@TheGFG, you say your son loves sports, and he was able to play throughout high school. I think that’s a success! I’ve said this before, but the 4 years one spends in high school are no more or less important than the 4 years spent in college and the 4 years after that and so on. If doing what a kid likes may hurt him or her with some colleges, then perhaps that college wasn’t a good fit anyway.
I have encouraged my Ds to participate in activities that interest them. This means I’ve got 2 well-rounded (uh oh, right?) young women with high stats. No major awards, some leadership, nothing major. Older D was accepted to 2 top-20 schools (out of 4 to which she applied) and we will see what happens with my second D. I guess I wanted to post this just to say that the failure to “package” a kid does not mean he or she will not be admitted to more selective schools.
About reading 100 books a year: It’s possible that those folks would be seen as too one-dimensional, but if I had to bet, I would say kids who actually do read 100 books a year (and really, how many of those kids do you see around?) tend to do rather well in the admissions process.
Regardless, just in terms of personal development, I think that is a worthwhile goal.
As for strategizing, I personally believe strategizing about how to live a good life is a more worthwhile goal, which, of course, means thinking about and defining what that means to you (and it may involve going to an elite school).
I remember reading a couple decades ago about a woman who showed up in the Harvard Admissions Office one day to inquire about how to have her child admitted to Harvard. When the staff asked her how old and what grade her child was, the staff quickly learned that the child wasn’t even born yet. The inquiring woman was pregnant at the time. Since I read about this woman, I’ve often wondered what kind of “strategy” she’d since come up with to pave her child’s way into Harvard. Or, whether she and her child’s been seeing psychotherapists…
When time came for my son to apply to colleges, we looked at which colleges matched his statistical profile and came up with a list of colleges; then, we narrowed the list down by researching which of the colleges have the best programs and profile that he was interested in, that is, colleges with greater undergrad focus with smaller student body and with quality music programs with pre-med track availability. My son then wrote his essays, whenever appropriate, focusing on how that particular college’s programs could benefit his development and, vice versa, how he could contribute to its institution. In retrospect, I think my son’s college application process was quite effective because it was applicant-centered as opposed to institution-centered.
As to the OP’s question, here are some of what top, elite colleges are looking for:
They want about 10-15% of URM; 10-25% recruited athletes; 10-25% legacies; 2-5% offsprings of generous donors; 1-2% offsprings of celebrities and politicians; 1-3% offsprings of faculty; and 1-3% other influential connections. Even by conservative account, these easily make up at least 50% of each year’s class. The rest half is made up of unhooked students to round out the class needs. Their “selectivity” rate is about half of all-time recording-setting selectivity rates that these elite colleges have reported in recent weeks.
@compmom , I can’t disagree with you more about waiting until second semester Junior year. I think that puts kids at a huge disadvantage to their peers who have been thinking about this for a while.
We started college tours the beginning of Sophmore year, which allowed us to visit a lot of schools while students were present. If we waited until second semester Junior year, my daughter would have had to visit during the summer when no students are present. That’s a huge disadvantage.
My child also took her standardized testing in Sept of Junior year, and did well enough that she was finished and was able to spend her time on her classes and ECs Junior year rather than adding one more thing to stress about. This was a true gift. Her friends who started second semester Junior year struggled with overload and also had to take fewer ECs.
She also had to take Subject tests. It was disappointing that we didn’t know about the need for these until Mid-sophomore year because she should have taken the Bio test at the end of Freshman year since she’s thinking about being a bio major and isn’t taking AP Bio until senior year (so taking the Bio SAT 2 at the end of the class is too late).
I also wish we were more aware of summer programs for HS students; it would have been beneficial to start doing these as a rising sophomore. Ok, so this isn’t a strict “thinking about college” issue, but I found out about most of these opportunities during my child’s Junior year. If we had known earlier, she could have been engaged in more opportunities, which isn’t just helpful for creating a resume spike, but is more importantly helpful for helping kids decide what they are interested in.
@PurpleTitan - Those figures are actually from Daniel Golden’s “The Price of Admission,” which Frank Bruni quoted in his “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be.” While quoting those figures, Bruni thought them as conservative figures. Whatever the actual figures, the point was that we know at least 50% of what these elite colleges want.
@melvin123 - I don’t know whether my son’s case was an exception (I doubt it), but he started preparing for college applications starting, as compmom suggested, in the second semester of his junior year. Of the seven colleges he was admitted to, he had never set his foot on any of their campuses prior to submitting the applications. Of the seven, he was only interviewed at two. I was never a believer in college visits for the sake of exhibiting “demonstrated interest” (I’m always amazed at how much money people are so willing to spend on something of questionable value unless these visits are conveniently overlapping with family vacation itineraries). As once an Ivy college interviewer, I never gave much weight to the interviews, either. In fact, I gave up interviewing once I figured out that I was basically wasting my valuable time.
This is my S18 as well. Sadly despite the endless hours dedicated by a 3 sport athlete, usually starting in grade school, unless they plan to play at the college level it is almost irrelevant how much passion and commitment they have had. Colleges are looking for kids with ECs that will translate somehow to the college campus in an impactful way and unfortunately that doesn’t mean intramural athletes.
Our school district is not at all competitive and there is very little strategizing going at any point, which is quite obvious when you look at the dismal admissions results. Kids just do their thing and parents are really laid back about it. Once every couple of years or so there is some kid that really stands out in some way, but it is rare. So, based on my own reality I have to disagree that a typical kid is going to win the admissions race without some strategizing from at least 9th grade.
@planner03 & @TheGFG: Being a three-sport athlete is irrelevant only if attending some set of colleges is seen as the end-all and be-all rather than sports being worthwhile in and of themselves.
@TiggerDad, we’ve found all the visits to be tremendously helpful. There were several colleges where my daughter knew in the first couple of minutes, it wasn’t for her; we still spent several hours at the schools, just to be sure. And there were several colleges that my daughter just loved based on watching how the students interacted with each other, the placards at the student center, and just the general vibe of the place.
I kind of miss the college visits. S12 and I ate our way through several midwest college dining halls and D and I had a blast hitting northeast campuses (but never the dining halls, always the town cafes). In both cases it was like a vacation but with a little structure, sometimes kind of an excuse
I’m not suggesting that everyone hang out and watch tv or something. I am just commenting on the implications of “strategizing.” If a kid attends a summer program as part of a “strategy” is that different from attending out of interest or to develop a talent? I think it is, but the difference is subtle.
We all go by the experiences of our families and friends. My kids had relatively stress-free lives during high school and did indeed do their first visit in Feb. of junior year, then some more in April vacation, a couple in the summer, a couple in the fall. It worked out fine.
They have a hard time relating to the abstraction of college until a certain point and reality hit one of mine in December of senior year. He had been so busy with his many endeavors he barely thought about college and got his essay done Dec. 31st. He did fine with admissions.
Different strokes…I think it is like the holiday season. For commercial reasons it just keeps getting longer and longer and in the end, the kids are stressed out
As a parent of a musician child, it saddens me to no end when witnessing kids who were pushed to pick up a musical instrument just for the eventual college application. I wish and wish and wish that kids pick up musical instruments simply because they want to experience the joy of making music. Likewise, I wish and wish and wish that kids pick up soccer, tennis, swimming, fencing or Taekwondo just for the purity of experiencing the athletic competitive spirit and the joy of such experience. Whether music or sports, if they don’t amount to anything in terms of college admissions, at least such experiences would very much add to enriching human experiences. If these were exploited only as a means to an end, what an awful experience it’d be at the moment of realization that none of the “investment” amounted to “anything”.
A young person can fill his days pursuing the things that interest him or he can fill his days doing what he thinks will impress some admissions officer. Whichever it is, there are only so many days. Both approaches will require a story on the application or in the interview. One will flow quite authentically. There’s a difference between packaging who you are and making yourself into who you think you should be.
Blocking out what needs to be done (testing, visits) and by when is important and can relieve a lot of stress. This is not at odds with doing what interests you; it’s simply good time management.
Learning at an early age to be who someone else wants you to be is not, imo, a good life lesson. And let’s face it, most smart kids can “be” whatever they need to be whether it makes them happy or not. It’s not surprising at all that mental health issues abound at top schools,…
@roethlisburger - I thought I figured that the NYT article wasn’t a satire about half way through, but I’m still scratching my head after finish reading the article…
@TiggerDad – I’m of the same mindset … but after watching my D18 get more involved in school because she wants to look good for colleges, I’ve somewhat changed my view. For kids like mine, the demands of the top colleges force them to get involved in things they wouldn’t have done otherwise. Even though the original motives may not have been “pure”, the result is kids doing things that give them experience in different areas. D18 right now is at our State U working in a lab. That probably wouldn’t have happened had she followed my advice in 9th grade to “do what interests you”, which ended up with her sitting on the sofa on her phone and unhappy through 10th grade. Instead, as a rising senior she’s working on a grad student’s research of “non-coding RNA”, doing PCRs, and other things that I barely understand. She may end up hating it, at which point we’ll say “now we know you don’t want to do that” and look elsewhere.
Wouldn’t the percentage of athletes be inversely correlated to the size of the school? For example, if Cornell and Dartmouth field teams in the same sports, they need the same number of athletes, but that number is a smaller percentage of Cornell’s students than it is of Dartmouth’s students.
Forgot about this thread for a while, but way back at post #62, there were comments about book reading and introverts. Don’t despair, there is plenty of room for them too. My son is more than introverted, it’s like pulling teeth to have a conversation with him. (Though I was invited in for the tail end of his Harvard interview and he seemed to be doing fine, thankfully!) He also had read well over 100 books. His essay also showed a sense of humor even though, I think at best, you could call it a not bad for an engineer essay. I think it’s highly doubtful that his essay was an important part of his (or most) decisions about who to admit.
My D is extremely introverted and a voracious reader. She ended up putting recreation reading as an EC since it takes up so many hours of her week. Her description of the activity mentioned reading the oeuvre of numerous authors, and a couple of greatest books lists. It also included numerous books in their native Spanish. I had a thread under College Admissions about whether she should use it as an EC slot and most said no, but I think it was a positive aspect of her app. It kind of got mentioned in one note from an AdCom but about the books read in Spanish.
