I honestly can’t keep track of all the different cubes available these days and don’t know if they are all basically the same. But maybe you are right that, after a while, there are only certain moves and the fastest ones win. In any case, I think even being a “baton champ” can be super helpful, at least according to “supertutor” on youtube.
@bestmom888 Funny haven’t watched baton champs lately. But I do have a cousin in FL whose kids do some kind of dancing/ baton thing. They are often with a marching band and I know they go to nationals and have won. Maybe it’s a Southern thing but I don’t know anyone in the Northeast who twirls. They are REALLY into it from the photos. So it’s great.
Anything unusual can definitely be helpful.
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Actually, that is why I love the cubing parents. I’ve never met a nasty one. Most are just grateful that their little nerds have found something that they love to do with like- minded kids.
My daughter is super into research and sometimes I find that more unidimensional than the cubing. It does teach her persistence and problem solving (and hello, how many times do experiments have to be repeated) but there it is largely solitary as relating to people her age and she can’t really talk about it with her friends too much because they don’t understand what she’s doing. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I have my opinions and you have yours and it’s all good. As long as my kids love what they are doing, I’m happy and so are they, whether it be cubing or baseball.
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Probably depends on if they did them because they actually like doing them, or because of a perceived need to build a college application resume, or because they were steered into them by their parents for whatever reason (college admission reasons or otherwise).
Obviously, it also depends on how accessible the activity is, though some age-limited activities do have related activities for adults (e.g. someone who was into Scouts BSA or similar youth activity may later be active in whatever aspect of that was of the most interest, like camping, hiking, community service, etc.).
Continuing sports may depend on whether the sport is doable individually or socially, or whether an adult league exists in the area for team sports.
Pun intended? LOL!
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So true. My son has a number of friends that dropped out of band to take an extra AP courses. We opted for him to stay in band although we knew it would hurt his rank. His band experience has much more valuable to him as an individual than AP Environmental or Lit ever could be.
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This is the best thing when kids find something they really enjoy anything. I think it’s the seed from which lots of great things grow.
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@1NJParent Yes. My daughter has a friend who has chosen everything she does since 9th grade according to how it will look on college applications. She’s weird, hard to get along with, and competitive in an immature way, but hey she looks great on paper and the selective schools will probably love her 
Whatever! My daughter has great stats, leadership, athletics, etc., but she might be too ‘normal’ for what some of these schools like. We’ll see I guess.
My son is good at the rubik’s cube and I’ve spent a ton of money on them. He’s not a senior so I’m not on the forum for him but it’s nice to see him doing something he enjoys with a legitimate passion. He can solve them while riding a unicycle. I didn’t know about the competitions. Something to investigate.
I don’t think everyone can solve them quickly or at all so I’m impressed. Not everybody wants to play traditional team sports or is good at them. Being who you are is important too.
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Perhaps her preferred activity is not any specific activity (e.g. soccer, violin, scouting, etc.) but the competing and winning in whatever activity where that is possible for her. If so, doing everything with the goal of building a college admission resume fits right into this mindset, since admission to a highly competitive-for-admission college may be one of the bigger prizes in view of a high school student.
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@ucbalumnus No, that is not the case. She doesn’t choose activities that are in and of themselves competitive; she chooses things to do based on how it will look on applications. She is, however, competitive with her friends in an immature jealous way.
Way back in the early 80’s H made it on the TV show That’s Incredible because he solved the Rubik’s cube with his feet. Then they did a follow up when he did it on a knee board being towed by a boat - also with his feet (not hands). He has a video of the follow up. We’ve looked for years to see if we could find the original on the internet, but so far no luck.
I don’t know that it helped his college application at all - or if he even put it on there - but he became a very successful engineer and still keeps a cube next to his armchair that the kids like to mess up when they visit just so he can fix it. He does it with his hands now. An accident messed up his ability to move one of his toes.
To think I watched the original episode never once thinking, “That’s the man I’m going to marry…” 
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@Creekland That brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye. What a heartwarming story!!!
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They are actually all mathematical algorithms that need to be memorized depending on what your previous move is (that last part is the tough one.) And there are various methods as well, each with its proponents so it’s not just memorization. The fact that 19.5 quinquagintillion combinations are available in a 7X 7 cube should say something!
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All these rubik cube stories are so fascinating to me. My oldest kid was so fascinated with it and would solve it so fast I never thought anything of it. He would then solve different types of puzzles like that and the different types of cubes without hesitation. He was always good at math and logic and played in chess tournaments and for awhile was trained by a Grandmaster but it was far away and became difficult to keep up. But then in high school (9th grade) he was hit with the bug. The CS bug and the rest was history. He taught himself more than school could teach him, took free classes online through MIT or Harvard and of course didn’t care much about his other stuff. But I never thought there was any correlation to rubik cube and speed and any of that but after reading all this stuff people are saying I guess there was. He’s like this savant that if you’re on that level with him or interested in what he’s interested in you can talk to him about anything and on that level, but if you don’t get it or what he does, then you feel like you’re on another planet and would sense that he’s a little off, but it’s not so much that, but it’s just a totally different world. He started his own company that was funded by ycombinator a year ago and then he and his company had a VC raise in February and I honestly can’t really explain to anyone what it does, other than something with analytics, lol.
Who knew a rubik’s cube would’ve been a sign of such greatness!
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That’s incredible. I don’t really know anything about it, but just thought there must be some higher intellect involved in something like this. Looks like @srparent15 son proves it! A kid founding a company good enough to interest VCs! What an amazing accomplishment. You must be so proud. Where is he applying early? I hope he is not in direct competition v D21 
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One of the things that interests me in some of the responses I see on CC is the primacy of career-oriented thinking about majors rather than the subject that a student is most intellectually fascinated by. Granted there’s a concern about spending money on a degree that doesn’t lead to a job. But it seems to me that forcing kids to choose a major that dictates their entire life path is going to encounter much more resistance (and therefore a desire to be “undecided”) compared to asking them to choose what they are interested in studying for the next four years.
@anon45019500 is advocating an application strategy that sounds a lot closer to how students apply to college in the UK by expressing academic interest in a specific subject (where the decision is made by a professor that “this is a student I’d like to teach”). In my experience many students, especially at top UK universities (apart from those reading medicine and law) don’t view their subject as a career-defining choice. I certainly did zero thinking before applying to university about the careers that a math or science degree would lead to. In essence UK students have mostly chosen their subjects when picking A levels at 16, so unsurprisingly a life long career is not their focus, it is doing what they are best at and most interested in.
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Most regular posters will agree that parents forcing a student into a specific major (or other path like pre-med) is not a good thing, although it does happen.
However, it is likely that the high cost of college leads both parents and students to think of colleges and majors with a more pre-professional focus. Most bachelor’s degrees generally are completed in overtly pre-professional majors. Even when students choose liberal arts majors, they often choose them for pre-professional reasons. It is not surprising that a Wall Street / consulting target school like Harvard has a lot of economics majors, just as it is not surprising that Stanford has a lot of computer science majors.
Of course, some of the pre-professionally oriented students and parents do have some mistaken notions, such as “biology is a STEM major, therefore it has good job prospects” or “a pre-med should major in biology” or “a pre-law should major in political science”.
Have you tried writing ABC (the network that aired “That’s Incredible” to see if you could get a copy?
No, but I’ll mention it to H. Anyone know if they have copies of old shows that they make copies of to sell?