<p>I agree with SimpleLife, you just have to prepare your kids to have different perspective and different outcomes. </p>
<p>A bit off the topics, but response to others.</p>
<p>National merit (SF, F and scholar) - it is initially selected from your PSAT done during your junior year. At our public HS, year after year, typically 1/2 the graduating seniors are NMSF, and by around April-May, about 10+ kids are finalists. A few years ago, my older son was also a NMscholar, but so what, there is small amount of money (at most 2000) with these titles. That amount is perhaps enough to pay for books.</p>
<p>On USC - extremely generous with NM titles; However even without those titles, one neighborhood kid who didn’t made NMSF, came from families of doctors (rich family) was granted USC 4-year trustee full scholarship after the interview. He was a very smart (STEM) kid just happened to have a bad PSAT score, I think he told us he forgot to put the answers down on the scantron…
My point is that they don’t always focus on URM or poor kids, nor NM titles.</p>
<p>On Harvey Mudd, its admission is more selective than MIT if the applicant is male. This is partly due to its small size and the pressure to admit more female. I’ve known several MIT admits who were rejected or waitlisted from Harvey Mudd. And, Harvey Mudd did not get anyone off the waitlists in the last 2 years.
As to Harvey Mudd’s academics - extremely tough and challenging. Getting a GPA of 2.9 is good. I don’t know about repeating junior classes - but redoing a more in-depth Calculus and Calulus-based Physics (they start off with special relativity prior to Mechanics) those are NOT easy classes. Most students have to form groups to tackle the homework and projects. They do expect you to be on campus during the break and weekends to work on problems with your peers…(very similar to Olin’s project concepts, except Olin’s core classes are not as strong as Mudd) Mudd also repeatedly stated that this school is NOT for pre-med students due to grade deflation.</p>