Another thought:
With the way that your kid is, he’s going to be successful only if he enters medicine, becomes an artist/writer or (maybe) academic.
With the lack of interest in science, he’s not going to be a doctor, so I hope he makes it as either an artist/writer or academic.
Good luck.
Being 14, I wouldn’t assume all of the above will be true when he applies. Sometimes kids can change a lot during HS. But if he does accomplish all of the above, then it’s very likely (but not certain) that he will be admitted to multiple highly selective colleges, particularly ones that compete in the sport where he is state ranked. Skimming through the thread, I’d expect the biggest weak area relates to things like LORs, essays, and other areas where the personality described may be notable. Many holistic, highly selective colleges are looking for genuinely nice persons who help their fellow students be successful and make the campus a better place, rather than “ruthless” competitors. For example, MIT’s CDS marks the most important criteria for admissions as “character/personal qualities” – more important than grades, scores, ECs, … They describe what they mean by character/personal qualities at http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match , which states
“The core of the MIT spirit is collaboration and cooperation… If you enjoy working alone all the time, that’s fine! But you’re probably not going to be particularly happy here”
“Our community is comprised of good people. People who take care of each other and lift each other up. People who inspire each other to work & dream beyond their potential. We’re looking to admit people who by nature will sustain the qualities of this community.”
“Work hard, play hard. Despite what you may have heard, this place is NOT all about work. To be successful here, you must prioritize some measure of down-time. Therefore we like to see that you’ve prioritized some down-time in high school as well. Question #3a (Tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it) is not a trick question. Answer it wisely.”
My experience at Stanford, which has a similar emphasis on character, was that for the most part students assisted each other, rather than competed with each other. For example, once during a pre-med chem class exam, a kid sitting in the row in front of me appeared to just give up in the middle of the exam. The guy sitting next to him, asked him what was wrong and tried to get to him to keep going on the exam, risking an honor code violation by talking during the exam to assist a fellow student. Students frequently studied together. The vast majority of persons working problem sets for my electrical engineering classes worked on the problem set HW assignments together in groups, so they’d end up submitting similar or same answers. This was not only permitted – it was encouraged. To this day, I don’t know what my decile rank in my college class was or who was val/sal/… This information was never given, likely to discourage competition.
@Data10, if this kid reaches all those goals, it would be amazing if he gets rejected from all those elite privates listed, though if anyone can accomplish such a feat, it would be him.
However, I agree that the odds are above even that he’ll receive multiple acceptances from the pool of schools listed.
BTW, many of the Ivies & equivalents are collaborative, but you know what? If you good enough in something/things (and you have to be extreme good), I’m pretty certain that Harvard will take you.
One of the issues here seems to be that you are severely uncalibrated. a kid who has the ability to make USAJMO is not “average” in math. But I think you’re going about this in the wrong way. You’re worried about how to make the kid fit the school. You have an intelligent, hard-working, talented kid. The very best thing he can do is pursue activities that he is honestly passionate about (real passion, not “passion for college applications”). And by pursue, I mean all of in the school context and out of the school context, and most importantly in the summer, when he can hang out with other kids who have that passion as well. (That’s why math camps are wonderful – not as a resume line, but as a place to spend time with “your people” and find out who you are away from the context of your family.) Then you take the kid you have and help him try to figure out where he’ll be happiest for 4 years. That’s it. Nothing more.
@IJustDrive , happiness is valued differently by different people.
I just heard on the radio that the third MIT student this year just committed suicide. And MIT isn’t alone in this particular metric. Perhaps people should start valuing happiness more!
Justonemom - my kids also went to a private school where it was predominantly white, they constantly send 35%+ of their students to top 20s. I used to be very impressed until I figured out a lot of it were legacies and athletic recruits. The school required 100+ hours of volunteer work, but they didn’t arrange the volunteer work. I would say most students did a lot more hours than the minimum, and those kids also had very demanding ECs. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the case at your son’s school. If I were you I would carefully go over the common app. For every EC listed, they ask if you will continue such EC in college.
D1 was more like your son that she felt she didn’t have much time to do volunteer work with her 20+ hours of one EC. D2 was a different kid. she often picked the volunteer work most kids didn’t want to do. One of those volunteer work was making sandwiches and passing out food to homeless people in NYC under bridges and isolated places when it was freezing cold out. D1 is at a very lucrative job now, but I see D2 getting her law degree and maybe changing the world a bit.
JustOneMom started this off asking for “necessary, if not sufficient” achievements, and listed a set of things. Many folks who managed to have kids accepted to just those schools said their kids didn’t have all of those things, so “necessary” is a meaningless word. There is no BAR, no MINIMUM. As much as many high-achieving kids, and their high-achieving parents would wish it were so, there is no set of check boxes, no list of “if I just do this”. Lots of good advice has been given here, but it seems to be unwanted.
"Do you think I should really push my son now to get some B’s in the subjects he doesn’t like so that he doesn’t look like a grade grubber? Right now, he ruthlessly masters anything put in front of him whether or not he likes it, and naturally gets A+'s. "
No. But he sounds joyless. If he can’t be number one, he’s upset. That’s a horrible, stressful way to live.
And it’s not NECESSARY, either, to live that way to be successful.
Possibly one of the best humble-brag threads ever. And 182 replies for someone that has no interest in what anyone here has to say. She clearly has all of the support, guidance, and networking in the world right in her own backyard, so why is she seeking advice from random internet strangers? She portrays her S as a prodigy on multiple levels, but it doesn’t seem to be enough? What is the point of this thread? There are so many current threads from parents/students that truly need help…
"I agree with you that Brown will be a complete disaster with it’s BYOB approach to education. I also agree that Dartmouth culture will likely clash with my son’s personality. However, I also strongly believe in adaptability. "
If you strongly believe in adaptability, why are you so closed-minded to the idea of other schools other than those you have decided the son must apply to / get in? At least be honest and say you don’t believe in adaptability, since you’re not going to change anything.
@ProudMomx3, it is entertaining, though, so I don’t mind.
I think Dave Barry may have turned to fiction in order to make his monthly click-bait quota. And, I have to say, he’s off to one heck of a start for March. Do I smell a bonus?
Let’s Buzzfeed this thread … I wanted to send my kid to an Ivy, but one look and you’ll never believe what I saw …
As enjoyable as this may be, I don’t see anything new coming out of this thread. Combined with the fact that the OP seems unable/unwilling to accept advice, I am closing.