<p>mammall - Marite’s son is going into his junior year at Harvard:). And from what we have all heard over the years here he is pretty spectacular at what he does…</p>
<p>Alu:</p>
<p>Thank you for those kind words. The thing is, S has met many kids who are far more spectacular than he is. So I don’t expect him to walk away with laurels. </p>
<p>But not everyone is spectacular or near-spectacular. There is room for BWRKs; there is room for perfect scorers. Adcoms take into account opportunities for enrichment and for achieving beyond perfect scores. But that gets into the realm of holistic review.</p>
<p>I must admit that stories about kids like Marite’s son are fun to hear. It’s exciting to remember that intelligence and creativity don’t need to be bordered by school curriculums. I also like Marite’s beautiful humility that is born of the true understanding of the very remarkable and wonderful people in the world. Precosity is so endearing, but so is Grandma Moses’ artistic blossoming in her eighties. </p>
<p>And if kids like Marite’s son (and I’m sorry, mammall, your daughter too, I for one am pretty impressed by her ACT 36 in 9th grade) can accomplish outside the school box, the same is true for college. None of our kids needs be bounded by the decisions of adcoms; there are so many opportunities around. </p>
<p>I met my mentor at a much less prestigious school than my best friend attended. She did not happen to meet someone to mentor her in an academic career. However, she did meet someone interested in her writing. I have a PhD and a long college teaching career; she is a free lance writer. We both write, but only she gets paid for it (haha!) I don’t think these outcomes could have been predicted from the schools we attended. I think that we are each, on the whole, happy with our outcomes.</p>
<p>Post #363 is a good reminder that there are a lot of interesting paths to follow after college. My usual advice to high school students is DARE TO BE YOURSELF, be sure to apply to a list of colleges including a sure-bet “safety” college, and then bloom where you’re planted once you have your admission results.</p>
<p>I really do not wish to get flamed again, but Id like to remark about the question of opportunity, since this has been brought up by one poster, & there may be addl parents interested in this. </p>
<p>The students graduating from our private high school and headed toward sciences/math in college, did NOT get special opportunities handed to them (via the school), nor even lists of resources about where to go to locate those. Since my D (who is not a science major but did quite well in sciences) had very close friends at the school who were in the sciences, and since I was close to those parents as well, I am certain that both of us would have known if any of those applicants had participated in competitions such as Seimens, Intel, Olympiads, & many others. It would have been a major topic of conversation among the student body, faculty, & administration as well, as this is a small school. Such competitions have never been discussed at school, let alone encouraged. And I dont know about other schools student newspapers, but at our school, those recognitions would also have been mentioned in the newspaper as an annual or other periodic mention, since non-science/math recognitions are published there.</p>
<p>Yet our science/math graduates have gained acceptances to MIT, Stanford, U.S. Military Academy, Harvard, Berkeley Engineering & some excellent Us/colleges below that (Brown, CMU, Harvey Mudd, others). Over the last 7 years there have been acceptances to Yale & Princeton & Columbia & UPenn; I dont know every one of that last group of graduates so dont know how many of those were outside of humanities. </p>
<p>The student so far with the best (multiple Elite) college acceptance record was someone who spent <em>summers</em> pursuing her passion for engineering. She and her <em>parents</em> researched & sought out those opportunities. The family is not rich. They are middle class, sometimes with one parent working, sometimes both, while 2 daughters attended this private school. Thus, they had not a lot of disposable income, either. They researched opportunities for engineering programs that were free, nominal, or offered financial aid. Gap money for the travel to these programs came from signficant baby-sitting savings provided by the daughter in question.</p>
<p>A student from a different family, one who is considered essentially a genius in math (& sounds a little like marites son, as the high school was scrambling to keep ahead of the student & provide her with the appropriate challenge), also had no off-campus fancy schmancy competitions. What happened was all on campus, in school. The faculty found a way to create an individual math curriculum for her, which was essentially Independent Study, on campus. She was also doing rarefied Computer Science one-on-one with faculty (as was the student who ended up at CMU, a student who Im convinced would have been admitted to HYP I believe she applied to P had she not unwisely overloaded her APs, which at this school is quite different from APs at many schools, & thus she had not quite the GPA needed).</p>
<p>Ive seen such things happen at publics, as well. If a student is truly gifted in one or more areas, it will be the exception that there will not be at least one faculty member who will notice that & seek individual opportunity for that student even (often), if thats not that teachers specialty. By opportunity I mostly mean curriculum opportunity, although naturally a sharp teacher will go beyond that if thats his/her specialty, & direct the student to off-campus opportunties, as well. </p>
<p>Similarly for the humanities. The students with the best college acceptances (H, Y, P, C, S, Columbia, Penn & Brown) were those that themselves (& whose parents) were assertive about creating & finding opportunity beyond the classroom. That would include competitions & coursework & national exams. Im sorry, but the school cannot take credit for the college acceptances of these highly accomplished students. The credit goes to the students and their parents. And digressing for a moment to the laughable college counseling department (of one person), theres a uaninmous sentiment among the parents that our students received their acceptances in spite of the GC, not because of her. Her college suggestions for the brightest kids were ridiculous. And she has absolutely no interest in developing relationships, btw, with Elites. This is not an Ivy-feeder school per se, and even better luck making it to an East Coast LAC, where you will be accepted only if your parent is an active alum there.</p>
<p>Ive been a teacher & consultant in the homeschool movement for several years now. Many families choose homeschooling especially if the child is gifted & the local schools are lame, & if even the privates have limitations in the curiculum (or the progress allowable). The recent national winner of the Spelling Bee is a gifted homeschooler who had no ceiling on his personal passions, & thus able to use dictionaries as his playground. The Elites now recognize homeschooling as a respectable alternative, & admit a few of these students every year. In just the last couple of weeks Columbia had to change its application, because it had not included Homeschool in the type of school section, & clearly they must have received significant calls about this.</p>
<p>Many of my homeschoolers, from age 10 and up, take one community college per semester, and additionally through that resource find supplementary opportunities, as these students have no campus, period.</p>
<p>The only inner sanctum I know is the identical inner sanctum available to everyone who reads. It is the generous information published directly from colleges & Us, and directly from current & past admissions officers at these Us. I also happen to have access to student records, including the e.c.s & what-not of those students. I also read the CC Results Threads very carefully & thoroughly. Im just interested; I like the information, thats all. I don’t consider myself a spokesperson for elite U’s. I consider myself a carrier of information that they themselves provide.</p>
<p>I should have added that many capable students – including those in site schools (public & private) avail themselves of virtual schooling, by which they can take one online class per semester (if enrolled in another school & if the school supports such an addition) on top of the h.s.curriculum. That often includes college level courses, sometimes just challenging h.s. level courses.</p>
<p>Those are very good examples in posts #365 and #366 of opportunities students or their parents can dig up for themselves, things that students who test well would probably find engaging and more interesting than standard school lessons. In my considered opinion, having also seen many CC results threads, a student who takes initiative to find such opportunities is indeed more “impressive” to a college admission committee than a similarly situated student who sticks with the school’s course offerings and aces an admission test.</p>
<p>“The student so far with the best (multiple Elite) college acceptance record was someone who spent <em>summers</em> pursuing her passion for engineering. She and her <em>parents</em> researched & sought out those opportunities. The family is not rich. They are middle class, sometimes with one parent working, sometimes both, while 2 daughters attended this private school. Thus, they had not a lot of disposable income, either. They researched opportunities for engineering programs that were free, nominal, or offered financial aid. Gap money for the travel to these programs came from signficant baby-sitting savings provided by the daughter in question.”</p>
<p>And that is typical of the way that students who end up at HPYS etc. pursue their passions. If a student is so low income that they have to work during the summer, they find a way to connect with someone who’s doing something in a field that interests them.</p>
<p>This can happen even if such a student is working as a supermarket bagger. In their spare time, they may end up learning mechanics from the handyman down the street or even teaching themselves mechanics by fixing things around the house and for others.</p>
<p>These are not students whose parents pushed them into pursuing activities. These are students who move heaven and earth to pursue the activities that light their fires.</p>
<p>“These are not students whose parents pushed them into pursuing activities. These are students who move heaven and earth to pursue the activities that light their fires.”</p>
<p>Exactly.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, on CC, the students list their stats and list of ECs on the “Chance Me” threads, an extremely superficial measure of a student. This bombardment of stats can mislead everyone into thinking that these numbers are the most important aspect of an applicant, when they are only the first layer. The deeper stuff counts much more.</p>
<p>We all remember the special few students on CC who communicated their passions on threads other than the Chance Me’s, who demonstrated through their writing or insights or articulated desires that they had both passion and initiative. These same students may have been told by others that they had no chance of getting into, say, Harvard, but did anyway. If you looked at their stats, you might say that they were nothing special; however, whether through recommendations or essays or the intensity of ECs (even NOT at the “state or national level”) or all of the preceding, the AdCom saw something unique.</p>
<p>I do feel that, as a defense against the enormous number of applications, the elite schools have begun to rely MORE on stats than in the past. There used to be room for late-bloomers, those who discovered their passions in junior year and who pursued them relentlessly. The competitive nature of elite college admissions rules them out on the first round. Fortunately, we have many colleges and universities in the US where these late bloomers can soar – and end up in top graduate programs in their chosen professions.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s an interesting thought. I have no idea how the admission practices of the most selective colleges today compare to their practices in my generation, when I applied only to my state university (based mostly on its list price, which in hindsight I think was not a good basis for choosing a college). I think there has been a national “flight to quality” insofar as these days kids with high test scores all over the country not only apply to their own state’s flagship university (as they still do, at least in this town) but also to far-away nationally known universities, which do have many more applications in this Echo Baby Boom generation than they had half a generation ago. </p>
<p>I THINK–but this is an issue I am still investigating–that there is much to be said for a child just daring to be himself or herself and submitting an application that includes accurate self-description. Maybe there is still is room for the late bloomer in today’s competitive college if the late bloomer shows an un-“packaged” sense of self-awareness. It is good, for all concerned, that there are multiple colleges in this country and that there are many good colleges happy to admit students who didn’t make it into the most selective half-dozen colleges.</p>
<p>I was browsing the Stanford viewbook </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/pdf/Stanford_Viewbook.pdf[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/pdf/Stanford_Viewbook.pdf</a> </p>
<p>yesterday and found a chart there that I think is interesting. </p>
<p>
PREVIOUS COLLEGE GPA</p>
<pre><code> Percent of Percent of
Applicants Admitted Class
</code></pre>
<p>3.54.0 81% 87%</p>
<p>Below 3.5 19% 13% </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This gives a little hint of how previous college-level courses may matter in admission at a college as selective as Stanford. It confirms what I have heard more anecdotally locally that a dual-enrollment student with a 3.5 college grade average can be as desired by Ivy League or Ivy-peer universities as a high school student with a high school grade average above 4.0 (weighted). Just one more issue to think about. </p>
<p>P.S. Thanks to Xiggi for using the “code” attribute in VB Code, which prompted me to look at the advanced posting options menu to see how he did it.</p>
<p>tokenadult, I think the previous college GPA refers to transfer applicants/admits, not freshman applicants/admits. If you look at the top of the column it’s in, you’ll see “Transfers, Fall 2005”.</p>
<p>@svalbard (post #372). You are right. Thanks for pointing that out. I didn’t notice that because of how the viewbook scrolled on my screen as I was reading it online. I’m used to dealing with colleges that don’t report stats for transfer admits. </p>
<p>Okay, so now I’m STILL curious about how colleges size up the level of courses submitted as part of an application for freshman admission, because I hear that applicants from the most elite “prep” schools hardly ever have perfect G.P.A.s, because they take tough courses graded to high standards, but some students at those schools do get into the most selective colleges.</p>
<p>tokenadult:</p>
<p>the most elite prep schools are well known to colleges, so the latter are able to make sense of their grading practices. If, however, Unknown high handed out tough grades, its students would have a much less favorable reception at the elite colleges.</p>
<p>We know that colleges tend to prefer APs to local college courses precisely because they know the AP curriculum but cannot gauge the local college’s quality and there is no validating exam such as the AP exam. However, even when they do not grant credit for their own courses, as in the case of Harvard, top colleges recognize the quality of some well known colleges. Finally, they have some inkling of the level of challenge of college courses. Whether at the Harvard Extension School or Podunk CC, Multivariable Calculus is still Multivariable Calculus. But to make sure adcoms understand what courses cover, it is a good idea to include the catalog descriptions along with the applications. This is what S did.<br>
I don’t know if adcoms have some formula for gauging college courses; I assume that they would look differently at a course on quantum mechanics than multivariable calculus. Our high school has now adopted the block system which makes it possible for the more advanced students to take AP Calc in their junior year. Presumably, the trickle of students taking MV-Calc will become a flood.</p>
<p>I agree whole hearted that kids who must work summers, or even those with a well developed or taught sense of responsibility who want to work should not be disadvantaged in the college admissions game. Props to them for shouldering responsibility.</p>
<p>And I must say, that my own children clambered for opportunities to pursue their passions, so they do not fit into the category of being parent-led.</p>
<p>However, some of these posts make me uncomfortable in their judgements of those kids who lack the focus or self-confidence to pursue their passions at a young age. And we don’t know what leads those who do, either. A high achieving sibling or a culture of high achievement for example.</p>
<p>I don’t want test scores, exxpensive summer programs or staight GPA’s to be gate keepers for elite college admissions, but neither do I want ambition and focus. We also need dreamers and those spiritually inclined. There is an undertone of dismissive judgement against those kids who are not yet ready to steer their ships in hugh school. Why must we derisively target any kids or their parents?</p>
<p>Advocating for one group of deserving students does not mean we need toi dismiss others. They are still young people.</p>
<p>mythmom - well said</p>
<p>^^Thank you for posting the above message, mythmom.</p>
<p>This has been the topic of conversation for many of us who took this topic “off-list”. It appears to us that many parents eloquently defend the student who doesn’t score well on standardized tests but brutally dismiss those who are unwilling/unable to aggressively pursue their interests. </p>
<p>In fact, there are many studies which actually show a significant correlation between giftedness and lack of achievement. Most experts in the field recognize that “high achievers” are not necessarily the most talented and capable. Some need help learning to “follow-up” and “follow-through”. Other’s just need a bit of help locating suitable mentors. Many are a bit shy about asking for assistance.</p>
<p>Many of these kids that you so eloquently describe as “not ready to steer their ships” would do wonderfully in elite colleges when provided access to mentors and resources.</p>
<p>Sadly, many on this list continually show that they have no real understanding of the life experiences of those in certain communities. Not every child has access to gifted teachers knowledgeable about “summer programs, research opportunities and scholarships”. Some have parents who struggle, working long overtime hours, just to provide the necessities. Many of these students are also gifted and passionate - but have parents who are not capable of homeschooling or supplementing their formal education.</p>
<p>
I haven’t contributed to this thread thus far, since I did not have anything unique to offer. But I’d like to add my support for the idea that many teenagers don’t have life figured out at 17. I even think that there’s nothing wrong in spending time pursuing non-academic interests in summer, even if that is something as trivial as videogames. How do kids become inspired to pursue CS? Many of these kids are avid gamers, which stimulates their interest in CS or engineering. My younger son has spent the summer taking PC components, motors, batteries and converting them to another project which has absolutely no academic benefit – but he’s putting the physics he learned last year into practice, and learning about mechanical engineering at the same time. (although I’m a little worried about the safety of some of his projects – I don’t want the house to blow up!)</p>
<p>I think some of the biggest accomplishments in life come from dreamers, and I hate to see everything reduced to test scores and a perfect application package. (I don’t object to SOME use of test scores in admissions, but it shouldn’t be all that matters.)</p>
<p>sjmom, I totally agree with this "I hate to see everything reduced to test scores and a perfect application package. "</p>
<p>All those super-achieving kids with perfect scores, resumes, summer activities, and who have “pursued their passions”, are just empty vessels if they don’t have compassion, empathy, wisdom and a servant attitude.</p>
<p>A servant attitude? I don’t think that’s what I’d be looking for. To me that implies a bunch of kids who just do what they are told. I’d like kids who are able to question the status quo and are willing to stand for their beliefs. But compassion, wisdom and empathy sound fine to me. :)</p>