OP: First, congratulations to your son! That is wonderful
It is one thing to print sports scores and various awards in the newspaper. It is potentially something entirely different for a young person to be interviewed. If you and he decide he should participate in the interview, please anticipate the sorts of questions that will be asked and how best to answer them. For example, is it a good idea to publicize his college list? I vote no. The reporter might ask âhow did you do itâ? What is the right answer here? I prepped? Iâm just smart? It isnât that difficult? Another question might be whether the student participates in non-academic activities. Is there time for a social life.
When this sort of thing came up for our family, I tried to evaluate the pros vs cons and I couldnât see the upside. The colleges would have the score information. I had no control over how a reporter portrayed my kids. Our decision was to wait till after college admissions to consent to any press.
fwiw
I think it is a great achievement! Congrats. I agree with so many posts here that too many times all that I see in the local paper is about sports accomplishments. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with an article or accolades for a perfect 36. I donât think anyone is saying that it is a golden ticket to selective colleges. Some may think it is, but those families are fooling themselves. It is just one piece of the puzzle. It is an accomplishment, just as much as taking ONE PSAT on ONE day and getting NMSF just based on ONE selection index. And yes, sometimes it is the parent (aka âpublicistâ) that needs to make the school or local newspaper aware. Every childâs achievements that are exceptional can be celebrated â whether sports, arts or academic, etc. My older child had a one and done 36 and then my next child did the same. I thought that was cool. Same family, different kids, both one and done!
OP- it is worth an hour or two for your son to prepare for the interview with a family friend or contact who is media savvy. People without experience with reporters can get tied into a bit of a knot and then end up going down a path theyâd prefer not to travel. Itâs helpful to rehearse 5 or 6 different anodyne answers which can redirect the interview.
So the question: âI bet you can write your own ticket in terms of college admissions, right?â Kid grunts, for lack of an answer, and the takeaway is âKid thinks he can write his own ticketâ. Better to have practiced âGee, there are lots of elements to applying to colleges besides ACT scores, and I hope I can find a college which will appreciate my awesome frisbee skills and deep knowledge of Bart Simpson triviaâ (or whatever is relevant). Reporter asks âI bet you are smarter than some of your teachers, right?â Kid gets flustered. Better to rehearse âMy teachers inspire me every dayâ or âIâm so lucky to attend Brightside HS where the faculty is so committed to all the studentsâ.
Our local paper has printed some interviews with kids I know (for various things) and it amazes me how moronic they make the kids appear. (I know the kids- they arenât moronic in the least). A little media training goes a long wayâŠ
It can for some scholarships.
https://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.php
Strongly recommend prepping for interview per @blossom post #23!
@WineLover Sounds like you have a great attitude about it. Of course, he should be proud. So many people want to diminish great scores.( too much emphasis, too stressful, too perfect, blah, blah, blah) But if they are achieved via hard work or no work at all they should be celebrated just as any achievement is celebrated. Funny how some parents reach out to the media and some would never think of it. Congrats to both kids.
I always get the impression that those that say a 36 is the same as a 34 do not have a kid that received a 36 and is trying to rationalize that the college AOs donât care and both kids are equally smart. According to one website you can only miss 0 - 2 questions in each section and still get a perfect score. For a 34 you can miss between 3 - 6 answers. All things being equal, I like the kid that only missed a maximum of two questions versus the kid that missed 6 questions (or a kid that missed 0 questions over the one that missed at least 3 questions).
Remember only 2,760 students get a perfect 36, while 20,500 get a 34.
MODERATORâS NOTE: Please, no more discussion of whether a 34 is the same as a 36.
Back to the topic of publicity - our school canât get enough! Any 36 is released through the media department of our school district. The kid gets his/her name on a special 36 plaque and 30 and above have their names on a different plaque all predominately placed in a hallway that all students have to walk by. I think itâs a bit over the top. (No my kid is not a 36 but he was on the 30 & above) Our school loves to breed competition among students.
I think itâs great and something to be very proud of - a 36 is a special thing. Definitely leverage it for scholarships because, MONEY, but temper your enthusiasm about it being a golden ticket to any school of his choosing and you and he wonât be devastated if the âdream schoolâ doesnât come through.
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@blossom my kid never prepared for an interview on this type of thing. The reporters from the local newspapers do just this - report on kids accomplishments whether it be sports, academic, arts, etc. I highly doubt that a reporter would make a kid come off as moronic. Have faith in the kid who scored the 36 that he/she will know how to handle an interview!
There are brilliant people who pay big bucks for media training. Not because they arenât smart enough to score a 36 (some of them are Nobel prize winners) but because when the tape recorder starts to roll, sometimes the first thing that pops into your head is the wrong thing to say. Iâm not suggesting that a HS kid needs professional media training- just an hour of rehearsal with an adult. And one personâs âwhat a cute thing to print in the newspaperâ is another personâs headache.
Why is a 36 ACT a bigger deal than NMF? If both are around the 1 percent level? One seems to get more publicity than the other.
Be careful with this â we had a local girl get a 36 and her parents publicized it up to kazoo â newspaper, facebook, city council. Talked about her Ivy favorites, etc. She did not get into any of her top choices, no Ivies. Ended up at her safety school. Keep it on the down low, I say. A 36 gets you looked at, but that is all.
Actually closer to .1% make a 36 on the ACT.
There is another thread about NMFs being rejected at top schools, and there are several stories there of ACT 36 National Merit Finalists being denied by top schools. Nothing is a given, the level of randomness and competition is so high!
@astute12 Even 36 ACT, NMF, URMs donât always get admitted.
Since thereâs a lopsided focus, attention, easy publicity given too frequently to even smallest of athletic achievements in our culture, Iâm certainly not against some of these going toward academic achievements. However, in my sonâs high school, those who did get the perfect ACT score ended up at at a not so coveted college. They did well, too, with other academic areas. Being a National Merit or Presidential Scholar doesnât mean much, either, so we never bothered with any of these things that may garner attention and raise parentsâ ego boost. If any of these has actual and practical benefits, such as scholarships, thatâs great and one should enjoy the fruits of oneâs labor. But for having an admission chance raised to a palpable degree at highly selective colleges, I havenât seen much of evidence of that.
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Even 36 ACT, NMF, URMs don't always get admitted.
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Real URMs get in with a 36/1600, assuming GPA/EC/LOR/essays are all OK. Maybe they donât get in everywhere, but they are most assuredly getting in to a T10.