<p>Bove, I agree with you about 6th grade being too early. 11th grade, a different story. Even 10th grade if one suspects one might be on the bubble for National Merit. (Whereas while I was pleased that D got it, I already knew that she wasn’t interested in any school that happened to give good National Merit money. Sigh. Karma.)</p>
<p>In contrast, I don’t think 9th grade is too early to start visiting colleges to establish some baselines and by 10th grade in all earnestness.</p>
<p>bovertine:
He isn’t taking a test prep class, it would be a class for kids who aren’t challenged in Language Arts at the elementary school level. It just happens to be at a place that focuses on SAT test prep. Thank you for your great response, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Mysonsdad- As a parent of two Ivy Leaguers (H & P), I think the LA class sounds helpful, and if your son enjoys the new vocabulary, it can only help. He may not be as open to such rote memorization for long though, as the little tykes can become terribly stubborn in middle school. I agree with the wise posters above, that reading is the key to good CR scores. Keep him stocked with new library books, challenged in the summers, and he’ll be in great shape.</p>
<p>Also, remember that developing his ECs is important too. Much of his extra time will be consumed with those in junior high and h.s., and you will see prep time plummet. </p>
<p>We chose to focus on ECs over PSAT prep as the Ivies don’t give NM money, nor would our DDs sit still for more homework. The top Ivies offer very generous financial aid for families making $180,000. and under. So one has to choose a strategy based on target schools and need.</p>
<p>I sounds as if your son is very bright, and will test well in any case.</p>
<p>Reading is an effective way to build vocab skills and not nearly as boring as “test prep.” And it doesn’t have to be “high literature” to help build vocabulary and grammar skills, either. Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett . . . How about Robert Aspirin’s “Myth” series? I loved that in sixth grade. Even graphic novels or comic books like Tintin or Watchmen. (Watchmen has some mature content, though, so make sure you read it first.)</p>
<p>There is no substitute for a lifetime of reading but a bit of test prep a few months before taking the SAT is definitely helpful for many kids. There are a few quirks of the SAT that can be prepped for to maximize a student’s potential. 6th grade is too early. 9th grade is too early. Heck, 10th grade may be too early. Reading and a good work ethic will ensure success in high school if accompanied by a bit of socializing and fun.</p>
<p>in my opinion, 6th grade is WAY TOO EARLY to push kids in this direction.</p>
<p>Some personal example here. </p>
<p>My S1 was tested with SAT at 8th grade: he scored 1430 for CR+M. He went on to a very competitive public magnet school rated within top 10 in the nation: the admission was based on tests and middle school GPA. He thrived in that school getting terrific grades without making much effort at all. </p>
<p>Fast forward, June of his junior year. He got a perfect 2400 in his first seating without any practice. The joke in the family is that in ~4 years, his CR+M score improved by only 170 points.</p>
<p>We never pushed him for anything intentionally academically. We never found out what assignments he was working on. Never knew when his tests were. We never checked whether he was doing his homework. However, he grew up in a household where reading is a default past time for everyone, intellectual pursuits were always prized, and for every intellectual initiative he made and interest he showed, there were ample resources provided for it (as in, you are interested in volcanoes? Fine, how about Natural History Museum this weekend, and let’s visit a few volcanoes this summer, ). As for math, well, that’s just his genes. </p>
<p>Moral of the story? I am not listing this to brag about him. I am sharing this because your son sounds like my S1 - a kind of kid, who, left to his own device, is going to have NO PROBLEM scoring very high on SAT and getting terrific grades. </p>
<p>Another fast forward: April of his senior year. Accepted in an EA round to one of the top 10 schools. Soundly rejected at HYP he applied to RD. </p>
<p>I know why he did not make it to HYP: his ECs and stuff was simply NOT up to the HYP standards. No, he did not just waste his time for four years in HS. He was marching to his own drumbeat. Read half the library worth of subjects of his passion, but none of this shows up in “demonstrable, institutionally recognizable form” like awards and such. </p>
<p>If your goal is to ensure that your kid ends up in an ultra prestigious college, what’s going to make it or break it is NOT going to be his GPA and SAT because an intellectually gifted kid is going be just fine without any intervention. It’s going to be his passion, ECs, and other non-number kind of stuff. If you want to intervene, and engineer his path, this is the area you need to be concerned about, if you must. </p>
<p>Last fast forward: Dec 2009: S1 is extremely happy at his school. He is very self motivated and doing everything to prepare himself for his chosen field, which he discovered while he was doing what I termed as “aimless intellectual meandering” without no external pressure and set direction.</p>
<p>I firmly believe that if you have an intellectually gifted child, the last thing parents should do is to limit the child’s scope by putting the “standardized tests and grades” sort of pressure too early. I would even venture to say that if you have such a child, let him meander to find his own passion, rather than “engineer” him early on in certain direction. If I had tried to “engineer” his ECs and etc, perhaps he could have made it to HYP, but then I might have prevented him from finding his own passion in an organic manner and deprived him of a sense of his own discovery and ownership for his vision, goals, and direction. Just my 2 cents. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>I am a parent of an Ivy Leaguer son (junior year Applied Math/Economics major) at Harvard. </p>
<p>I appreciate what the original poster wants to do for their child and all the suggestions in this thread and if the 5+ years of advanced prep and focus works I guess that is a good thing but my experience is different.</p>
<p>My son, my wife and I never thought about Ivy League schools. He didn’t prep at all for SAT’s and frankly was out late with his friends the night before he took them for the one and only time and ended up doing pretty good (2340). The only books he ever read was the Harry Potter series, he did the minimum required amount of homework and he didn’t go to any summer programs.</p>
<p>He attended an average suburban public high school. He didn’t apply early action/decision to any schools because we “didn’t have our act together” and ended up applying to a hodge podge of 20 schools. He was rejected by 6 (Y,P,Dart,Penn,Stan,MIT) and accepted by 14 including two Ivies (Harvard & Cornell) – a big, pleasant surprise to us.</p>
<p>So what did he have going for him? He was #3 (out of 265) in not particularly bright HS graduating class. He became class president his junior year in HS. He did marching band, jazz band, a little singing, a smidgen of community service and had probably OK teacher recommendations but we weren’t allowed to read them. He has that tall, thin male Ivy “look” and has a naturally quick caustic wit and I think his appearance and sense of humor “clicked” with his Harvard and other interviewers.</p>
<p>But overall he was a slightly above average college applicant.</p>
<p>So his experience may either encourage, disappoint and/or puzzle you but I have a theory of what happened and it is somewhat confirmed in an “On Harvard Time” video on YouTube where the Harvard dean of admissions is interviewed. I call it the “fish bowl” theory and here is how I think it works.</p>
<p>Harvard needs to give out only 2,000 acceptances each year to fill its 1,650 freshman slots. 250 acceptances are given to absolutely brilliant applicants who come out of the womb that way and there is nothing a parent can do to either make that happen or probably even screw it up - they are completely wired differently from us muggles and we just have to accept that. My son has met them at Harvard, they really do exist.</p>
<p>Another 250 acceptances are given to “special” applicants. These range from kinda smart olympic athletes, children of prominent parents, somewhat weird kids like the current H freshman who holds the world record for crawling the fastest mile (her YouTube video is a hoot). That leaves 1,500 acceptances for what the dean calls something like “good all arounders” - that’s what my kid is.</p>
<p>The remaining 12,000 applicants who are considered “good all arounders” are put in a fish bowl and their names are pulled randomly. Of course, I am exaggerating, they aren’t really pulled randomly but if you look at the end of the process and examine which good all arounders were accepted and who were rejected, it will appear pretty random. And that’s where parents get cranky because their kid gets rejected and the less impressive kid but who were also “fish bowl qualified” gets accepted. Believe me, I experienced some of this.</p>
<p>So what can a motivated parent do? Give your child a happy childhood plus a few extra shoves in the right direction and if they want to go to a supper selective school make sure they apply to all of them because if they are “fish bowl qualified” they will want to be in as many fish bowls as possible to improve the odds.</p>
<p>This posting is very long so I will make a second posting on how to tell if going to an Ivy league school is right for your kid.</p>
<p>Like everyone else has said, S1 read constantly as a child. In sixth grade, his reading level tested in the same range as his Wake Forest grad. teacher’s. He took the SAT for the Duke TIP program…did well, state recognition. He was just a naturally curious bright kid who also really liked all regular kid things including sports and video/computer games.
We never pushed him, never did prep classes, just let him chart his own course.</p>
<p>He ended up in the top 2% of his class,NM Commended,AP Scholar w/ Distinction,etc.
He was not interested in “big name” schools so we didn’t force that either. </p>
<p>We let him go where he wanted which was our big state u. He went on a full-ride, graduated Magna Cum Laude and enjoyed every minute of it.<br>
He is now an Officer in one of the most competitive units there is in the U.S Navy. He was one of twleve chosen nationwide last year for this path.
He had a goal. He pushed himself. We just rolled along with him.</p>
<p>It all started with loving to read.</p>
<p>Here’s my second posting.</p>
<p>When it come time for your kid to apply to college ask the following questions.</p>
<p>Has your high schooler achieved their success by competing with other kids or are are they sort of laid back and motivated simply by the love of learning?</p>
<p>If they are motivated by competing with other kids an Ivy league experience may be rude wake up call because when they arrive they may panic when they realize that everyone around them is smarter than they are for the first time in their life.</p>
<p>If they are truly internally motivated by a love of learning and they pick the correct major at an Ivy league school then their college experience may be good.</p>
<p>I chose to post this topic here because I fear that super motivated parents run the risk of tending to produce “competitive kids” rather than “love of learning” kids. For all his “laid backness” deep down my kid is competitive and he still spends many days getting his face shoved into the dirt by very hard classes, tough professors and smart extremely competitive classmates. It can be brutal, the rate of mental breakdowns and suicides is high. For some insight check out the various ■■■ web sites. Collegeconfidential won’t let me post web addresses but search for H, Y, MIT, etc. followed by the letters ■■■ for some insight into these kids’ lives.</p>
<p>College selection is all about “fit”. My second child got accepted yesterday EA to a second tier school and couldn’t be happier. She is probably “fish bowl qualified” (see my previous posting) so I asked her if she wanted to apply regular decision to the Ivies - her response after experiencing Harvard through her brother was “no way”.</p>
<p>Good luck to all whatever you decide to do.</p>
<p>Going back to my OP, the only thing that scares me is that the students at our school did not do nearly as well as we (the staff) and they (the students themselves) thought they would. These are students who have GPA’s from 4.2 to 4.5 and took many AP classes, yet the highest one scored just over 2000. All the other students whose GPA’s were in that 4.2 to 4.5 range scored between 1700 to 1850. Now they are going to “state” colleges and not the Universities. I don’t mean to knock the state schools (I went to two), but our kids (mainly Asian for what it’s worth) had been raised to go to top 20 schools. So when I asked what they would do different they suggested getting my son started early. I also think about how hard the Asian kids are pushed and, as a whole, how successful they are. BTW, I have my son do Algebra because I feel that just sitting in class learning stuff he already knows is a waste of time. The Language Arts class would be to make up what he is not learning in school. </p>
<p>I thank all of you for your wonderful responses. They are very helpful.</p>
<p>What does ■■■ and NMSF mean?</p>
<p>To Mysonsdad - Collegeconfidential would delete my posting if I said what ■■■ stood for but it is a common phrase among young people. Google will tell you. There are several college specific ■■■ sites/blogs - they are real eye openers and I think good guides to parents on what can go wrong.</p>
<p>Rereading my last two posting, I agree that I strayed from the original thread theme and I am sorry for that but as much as I and others want to help our kids be high achievers I think balance and faith that “it will all work out in the end” needs to be remembered. Kids are more fragile than they appear.</p>
<p>To Mysonsdad - I didn’t look it up in the abbreviation thread but I think NMSF means National Merit Scholarship Finalist which if I remember correctly is based on scoring in the top 5%(?) nationwide on the sophomore PSAT’s.</p>
<p>NMSF stands for National Merit Semi Finalist. You are chosen for this based on junior year PSAT scores and you advance to NMF (national merit finalist) based on gpa, sat score & essay. You can look at the SAT thread for information about PSAT and NMSF process. My DD is a NMSF this year.</p>
<p>■■■ is a phrase. The m stands for “my” and the l stands for “life.” The f stands for a 4 letter word that we all hope our children won’t use 
■■■ sites are places where people post their stories about bad things that have happened to them. </p>
<p>OneDownOnetoGo: you use the fish bowl analogy; we use the swimming pool analogy 
DD had the stats that would allow her to jump into the pool but it’s a crowded pool & maybe she wouldn’t get a chance to go down the water slide. But she deserved to be in the pool & that’s cool.</p>
<p>I think what’s important to instill in a 6th grader is a good study habit and sense of responsibility. Those qualities are a lot more important than taking advance courses, SAT prep or go to gifted programs. With both of my kids, I made sure they understood it’s their responsibility to get their homework done (not mine), it’s their responsibility to turn projects in on time (I refused to bring their homework or projects to school for them if they forgot), and it’s their responsibility to make sure they have everything they need for for EC, which is ballet (I expected them to tell me when they need shoes, tights for audition or performance). </p>
<p>At that age, I focused more on their behavior in school rather than the actual outcome. As an example, if they forgot a project, I would rather if they got an incomplete than get in the habit of us bailing them out. It would be up to them to negotiate with their teacher to fix that incomplete. On Fri nights I would ask them what projects/tests they have the following week. Every once in a while they would lie to me about amount of work they have and slack off, and they would suffer the consequence following week. When I would see lower grades on papers/tests, I would dissect with them as to why. 9 times out of 10 would be because they didn’t put as much time into it.</p>
<p>By the time my kids are in high school, all of those habits are ingrained in them. I feel if they have good habits, they will learn at their own speed.</p>
<p>Oldfort, I think what you say is very important. Interesting each year our middle school holds a meeting for the incoming parents and the gist of the meeting is pretty much aligned with what you are saying. Personally, I can’t stress enough how invaluable teaching the kids to be personally responsible is to the entire process. Some parents just have the hardest time letting their kids fall down, remember how different people react when the kids are very little and get an “ouchee.” Forgetting homework, is abit like getting an “ouchee” It’s painful to see an incomplete or an F or however the school “marks” it, but learning to fail or learning how to recover are infinitely good life lessons.</p>
<p>And one last point of reference for parents deciding how to prepare their kids…go to any of the Ivy League sub forums on this web site and look for the thread where people announce whether they were Accepted or Rejected (or Deferred during an EA/ED round). They usually post their full profile - SAT’s, class rank, extra curriculars, etc. and you will see lots of nearly “perfect” kids getting rejected. There is no path, profile or accumulation of awards that I believe will raise your probability of admission above (say) 30% at the super selective schools. So why stress so much? Just help your kid be comfortable in their own skin, well rounded, and interesting. That’s fortunately or unfortunately all that I think you can do.</p>
<p>SAT scores are definitely important, but the high school transcript is crucial. In sixth grade you want your student to develop good study habits and organizational skills. You wouldn’t believe how many GPA’s get sabotaged by late or missing homework assignments. Probably the most important thing you can do now is to instill in your child the importance of turning in all assignments on time. </p>
<p>As everyone else said, encourage your child to read, read, read. Don’t worry about SAT math yet, but make sure he is building a good foundation in his current math level so he will be ready to master higher level math when the time comes.</p>
<p>And think about extra-curriculars, what does he love? A passion will show through. My D. didn’t find her EC until freshman year of high school, so he doesn’t need to start it yet, but you can look around and see areas where you think he might be able to shine. </p>
<p>Lastly, fit is absolutely more important than prestige. Lots of students who are qualified for the ivies never even apply because they know that they would be happier elsewhere. That uber-competitive environment isn’t right for everyone. Honors programs in both state and private schools are a very attractive option for many students both from a fit and financial perspective. Does your kid do better as a big fish in a small pond or as one of the minnows?</p>
<p>
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<p>I wonder how many kids who go on to become a phenomenal success later in life in their 40’s and 50’s (NOT at college admissions game) were raised with this goal? </p>
<p>I raised my kids to win a marathon, not a 100 m dash. And, I believe that winning a marathon requires a very good INTERNAL combustion engine. </p>
<p>Some kids who were stimulated intellectually and supported through and through the whole process of discovering their own vision and goals will end up going to top 20 schools. Some may not, but still become what would be considered a resounding success by all account. </p>
<p>Mother of a friend of my son’s in the middle school once told me this about my son: what a shame and what a waste of such an amazing natural talent. She meant well. What she meant is, I was not pushing him hard enough and was depriving him of opportunities to excel in all areas. It may have almost been deserved: S was an amazingly bright kid who managed to miss all the awards the schools was giving out. I used to joke that it takes a special kind of talent to dodge so many awards the school is throwing at anyone and everyone, some silly and some not. </p>
<p>I would have been worried if I had not had the conviction that S was an enormously gifted kid intellectually with his own drive and my role is to support and assist him while he is led by his insatiable intellectual curiosity. He was a voracious reader and gifted debater (with us, that is: he could twist any logic in any subject matter like a professional pretzel maker). So what if he decided to read all about volcanoes for weeks and “forgot” to do the extra credit projects at school? I couldn’t care less if that resulted in B+ or A-. I never checked his grades. </p>
<p>I have a kid who claimed that he was happiest kid in the world in his intensely competitive HS because he was free to do whatever he wanted to do, while many of his friends were bent out of shape due to the competition and pressure in that school. He did not do any EC stuff that would have shown up nicely on his college application. But when he decided to go for the paid summer wall street internship as a high school senior, he managed to get one entirely on his own merit with no family connection etc - alas, past when all the admission decision were made (who knows, with this, he may have been able to make it to HYP ) </p>
<p>He is a college freshman now, and is INTENSELY driven to succeed, but it is ENTIRELY his drive. Actually, I wonder these days where that came from. He was such a mellow child devoid of any burning desire to do better than his friends by getting better grades than they, etc. He was marching to his own drumbeat. Now his own internal drum is telling him to succeed, so he follows that order. </p>
<p>Yes, he ended up at one of the top 10 schools. But, I declare in clean conscience that had he ended up at a school below top 20 with the same happy personality and internal drive, I still would very much prefer that to a kid who managed to go to Harvard if that was achieved by perhaps a tad too much external meddling that may dampen the long term drive and initiative on his part.</p>
<p>I strongly suggest enrolling your child in a talent search. This will give you a good idea of where your son stands in comparison to other bright students and students well above his grade level. If he does well on the test, he will have a whole world of enrichment opprotunities open to him that are very high quality. I suggest checking of Johns Hopkins CTY, Northwestern CTD, and Duke TIP. Even though you take the test with one organization you can cross-enroll and get great benefits from all 3.</p>