Packaging an applicant with disparate ECs/interests

Applying to College
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Would like any thoughts on how to “package” or “market” my D’s profile for college applications. She has followed her passions, had a memorable and happy (knock-on-wood) high school experience so far, and now we are just wondering how best to present her to AOs. This is a little trickier than for my older kid, because D has passions that don’t as typically go hand-in-hand.

For context, finding a good way to package a student is one piece of college application advice I truly believe in. I totally understand if others don’t, but I would love to avoid the thread turning into a question of whether or not an applicant should try to package their application.

Her interests/ECs: she loves writing, linguistics, history, and … robotics. Her ECs are focused around those interests. Of her ECs, robotics takes up the most time (although she loves it and enjoys the time). She has a position on the school paper, has won writing awards for both fiction and non-fiction. [She plays a musical instrument, but dropped pursuing it in any organized way for time reasons and because she liked her other activities better.]

Grades/courses. She has strong grades across the board (only As or A+s); pretty strong rigor - all honors or APs offered except on the math track, where is she in the middle track her school offers. Given her interest in robotics, it may seem a little odd to an AO that she is not on the more rigorous math track. FWIW, she is going to take AP Calculus AB but that will be her first honors/AP math course. Also taking AP Computer Science, which perhaps ties in with the robotics.

Future plans. While she could see herself being happy in different majors, she has not settled on anything.

So, any suggestions on how to tie her more humanities-oriented interests and accomplishments in with her love and commitment to robotics? I know she likes the team component of robotics, the variety of tasks that it involves and the friends she has in the program.

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What colleges? What majors of interest?

Different colleges will require different “packaging” to the extent that it matters.

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She will be applying primarily to LACs that don’t require a declaration of major. In terms of what she might want to major in, she is undecided. So, this is more about finding a way to package her application in a way that makes sense and is digestible. We are trying to avoid the reaction from AOs of ‘talented writer who spends most of her time in robotics - I don’t get it.’

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I like to blend interests together and do searches to see what I find. I suggest you this for your daughter. So much interesting areas of study out there.

So I assume a 4.0 unweighted GPA. Any Sat /Act scores?

I also think these two areas can present her nicely and uniquely or something similar. Being different and unique is how you stand out.

Can you state some Lacs you are looking at. The term Lac means different things to different people and there are Lacs that are extremely hard to get into and others, not so much.

But it seems then she wants a smaller school vs a large public. Does she hope for smaller classes?

What classes that had rigor did she take so far?

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Honestly…I would not worry about this. My DD was a talented (very talented) musician who applied as an undeclared arts and sciences student.

Key for her…was finding a college where she could continue to pursue the things she loved while she was figuring everything else out.

She chose a Jesuit college which had a strong core curriculum. It required all students to take courses across multiple disciplines. Our kid landed as a bioengineering/biology major (which didn’t surprise any of us as she was a strong STEM student).

She did take courses across a broad range of things…and learned what piqued her interest…and what didn’t.

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Humanities and robotics can dovetail nicely as there is building technology in a silo, and then there is building technology that solves a problem and studying how people use/will use technology. She can highlight the problem-solving/humanistic approach of working with a team to solve problems.

Have her research some of the degrees in Society and Technology (like the one at WPI) and see if anything jumps out to her as skills she is using within her robotics activities. Or skills she would like to talk about developing. Degree in Society, Technology & Policy | Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Seems to me that LACs would love someone that is well rounded, has abilities in STEM and is a great writer. Isn’t that what most LACs are all about? Rather than take a STEM kid and try to make them a great writer, or push a great writer to take on more STEM classes, you have a kid that is already halfway there.

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Very cool - thank you! I really appreciate the input.
(I hope you don’t mind if it don’t get into specifics about schools and stats. I have read so much wonderful advice on CC, but I am not a fan of the way threads tend to go when you throw scores and schools into the mix - makes me angsty!)

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From your lips to the AOs ears! Thank you - will definitely share that program with her.

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Your concern is that she loves humanities and robotics but she’ll only be in Calc AB.

Hmmmm - that’s not a concern at all.

So you needn’t package.

You don’t want to hear that but it’s the truth.

Her ECs should be listed in order of time / impact and where possible grouped by category if several are similar in that capacity. It’s very possible that some AO’s don’t even look past the top few as they know kids pad their lists.

The essay can be about anything - no one is expecting a tie in. My kid wrote about tea. A local Yale admit write about the exhilaration of waiting for Papa Johns delivery. Another about the yellow fuzz on a tennis ball.

I know you want to package but I don’t see anything to package nor do I see any concerns with math. Calc AB is ahead of the curve.

I think you’re over thinking.

It’s great she has disparate interests and that she’s experienced so many different things - assuming she’s been deeply involved, made an impact vs just building a list.

In the end, the grades, test score, rigor (and math is fine) will be what matters - along with the essay, LORs, etc. honestly nothing unusual here in your student’s profile.

We read about kids getting into top LACs without Calc. And your student will be fine for many schools - LAC or others like a WPI, RIT, etc.

Good luck.

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I think that this is a good combination.

As an example, you might think that “writing” and “robotics” is an unusual combination. Whether it is unusual or not, it is a valuable combination. There are a significant number of situations where it is important to very well understand a technology or even to push the technology forward, and to also write very clearly about that technology. I do not know whether most mathematicians and engineers write well, but there are certainly some that need to write very well. Similarly, if you talk about linguistics I might think of computational linguistics, where again humanities (linguistics) and math and high tech interact.

I was a math major. I spent my entire career in high tech. The ability to write well has been a huge part of my career.

To me it sounds like your daughter has an interesting combination of abilities and is doing very well.

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I’m not sure I understand what “packaging” means in this context.

I do get the concept of “marketing” (at least I think so), and this is one of the marketing contexts in which I sometimes like to think about the concept of an elevator pitch, a short, simple, and compelling summation of why someone should buy your product or service, or sometimes hire you, or in this case admit you to their college.

But to me, often a great college admissions elevator pitch–not least for LACs–is precisely about a few strong but different aspects of the applicant that together come across as particularly interesting.

Like, suppose a candidate is an A student who was captain of the soccer team (not recruited) and is thinking premed but also loves French poetry. Just hearing that, I want to meet that kid! I want to admit that kid! Nice elevator pitch.

It sounds to me, though, like you think that is maybe a bad elevator pitch? Because premeds are not supposed to love French poetry maybe? But that is not actually strange, or at least not strange for an LAC kid. And in fact, LAC folks will be the first to say that the things you learn from studying French poetry could well make you a better doctor some day.

So if you embrace that mindset yourself, and communicate that worldview in your application, you are going to be doing the exact right sort of elevator pitch for a whole bunch of great LACs.

OK, so in this case, I am hearing A/A+ student who loves writing, linguistics, and robotics. As others explained, this is not even a particular stretch as a whole bunch of really cool stuff in the area of robotics is intersecting with linguistics which intersects with writing. Or you can directly intersect robotics with writing through, say, science fiction. Or so on. So again, this is pretty much an LAC elevator pitch that writes itself.

But what I am hearing is you think they will do things like see an interest in robotics, and then say kids interested in robotics should be on the most advanced math track at their HS, and then reject her because she is not?

And who knows, maybe if she was saying she knew wanted to do CS at a highly selective tech college, that could be an actual thing admissions might think (although even then I am not at all sure).

But for LACs? With a person looking to explore before committing to a major? They are not going to think she has to be the most advanced math student at her high school in order to have a passionate interest in robotics, they are just going to think that is cool. Because robots are cool–at least that is what LAC folks tend to think.

But again, I am not saying it is wrong to think about how to market this. I just don’t see any reason to shy away from it. Pitching yourself as an A/A+ student who is into writing, linguistics, and robotics IS good marketing, at least for many LACs.

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You are assuming humanities and science are antagonistic. Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, many science disciplines value writing because that is key to communicate findings and future grant writings.

AI and CS started out in economics and psychology. Predicative behavior and business modeling were the focus. Computers can along made made it quicker to model the experiments.

Assuming your D is as good of a writer as you say, embrace that and “package” that. Robotics can be a hobby that adds dimension.

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My reaction if I were an AO is that this kid is multi-faceted and driven by genuine interests. She can just list her EC’s and leave it at that. I agree with @tsbna44 on the essay: I have seen good ones on blueberry muffins, Legos, and thrift stores.

High school is a time to explore interests. For some, that might be music or dance or some other intense focus. For others it means trying out several things. I would assume a lot of personal growth from your daughter’s EC’s.

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In terms of an overarching theme, I would think “I am interested in so many wide ranging things, and I can’t wait to see what I will discover in college!” would be very appealing to AOs.

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To the extent that “packaging” matters, it can vary by college. For example, if the student’s stats are “overqualified” for the college which considers level of applicant’s interest, then the “packaging” needed for that college is to make it look like the college is a top choice for the student, rather than a low choice “backup”. But such “packaging” is much less relevant when applying to reach colleges.

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That reminded me of one of the really insightful comments I once saw about essays, and the idea of applying to a lot of colleges with similar supplemental essays and then just tweaking the same core essay on that subject for each application.

I think almost every kid who applies to a lot of colleges ends up doing some of that, and I am not inherently against it. But the insight was one of the risks of this approach is that a kid may fail to do exactly what you noted, convince a college for which they are arguably overqualified that they would really want to go there if they also get admitted to somewhere they are within the normal range.

Like, if the AO at College Plan C can imagine this being basically the same essay you would have written for the sorts of colleges that usually win cross-admit battles with College Plan C (because in fact they are many applicants’ Colleges Plan A or B), is that essay tipping them off?

And of course sometimes colleges try to combat this with unique supplementals. But still.

I think this is one example of a general cautionary note for the OP. I think in some circles, there is a concept of some one ideal packaging you are aiming for, on the implicit assumption every college of interest will love the same package. In the real world, different colleges of interest might have all sorts of different complex considerations in mind, and sometimes it will pay to actually study the college’s admissions page, carefully consider their application prompts, and actually make a point of packaging yourself appropriately for that specific college.

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Also part of “packaging” is having verifiable accomplishments and results.

In OP’s case, claiming to be a good writer necessitates not only the application essays be well written, but showing what other things D has done to support her love for writing. Not that AO will look things up, but if one actually chooses to, they need to be able to (IMO) find something. Too may people list things, but they lack “presence.”

A kid in our scout troop loves to write. He published a book using one of those paid services. I know that is not super impressive (using a service), but at least he got his work out there for people to read and decide if he has a future on lit/writing. He ended up at Berkeley, so I guess they must have liked what he has done in HS.

If my kids have passion in robotics and are also good writers, I would convince them to keep an online blog or write for school newspaper covering a science section. If you ever read an science related topic, it is usually pretty obvious if the author lacks science knowledge and/or is a science guy who can’t articulate. There are ample opportunities to showcase writing talent and love for science.

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Excellent point - will keep in mind.

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I completely agree that being able to write well is helpful in nearly every field. And computational linguistics is something I think does marry her interests. Thank you!

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It’s not that I view it as a problem per se, just more of a challenge to figure out how to package this array of experiences, etc. than my older kid. I personally (again I get that not everyone agrees) think it is important no matter who an applicant is, to think about how to package an application. With so many applications to review, AOs have to look for shortcuts, and presenting a clear message about what kind of applicant someone is useful in my mind. Anyway, there were some great ideas on here. Thank you!

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