@TimeUpJunior - as a parent it seems like you come here with a wealth of knowledge on this process.
Are you seeking validation that your offspring is a viable candidate at a small group of schools in a particular athletic conference?
Personally, I would suggest additional homework for you to find the right fit for your prodigy that check all these boxes:
what schools can challenge him academically
what schools can cultivate his music composition within an undergraduate school of music
what schools are near major medical centers
what schools can provide him merit scholarships
what schools socially are right for your son
what schools are geographically compatible for him
Once you can pinpoint those schools you can develop the best strategy for college applications, which most likely will include visits, auditions and mainly regular decisions…
Again, I didn’t say “big.” Capacity to learn is supposed to be augmented by some ‘get out there and do it.’ You’re fooling yourself if you think any uber competitive college just looks at “interest” and the ability shown by grades in a high school setting. But at this point, I wondet if you’re pulling my leg.
@mathmom I would note that your link is what their dept of Education is saying, not the admissions office.
OP I would investigate schools with a research hospital. That creates may opportunities to get involved in bioresearch.
In my opinion, unless you are URM, with no ECs in science or even STEM, I think Harvard and Stanford are virtually unreachable. I would try to remedy that.
I would investigate Johns Hopkins, Penn, Cornell, Northwestern, Duke and Chicago. Admission to any of these schools is an aggressive goal. Without relevant ECs, he could be shut out, however, his chances are a lot better than Harvard or Stanford. The work expected will be virtually identical. I can promise you he will be very challenged at all of those schools.
@Much2learn that is true. And much of what even the admissions office says is probably not 100% true either. My kids did what they were interested in. One got A’s with his hands tied behind his back and spent all his time teaching himself computer programming (at first), then computer operating systems (later in high school). He had recommendation letters from professors saying he’d done programming work for them that their grad students coudln’t do. He didn’t try to mold himself to a college he did what interested him and then looked for colleges that were good fits. He did apply to Harvard, though it wasn’t the best fit, because they had just announced they were expanding the engineering school and were clearly looking for more kids like him. Also his school has had a pretty steady track record of getting a handful of kids like him into Harvard every year. My other kid was not nearly as driven so a slightly different set of schools were in the cards for him.
Oh he didn’t go to Harvard although he was accepted and was tempted - he went to Carnegie Mellon. It was definitely not cruising. He graduated a few years ago and is now at Google doing stuff we don’t understand with the Linux kernel.
You can’t beat Carnegie Mellon for CS and fantastic job prospects. My D is in the thick of right now and has quite a few options for summer internships. It’s tough academically but well worth it IMO.
Harvard has wonderful music ensembles for all of its students. There are tons of students enrolled at Harvard who play on their orchestra, wind ensemble, or other instrumental ensemble…or sing.
It’s not the go to place to major in music, perhaps, but plenty of great opportunities to continue music.
Yes…Rice and Richester have great conservatories (Eastman at Rocheater), but students who are not auditioned music majors don’t play in those conservatory ensembles. The schools DO have ensembles for non-music majors that are not part of the conservatory.
MIT has great music performance groups for all students.
JHU has performance groups on the JHU campus. But they can’t be in the Peabody Conservatory ensembles unless they are auditioned music majors.
@thumper1 I don’t know about Rice, but students can attend both Eastman and the rest of the university. As you point out, though, the student has to audition and actually get into Eastman, which is by no means an easy feat.
Right…they need to,audition for,and get acceoted into those conservatory programs to be able to play in the conservatory ensembles. That includes Rice.
OP, for future posts it’s helpful for you to post as the parent and not the student - it avoids confusion in the discussion.
A couple of thoughts. First, I agree that there is some strategy in the decision about where your S should apply EA/SCEA/ED so I think your question is a valid one. A kid shouldn’t “waste” an early shot on a school at which s/he has a very small chance of admission (eg, unhooked kid applying to Harvard with an 85 average and test scores around 2000) - that’s a very costly use of the early card. Your S obviously has great stats so he is not in that category.
I think the key is to determine what he is actually looking for in a school and which 2 or 3 colleges fit that bill for consideration of his “early” pick. I just went through the admissions process with my DD who is a HS senior. She had narrowed her favorites down to 3 schools - Princeton, Dartmouth and Duke - and we weighed what we thought were her chances using the school’s Naviance data. Not surprisingly, there was only a small bit of difference in scores/gpas of the kids from her school admitted to those colleges, so the data was really not that telling. The Naviance data for your S may be more informative once you figure out what his other top choices are. (He does have schools other than Harvard in mind, right?)
In the end it wasn’t the likelihood of admission that drove her decision - it was which was her favorite school. I asked her to imagine that she had picked Dartmouth, was admitted ED and then in April found out that a classmate with similar stats had been admitted to Princeton or Duke. Would she be jealous? Same question for Duke and Princeton. It was a useful tool for deciding which of 3 amazing schools on which she be willing to use her early card.
Finally, I have to reiterate what other posters have said about your son’s interest in studying biology. From everything I’ve heard, read and seen via previous years’ applicants from my D’s HS, the colleges your S is aiming for want to see kids whose applications “make sense” or “tell a cohesive story” and who have a history of meaningful participation both curricularly and extra curricularly in their prospective major.
I am not at all saying that your S has to have won national or even regional or local awards in biology. Rather, he needs to show a record of participation and interest in the subject beyond having an award-winning teacher and the desire to find a miracle drug. This could mean post-HS courses at community college if he’s exhausted his HS’s biology offerings, working in a lab (even washing test tubes would be a learning experience), an outreach program involving teaching biology at elementary schools whose science curriculum is lacking, writing articles about biology for a student publication, or going on informational interviews to meet researchers in your area. There are hundreds of ways a kid can express interest in a particular subject matter in a way that is both exciting to the student and an opportunity to grow in the soft-skills and explore career opportunities.
Good luck and please keep us posted with your S’s decision.
@GnocchiB My apology to you. I copy and paste junior’s info on my post, forgetting to change “I” to “He”.
I have never heard of the tool called “Naviance” until now, thank you. Is Naviance a nationwide tool or is it just specific to a school? What kind of information can you pull out of it? I definitely will ask junior to talk to his counselor about it.
Is biology a major so hard to get into? A few others posters share the same concern about my son’s chance based on the fact he has not done anything extra accept taking an IB course from an award winning teacher. I will talk to junior to re-evaluate his choices of major.
No biology is not a hard major to get into. Many colleges (such as Harvard) don’t admit by majors, so while they ask what you think you might major in, it is okay to say you are undecided. Some students may touch on their prospective major in some of their essays, others may not. My oldest had no doubt he would major in computer science and it was so central to his being it was the focus of his essay. My other kid applied undecided everywhere but Georgetown (where he had to apply to the School of Foreign Service if he wanted to major in International Relations.) He thought he’d probably be an IR major, but since none of his high school activities pointed that way he didn’t mention it. He’d made origami jewelry, done some volunteer work archiving historical papers, played for four years in two orchestras, was on the literary magazine and was part of an award winning Science Olympiad team. Your typical well-rounded kid. It’s often easier to sell yourself as a pointy kid, but really most high schoolers don’t know what they want to do when they grow up and that is fine.
If he’s interested in pharmacy or pharmacology, biology or chemistry would be obvious majors. I don’t see why he should choose a major based on what he thinks colleges will like.
Our public school doesn’t have Naviance. The very top colleges aren’t really admitting based on stats so I don’t see how it would be that helpful for this student anyhow.