product or service you are out of business no matter how great your other elements are.
If your D is interested in business, have her get a job. Folding sweaters at Old Navy. Making change at the local amusement park. Scooping ice cream, giving instructions to the ladies room at the info desk at the mall. It doesn’t matter. But seeing up close how a business operates is the best way to get her launched.
And if she doesn’t want to do any of these things-- she’ll need to figure out her own reality. They can teach you a lot in a business program but they don’t teach “fire in the belly”- that has to come from her.
I don’t think this is going to help, but here goes: my daughter was interested in business in high school, but it was kind of an amorphous interest. She was also really into emo/punk/alternative music; at one time she was determined to work for AP (an alternative music magazine) or be a band manager (!). She couldn’t play an instrument - she just liked the business end of music. That, and she loved wearing those Converse tennis shoes and the obscure-band tee-shirts.
Here’s what she did in high school to develop her interest in business: she joined the high school radio station and worked as its PR/business manager when she was a senior. She also was the “business manager” for a friend’s rock band - booking shows, working with schedulers and venues, and troubleshooting. She really loved both activities.
Never took a summer class and never did anything to look “good” for college admissions (no matter how much her mother might have wanted her to!) Everything worked out fine, although she never did work for AP magazine or manage a band. She’s a CPA now and rarely wears that Converse/Tee-shirt ensemble any more.
If your child’s high school offers Dual Enrollment, I would suggest that she take a couple of college courses (not necessarily business-oriented courses) at her local community college over the summer. The cost would be zero and she would start her college experience early, earning transferable credits to a 4-year institution. She could continue into her senior year, if she valued the experience. It would expose her to the a “different” college population and the ability to interact with a diverse group of students.
we still haven’t heard from the OP why her child has decided on “business”. What appeals to her? I think sometimes kids come to this more as an “other” choice. As in “I’m not interested in STEM, I’m not interested in being a teacher, or a lawyer, or a doctor, or a musician, or…” Hey, I could do “business”; how hard can that be?
I am absolutely not denigrating people who go into business; just that it may seem “easy” to a young and inexperienced kid who doesn’t have any other idea about what to do. If I’m wrong about this, and she is passionate about being an entrepreneur, or a leader, or marketing, that would be helpful information for those of us attempting to give advice.
Business is a nice default but that doesn’t mean studying “business” as an undergrad. If she likes HR, then psychology is a good discipline; if she likes marketing or market research then statistics is a good discipline; if she likes operations then urban planning is a good discipline; if she likes investor relations then history or comparative literature (or anything writing and research intensive); if she’s into social media/advertising then anything with a design or graphic component… etc.
So getting a job and seeing what happens when money changes hands is a nice start to figuring out an academic/intellectual path forward. The best CEO I ever worked for had a BA in Renaissance Studies- and he truly was a Renaissance Man in the best possible way. Voracious reader, absorbed new information like a sponge, had a tremendous artistic sensibility and appreciation but phenomenal quantitative and analytical skills. Plus fluent in a bunch of languages which surely helped his business career…
Both programs are at the University of Texas Austin
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Thank you very much,
Halomama18
I would say to not worry about what admissions counselors think, but "What will your child get out of the program?’
Let’s say you were doing an admisions interview and said “I attended the XYZ summer business program”…they wouldn’t care about that as much as 'you got to come up with a business idea and compete for funding…mine was chosen and we created a prototype and got some local businesses to sell it " and not “we listened to lectures”.
Also it should help her figure out if Business is the right major for her or what aspect of business she is interested in.
None of those programs are tips into an elite.
The problem is, over time, my opinion, OP has described her kid as a bit blase and needing to be convinced. (And she’s young- is it 10th now?) The answer isn’t a pay-to-play program. Or for Mom to spin in circles looking for shortcuts.
If she (thinks she) wants business now, then she can do something that shows she can actively pursue relevant real world experiences. She could hit a double by combining.
But I’m not sure we should start naming them for anyone out for shortcuts and with a philosophy that, “There is always a formula…Admission is not random, if it would be random, the distribution would be very different.” We shouldn’t help game the system.
OP misses the point, which is the way a kid makes choices in hs and is more fully formed by those experiences. Not what formulaic steps are instrumented for her. Whatever you choose, she has to grow, not just the resume. Adcoms look for various signs the kid is activated, has her own drives, can pursue them and make sense of them. Not just that she collected what Mom decides are the right experiences.
Looking- a kid whose primary interest right now is hanging with her BF (perfectly normal by the way) is going to be tough to mold into a junior Melissa Mayer/CEO wannabee. So I am less worried about the kid- who sounds great- and more worried about the parents! But they’ll get there, and learn to embrace the child they have not the child they wished they had, like all the rest of us have done.
27 years of teaching in a business discipline here and I’m not sure I would recommend a summer study in a business related field for a high schooler. To be successful in a business major, I believe that you need to have critical thinking skills that aren’t fully developed at 17 or 18. I would suggest a summer job in a small business where the student could interact with the owner or a manager to learn a little about what makes the business profitable, why the owner took the risk to open it, etc.
Also, a strong awareness of current events is helpful as I believe the ability to connect the dots (again, critical thinking) is essential in business education and if you don’t know what the dots are, you can hardly connect them. Business majors need to understand how to evaluate an option through analytical means and they also have to understand why customers will react to a product (or not). Study in math or psychology would be worthwhile.
Although they are a little dated, I still believe that Tom Friedman’s books are relevant, particularly The World is Flat. Best business related book I’ve read in the last year was The Everything Store by Brad Stone which details the creation and growth of Amazon. Also, Walter Issacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is a good read. Reading about Jobs and Bezos would certainly develop critical thinking skills, showing that success isn’t correlated to being a good person who is kind to their employees.
Just my opinion…
Thank you very much!
I know the competitive opportunities for students to “shine” in STEM. It looks like there are no similar opportunities in business . It looks like all business-oriented summer programs are neither competitive not impressive.
Thank you very much. You saved me lots of money and time and energy. Thanks!
Things can be neither competitive nor impressive and still be worthwhile. That’s the part you don’t get. You’re so obsessed with resume building and not actual life.
Oh please. You don’t need a “competitive summer program” to shine as a STEM applicant either.