@cupugu Echoing cupugu’s post above, I think it’s pretty hard to figure out whether your kid has what it takes or even wants to attend a high ranked college. For example, I never thought or encouraged my kid to shoot for an Ivy or HYPSM level of school. I wasn’t all that enamored of an Ivy college, having went to one. Now that 2+ years have passed since my kid’s college admission process, I can say with a greater honesty and objectivity that yes, we hoped he could get into top 10 ranked college when he moved up to high school, but once I realized (I was the designated parent to advise my kid in this kind of matters because my spouse felt I was more qualified because I went to an Ivy and went to law school) that it took too much effort to try to get into high ranked college, I just focused on advising my kid to improve his writing (we moved back to US from abroad when he was 10, so he had to improve his English quickly) and challenge himself with good ECs, looking beyond high school ECs. At the beginning, my kid’s goal was to shoot for a mid-level UC, i.e., UCSD or UC Irvine, but when I realized that for most hard to get in colleges had a noticeably higher GPA or test score standards for STEM applicants – and since my kid was clearly not a STEM kid – I felt that GPA and test scores did not have to be perfect. By the time he was a sophomore in high school, I felt comfortable that our kid would at least get into a mid level UC as a non-STEM student because his GPA was 3.9 with many AP/Honors classes, so I was not worried. When he became a Junior, maybe due to his classmates or his own expectation of how far he could go, our kid’s goal became getting into one of UCLA/Berkeley as a non-STEM major. When he got 33 ACT with pretty high scores in Reading/Grammar, I was confident that he would get into either UCLA/Berkeley because I felt his ECs were relatively strong and focused in non-STEM areas. UCs didn’t require any letters of recommendations, so that was great. Now, I never expected my kid to score high enough on PSAT to be NMF in CA because his SAT score as sophomore was around 2150 and his ACT score as Junior was 33 composite; but when I compared his PSAT score to the NMF cut-off score for CA in the past, I realized there was a very high chance he would be NMF. That’s when I began to think maybe our kid should apply to at least one of really “reach” college but then I didn’t tell him because my attitude was “why get rejected and feel bad?” And besides, UCLA/Berkeley was darn good and cheaper because I knew we would in all likely be full pay at expensive private colleges. But then, right before college application process, our kid asked me if he applied to Stanford as an early applicant and somehow got in, whether we could afford the tuition. I wasn’t all that happy when he asked me this because I knew we would be full pay, and also because it was pretty hard to get into Stanford, so I didn’t want him to feel bad from rejection. But his attitude seemed to be that he knew he would likely be denied, and he would be happy just to get deferred, so I told him he can apply but he better make his essays really stand out. Now, I am the type of parent who gives his kid a lot of freedom but once I realize my kid wants something, I try to give him the best advice, so I told him that he should research everything he could about Stanford, find qualities in himself that he thinks Stanford is looking for and make his essays very personal to a point that the adcom reader would have a good picture of what kind of person he was. I told him every one of his essays, ranging from short to long ones, had to paint a picture of himself, so that after reading his entire application, the adcom reader would feel that he or she really knew him and liked him. I told him not to make his essays about his accomplishments but what he cares about and his failures and what he learned from them and how they molded him into the kind of person he is today and show the adcom he is the kind of person who would definitely make Stanford campus a better place and most importantly, he would enjoy and appreciate the Stanford community. I told him he better revise his essays many times to find his voice. I told him when I thought his essays would not impress the adcom and that he could do better. All my advice came from my background as an English Lit major and having watched many movies and read many books. We stayed away from any college consultants and essay consultants because I felt I knew my kid the best.
I looked at his high schoo’s Naviance record, and in his school’s history “only” 8 got into Stanford (similar number for Harvard), and he was told no one got into Stanford as an early applicant. Therefore, we focused on getting as good letters of recommendations from his high school teachers and counselor; I told him to put some time and effort to drop by get to know his teachers better and tell the teachers who would write recommendations to talk about his non-academic traits/qualities, knowing my kid is definitely not a kind of student whom teachers would write “He probably has been a top student in my 5 years of teaching this class etc.” because I felt my kid’s selling point was his non-academic traits although he was around 20th out of 500 students GPA wise. Basically, he coasted through high school with many A minuses and 2 B+s, by putting more efforts into his ECs. We also limited his school selections to only 4 UCs, two Honors Colleges for merit based on his NMF status and Stanford. There was no way he could put that much time into making his application to other top colleges as strong. Basically, when our kid turned in his application to Stanford, we did not know if it would be good enough but we felt it was the best application our kid could submit. I felt confident that not many applicants prepared their applications with as much focus.
Anyway, I found out around 70 kids applied to Stanford from his high school (many of them with better GPAs and test scores), and he was the only one who got in. Also, in his school’s history, he was the only one who got into Stanford early. His school counselor was shocked, as was my kid. But to be honest, I wasn’t that shocked because I already knew that although my kid would never get a Regents scholarship from UCLA/Berkeley, he had certain qualities that top colleges were looking for, which they could see from his application.
My kid had no apparent hook of any kind. I will be honest: had my kid applied as a STEM intended applicant, no way he would have gotten accepted. My advice is to build your application around your kid’s interest and make the application as compelling. But I am here to tell you that it’s hard to gauge whether your kid has what it takes because each kid progresses at different pace and different ways.
Basically, I am happy if my kid is happy, so since he’s happy and feels he’s learning and sufficiently challenged at Stanford, I am happy. I would feel the same had he gone to UCLA or Honors College with merit money.