Not that it has anything to do with my d, I think there was a Chinese piano prodigy who was admitted to Stanford (or an Ivy?) with not much more than his GED and piano quite recently.
I will keep your advises in mind though.
@rosered55, I start with assumption that mine has a very low chance to begin with, like many other outstanding students, therefore changes that careful “every bits” will bring are more likely to move things up than down. She has little to loose by trying every bits, provided that those still help her personal growth just as well.
It depends how the kid spends the time and shows the passion for the activity. I have seen many kids who participated in math competition, qualified for USAMO, and won USAMO (very few) admitted to top colleges. Also we should understand community service in a broader sense. The math kid can give to community too by helping other kids learn math, solve problems, build the team,…
Well, if you note a link, I’d hunt more info. Stanford is looking for a certain something and just piano prodigy and a GED isn’t the full “it.” All the TTs are concerned about a kid’s ability to fit and thrive, take advantage of academic opportunities, as well as social (the campus community and sometimes outside the gates.)
@coolweather when the top colleges are looking for top math students that doesn’t mean that they have to have won competitions nor does it mean that they have given to the community. It just means they have the potential for doing really well in math.
Anyone who can demonstrate that they understand at least part of the solution of Fermats last theorem is more than ready for all the top schools. I think the proof is around 150 pages long and is only fully understood by a few mathematicians in the world
I think you are missing the point on ECs. Each and every one doesn’t have to be ‘varsity.’ A student doesn’t have to be the quarterback to count football as an EC, in fact doesn’t even have to be on varsity or ever play in a game. It’s an activity and you list it for the benefits you got from it - 2 years, captain, won the city championship? Whatever. There is no such thing as a Varsity team for climbing. It’s a club, an activity. I don’t think an AO would be very impressed if she listed “climbing” as one of her ten activities, but might be if she noted a club she participated in, having climbed half the 14ers in Colorado, a climbing trip that she planned, etc.
Not every high school athlete has a hook. Some are pretty bad, some want to go to schools that do not have a team for that sport, and some just plain don’t want to play anymore. A school isn’t going to count it as a hook on your application if you won the state championship but you don’t want to play baseball for the school. Then it is just a nice EC. Your daughter doesn’t want to major in art, so her art will just be a really nice EC. Really nice.
At Harvard, btw, if the source is correct, Yo-Yo studied anthropology.
SD, I think your daughter will be fine. You and she have time. Encourage her to try a new thing every so often, for the enjoyment. And I believe, as a life skill.
@collegedad13 I am talking about students who have strong math capability and their EC that I know. I don’t know how many HS students can solve Fermat’s last theorem. And students don’t have to perform community service to get into top college. My point is community service can be done in many ways. And naturally when a student is passionate about something, he/she will try to get more others involved with what he/she does.
Top colleges look for top math students. Yes and no. Colleges look for top math students with passion in math.
Daughter is pretty good at tope rope and could have won some minor regional award if she wasn’t always taking a all-day Saturdays ceramics class so couldn’t compete.
It seems some schools and states have competitions, but not (as far as I could find) sponsored by the state high school athletic associations. But so what? If she likes climbing, she should participate. Why does it have to be ‘varsity’? Why can’t she just join a club or a league, take lessons, get some friends to go with her on Saturdays?
Every EC doesn’t have to be a competition and there doesn’t have to be a prize or a winner. Some students have jobs, some do community service. All good.
What I really liked about the book that collated CC stats is the data mining approach to it. As Nate Cohen, Money Ball and Quantitative Trading repeatedly shows, data mining will win out over punditry 9 out of 10 times. To demystify college admissions we need massive amounts of data that can be used in forecast models like the ones used by top marketing firms to predict whether a certain product would succeed in the market. CC is a good forum where such data is provided, albeit with noise, but that can be filtered out using sophisticated statistical methods (which, I must admit, doesn’t seem to have been used in the book). Bottom line, one doesn’t have to coach or play baseball to build a winning baseball team, one only needs numbers and analysis. The same is true for any other field, including college admissions. I applaud the data mining approach, as it just works.
coolweather, You write: “It depends how the kid spends the time and shows the passion for the activity. I have seen many kids who participated in math competition, qualified for USAMO, and won USAMO (very few) admitted to top colleges. Also we should understand community service in a broader sense. The math kid can give to community too by helping other kids learn math, solve problems, build the team,…”
I think the best way to show passion for math is to do math research. Not teaching math to others, not participating in math competitions (though those are fun), just studying math and trying to get into a program like MIT Primes to do math research. But that’s just me. I have been told that ad coms think very differently.
You also write: “And naturally when a student is passionate about something, he/she will try to get more others involved with what he/she does.”
In my experience, this is not true at all. Half the world is made of introverts. Another quarter doesn’t want to be objects of ridicule by going against the prevailing tide in high school.
Conrad Tao won a million Morton Gould awards before applying to college. He may not be human. However, I wonder if the AOs had a good debate about him, as, perhaps, that’s all he did all day - compose music that is.
@1Wife1Kid wrote “I think the best way to show passion for math is to do math research.”
That is only one way. And it’s not easy for HS students to do research unless the parents have some connection with a university. Also, most students who are admitted to programs like MIT PRIMES USA, RSI,… already have strong problem solving skills learned through math competitions in earlier years. Those research programs are wonderful for couple dozens of top math students but not for thousands of others who love math.
Art was my son’s primary EC (painting and drawing in his case). During his college search he focused on schools that were known both for academic excellence and for strong studio art and art history programs. I believe his commitment to making and studying art, which was expanded on in his portfolio, resume, recommendations and essays, was an important factor in admission to a highly selective school.
Admissions committees are not just looking at ECs as isolated accomplishments and talents but also for what the candidate can contribute to the campus community. Colleges, especially those with vibrant art departments, need to admit artists, just as they need musicians and football players.
I don’t view making art as necessarily solitary, though it can be unstructured and unquantifiable, less widely understandable than typical high school ECs like organized sports, music ensembles, theater or student government. Art departments at academically driven colleges not only teach to the process of making art — or composing or acting – but also the articulation of the abstract intellectual concepts behind the work. Critiquing colleagues’ work and defending your own is a major element of arts education on a college level.
Even if the OP’s daughter intends to major in another discipline (though I’d keep the option of a double major or an art minor open at this point) the art element of her profile – really of her persona – will resonate if she crafts her application to reflect that facet of who she is and what she cares about. She should think about how she would be viewed in shorthand descriptors, for example "the Asian-American sculptor who also . . .(fill in the blanks).
To me the combination of accomplishments in academics, the arts and some kind of athletic or outdoorsy activity is the trifecta of selective college admissions. To that end, I think climbing or riding would be excellent secondary ECs, no matter what level of achievement the OP’s daughter reaches.
There are always outliers. On the flip side, MIT rejected a kid that built a nuclear reactor in the basement. Neither is your daughter. Focus more on your kid and what is right for her.
@SculptorDad , I wish it was possible for you to take a giant step back and read all of your own posts, and try to get a feel, as an outsider, of you and your child.
Perhaps it is just me, but I feel so sad for your daughter. She sounds like a delightful child who is being stage managed by a person whose intentions may be good, but the long term implications of all this finagling mean that the essence of who she really is, deep down in her soul, is being lost.
Let her explore whatever ECs interest her. Let her dive deeply or skim lightly over the surface of those ECs.
For all you know, the admissions personnel who read her applications years from now might be charmed by her quirky essay about the artistry of climbing, or in discovering how the sculptual essence of a natural outcropping far outshines anything she has ever created. But that’s only going to happen if she has the time and peace to look around and discover the Zen of rock climbing.
See what I did there? Any darned interest or personal EC can become an admissions hook. But that requires that you back slowly away and let her discover the relationships that link her interests.
Or take a giant leap forward, your D got into all top colleges and made out. Tell us how she’s doing. There must be some dads like that out there but not on CC. Anyone knows what the dads have to say?