<p>Take the most rigorous curriculum at high school and do well. It is another chance for colleges to compare a student with his peers. It could also bring up a student’s GPA. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Colleges want to see students continue with their ECs (sports, club, performing arts). Without giving up on existing ECs, it would be helpful to see a good upward trend fall of senior year, especially if courses are the most difficult ones at school.</p>
<p>I would like to add that most of sports recruits are pretty much done by Sep.</p>
<p>
I always view ED as a free option, but if it’s so far out, then it’s worthless. If you have a special hoolk, as a legacy at NU, with close enough stats, then ED would help. For many schools, if you don’t use your legacy card during the ED round, then it doesn’t give you a boost during RD. If you have no hook, by applying to JHU, Georgetown of the world, it would be a waste. Instead, if you were to use it for a school that’s likely to accept you during RD, then it would be a big boost.</p>
<p>
Aside from having amazing rec letters, only private school GC would be of any help.</p>
<p>Definitely don’t forget #5!! Sure, reach for those Top 20 schools, standing on a foundation of matches and safeties.</p>
<p>If the object is to get into a Top 20 school, then I’d say that top grades WHILE TAKING a rigorous curriculum is a must.</p>
<p>If you can work on an EC that can get you national recognition or high leadership position, I’d push for it. Otherwise, cut down on extraneous ECs (ones that you haven’t invested 2-3 years in already) if they cut into the time you need for studying and applying for college. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t apply ED or EA–you want the first semester grades to show an upwards progression. You only have one time to make a first impression.</p>
<p>I’d add a #6.</p>
<p>Take time on your essays. Essays are very important for this kind of candidate. The purpose of the essay is to show something of the candidate that can’t be seen from the sterile record. When the sterile record has some blotches on it, you definitely have to educate the adcom about your good qualities through the essay.</p>
<p>My son is still building the list of college he’ll apply to, with lots of input from me and Mom, since he has gotten a very late start in thinking about this stuff.</p>
<p>We’re taking the top-heavy approach, with one financial safety (our flagship State U), one or two better state schools in other states, one or two private matches, and a bunch of top-20 schools. We’re targeting schools with reputations for good financial aid.</p>
<p>Our State U is a nice place with a good honors college and will be free or nearly so, so it’s a no-brainer as the safety. Our son has already said that he wants to go someplace great but wouldn’t mind State U if he ended up there, so there doesn’t seem to be much point applying to a lot of in-between schools.</p>
<p>I think he’d have more opportunities at another state’s flagship school (Big Ten would be great), but it seems to be really hard for an out-of-state student to get decent financial aid, and we can’t afford to pay full fare.</p>
<p>I think for most of these kids there’s not much that can be done about GPA. S2 will probably have a better GPA without Latin, which he is dropping, but that’s not the entire reason he dropped it. But I wouldn’t recommend dropping ECs or sports unless you were 100% sure that a major grade increase would result and I absolutely would not recommend taking easier courses, though I admit my older son got an A for the first time in English the year scheduling issues kept him out of both AP and honors. Younger son has gotten his best grades in AP courses.</p>
<p>I think getting honors in ECs is worth pursuing. Especially if it were to be on the Intel/Siemens level. I don’t think S2 would have gotten better grades in Latin if he’d spent less time studying for Science Olympiad (where he got a medal at States). </p>
<p>Applying ED at most schools and EA at some schools will probably improve chances especially if you assume no major changes in grades. However my son doesn’t have a clear first choice at this point - and I don’t think he will. </p>
<p>I don’t like the term leveraging, but if there’s a teacher who knows your child is a hidden gem, obviously they should be writing the recommendation. I’m not overly concerned about the GC recommendation. If there are outside recommendations that could be helpful (from a boss or volunteer job) I think these kids may benefit. I’m not wed to top twenty, but I do think both my kids do well surrounded by other smart and hardworking kids, so we aren’t eliminating reaches. </p>
<p>Here’s the list (not final) on my spreadsheet for S2 (interested in history and international relations, medium size school preferable not rural) sorted by percent of class in top 10%, then by percentage accepted, from safety at top, to reach at the bottom. Some of these reaches (like Johns Hopkins) look too reachy, but I haven’t gotten around to culling the list, for another kid at another school, JHU might be a plausible reach despite a B+ GPA. And my numbers may not be right. They were from Princeton Review and a number of places seem to have gotten more selective even in the last year or two. :(</p>
<p>UVM
syracuse
American
BU
SUNY Geneseo
Trinity
Kenyon
Tulane
George Wash.
Grinnell (too rural for son)
Macalaster
Vassar
Reed
Oberlin
colgate
carnegie mellon
rochester
brandeis
johns hopkins
U. of Chicago
bowdoin
johns hopkins
swarthmore
claremont mck
tufts
Georgetown
Haverford
brown
Vanderbilt</p>
<p>re: #5 – don’t even think about T20 apps without a very solid foundation of schools. Period.</p>
<p>re: #6 – These are kids for whom a supp rec could tip the scales. Someone with whom your kid did research, community service, an EC – could really help fill out the picture.
For anyone whose student is contemplating Intel/Siemens – get that paper written NOW. Siemens is due ~10/1, Intel ~11/15. I cannot tell you how much easier it made S1’s senior year, and having it done early gave him time to get feedback, polish without panic, prepare the presentation, practice it, and to include the paper (or a discussion of same) in EA apps. Feel free to PM me on this.</p>
<p>S2 has finished IB SL/AP Spanish (a perpetual B/B+) and is taking IB Philosophy, and he is taking AP Stat (took Calc AB last year). He hopes this will help the GPA, but the HL Bio is a double period and counts double in the GPA. Major efforts will be focused on getting an A in there. His courses this year really reflect who he is, while being very challenging (3 IB HLs, 2 IB SLs (but one exam), and 4 APs (one of which is self-study)).</p>
<p>He is not dropping ECs, as the ones he’s involved in are all long-standing and where he has leadership. OTOH, he won’t be adding gratuitous stuff for the sake of padding the resume, either. I do wonder how much better the GPA would have been had he not taken so many AP/IBs, but that is water under the bridge now. He needs to spend time on the essays. Lots of it.</p>
<p>mathmom – at S2’s school, 3.4-3.6 kids who apply ED to JHU actually do pretty well. That is NOT the case in RD, though. Not sure if I mentioned this here or on the 3.3-3.6 thread. S2 has looked at many of the schools on your S’s list, too.</p>
<p>i’ll add my own suggestion (which may be number one)- do a financial reality check NOW. It is too darn easy to be delusional about what you can and cannot afford, and the posts in April of every year of the the kids just like yours, whose parents encourage them to “shoot for the stars” who end up sad and disappointed… well they are sad and disappointing. Sure, your kid could write the essay of all essays, pull up his grades by November, win a national award for curing lymphoma, and end up at Dream School with the lowest GPA your GC has ever seen get admitted there. Make sure you’ve done your homework.</p>
<p>So since I’m old and have seen the process play out many times, here’s my check list:</p>
<p>1- do a financial aid calculator/simulator. Run REAL numbers through the spreadsheet, not best guess. (pretend it’s last year, use your 2008 tax return so you eliminate the fudge factor on trying to guess your income.) Obviously, if your income has shot way up or gone way down, that’s huge… but for now, the drill is to use real numbers not fake estimates.</p>
<p>2- stare the numbers in the face. Your EFC will be calculated by a computer. The kinds of things that will materially change the amount of aid you get are things that are both material and out of your control. So having grandma living with you and paying out of pocket for her dialysis is material. The fact that your spouse restores old porsches for a hobby and needs X amount of discretionary funds every month to pay the garage fees for the cars, plus Y amount of discretionary funds in insurance premiums, plus you are still re-stocking your wine cellar after the hurricane of 2006 destroyed all the Chateau whatever… well don’t think the financial aid officer at your typical top 20 school who lives on 65K per year is going to give a $%^&.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Figure out in nauseating detail where your EFC is going to come from. And all the kind folks down at the bagel shop who tell you that their nephew is at Princteon on a hockey scholarship and since your kid plays hockey he should apply to Princeton so he can attend for free… well they’re lying. So do the math. How much from kids college savings plan plus how much from your decimated brokerage account plus how much out of your monthly paycheck plus how much from selling your second car (note I didn’t say second kidney…) Get down to a granular level of detail. It is too easy for parents to tell their kids, “If you get into Hopkins I will find the money”. Where are you finding the money? Where is it hiding? Don’t be one of those parents who learns in April that you can’t find the money ('cause you don’t have it or can’t tap it or have too many other dependents to go without disability insurance).</p></li>
<li><p>Make sure your kid understands that your love is absolute and unconditional… and that you will try to always support his/her dreams. But you cannot leave your family homeless or cash in your life insurance policy or live in your honda in order to pay for top 20 dream school if more affordable less dreamy school emerges as the better choice.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Pizzagirl, absolutely an employer can write. mathson had two letters - one from the computer firm that he’d done freelance progamming for. He had several years experience and we knew they thought highly of him. (As evidenced by giving him a raise from $15 to $25 hour without asking.) He worked on a couple of high profile projects there. He also asked a professor to write a letter for whom he’d written some sort of program that helped sequence proteins. It was just a little volunteer project in my son’s eyes, but every time we ran into this prof he’d tell us how grateful he was so we asked son to ask him for a letter. We saw the letter later and it was effusive - couldn’t have been nicer.</p>
<p>CountingDown, I can’t remember if it was you or someone else that mentioned JHU. The kids who’ve gotten in from our school had better grades and better scores than S2, though there are kids with worse scores who were waitlisted. No one has been accepted in the last two years. He’d have to love it a lot to apply. We are planning a DC trip - but I don’t know if we can squeeze any useful time to see it.</p>
<p>Can I get my sister, who has a different last name, to pretend she was an employer? “Pizza’s twins are the most wonderful teenagers on earth!” Tee hee. (I’m just KIDDING, folks. Really.)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl – YES. The debate at our house re: a third rec for S2 right now is focused on whether the director from a history-related camp where S has volunteered the past four summers (who has known him since he was a camper there at age 9) or the catering coordinator at our synagogue who knows, works with and loves S2 (and his cooking) should write the letter. I wish I knew what their respective writing skills were like! These are the two areas where the bulk of his community service hours were earned (300+ for one, close to 200 for the other).</p>
<p>These two folks see a very different side to S than what’s in the classroom.</p>
<p>mathmom, S2 didn’t put it on his list. A little too close to home, a bit more competitive than he likes, a different focus than what he wants (at least for UG).</p>
<p>S1’s research mentor wrote an amazing letter. (He gave a copy to S to read.) Gave specific examples of his preparation, work ethic, level of expertise, etc. I know I’m biased when I think my kids are terrific…but it is amazing to hear what someone else sees in them. ;)</p>
<p>While I know it’s controversial, what I would do if funds were available is hire a good private counselor. Everything is pretty much “baked” now, all you can do is maximize the student’s positioning. A great essay will make a difference as will the tips these counselors give you to construct the strongest possible application.</p>
<p>This is what we did for my niece who is applying to some top schools this year and fits in this category. When I read the completed application I had the same feeling as I did when I read my DS2’s this time 2 years ago–if this doesn’t do it nothing will and I wish I’d know this counselor when my first 2 went through the process.</p>
<p>I fully agree about getting the financial ducks lined up first. The schools that offer generous financial aid incentives still have an amount that YOU, the family, will likely have to pay (unless your EFC is $0). Most of these generous schools also have a student contribution. Make sure you have a way to pay that too. </p>
<p>And please discuss this with your child BEFORE they send their applications off. Every year on this forum we get sobbing posts from students who cannot go to their dream school because the money just wasn’t there and the family couldn’t or wouldn’t contribute. When you check your financial situation using one of those finaid calculators, you also have to see if the family contribution they estimate aligns with what YOU plan to pay out. If you have decided to pay less than what the calculator spits out, again…you will have to decide if you can or will fill that gap.</p>
<p>Realistic financial considerations should also be part of crafting a well balanced college list.</p>
<p>Don’t run under the impression that you will be able to “negotiate” a higher financial aid package.</p>
<p>Be realistic for YOUR family.</p>
<p>The schools with the MOST generous financial aid incentives are amongst the most competitive for admissions. The financial aid incentives do you NO GOOD if you are in the 80-90% of the students who do NOT get accepted to these schools.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good suggestions. Here is an updated list of things to ponder and work on.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Since we are here because our kids don’t have the GPA “fit”, is striving for high GPA in the senior year the highest priority? If so, do we do it at the expense of taking on a rigorous curriculum or an opportunity to take a college class?</p></li>
<li><p>Should they cut down their ECs to focus on getting better grades and test scores, or do just the opposite to increase their chances of getting some recognitions for their ECs, e.g., Intel/Siemens research, state/national title in sports?</p></li>
<li><p>Will applying EA/ED increase their chances of getting in, or will it hurt their chances?</p></li>
<li><p>How could we better let their GCs and teachers to help them? </p></li>
<li><p>Should we maybe make a concerted effort to produce a realistic list of schools at which kids will thrive, even if (heaven forbid) these same schools fall below the top twenty on somebody’s prestige list?</p></li>
<li><p>Take time on your essays. Essays are very important for this kind of candidate. </p></li>
<li><p>Do a financial reality check NOW. It is too darn easy to be delusional about what you can and cannot afford.</p></li>
<li><p>Who else to get letters of recommendation from besides teachers and GCs?</p></li>
<li><p>How about hiring a good private counselor?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I personally think ED is worth trying. I’m encouraging S to consider which schools are ED candidates, because he liked them the best of the schools he’s visited. </p>
<p>Then, we’ll think about selecting from that list based on acceptance strategy. I don’t think he should “waste” the ED window on a super-reach school, but instead aim for a reach school where the ED bump just might be enough to push him into the accepted pile. If that doesn’t work, there are some ED-II low-reach/high-match possibilities to consider. </p>
<p>My S doesn’t have a single absolute favorite school, but several that he likes a lot. So my feeling is that it is best to optimize his odds of getting into one of those several favorite schools. I just wish there was a good way to calculate his personalized odds and the ED bump for particular schools.</p>
<p>PaperChaserPop…gotta ask. Are you writing a book? Are you researching information to use for your soon to be college bound youngster? I’m just curious why this thread is so important to you. You’ve posed some excellent questions…but little in the way of advice. Just curious.</p>
mathmom, considering your son’s interests and size/location criteria, I’m wondering why W & M isn’t on the list? It’s tough OOS, but they’d love to get more applications from boys. Their IR department is popular (more than 100 majors graduated last year), and their history department (especially American history) is well-respected. If his GPA is around 3.6 with a rigorous curriculum, he’d have a decent chance with strong SATs and good recs/essays. I know W & M isn’t a top 20 school (US News has had it in the low 30s for the past several years), but it seems to fit with the other schools on your son’s list.</p>
<p>thumper1 - No. I’m not writing a book. I started this thread because my DS1 is going through the application process now. As far as asking lots of questions, but not giving advice - well, I always thought asking good questions IS a way to give advice. I’m seeking collective wisdom and different perspectives here. But if direct advice is what you are looking for, please read my postings through out this thread from the start.</p>
<p>PaperChaserPop - my question is if it’s so important for your son to get into a top 20s (I assume that’s why you started this thread), why the push now and not 3 years ago? Did you explain to him GPA is important to get into top 20s? If so, did he try really hard but still end up with less than3.6. If that’s the case, then would he be able to perform at a top 20s? If you never had a discussion with him, then isn’t this an unfair expectation and pressure when everything is “baked” already.</p>
<p>Sorry if I sound harsh, but it has been nagging at me about this thread.</p>
Their IR department is popular (more than 100 majors graduated last year), and their history department (especially American history) is well-respected. If his GPA is around 3.6 with a rigorous curriculum, he’d have a decent chance with strong SATs and good recs/essays. I know W & M isn’t a top 20 school (US News has had it in the low 30s for the past several years), but it seems to fit with the other schools on your son’s list.</p>