Perhaps you should look into the Johns Hopkins /Peabody dual degree program if music is his creative field and you don’t think he can make the Columbia Juilliard cut.
Have you contacted the college counseling office at his private school for information and perspective? My understanding is that private schools usually offer excellent counseling services - and, given that other students there have achieved at your son’s level, the office should have experience with guiding such students.
Yale School of Music is a grad school program, not undergrad.
Why not Oberlin? It’s a fabulous school with a good arts program. I have one kid at a HYPMS and one at a top three LAC (and it wouldn’t be hard for you to figure what they are). I like the LAC better overall as far as the student experience.
I would consider applying ED/SCEA as a legacy to the Ivy that fits him best. If he does this his chance of being accepted increases by three to four times.
Athletics are a great way to relieve stress. From our experience if an athlete participating in two national meets a year that is sufficient to generate interest from the schools you have mentioned. Likely Letters for Ivy League recruited athletes can be issued as as early as Oct 1st. If he is a recruited athlete at an Ivy and finds that he cannot maintain his grades then he can simply leave the team. Up to 50% of recruited athlete quit by their senior year.
@neatoburito, I completely agree which is why JHU is a promiment one in the list that I prepared.
@frazzled1, There is not much help that we can get in freshman year as the focus is on the sophomores and juniors. However, I always like someone working just for me and not trading off advice among the several good students the school has.
@thumper1, I know that Yale music school is a graduate program. I am hoping however that he can continue private lessons with some of the faculty.
@donnaleighg, I personally find LACs to be limiting because of the small size. Also, in my experience over 25 years in the industry the quality of students is better in the top national universities than the LACs. I do not want to get into a debate over this however. Knowing my son, he would thrive in an environment on intense competition among his fellow students. If he was science oriented I would encourage him to go to Caltech as that’s the kind of pressure he enjoys and feeds off of.
@swimkidsdad, He will be participating in enough national level tournaments to meet your criteria, but I am dead set against him applying in the athletic quota. It is a personal thing. I would rather he does an English/Math dual major while trying a third one in a joint performance art program. There will be no room for athletics in such a curriculum, but of course he can play for fun when he chooses. Funny thing is that athletics doesn’t lower stress for my son. He goes into the court to win and win only and when he invariably loses after a few rounds (as he is not US #1 in his age group, in fact he is far from it) it causes him major distress. All kids are different.
It’s not whether the facts are real. It’s the way this conversation is developing. Have you looked at what the colleges themselves say they are looking for? They don’t say 2400 and national recognition. I know you want ideas here, but severely unilateral kids are at a disadvantage. Tell us he can let go, has a variety of friends, can compassionately do for others, And certainly that he’s resilient. All I’m getting is drive and top rankings.
At Yale, it would depend on the instrument and the faculty. Usually undergrads take lessons with the very talented grad students…and they are a talented group. Occasionally, an applied faculty at Yale will be able to see an undergrad, but not usually.
MIT also has a thriving music culture at the school. Lots of very good ensembles for the students. Very high level of performance. Is MIT a consideration?
@lookingforward, Do you think colleges look for kids who let go of high performance and instead have a lot of friends while helping them compassionately? Points #2 and #3 hold for my son, but I think there is a snowball’s chance in hell that #1 will ever hold for him. But don’t all kids have friends who they help compassionately? Isn’t that what friendship is all about anyway?
@thumper1, MIT is definitely a consideration!
The necessary credentials for getting in to the schools you listed are far below the credentials that you listed.
Did your son already make USAJMO? How high of a rank in NACLO? Is he already doing AOPS or summer math camps to train for competitive math (assuming he’s interested in doing such)? I mention this only because obviously making USAJMO followed by USAMO/MOP camp does get great notice from AdComms and can significantly help in the admissions process.
It actually isn’t that easy for non-music majors to join the conservatory performance groups at Oberlin anyway. As an aside, my kid tried NACLO. Just one year, and just for curiosity. It isn’t discussed much out here.
Definitely agree about applying ED/SCEA if you / your son can identify his best “fit.” If you can toss out some of the Ivies for the reasons other and you have mentioned, then the target list offers very different fits. My D was admitted to Duke, but it’s not on your list. If you care to view it, Duke’s Dean Guttentag has a pretty good video that Forbes posted. You’ll note that he described a student as “coming alive” or something like that (it’s been several weeks since I watched the video) – the student is more than his curriculum, grades and scores.
All the achievement any student gathers is somewhat meaningless if it’s not expressed in the collection of papers that present his case to the university. That’s what became very clear to me when my D went through the 2014-15 app season. The file and its contents have to speak. So…what will your son’s essays say, what will his teachers and coaches say in LoRs. How will he distinguish himself. These sound like cliche questions, but they really do have to be answered. For instance, if he is so driven and competitive that he appears ruthless, that won’t look good. If he is so single-mindedly focused on grades that he seems like a robot, that won’t look good. Are his goals so stereotypical that they ring false? I trust you’ll understand what I am saying and not referring specifically to your son.
After all that, then, he’s still subject to the daunting percentages. But ED/SCEA will help.
Also, if you aren’t instate for UCB or UCLA, then your chances there are somewhat improved over instate applicants. It’s no secret that UCs want OOS tuition. Familiarize yourself with the criteria UCs use to calculate GPA, etc. There they don’t care about LoRs. There are too many applicants.
@CalBearsMom, Yes, he made USAJMO. NACLO is a consideration for next year but he is doing well in the prep. We started him on AoPS when he was in 2nd grade. It is a great program. But MOSP is hard to get into. I do not know if he will ever make it to MOSP. I don’t think he is that good. He is average in math.
@AttorneyMother, To be honest, my son is ruthless. I am pretty sure his teachers and coaches see that, given that they encourage him to be even more ruthless especially when bouncing back from failure. He is also single mindedly focused on results, including grades. Teachers in his school absolutely love him for that. If colleges do not like that then we will have a problem for sure.
As for distinguishing himself, I am not sure that he has anything special.
Memorable teacher recommendations and essays!
This is from the MIT admissions blog, but I think it would apply to some of the schools you’re interested in.
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/there_is_no_formula
I like @arwarw 's response. There is no doubt that your child’s “raw ingredients” can be made into a good entree. But not every institution he serves it to will want to partake nor will it be on their menu that year. You don’t want your child to find his cooking not to be his taste or the restaurant not to his liking, after all that work.
Also, if he’s a freshman, consider if he’ll run the risk of burning out by junior/senior year.
Yikes. I’m not sure any college is looking for kids who their own mom would describe as “ruthless” and I certainly wouldn’t want him for my child’s roommate! The reality is that today’s world is different than the world we grew up in. Our economy now is based on creativity and entrepreneurialism. If you want your son to be successful, help him be okay with failure, for only by failing many, many times, will he do something great. If you want your son to be successful, help him to learn how to collaborate, rather than simply compete, with others because nowadays almost every great advance requires a team approach. If you want your son to be successful, help him find some breathing room to discover his passions, rather than simply follow a predetermined path to college admission. Those are the kids who will start the next Google, be part of the scientific breakthrough team, or lead our country in the right direction. Someone will always be smarter than your child, or better musically, no matter how relentlessly he pursues his goals. Right now, he sounds like a kid who is beating himself up trying to win at a game that is not winnable and you sound like a mom who is right behind pushing him up that never-ending mountain.
The appropriate response to “Brown and Dartmouth have campus cultures that would likely not fit with my son’s personality” would be “…and therefore there’s no sense in having him apply to Brown and Dartmouth.”
Not “he’ll apply anyway and turn himself into a pretzel.”
It seems that impressing whoever-it-is-you-strive-to-impress is more important than finding the right place for your son.
Elite American colleges do not often have soft spots for kids who overly focus on grades, because they perceive such students as missing out on other important parts of life, such as empathy, humanity, compassion, working with others, and living life in the moment. You may want or wish elite American colleges to reward ruthlessness in the pursuit of the A, but they don’t.
This is what’s called a humblebrag. Getting into USAJMO means you’re better in math than 99% of the country. Not “average in math.”
You know what my son - who attends one of the private colleges you called out - was doing in 2nd grade? Running around with his friends, climbing trees, riding bikes, and playing with Pokemon. Your academic focus is truly excessive, and not at all necessary to get into schools of this caliber.
"Also, in my experience over 25 years in the industry the quality of students is better in the top national universities than the LACs. "
What industry? Most every parent posting has had 25 years of experience in the work world.