@privatebanker S16 was a legacy and applied EA. D18 was unhooked. Like I stated, both kids pursued their ECs to a very high level. They both had state and national recognition. They both are/will continue pursuing ECs in college but will not major in field related to ECs.
I’m not going to add to the pile on.
But for the sake of your 8th grade daughter, I hope she can live up to your expectations for success.
I’ve taught so many kids over the years who have had a strong history of success… until they hit one course and suddenly struggled.
In fact part of my “last day of classes speech to my seniors” on Friday was about this topic. That they will, at some point in their lives, have to struggle at something. For some it may be calculus, for some it may be Anatomy and Physiology, for some it may be relationships, for some it may be something else. For some it will be the first time that life hasn’t handed them exactly what they wanted as a reward for hard work.
But none will lead the charmed life of someone who always finds success. And that’s OK. It doesn’t make them stupid or “unsuccessful”-- it simply makes them human. And the people in their lives who matter will always love them anyway. The are loved for far more than their resume of successes.
I understand, to some extent anyway, your repeated insistence that she WILL be a success at whatever she does. But I’m sincerely hoping that you’re tempering the message you’re sending her.
As to what your daughter can do, I’ll add the suggestion of at some point-- though NOT in middle school-- that she gets a job. Nope, it won’t work any wonders on her application. But it teaches kids responsibility in a way that school simply can’t. Your boss isn’t invested in helping you find success the way I am as your classroom teacher. He’s invested in paying his mortgage, and your job is to help him earn the money to make that possible. It’s an entirely different spin,and I think it does kids a world of good. Lots of places will hire her next year, after her freshman year, when she turns 15. My youngest daughter, just finishing freshman year and 15 years old, joined the rest of the family in having a job in March and I can already see the changes in her.
I’m also not a fan of the “dream school” concept-- not for my own kids and not for the kids I teach. I would much rather kids have a group of schools they love and have a good chance of being accepted to. It hurts so much to be rejected from any school-- much less the One and Only that you have your heart set on. And, as we see every year here, the idea of “safety” doesn’t always match the reality when those envelopes start to arrive at your house.
Sound like great kids! At 18 I had done nothing but sports and a job at self serve gas station. Didn’t even know what an ec was. These kids these days are doing amazing things
Aside from all the other good advice given so far, I don’t think that anyone has mentioned the following:
If your D is truly interested in law school, it matters very little where she goes for undergrad. The primary determinants of law-school admissions is the GPA and LSAT score. This is in large part due to the importance given to USNWR law school rankings, and this importance has only increased with the drop in the number of law school applicants. Harvard in particular has been very stats based, because it has a large class to fill. Yale, being much smaller, is less so.
Here’s my one piece of advice from having gotten one kid through the process and has a current 9th grader (who is also interested in the law).
If you haven’t done so, run your financials through the net price calculators of your current schools of interest and see if they will be affordable for your family. While Harvard, Stanford, Yale are very generous with need based aid, you may not be able to pay what they think you should, especially if you live in a high cost of living area or have other financial constraints that aren’t considered by those calculators.
There is nothing more disappointing than having your kid beat the admissions odds only to find that the school is out of reach financially or would be possible only through crippling loans or cashing out your retirement (neither of which are worth it, IMO).
If you are a “donut hole” family and want both prestige and merit-based funding, there are top 30 schools that offer generous merit (up to full tuition) via highly competitive scholarships by separate application. Typically these also require on campus interviews (paid by the school). I’m thinking of places like Vanderbilt, Duke, Wash U. There are others. Honors Programs at public universities can also be good options for academically ambitious, high stats kids.
With the financial parameters in place, then you can begin to build a sensible college list. If you’ve already done this and HYS are viable, then great! Identify safeties and matches to complement the reaches.
Regarding your question, beyond high GPA and standardized test scores, let your daughter be herself, encourage her passions as much as your means and her level of interest allow, and enjoy these next few years. They go by fast.
p.s. forgot to mention there is a class of 2021 parents thread that might be helpful to you. Some folks have already been through the process. Lots of good advice about both the HS years and planning for college down the line.
I just read through this thread and when I saw your original question and I thought…oh no…wait for the anti-tiger parent threads. We don’t have a lot of information about your kids and I don’t think it is helpful to say to kids to not have dream schools or just sit back and let the high school counselors handle it. I think there are ways to increase the statistical possibility for your child to get into a highly selective school and whether you do that or not, and how you communicate that to your child is very important to their self esteem. You need to alter your go from “my kid is the most perfect kid in the universe” and develop a realistic understanding of your child’s qualities, interests and abilities. So, I would look at it the way the admission realities are. First Grades, are your children taking the most rigorous classes and are they getting A’s. If grades come easy and they are internally motivated, then they have one piece, if they struggle in some subjects you think they will probably get a number of 'b’s or below, then the statistics go down. Next test scores. Do your kids read? Do they test well? At some time that your kids have down time and if they want to, you might try one of the free SAT or ACT practice shortened test to see what they get. If they seem to do well, then research test prep services, look at their success rate, yelp reviews, talk to others to find a good program that your children would be open to take. If they push back, are not interested, then don’t push. This should be fun and shouldn’t interfere with other interest. Junior year is really busy for kids, so I think the earlier you can work this in, the better. Ideally they can take a prep course the summer before junior year, knock it out with one test before classes start and not have to worry about it again. EC’s. It is pretty obvious that most kids accepted have some pretty outstanding EC’s. I think as a parent with kids in middle school what you can do is talk to your child about what they like to do and are good at. Sports is an obvious hook at all schools and if your daughters like sports show them what the colleges their dream schools compete in and ask them if they want to try one. Rowing, squash, fencing? Give it a shot, make it fun. If they really take to it, then support it. But also look at what else your child likes to do, and support it. If your child loves playing computer games, see ways they can explore that, cooking, explore that. It seems the more involved and if they can get good enough to have some state, national or international success, then you have a shot. But you need to have a very realistic assessment of their ability and listening to their interest. ALWAYS check yourself and ask yourself this regularly “is this my interest or theirs”. Anytime you find yourself saying this is something you want more then they do, back off. You can also make sure to never say “if you don’t do this you cant get into school x” instead, maybe start introducing other options, talk highly about your state options, go on a few college trips with a variety of selectivity and talk about the benefits and positive attributes of each of them. Make sure your children know there are no “lesser” schools and in the end has a well balanced list of options. And make sure they have a great high school experience, go to games, dances, develop values.
This year at my daughters school she said 4 kids got into Stanford. None were athletes. All were off-the-charts- nationally smart and always have been, so my guess is the grades and test they were in the top few percentage. All seem to have a serious passion and related accomplishment, one I know of for the last few years has succeeded in state and national science fairs. No doubt those activities are supported by her parents, but also, no doubt it wasn’t something she can got that far just on parent will, it started with her passion.
Lastly, enjoy your kids. The high school years go fast. Take family vacations, take them shopping, laugh a lot and treasure watching them become young adults. It goes way too fast…
Amen to the high school years going by in the blink of an eye. Enjoy every minute you can with your kids!
Lol, have faith in your kid. That means that she will evolve, isn’t fully formed at 13 or 14, stuck in place.
Knowing lots of bright, ambitious kids, I find it difficult to accept she independently and maturely “researched” and just happened to come up with three colleges at the top of media rankings. Especially as you say she wants a law future and one can’t get a sense of how any college prepares you for law school. It’s not like it’s a sub category in college info or course lists.
I wouldn’t dependon this website or books (why do you think folks publish? As a public service?) Instead, go straight to the source, what the colleges say. It’s not laid out in simple instructions. They like savvy kids and it takes savvy to figure out. (If it were as simple as asking on a big forum, lol.) Depth and breadth, in the right, meaningful ways.
And this idea, "…she knows what she likes and does not like, and I would never force her to partake in anything she didn’t already want do. Well, she won’t do the picking, adcoms make the admit decisions and if you go your own merry way, ignore the patterns, attributes, and actions they like, you may very well find thay aren’t so interested. (If she were applying for a prestigious scholarship with requirements or stated goals, would you say, "But I don’t want to"and expect to meet with success?)
“If she wishes to volunteer do so. But don’t do so just because she thinks she needs to to look good for colleges.” Same as above. If a college expects- and will choose among- bright, accomplished, critically thinking kids who stretch and engage in solid, challenging, compassionate vol activities, don’t expect a pass because you think you alone are special for going against the grain.
And trust us, there will be plenty of highly qualified kids in competition with yours. There’s a diss sometimes used on CC, “special snowflakes.” Just looking at one’s own high school or middle school accomplishments doesn’t lend perspective.
It’s tough out there.
Let her be herself and find her own path. If she is as smart as you think, she will figure it out.
You should not do anything besides supporting her decisions and preferences.
If you start in 8th grade with the college admission craziness, you won’t survive until the end. Give yourself a break, enjoy your daughter, and put her health and happiness in front of everything else. Top schools are filled with too many kids that did everything possible and impossible to get there only to end up with therapists treating anxiety and depression, or worst. Relax…
@mamaedefamilia One caveat to this advice. I’ve seen parents/kids just develop a list of tippy top schools because they give the very best need based aid. Well, sure they do — but they still just have a 4-5% (or lower if you aren’t hooked) chance of admission. The elbow grease part of college admissions is finding matches and safeties that meet the kid’s academic needs and are affordable. Part of the patent’s role in the process is to help the kid broaden their search and find a range of options that will work for them. Then if they get into a top school, gravy! If not, they have at least a couple of choices that they like and are affordable. And there was a post a lot further up mentioning Duke or UCLA as safeties. Those are nobody’s safeties — even with perfect scores, a kid could get turned down there. Gotta go further down the selectivity list for true safeties.
There is so much wisdom in these posts above! I agree with so many of them and could repeat the same things, but I’ll share what happened with my D as a way to add something unique and specific:
In 8th grade, my D was far more interested in the college search than her 10th grade sister. For fun, she watched Caltech videos, read MIT blogs, and dreamed of walking around Stanford’s campus. She wasn’t sure of her exact STEM major, but she knew she wanted to get into the best and most prestigious college possible.
As a senior, she ended up with stats of 4.0 UW GPA and 36 ACT and solid ECs. But the reality was that being a white NYer who wasn’t an athletic recruit or a national science competition finalist or famous, she still had little hope of being accepted to those schools (other than perhaps a small bump as a female to tech schools). Perfect stats are good but in no way a guarantee for admission. Seeing Brown’s admission stats (as an example) made this real for me with 72% of students with a perfect ACT score being rejected this past year: https://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/facts.
The good news is that she also discovered some other schools along the way.
This past fall, she ended up applying and being accepted ED to Harvey Mudd, a great little tech/liberal arts school in CA. While it may be prestigious to those in the know on the west coast in the engineering/tech world, very few people have even heard of the college here in NY, so no prestige value in her current world at all. But she knows it is the perfect school for her. She might have had a shot at Caltech (probably still no chance for Stanford, though), but she came to realize she preferred Mudd’s program and philosophy and student body.
As your D grows, I hope you can encourage her to look beyond prestige. There are a lot of amazing colleges out there, colleges you and your D may never have heard of before. Best wishes exploring!
" I think if they would have had a realistic view of how hard those schools are to get into, they may have had an easier time accepting UCLA, or Duke, or the flagship."
This admissions cycle Duke had an 8% acceptance rate. A year ago Duke had 1,914 valedictorians apply of which 29% got accepted.
I think we may want to temper the idea that Duke is a safety for anyone.
Not that Mudd is anybody’s safety or match, either. But the point, OP, is that there are hundreds of schools you and your D have never heard of that could be a great fit for your kid. And congrats, @silverkey — so excited for you and your D!
@intparent Yes, I agree, which is why I mentioned public universities with honors programs as a possible option. And, yes, there are hundreds of options beyond the top 20 where the OP’s child would do well and be happy!
I know that the two of us are both fans of LACs and that our own kids have thrived at them. This was another option that I wanted to mention to the OP. @narline1 - your child’s preferences may well shift as she matures. Also it’s entirely possible that she may step on campus and love Yale, but hate New Haven. She might thrill to Stanford and be turned off by Harvard. She may decide that women’s colleges are the way to go. She may want the bustle of a large public flagship or the intimacy of a small LAC.
As example, we visited four Ivies, Stanford, and Chicago. Of them, my kid ended up liking only two of the six and applied to none. She had gravitated towards LACs by the end of her junior year as her preferred category. She also applied to two less selective public universities with honors programs and rolling admissions that were affordable - true safeties - and that took a lot of the pressure off.
Of course some of the top LACs are nearly as competitive these days - Mudd and others in the Claremont Consortium being one example. Scroll through the acceptance threads of the tippy tops on CC and you will get a sobering reality check. I personally know of a number of well qualified nice genuine kids - great grades and scores, multi-season athletes, academic ECs, who were shut out from the top 20 as well as from mid-tier places that should have been fairly predictable admits. The admissions landscape seems to be less forgiving every year. The good news is that GPA, test scores, character, and thoughtful ECs will yield good results, but perhaps not the ones you expect.
^ right, so many great colleges. And so much growth to come. We talk about the growth between junior spring and senior fall, then senior fall to 12/31 and 5/1. To think a rising 9th grader is set? That’s closing doors. The top colleges prefer an openness to new input, not the fixed mindset. And evidence of that.
I’ll second a couple of things @mamaedefamilia said; visit the colleges that your daughter might want to attend (it will change her mind about them, one way or the other and you have a few years to look at them) and visit some LAC’s. My DD visited (in order of preference) Harvard, Princeton, UChicago, Stanford, Cornell, and Brown. Her order changed after the visits to: UChicago, Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford. Stanford actually fell off the list entirely (didn’t apply). She will meet current students and get a vibe from the school which will have its affect. I do think we should have added a few LAC’s because I think their education on par with most. Ended up at UChicago.
Visiting cannot be over emphasized. My daughter had a totally different list of schools on her “visit” list than where she ended up applying. Her #1 on paper ended up getting scrapped 1/2 way through the visit.
After going through this process recently (my daughter is a freshman at UChicago, and also accepted into 3 Ivies, Duke, Vanderbilt, and others), I was in the opposite position of OP. I tried to take off the stress of my daughter life, telling her constantly that is not “Harvard or McDonalds” (In her case was “Chicago or McDonalds.” as UChicago was her dream school). That there are infinite ways to success, and choosing a college (or a college choosing you or not) does not define you as a person, or later on as a professional.
In my children’s school, we have many AOs from the top universities visiting to explain the admissions process, and one of them was an incredible woman in her 60s that said; “I have been happily married for 29 years to a wonderful man, but I am sure that out there-there are at least 10 other men that would have made me as happy as I am now. Well, exactly the same happens with colleges. Forget the idea of a dream college. There are many colleges that will be the perfect place for you.”
Now my 8th-grade-high-achiever son is already thinking of colleges. I cannot believe it. For nothing less than CS. Now my job is to sell him the many wonderful top colleges for CS (none of them Ivies BTW), and convince him that there are more places to do that besides MIT or Stanford. In four years, those admissions rates will be decimal numbers.
Of course there are so many great colleges, so much growth to come, and one should be flexible. No one should “close doors”, or think a 9th graer is “set”, and I don’t think that was particularly suggested. But I don’t think there is anything wrong with having a rough target, or even a potential “dream school”, especially if it is based on more than general reputation and prestige. My highly gifted 12 year old 7th grader does tons of above-grade activities with HS kids who are focused on college (and many with college age kids, and some with adults), so it’s not surprising that he’s somewhat aware of colleges. He independently came up with his current preferred school - one with a < 10% acceptance rate - and I personally think he did a remarkably good job of picking a potential “fit”. Of course he understands that there are no guarantees, that there are tons of good options, that things may change, and he spends absolutely no effort at all specifically targeting schools. But I don’t think it’s a sin to have an inkling at a young age.
Kids today are exposed to information much earlier than I was as a child. The internet and media have opened up so much. Pressure starts much earlier, too, whether we like it or not. It may be unrealistic to advocate living life in a utopian childhood bubble until 11th grade and then suddenly morphing into a sophisticated college shopper.
My biggest piece of advice is to look at the rejection threads on CC for all of the extremely selective schools that your adolescent is targeting as an 8th grader. You’ll find hundreds of students just as , or more accomplished as she is who were just as determined and convinced that they would be admitted. Have a goal that is also tempered with realism.