<p>My son has fallen in love with Priceton. He is in the top 3% of his class at a competative HS, is a National Swimmer (on the low end), has scored 2350 on the SAT, and nothing below 750 on his AP exams. The problem is that our guidance department is useless. Hingham High School has not gotten anyone into Princeton for 15 years. How can we change that trend? He has visited Princeton and spoken with the swim coach. His times are a little slow for the Ivy League champs-but his grade point average may help in boosting the team average. Does anyone have any advice to help?</p>
<p>[Swimming</a> Recruiting Guidelines](<a href=“http://www.ncsasports.org/recruiting-tools/swimming/swimming-recruiting-guidelines]Swimming”>http://www.ncsasports.org/recruiting-tools/swimming/swimming-recruiting-guidelines)</p>
<p>If his times aren’t under the “High DI” the chance of swimming helping him gain admittance is pretty low</p>
<p>With the top schools in the country, you never know what exactly they are looking for. When we went on the Princeton tour, I remember the admissions rep saying that they were looking for “flava.” And that is how she pronounced it. Then she went on to tell a story about a young man who wrote in his essay that his goal for his senior year was to get his first date. That essay really struck a nerve with the committee and the boy was admitted and they all wanted to know when they met him whether he had succeeded (and for inquiring minds…he did). I am certain he had dandy numbers as well.</p>
<p>Around here, the state Princeton Alumni Association gives an annual book award to half a dozen students (schools are allowed to nominate one or two students, so out of about 80, six are selected). The representatives at the award night say that it is a marketing ploy to identify the best kids in the region and the winners are encouraged to apply. Does your region have an alumni chapter? </p>
<p>Many, many young people across the country fall in love with schools that are extremely difficult to gain admission to, and are in fact reaches for everyone because no one knows what “flava” they are looking for this year. If my child were in that situation, I would encourage him/her to work very hard on the essays and in selecting the teachers who will write the recommendations. We provided all the teachers who wrote recommendations with a resume because DD had only been at the school for two years and had many out of school activities. One of the things that stood out with my daughter as we worked through the admissions process was a true love of learning and intellectual curiosity. She had a thread thoughout all of her years that indicated her love of languages (She had studied Latin, Japanese, and Chinese on her own and German in school; in one of her activities, she had woven foreign languages into her scripts.) As a parent, you may be able to help your child identify what it is that makes him different. I was lucky because my daughter actuallly respected my opinions and took my advice. She was quite successful with her admissions process although the Ivy League did not appeal to her. Good luck with the search.</p>
<p>He won the Brown book award…but is that even worth mentioning to Princeton?</p>
<p>He won the Brown book award…does that help? Our guidance department randomly selected 1 student (with impressive credentials) to receive each of the book awards. Do we mention the Brown Book Award to Priceton?</p>
<p>The book awards are very differently administered. The one I am talking about was given by Princeton graduates, not one given by the high school for different student attributes. </p>
<p>All of the book awards are nice academic awards that should be included in the spot for academic awards on the application. I don’t think that they would require special mention. The point I was trying to make was that when the Princeton award was given the students who won were encouraged to contact the alumni members who presented the award for recommendations if they decided to apply. So in that case, the Brown award would not be helpful. I hope this makes more sense.</p>
<p>It does. Thanks. It all just seems like such a crap shoot!</p>
<p>And that is what it is.</p>
<p>At DD’s HS, the college counselor last year said that it had been so long since anyone form there had been admitted to Yale that she hated to have anyone apply. Of course, they would never prevent anyone from applying.</p>
<p>lol, no one from my school has ever been accepted to Princeton. We have a scattergram system to compare acceptances/rejections and their GPA/SAT’s, and we just have 0 acceptances to Princeton. (Though quite a few to Yale/Harvard)</p>
<p>^same! I’m trying to break the pattern because I’m possibly the only competitive minority candidate my school’s had in years. Sometimes Princeton likes to go for the undocumented Hispanic classicists, so I might be in luck!</p>