<p>I'm a mom, new to the list. I'm trying to figure out if my high school jr.'s awards will possibly increase his chances of acceptance at the most selective schools, which might be a bit of a reach for him. I guess what I'm asking is whether the type of awards he has are pretty standard for kids applying to the most selective schools, or whether these awards will perhaps be the thing that makes the reach possible. (I'm also assuming that if he has less than a 2200 on his SAT, then the most selective schools will probably be a reach, even given good grades in challenging courses.)</p>
<p>The awards/ ECs are:
1. Grand Awards in life and physical science at large regional science fairs
2. First place awards from special awarding agencies and a 3rd place grand award at the International Science Fair.
3. First place at regional science and humanities symposium (national competition coming up in April)
4. Local, regional and national film awards, including grants from a non-profit for film making
5. Member of award winning BEST and FIRST robotics teams
6. Intern at local software company for three years
7. 2nd degree black belt</p>
<p>Any ideas as to whether these are kind of standard things seen on the applications of students applying to the most selective schools, or will he stand out enough to bump him up a bit? Also, am I correct in assuming that if the SATs are less than 2200, then the most selective schools will be a reach?
Thank you for your advice.</p>
<p>Those are great ECs. Placing high in an International Science Fair = amazing. Try to show a little more “focus” through the science projects though. Someone who did well in two biochemistry experiments will look much better than in a biochemistry experiment in 10th grade and then did an astronomy experiment 11th. It shows more passion, which is something good to have on an application.</p>
<p>the selective schools (and I am guessing you are talking about Harvard/Yale/Princeton/etc) are reaches for everyone – even kids with out of this world ECs, 4.0 GPA and perfect SAT scores.</p>
<p>However – schools are looking for students that they want to be part of their school. Your son’s EC’s look very good – but he won’t be the only kid with those ECs and awards. If his stats (GPA, class rank, rigor of curriculum, sat or act test scores) are also up there, then encourage him to apply – he certainly has the same chance as other top students will.</p>
<p>How about browsing through the stats profiles of students admitted into the top colleges? The link is at the top of the links column to your left.</p>
<p>Look at the CC forums for selective colleges, and find the threads discussing acceptances/rejections. That will show you how your S’s ECs compare.</p>
<p>MegaVortex7 - Each project was a two year project. Both were technology intensive and involved computer programming, so I’m hoping this does look like
a sustained passion.</p>
<p>tetrisfan, what I meant was that I think people (and especially those here on CC) overrate the difficulty of gaining acceptance to the most selective schools. If you literally are a “kid with out of this world ECs, 4.0 GPA and perfect SAT scores,” as the poster above me said, you have nothing to fear provided you apply to a fair amount of schools. Here at Princeton, 95% of the people I know - and I am not exaggerating - would not be deemed Princeton material or even Ivy material by many posters here on CC.</p>
<p>As a Junior the EC are phenomonal. I assume that they will be continuing science fair this year? It is safe to assume if so that they stand a chance to yet again win a big prize. the chances are good but know that there are surprisingly alot of students who have won such competitions, and so I suppose ISEF it looses its edge as a hook to admissions.</p>
<p>That said, passion doesnt have to be defined by a continuation project or a single science through high school. I was 1st category at ISEF with a first year project. I’ll report on how it goes.</p>
<p>Your kid should also apply to Westinghouse and STS next year. No doubt that a ISEF+STS+Westinghouse winner will get in anywhere (no jokes and exagerations here, look at the past winners–> All HYPS)</p>
<p>“Here at Princeton, 95% of the people I know - and I am not exaggerating - would not be deemed Princeton material or even Ivy material by many posters here on CC.”</p>
<p>Ernie H. may be right about this…but it is clear that the most selective schools do in fact reject large numbers of highly qualified students each year. It is probably true that CC discussions understate the likelihood that a highly qualified applicant will get into at least one or two highly selective schools, as long as they apply to enough of them…but the odds of getting into any one school can still be pretty long, even for an amazing kid.</p>
<p>knickknackpatty-- He will compete in Westinghouse next year, but he’s going to have to find a new project. His project would be considered behavioral science bc it involves observations of animals. Westinghouse doesn’t allow behavioral science projects. Not sure why. So unless he can go back to his 9th/10th grade project, which was in the computer science category, then he’ll have 3 different projects for his high school career.</p>
<p>A lot of these responses have been huge paragraphs that are hard to sift through and you’re probably looking for some sort of list that you can just go down and check off. Here’s what I think are the important ones, albeit they are sort of vague. I took this from the United States Naval Academy class of 2011 profile:</p>
<p>School Honors and Activities
Student body/council/government
president or vice president… 8.3%
Class president or vice president… 11.6%
School club president or vice president… 35.2%
School publication staff… 22.7%
National Honor Society… 62.0%
Varsity athletics… 90.9%
Varsity letter winner… 84.2%
Dramatics, public speaking, debating… 88.4%
Eagle Scout/Gold Award… 11.0%
Boys/Girls State or Nation… 15.5%
Reserve Officer Training Programs… 13.7%</p>
<p>And also:</p>
<p>Rank in High School Class
First fifth… 78.0%
Second fifth… 15.3%</p>
<p>And:</p>
<p>Combined Scholastic Assessment Test I (SAT I) and
American College Testing (ACT) Program Scores
Score Ranges
Verbal Math
700-800 (31-36)… 23% 30%
600-699 (26-30)… 46% 54%</p>
<p>These are the things that I’d focus on for most competitive institutions.</p>
<p>Ernie H: I think you are misleading the OP. The top schools, be they ivies, more research oriented like Stanford, CalTech or MIT, or LACs are reaches for everyone. Too many examples of deferrals or outright rejections at my sons’ very well known, competitive (admittance rate from our county to this school is much lower than than any college) and respected public HS show this all too well. The top schools that hit the road all visit this school each and every year to recruit these kids, yet most of them get rejected somewhere.</p>
<p>S1 had perfect scores, international awards at the collegiate and high school level in math, national awards in Latin (4 times perfect NLE paper), english and humanities great GPA, EC’s and recs, worked during school and was rejected by 3 of his 11 schools, while receiving early writes and acceptances from others. There was no way to make sense of it, it just was what it was. He is currently thriving at your institution and doing incredibly well academically, but I can’t imagine that he would agree with your 10% statement. While he doesn’t find it unbearably hard, he does find it challenging. But maybe that’s because he is taking 5-6 courses each semester, all of which are two to three levels above his class year.</p>
<p>My advice to the OP is to find a few reaches, a few matches, and one or two safeties. Do the research as suggested, go to the library, search online to determine these schools. What you want to hear after all of the apps are submitted is “I really want to go to X college, but I can picture myself happy at any of the schools that I applied to.”</p>