<p>No one in my high school had a 4.0. I took four APs as a senior, which was considered a lot. We had a required Wednesday program where there were no classes, but instead we did various community service projects or internships, so I had worked in a residential day care program for children whose parents were incarcerated, tutored at a public school, worked for a Congressman on Capitol Hill, and interned at The Washington Monthly before I graduated. I can’t remember what I did every summer, but one summer I went to a program where I took paintings in the morning and played math games or went rock climbing in the afternoons. Another summer I worked at a USIS library in Tanzania. I performed in modern dance, was on the yearbook and the newspaper, played in a recorder group and was active both in my local Girl Scout troop (earning the equivalent of the Gold Award) and the district Girl Scout Council. I had plenty of time to read a lot of historical fiction and romance novels. The difference - I took the SAT1s twice with minimal prep (vocab exercises in English), and the SAT2s once with no prep. I applied to three colleges and U Penn was my safety (!). In my graduating class of 80, 6 went to Harvard, 4 to Yale and 2 to Princeton.</p>
<p>That said my oldest rarely did more than three hours of homework, only practiced the SAT essay, had two school ECs (Science Olympiad and Academic Team) and spent hours of free time messing around with computer programming and reading (approximately 100 sci fi and fantasy books a year.) He got into Harvard (admittedly as a legacy) and Carnegie Mellon. He did have great scores and was in the top 1% of the class.</p>
<p>S2 is beginning to feel more stressed about academics this year - or at least the second half of this year (he’s a junior), but is not aiming at HYPMS. I don’t know if he’ll get into his reach schools, but I’m pretty confident that he’ll get in to some nice schools. He’s got at least one unusual activity as well as a decent set of activities he’s involved in at school.</p>