Under 3.6 (GPA) and Applying Top 20 Parents Thread

Parents Forum
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<p>PCP,</p>

<p>It’s not just the Siemen’s thing that stood out about your son. The overall EC package sounds really strong and compelling. </p>

<p>If my S1 was competing against yours, I would have been terrified on his behalf. Other than a slightly better GPA (like in 3.8) from a super selective/competitive high school, my S1 does not have a leg to stand on compared with yours (SAT 1 is about the same, and my S1 SAT IIs were better, but I feel that SAT IIs don’t carry the same weight at all). Yet, he got accepted by Chicago EA, Berkeley, and UMCP (as mentioned by countingdown) full ride honor scholarship (was rejected by HYP though - not surprised at all)</p>

<p>While being cautious is a good thing, you may be over-cautious. By all means, make sure you have safeties, but you may also want to enlarge your reach list. what do you have to lose? Getting an EA from places like Chicago will allows you to do away with the safeties and concentrate on reaches for RD.</p>

<p>In your son’s case, I believe it’s all about “marketing and sales tactics” that I discussed earlier. You have a very competitive and compelling product, it’s a matter of strategic positioning, marketing, and sales now, and I DO believe it makes a HUGE difference.</p>

<p>Good luck. I believe when all this is over, your son will have done very well. do let us know how this turned out.</p>

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<p>PCP, after reading your son’s resume, I would venture that he could push his Cornell application to RD. I’ve seen a number of students from our HS get into Cornell RD over the last five years, and your son would rank with the best of them.</p>

<p>I can’t see any reason to bring up UMass at this point. Have him get his early applications in order, and then have a ready list if December serves up a lot of disappointment. He can add Case Western to his EA list if he wants an early safety acceptance that will likely have some merit money attached.</p>

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<p>I apologize if somebody mentioned this (I confess I haven’t read all the posts). If your child is a rising senior, it seems to me that his strategy essentially has to be (1) do what he’s doing in academics and ECs as well as he can and (2) craft a sensible list with a range of schools, and not fall too much in love with any of them.
If your child is a rising junior, one thing to consider is how to use the summer between junior and senior year. You might want to consider a summer program in an area that particularly interests him–perhaps one with selective admissions. There are great programs in the arts (music, especially), and of course, math and science programs as well.</p>

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<p>We must hang together, or surely we shall hang separately! :)</p>

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<p>one thing I might add in terms of the “branding strategy”.</p>

<p>One piece of advice I gave to my son about personal essay.</p>

<p>“think about how to integrate all the pieces of salient information about you that are different from other kids in a holistic manner to collectively give a clear and powerful glimpse into the person that you are”. Imagine you have 1000 gig saw puzzle pieces. You could just present these 1000 pieces by listing all sorts of ECs in a 100 bullet point list or you could complete the set and present the “picture” that emerged after you assembled all the puzzle pieces and finished the puzzle for the adcoms.</p>

<p>In my son’s case, the salient parts were: close to 50 countries he visited. The fact that he is a complete “natural”, no outside pressure on anything he did. yes, the fact that he spent two years playing on line games. how he developed his interest in economics/finance. how that came about and what about his life story up that point resulted in that choice. what he wants to in university going forward, etc, etc.</p>

<p>He wove various themes throughout multiple essays he wrote, and the resulting “big picture” was that of an organic free range chicken who discovered his passion through aimless intellectual and cultural meandering throughout HS, and NOW ready to fire on ALL cylinders in college to pursue his passion with razor sharp focus. Main essays and short essays and answers were all written to be complementary with each to follow a clear “master branding strategy”.</p>

<p>When I do marketing/sales pitch at work, I tell my people to follow the rule of parsimony. All the information you want to present and NOTHING ELSE that will distract your audience. Following this philosophy, I even advised him to omit certain minor ECs that won’t add to the big picture but also give the impression that after all he did follow conventional paths and the reason for any major EC achievement was lack of trying and time management. Better that he looks like a maverick and iconoclast with a story to match, than a dabbler and poorly motivated straggler. </p>

<p>I coached S1 as if I were coaching my subordinates to aim for a multi billion dollar sales win for the business. </p>

<p>Still not good enough for HYP, but it got him accepted into Chicago with an EC profile that was dismal in anybody’s view in terms of any organized activities with demonstratable institutional awards and certification of any kind.</p>

<p>the whole college application process turned out to be a really bonding experience for me, my husband and S1. This dynamics of him and us working together worked beautifully in the process of him getting his summer paid internship in the wall street (through merit and his own personal hustling with no family/friends connections) and how he managed the “orgniazational dynamics and politics” in that place to position him the best going forward. After this summer, the only thing I have left to teach him in terms of office politics is how to handle awful people at work. They were all so nice to him, he did not have a chance to learn how to win when confronted with true evil :)</p>

<p>This is the reason why I would never consider a boarding school or a hired college counselor. I would never want to outsource a critical business function that has reververating implications for my business for years to come. So, why would I want to delegate to somebody else this whole process that will pave the way I will interact with my son as an adult to adult for the rest of my life?</p>

<p>I will be doing the same for S2. He is completely in charge of “product development” - that, I don’t mess with or interfere. But, I will be his chief consultant for market analysis, strategic marketing and sales realization tactics.</p>

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<p>^^^ And a few in the humanities, as well. TASP asks for a transcript but not test scores, and really doesn’t seem to care much about the academic side as long as you’re competent.</p>

<p>hyeonjlee - I’m writing my Pomona supplement essay on how I got my start with leadership by playing an online RPG game in middle school.</p>

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<p>hye…interesting marketing perspective…but what if there is only one essay and one short answer to write? Do you use that one essay to weave all of those positioning elements together? Seems like a lot to fit in…unless you are specifically talking about very top tier schools who require multiple essays.</p>

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<p>How do you do that in a way that doesn’t come across as “rich / privileged kid”? Sincerely asking, not challenging.</p>

<p>S has attended CTD (similar to TIP and CTY) for the last few summers. It is organic with him, he truly has enjoyed it. Our hs does not put it on transcripts, etc. How can he talk about the things he’s learned there without having it sound “rich / privileged kid whose parents can afford fancy schmancy summer programs”? I worry about that.</p>

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<p>PCP – yes, S1’s grades were a bit higher than this thread’s parameters. Nevertheless, they were the weak spot for him. BTW, he was rejected at Cornell. He (and S2, who is why I’m here) attend specialized public programs with selective entry – think essays, recs, transcript and a 14% acceptance rate. The program S1 attended offers lots of post-AP math/science/CS. At his school, the AP curriculum is the ground floor of what is taught. AP Stat and Comp Sci AB are one-semester classes; BC Calc is finished by Dec.-Jan. and they just keep going from there.</p>

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<p>Pizzagirl – I asked the same thing of the StatsEval people, as we have done a good bit of family travel (on the mega-cheap, thanks to FF miles from DH’s work), and international exposure would seem to a be a good thing to mention for an IR major. The collective wisdom seems to be to avoid it.</p>

<p>S1 went to a summer math program (cheaper than CTY, EPGY and many others) and focused on how it totally turned his world upside down. Didn’t seem to hurt.</p>

<p>I think the tone of the essay would be critical here.</p>

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<p>^^^ Well, knowing how much CTY and like programs cost, it does sound like–and IS–“rich/privileged kid whose parents can afford fancy schmancy summer programs.” The only approach I’ve seen work (from an outside perspective, personally) is to directly acknowledge that privilege first and foremost. And don’t talk about experiencing physical hardship, woe is I, on expensive “adventure” camps, etc.</p>

<p>Free and/or highly selective programs are a different matter.</p>

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<p>There is nothing wrong with being rich/privileged; it does provide a child with many opportunities. Besides, being full-pay is not exactly a detriment in today’s economy, even if a school has a Harvard-like endowment (or is Harvard).</p>

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<p>That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable, though, Keilexandra. How, precisely, would one write an essay directly acknowledging that privilege? How would that work? I mean, the adcoms are going to see two well-educated parents with professional jobs and a kid going to CTD camp for a couple of summers, they can figure out our zip code, they’ll know that we’re not begging for gruel or choosing between braces and CTD. I don’t see a need for an essay to apologize for that, though. Perhaps I’m missing something? I’m asking a legit question - how do you show what you’ve learned from admittedly privileged situations without apologizing for the good fortune of being in those situations in the first place.</p>

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<p>quote:</p>

<p>How do you do that in a way that doesn’t come across as “rich / privileged kid”? Sincerely asking, not challenging.</p>

<p>unquote:</p>

<p>yes, the though crossed my mind. However, I decided to trust the adcoms’ sophitication. Come on, if you are not asking for financial aid, had the kid in ballet class for 15 years, and all sorts of ECs with a couple of summer Harvard and MIT course thrown in, don’t you think the adcoms “get” it that your kid is not coming from an improverished background?</p>

<p>Both my husband and I have relatives all over the world, and that was also mentioned too, so there was a “mitigating” circumstance. Beside, my number one goal in educating my kids was to expose them to the wonders of the world they live in, much more so than good grades and outstanding SATs, so that when they leave us, they will truly feel that they can be comfortable anywhere on this planet. So, that philosophy of ours was also woven into the story he wrote on how he became who he is.</p>

<p>By the way, majority of these countries we visited were third world countries, and he wove that story into how economic policies and financial decisions make or break the national development, rather than natural resources.</p>

<p>well, sometimes, you just have to go with your gut, rather than psycho analyzing adcoms to death…</p>

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<p>Alas, the roller-coaster ride that brings my heart to my throat. Midwesterner – thanks for the encouragement. CountingDown – thanks for the sobering reality that I frequently tried to ignore.</p>

<p>I do like the strategy of focusing on the ED/EAs for now and not lock down on the RDs until November. Full-ride to UMCP sounds great too. Even though I may say to my kid, “Get to the best school you can and Dad will find the money”, tuition and fees are still a big issue for me.</p>

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<p>Are you feeling sorry or guilty for providing a “privileged” environment for you kids? C’mon. There is no need for this. What counts is what did you do with the privilege? Though my kids are not privileged (single salaried income), I’d venture to say that attending these expensive programs are not valuable by themselves other than indicating to the finaid folks that you can do full-sticker which may a plus for the some of the schools below T20s. Not much use to the T20s. However, if they follow up the experience at these programs and attain something more, then it gets interesting.</p>

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<p>I can’t speak to other programs, but I’m aware that CTY summer programs offer scholarships to those who cannot afford full freight. Additionally, the cost to attend can be shaved if you are fortunate enough (as we were) to live close enough to do a daily commute to the program, thus avoiding about $1,000 a session. </p>

<p>Parents choose CTY and similar programs for different reasons. In our case, two of the three summers, it was for enrichment classes not available at the HS. The third summer, S chose physics so he could take AP Physics C as a junior. This turned out to be a lucky choice for him, since the HS, like many public schools in CA, is under financial duress and not offering each AP science every year.</p>

<p>I’m thinking ad comms who’ve been in the business for more than a few years are going to be saavy. They’ll be able to tell from other parts of the application (e.g. parents educational levels and occupations, zip code) whether an applicant is economically advantaged. However, it’s clear that not every economically advantaged set of parents chooses to use their monetary advantage to help better their kid’s educational experiences. Far from it. Some families prefer the big car and boat and seasons tickets to watch the sports team.</p>

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<p>I don’t feel guilty in the least for providing CTD to my S who really enjoyed it and learned a lot, any more than any parent on here should feel guilty for providing music lessons / sports camps / ballet lessons / transportation to science fairs / extensive foreign travel / etc. </p>

<p>I was addressing Keilexandra’s point that these are rich-kid camps and that the only way to talk about them is to acknowledge the privilege directly upfront. So my questions are two fold. A, How is that done? and B, Is that really necessary? </p>

<p>After all, adcoms can also figure out that families who can send a kid to ballet lessons for 15 years, or fund an expensive musical instrument, or get the kid enough private tennis lessons so that he wins state, have privilege. Do those kids need to apologize or acknowledge that privilege in writing about what they’ve learned from 15 years of ballet / music / tennis?</p>

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<p>^I take that back, but ykwim.</p>

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<p>I’d like to challenge you (nicely) on this, because here’s the thing. If a kid is interested in science – he can go work in a lab and explore his interests. Maybe he does Siemens or Intel. Those are his “classrooms.”</p>

<p>My S was interested in creative writing and international relations with a bent towards understanding philosophy, competing systems of ethics and religions and how they shape international policy. There is no “lab” for that, no awards – he just wanted to learn, and so we facilitated that environment by sending him to CTD. (Of course, it could have been a community college course, self-study, whatever.) How is his tinkering around in the classroom and the library with his prof and classmates and exploring these areas of inquiry over the summer any different conceptually from the smart science student tinkering around in a lab over the summer?</p>

<p>I live near Fermilab and Argonne. No doubt that there are hs students who are doing internships there over the summer, and more power to them. But you know - they’ve got to be kids of privilege too. Because it requires either a parent without an outside job who is able to drive there and back every single day, or it requires a family to invest in a car for a kid to be able to get there and back (and presupposes that kid isn’t needed at home over the summer to watch younger siblings). They aren’t on public transportation lines. I don’t know about you, but when I got 2 new drivers, two cars didn’t magically appear in my driveway. How is that any less privilege to do an internship at Argonne or Fermilab? It’s the same privilege as sending a kid to CTD (etc), IMO.</p>

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<p>You don’t need to write an essay about privilege–I’m just suggesting that if you write an essay about a CTY summer program, it might be beneficial to acknowledge (in a sentence or two) that you were privileged to have the opportunity.</p>

<p>Privilege comes in many different forms. I’ve benefited from other kinds of privilege, even if my parents have different financial priorities than most here. I don’t think anyone would be rejected for being sincerely over-modest (sincere being the key adjective there).</p>

<p>As PCP said, what did you do with the privilege? That should be the essay’s main focus–but you also do need to acknowledge the underlying privilege that made it possible.</p>

<p>FAP - Yes, people choose CTY for different reasons. It does provide very useful summer enrichment. Don’t I wish I could attend? (Solidly middle-class, so I don’t qualify for need-based aid at summer programs; but the reason why my family doesn’t spend money on extras is also why we’ll pay 20k EFC on an 80k income.) Your S was privileged to have a math professor as his father, and to live near enough to commute, and to afford the program so that he could take AP Physics C before it was canceled. So what? That’s just fact. You shouldn’t be guilty over having privilege; acknowledge it honestly, move on, and use it for good.</p>

<p>Of course, you don’t NEED to acknowledge your privilege, but if I were an adcom, I would look kindly upon the rare kid who did so with sincerity and without wallowing in guilt.</p>

<p>Pizzagirl - I’m interested in English and creative writing and philosophy and world religions and sociology and linguistics. None of those subjects lend themselves well to tinkering in a local lab. I had to study them from books and (thank all the Gods that ever existed) the Internet. Your S could go to a summer camp and learn about them in a communal, structured environment. That’s privilege–but again, so what? Acknowledge it and move on.</p>

<p>I’ve never heard of Fermilab or Argonne–like I said, I’m a humanities person–but if they’re not easy to commute to, then yes, that is privilege too. So is the lab assistant job that people get because their parents are friends with a professor. Etcetera.</p>