Even if @davidkram has substantial parental help to get started, he has taken full advantage of it. It’s not like he’s been dragged to a lab with his mom or dad to do some research in his mom or dad’s hospital. Very impressive body of work. Try to stay involved in a board capacity and do what you like. You still have another year left before applications. There will be lots of fun political work over the next year as we ramp up to the 2022 elections.
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People have to avoid making assumptions or speculating without evidence.
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@1NJParent @me29034 @Lindagaf Thank you for your uninformed commentary.
What if I told you my parents are not involved in any way?
What if I told you my parents did not even know about initial internships I was doing?
What if I told you they’ve been asking me to cut back on activities and school because they think I’m overworking myself?
What if I told you I’m the one pushing myself to go to a top school?
Please stop simply making assumptions about people whom you know nothing about. Whilst my parents have definitely been greatly supportive of my aspirations, we’re a typical middle-class family. There are no connections they’ve utilized on my behalf - even if they had them I wouldn’t use them out of principle.
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I’m not sure why you tagged me. I haven’t made any of those assumptions you listed above. In particular, in my commetns I didn’t assume any role your parent may or may not have played.
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I apologize for making assumptions. I won’t comment on this thread anymore.
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Do your thing and ignore the advices here. I have no idea why so many people think they have something to say on this topic.
Sooner or later all questions here either turn about money, or toxic in some other way. I have no idea if anybody finds any useful advice.
I am not making assumptions. Seriously, you are very impressive. You are diluting the impressiveness by discounting the role your parent played as well as exaggerating what you’ve done.
Take this advice, or leave it, of course it’s up to you. Having made my point, I will not repeat it.
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I am not sure what you think I said, but I haven’t mentioned your parents at all. My concern is that you might be stretching yourself too thin and that’s what I posted. Good luck with your endeavors.
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While you raise a number of questions, you do not deny they are true. Also, what’s your definition of “middle class?”
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I think you should continue doing it. You’ve clearly invested significant time and energy in it, and it appears to be doing well. If you’re not feeling burnt out or mentally compromised, why stop now? Only you know if there is way you can delegate some of your responsibilities while you finish high school, but I’m guessing you want to be all in or not at all?
I do think this will play well with elite colleges (assuming everything can be confirmed) - even more so if you can get recs from some of the high rollers you’ve worked with and who support your NP.
Regarding comments about whether the OP is spending too many hours in a day on the NP and not getting enough sleep, I’d point out that there are many, many high school students without NP’s who are putting in similar hours - especially junior & senior year. My D was out the door at 6:30 am everyday, managing an AP-heavy school load, sports practices & games, a job and a regular volunteer gig. Most nights she didn’t get home until 10pm. Then it was homework until 1-2am, only to do the whole thing over on the next day. This was most of her junior & senior year. I didn’t love it but she was very driven and had a goal of getting into a T20 college (she did). Just writing this to say that I considered it a win on the rare night that she got 5 hours of sleep.
That’s an awfully combative response for someone who is asking whether a non-profit he helped start is a “spike”.
I know little about college admissions, likely far less than some of the folks who have already posted. Your non-profit does sound impressive, but I guess some of the posters here are giving your their first impression: it sounds too good to be true. That may be wrong, that may be right. But your response shuts people off.
You can read about the huge amount of cynicism on CC regarding students creating non-profits solely to get into colleges. To a degree, that cynicism is likely a proxy for how admission officers might view something like this. I doubt you would respond to an admissions officer in the same way you are responding here. Just understand that AOs have seen all sorts of ECs, and they are probably a bit jaded.
Unlike qualifying for the US Olympic XX Team, judging a non-profit is far more subjective. To that extent, as a practical matter, the act of creating/implementing a non-profit seems to me to be much harder to qualify as an admissions “spike.”
That being said, if the folks who write your recommendation letters discuss what you have created and how much of a difference it will make to people, that goes a long way to making this stand out.
Whether this is a spike or not, I have no idea. Non-profits generally don’t sound like spike material to me.
If you keep your grades up and get great test scores, along with meaningfully demonstrating how you created this non-profit that really makes a difference, I think you’d be a strong candidate anywhere. But your grades and test scores are critical.
FWIW, I would tone it down when responding to folks who are reacting to a question you asked based on the way you asked the question.
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I thought the OP’s response was warranted, articulate and mature. The skepticism initially expressed here should have gone away after reading the OP’s response.
I understand that many students start 501c3’s with the help of parents, solely to get into college, but in this case this is a legit non-profit with the initiative, connections and work being done by the OP (and a few other young people).
Regardless of how much longer he works with the organization, I think he should and will, do well with college admissions.
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If what you said is true (which I don’t doubt), isn’t there something wrong for that to be necessary for a kid? It can’t be good for that kid’s development in the long run, can it?
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I think this is true of many HSers today.
I expect for some students it works fine (for example, there are people who need only 4-5 hours of sleep per night for their entire lives), but doesn’t work for others.
In our area there are many students with this type of schedule…and a high rate of anxiety and depression among them. Not only are the in-school psychologists very busy, but many students see private counselors as well.
Some of these kids will continue being high achievers in college, and go on to work 80-100 hour weeks as attorneys, consultants, IB analysts, etc. Hard to predict at the individual level what’s good or not in the long run.
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My opinion…the value in starting a non-profit (or any other EC activity for that matter) is that YOU want to do it and it fulfills a need. If you enjoy this endeavor and want to continue it, then do so.
Do not do any activity including starting a non-profit because you think it’s the entry door to colleges. Do these things because they are something you want to do.
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Some people may be able to sustain long hours with little sleep for a longer period of time than others, but no one can sustain it for too long because we aren’t biologically built that way. Even in IB, analysts can only put up with that kind of hours for a couple of years at most. Stretching beyond one’s biological limit may cause mental health issues and substance abuses, among other things. At a minimum, it isn’t a healthy lifestyle.
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I hear you and agree in general. Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger about performing at a high level for an entire life on 4-5 hours of sleep per night though! And he’s definitely not the only one.
To bring this back to OP, I agree with others that OP will do well in college admissions.
Arnold may be built biologically differently from most of us… 
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Perhaps we can all move on from sharing sleep anecdotes
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