What Extra Curricular Activities (ECs) Top Schools REALLY want

taxguy · May 23, 2006, 1:50pm

Epiphany notes,“if they are “really good,” they won’t be there for long.”

Response: Darn tootin. If one looks at the make up for our magnet programs, most of the kids came from mediocre high school. The top high schools rarely have kids leave for magnet programs.

In addition, if a school is deemed poor, there are a fair number of people who request transfers, which aren’t as easy as Epiphany notes, or they move to an area that has a stronger academic high school, which is done with some regularity.

Donemom · May 23, 2006, 2:15pm

Like Soozievt’s high school, ours always has a relatively small contingent of extremely accomplished kids who do get into the top schools. In recent years, we’ve had kids get into Columbia, Brown, Penn, Stanford, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, Duke, Cornell, etc. However, my son was the first to get into Harvard in about 10 years, (he didn’t apply any where else) and no one has gotten into Yale as long as I’ve been following it. Nevertheless, I do feel, based on my daughter’s performance at Brown, and my son’s so far, that they were very well prepared for the academic rigors of such schools. And since they were also happy socially, I have no regrets in having them remain in our admittedly unspectacular high school.

soozievt · May 23, 2006, 2:49pm

Shelflife, you didn’t do anything wrong. Indeed my PM box was full as it always seems to be. I can’t keep up with all the PMs and also clearing it out. I just cleared some to make room if you wish to try again. Also, if you are willing, you can also email me. Click on my name and then there is a link to how to email me. I actually prefer emails but if you wish to PM, go ahead and try again.

Vango wrote:
“I think your kids are very lucky to have had the hs experience they had, however, like epiphany says, for some of us the choice of our local public was just not acceptable. I myself went to a rural public and felt I got a wonderful education. We had a bunch of dedicated, experienced teachers who put 100% into the school. When I went off to college, I found I was better prepared than most students and never felt at a disadvantage to any of my prep school peers.”

I think I better qualify or clarify what I had written or what may have been inadvertantly implied. I never said our school was acceptable or “good”. My feeling is that most of you would NOT send your kids to our school. It doesn’t have that many accolades and I doubt it meets the standards you have come to expect. Nonetheless, my children and many others like them, have learned and done well and gone onto good colleges, from our ordinary HS that is nothing so hot. Our music program, however, is well thought ofand actually won a Grammy Award. But for instance, you guys likely wouldn’t choose a high school where only 2/3’s of the graduates go onto college. We don’t have private schools here. This is the only game in town. It was just fine for our kids. However, our kids did have learning needs that needed accomodations, including acceleration. We were proactive and they also are driven types of kids who initiated learning accomodations. My D’s GC even wrote about this in his recs. So, all was NOT great here, not by far. But we made it work. And my kids were in classes that were demanding and the kids in those classes were good students. They were a minority but these kids more than made do and many have gone on to fantastic schools and careers and lives. Our elementary school is excellent and has won a national award. Our middle school sucked. Our high school was fair at best but we helped create learning opportunities to meet their needs. There were some great teachers and some bad ones. We love our GC as a support person who thinks outside the box and supported accomodations and forging paths. He may not be up on elite college admissions but we took care of that ourselves and are thankful for his support and his recs and so forth.

You guys may shop around for high schools but we did not. We live here and this is the school for those who live here. You would consider it a mediocre school at best, I believe.

My kids surely did not get into their colleges on the reputation of their high school, LOL. As I mentioned earlier, D1 was the only kid in her class to go to an Ivy that year. D2 was one of the only who has ever applied to the very selective college programs which are BFA’s in Musical Theater. I know of only two kids in the past six years or so who ever applied to this kind of college. Then in my D’s year, it was unusual because two students did…my D and the sal. Students with strong profiles can get in from anywhere. My kids may live in the middle of nowhere and go to a no name high school but they made out just fine. One is going to a super selective BFA program…NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, at its MT program, called CAP21 that accepts approx. 7% into that program. She was up against kids coming out of performing arts high schools, and our state does not even have PA high schools. From our unknown dance studio in our region, not only did she get into Tisch, but this year, two other dancers got into Tisch for a BFA in dance. You don’t HAVE to attend a fine high school or known arts school to get into top colleges or programs. It sure helps but it is not necessary. The student gets in, not just the high school from where she came. Sure, if the high school is known, it is an advantage in some respects. Some parents, however, are misguided and this includes many where we live, who feel their child MUST go away to prep boarding schools (we don’t have day schools) out of state in order to have a chance of attending a top college. My kids did not do that and still ended up at schools that were their first choices and ones that are quite selective. Both won scholarships and other Scholar designations at several schools. My kids are not unusual in the population at large and yes, they may stand out at home but they are not the ONLY kids like this at home either. We just have fewer with this sort of profile at our HS than in a high school like your kids go to.

Epiphany wrote:
“Further, if he or she is so stand-out, what it means in our area is that the teacher is teaching to the overwhelming numbers of non-stand-outs, NOT to the lone student. I am not denying that there are really good students at MOST high schools; I would not universalize that to all, however.”

Here, while my kids were amongst the better students academically at their school, they were not ALONE in that respect. There were enough others in the top tracked classes to keep those classes on par with them. Now, if they were not in the hardest classes, THEN it would have been a problem. In fact, this was a problem in the heterogeneous groupings at our middle school and contributed to my kids having to have various accomodations made including acceleration, taking HS courses, and indep. studies and long distance learning.

My kids did not attend a so called “lame” school so that they could “shine”. They simply attended the school where we live. It wasn’t a choice, other than I guess you could say we could move. We didn’t want to send our kids to boarding schools as we preferred to have them grow up at home and also could never have afforded private school for high school anyway. I know many families with bright children and they exist at schools in our region. They just are not the majority of the student population. But my kids were surely not lone exceptions either. We have kids at school who have been standouts in various areas…scientific research, high level musicians, theater, scholar-athletes, and so on. They may not be typical of the student body as a whole, but there surely is more than one kid in every graduating class who is smart and accomplished. Occasionally there are kids who win state and national awards. Of course, in my neck of the woods, we never have heard of things like Intel, etc. until I read CC. In fact, I learned of the National Foundation of the Arts Awards (NFAA) on CC and because of that, my child entered and won a national award. She never would have heard of it at school. She was the only winner in any category from our state that year. But in other things, parents here, particularly educated parents or those whose kids are going onto college, have kids who are engaged in enriching activities either through school or outside of school. I know so many kids from the greater rural area here, not just our HS, who are going to great colleges and are accomplished kids. They may stand out as exceptional in the larger community but there are more than a handful of kids like this in this general area. I also know top top students who have wanted to go to UVM and schools that you guys might not think of as really good colleges. The difference is that people here do not have “Ivy on the brain.” That is not the goal of people here by FAR! Countless top students from our school, including vals, have gone to UVM even though I am sure they could have gotten into some highly selective schools. My D’s best friend who is an amazing student with very high stats and huge achievements in music, went to UVM because she could go for free as her dad works there and they have three kids in college at one time there for free and they can’t afford for her to attend a school like Wellesley where she was interested in attending. I know a girl who won a Coca Cola Scholarship for her scientific research and got into a pre vet program at UVM that guaranteed vet school at Tufts though she graduated college early and went to vet school in New Zealand. One of D2’s closest friends just got into Stern at NYU, which is very hard to get into, as a Stern Scholar, but can’t afford it and is going to Georgetown but also got into Duke. These kids are not the typical kids at our high school but there is more than one kid like this by far there. Nobody here touts our high school as wonderful and many would claim it sucks (including my husband!) but we still have cream who rise here and make the most of their education and go onto fine colleges and so forth.

epiphany · May 23, 2006, 3:41pm

Re Post 541 (transfers & magnets):

Practically no magnet schools exist any more, in our area. The people I feel really sorry for are those who mortgaged their futures, quite literally, moved into insanely expensive areas, on the assumption (one would think logical) that their children could attend their local district public schools. (Wrong.) In some of these areas you actually still need to apply, and you may or may not make the cut for admission, or you may be the wrong ethnic background, because they’re dividing up the school ethnically to achieve “balance.” (You never dreamt that when you purchased your home in a high-property-value area with every dime you had; the “balance” may be a result of transfers into your district from low-rent, low-performing schools in other counties. You may even be a minority yourself, but hell, that won’t help you.) In other cases you enter into a lottery system & list your preferences, but you have no guarantee of the ultimate result. That is, overall your local area may indeed look “high-rent” in its academic product, but that doesn’t prevent you’re getting “assigned” to perhaps the least performing school there --the one most impacted by transfers, for example. (The transfer system is the most abused aspect of public education in my area, I feel. Far more “secretive” & opaque, LOL, than upper-tier college admissions. Certain people know how to get around the process & get excused to attend schools for absolutely no legitimate reason except that they want to. Ordinary folk don’t know the ropes, so they get squeezed out.) I’m not even in that system, so no one needs to flame me; it’s just what I observed & why I understand frustrations with those kinds of “exceptions.”

In a recent situation I know of personally, a student’s family moved (physically moved, not transferred) into a historically well-performing middle-income public, only to arrive there & discover that 95% of the students were by now transfers from low-performings in other districts; I know this family would have been quite happy to stay there IF those transferred-in students were not bringing their obvious poor MOTIVATION and 4+ yrs Below-Grade-Level achievement with them. The new student described the atmosphere as a “joke.” No application to the subject matter, no follow-up at home for those students, no attempt to put in more than the minimum effort to earn a “D.” Teachers are required to at least attempt to reach the underperformers, esp. when there are massive amounts of them. In the process, the capable ones get ignored, at least in our area.

soozie, I was not speaking about your family when I mentioned cc posters’ questions about shining in lame schools. My comments had nothing to do with your family. If you were to read my post more carefully, you would notice that I mentioned moving to lame schools as a college admissions strategy, not staying where you live & attending a local school (& making the best of it). No need to defend your children when they’re not being attacked. Again, I’m talking about our area. Your experience does not invalidate my different experience, & plenty of people on CC have situations quite similar to what we’ve experienced in our region.

blossom · May 23, 2006, 4:10pm

Soozie-- not everyone lives in rural Vermont. When posters here talk about poor schools they’re not talking about schools where a large percentage don’t go to college; don’t aspire to Ivy league, etc. We’re talking about schools with metal detectors and armed guards in the lobby; where a misguided “one strike and you’re out” policy means that kids who were found with a joint in their locker end up in a special program with gang members who have already been incarcerated by age 16; where the GC’s don’t have time for college advising because they’re in court on a regular basis arguing for the emancipation of a HS kid whose been sexually abused by mom’s boyfriend, or visiting kids who are in jail but want to come back to school once they’ve served their sentence.

Would be great if our crappy schools were as you describe… but sadly, the staff is so overwhelmed dealing with the social pathologies they don’t have time to advocate for individualized learning.

epiphany · May 23, 2006, 4:39pm

ditto, blossom. Add to your list of social ills, an extremely low family functional literacy rate, even when English is not a Second Language. Students from those families have not done well in our area in any educational environment, private, public, rich, middle, strict, lax.

blossom · May 23, 2006, 5:58pm

Epiphany… we have a huge ESL population. The teachers are overhwelmed by kids who literally step off the boat (or however they got here) and walk into a classroom. We’ve also got a range of mainstreamed disabled kids whose issues range from autism to CP to former crack babies with a host of neurological ills. I have family members in typical suburban communities who complain about “crappy schools” which usually means a school system where the principal won’t advocate for the gifted and talented. All depends on your perspective.

1Down2togo · May 23, 2006, 6:10pm

Chances are pretty good that students at the schools blossom and epiphany describe are not losing a lot of sleep worrying about what extracurricular activities top schools really want.

Our suburban high school has no such problems. It’s of the “crappy means principal won’t advocate for the GATE kids” variety. Having a wealth of college preparation/selection/admission advice at our disposal starting in kindergarten certainly did make people feel “empowered” – but it also made them a little nuts, at least IMO.

I remember standing in cold, drizzling rain next to a soccer field early one Saturday morning in 1986 watching my 5-year-old playing something that people called “soccer” but which looked to me more like a bunch of tiny rowdy children chasing a ball around a lumpy, wet field in one amorphous mass of confusion. I made some comment to the adult standing next to me, who happened to be my neighbor and whose 6-year-old son was part of the amorphous blob, that I thought this was an absolutely ridiculous way to spend a Saturday morning and that my son so far hated soccer and that perhaps we started this process a little too early. To which my neighbor told me in no uncertain terms that I was absolutely wrong because if he doesn’t start young, he’ll be behind the curve and won’t have a prayer of a chance of making varsity in high school, and it’s important to play varsity sports in order to get into top colleges. I looked out at my unhappy child who hated soccer and at all the wet, shivering parents standing around clutching their coffe cups and decided then and there that the town that I had just moved into had a of crazy people living in it.

However, it was true that 12 years later, the vast majority of students from that high school who got into top colleges were multi-sport varsity athletes, including my son, who retired from soccer at 6 but picked up a couple of individual sports in middle school. The only thing I can say about having vast amounts of college preparation/selection/admission material at our fingertips was that it fed the frenzy like nobody’s business.

sjmom2329 · May 23, 2006, 6:57pm

1Down2ToGo, I had a similar moment when S2 was about 5 or 6. It was probably October and we lived in Minnesota. One evening, his little soccer team was practicing, when it began to sleet. The temperature was probably just around freezing, and all the parents were bundled up on the sidelines, while our frozen little boys chased a ball around a muddy field. I, too, said “This is stupid!” and took my son home. Unlike your son, though, my kids never really did become real athletes. They played a sport every season through 8th grade, but never really found one they loved, except maybe golf. But my experience was that if a boy didn’t choose his lifetime sport by the time he was 6 or 7, it was too late. The kids who were really into soccer, hockey or basketball played year-round, including summer camps. I don’t have anything against athletes, and I’ve always said that if I’d had a really talented one, maybe I would have been gung-ho. Instead, we focused on music and academics, where they did have talent, and that has worked out fine for them.

1Down2togo · May 23, 2006, 7:54pm

LOL, sjmom, my son didn’t become a real athlete either. He “picked up” a couple of individual sports in middle school, and he did them throughout high school, but he wouldn’t have done either one if it weren’t for the fact that he knew he had to put something down under “extracurriculars” on his college apps. He had some native ability and achieved some minor successes in his sports, certainly not at the “recruited athlete” level though, and he never felt any “passion” for either sport. He never did either sport year round. He started when the season started and ended when the season ended and that was that.

The things he felt passion for, he did not want to do in any organized, group environment that would allow him to put something concrete down on a college application as an EC. He liked programming and statistics and stock trading and poker and writing programs for stock trading and poker, and he didn’t want to go to any computer “camps” or enter any contests or intern at a software company, or take college courses in programming at night, or anything like that. He wanted to be left alone to do his thing. He taught himself C++ and several other languages, wrote programs, did some day trading, and didn’t put any of it down on his college app – instead he put down the varsity sports that he didn’t care a whit about but apparently the colleges at the time did, and now he’s a quantitative analyst at an ibank writing programs for pricing models and his athleticism starts and ends at chasing a cab. Personally, I think it’s hilarious. He was willing to play two sports he didn’t care about to satisfy the college admissions gods in order to protect the thing that he really did care about – he didn’t want college admissions to interfere with what he loved doing by forcing him into molding it into an “EC.”

Then, I have a kid who loves her sport so much that she eventually decided to go D3 rather than D1 because the relentless, year-round grind was killing her love of the game. I love irony.

soozievt · May 23, 2006, 9:12pm

Epiphany:
“soozie, I was not speaking about your family when I mentioned cc posters’ questions about shining in lame schools. My comments had nothing to do with your family. If you were to read my post more carefully, you would notice that I mentioned moving to lame schools as a college admissions strategy, not staying where you live & attending a local school (& making the best of it). No need to defend your children when they’re not being attacked. Again, I’m talking about our area. Your experience does not invalidate my different experience, & plenty of people on CC have situations quite similar to what we’ve experienced in our region.”

I am sorry if my post came across this way but that is not what I meant. I FULLY understand that the situation is DIFFERENT where some of you live and what you are experiencing and why people do this or that with high school choices and so forth. I KNOW you are talking about your own areas. I thought I had acknowledged that but I guess it didn’t come across. I was then just sharing what it is like here and in fact, was contrasting it because I was saying it is very different in different communities. I was explaining how our school and community is not as much of a frenzy about colleges. For instance, I am smiling at the story about watching Kindergarteners play soccer in the rain. For years, I have been at soccer games in the rain and SNOW and I think it is NUTS. I never have understood why they do not cancel the game. I mean it is a game after all. They are KIDS. I know last year the varsity soccer team played a big game and it was snowing and apparently from news articles, it was a very dangerous situation in fact. That is nuts. So, been there, done that. However, NOBODY here would ever come up with that line about how they have to play soccer so they can get into college. That line of thinking is nonexistant here. Lots and lots of kids play but I haven’t heard it tied to college admissions.

I definitely never felt my kids were being attacked! I thought I was explaining what it is like here just like you guys are explaining what it is like where you live. I know your explanations had nothing to do with my family. I didn’t feel I was defending anything but more explaining that it is different here.

Our school has LOTS and LOTS of low income families. And lots and lots of them have parents who never went to college. This is NOT an affluent area. From the way I hear talk of picking a place to live in your neck of the woods as to which schools are better and which ones have better college admissions records, is just very very different than the mindset here. Here, parents who are concerned with that, and have the money, send their kids away to boarding schools. We didn’t choose that, nor can afford that. Our school is nothing to write home about. When my kids went, only two classes had the AP designation though I think this year they were adding that to some courses my kids had taken in the past. The mean SAT is something like 1050. We have discipline problems. We have many special needs kids with a wide range of needs including downs syndrome, CP, autism, and some severe disabilities. While we don’t have the crime of inner city schools, we have other things that rural low income communities deal with. If my kids were in classes of heterogenous groupings, it would have been a disaster. But there was an Honors level class in every subject in high school and those students were mostly all very good students. So, there is a subset of the larger whole. Few are pursuing elite college admissions but each year a couple get into some very selective schools. Again, many at the top pick schools that are not on the radar on CC…like UVM, St. Michael’s College, and so forth. Last year’s val went to Syracuse. Two years ago, third ranked student went to Norwich. Three years ago, val went to UVM, though the sal went to Dartmouth. The sal my D1’s year went to Middlebury. So, very good students do all right. We just don’t have a lot like this. Also, our school, nor our state, has any gifted or talented programs.

As blossom says, what some call a crappy school, others may not. Some suburban publics that some are saying are not too good so they must go private, likely are better than our rural school. Those who are shopping around for high schools would never pick this one, in my opinion. But all who live here and don’t send their kids away to boarding schools, do make out, if the student is of the sort who will no matter where he/she goes to high school. Frankly, my husband hates our high school. It has lots of problems but I think all schools do and I know this one is not so hot but my kids made the best of it and sought out opportunities that did not exist. They created them. They created learning paths and had to forge new territory. We feel some other kids have benefitted who are like them. They are not unique and there are other kids in our community with similar learning needs and so some have benefitted from accomodations that we advocated for. It was not an easy path. Our GC wrote about this in his college rec for D1. So, even though the school was not great and we had to really make some things happen, my kids did and survived. Would they have been happier at fine prep schools or performing arts high schools? I don’t doubt it for a second. The GC even wrote that he was suprised that D’s parents did not send her away but that instead, she created opportunities to challenge herself right here. These did not necessarily exist…it took a lot of advocating to make it work. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t ideal, but it was making the most of it. I think they not only survived but also thrived and seem to be doing more than OK at their selective colleges. Basically, I feel that kids can do well no matter which HS they went to. The education or school may not be ideal but a student may be able to find a way to make it work.

The kinds of things talked about on CC are just very different than conversations in our community. When I found CC when D1 was starting her Junior year in HS (never started this college process before then but I now have learned that in some areas, the process is well underway before 11th), and my D took a look at it and all the student posts and talk of “what are my chances” and “what do I need to do to look good for college” and “what do I need to do to get into an Ivy”, “I got a 1500, should I retake?”, “Do I have to do a sport to get into college?”, “what courses should I take if I don’t want to wreck my ranking?”, “in what order would you rank the 8 Ivies?”, …she could not relate at all. She has very high standards for herself and wanted a challenging college but there was no competition element involved. It was not a big talk between friends at all. My kids just applied where they wanted and none of their friends were applying to the same places. They didn’t talk about it hardly at all amongst their peers. Their school didn’t help them get in. It was just all on their own. The school knew very little about the college processes my kids were entering. We do love our GC for his support but we had to forge our way. My kids know many kids from other states and communities that differ widely from ours (ie., they know many affluent kids in other parts of the country) and they have mentioned about the talk between them and what it is like in their home communities with the college frenzy and all. It makes me glad that even if our HS can’t compare whatsoever, we aren’t dealing with the stress that must come from that competitive frenzy that they hear others talking about where they live. The college process was overwhelming enough without that, LOL. So, I understand what you guys are talking about as I have heard it from their peers who live in other regions, and am merely saying it contrasts greatly from here.

This is just meant to give a description of what it is like at what many of you would think of as a low level public HS. There are many good students but they are the exception, not the general norm. The classes for the top students are indeed challenging. The majority of students aren’t taking those classes. I’m glad my kids mixed with a wide range of socio economic backgrounds as I think it was good for them. They may have fit better into a competitive prep school overall, but they also fit here as this is their community and there are all types in it, not just very good students trying for top colleges…there are some but there is a very wide range. Granted that the kids in their academic core classes were college bound but that was not the case in gym, health, art, chorus, computer class, etc. which they had to take.

I hope I was just sharing our experiences, particularly due to the contrast of what I have learned and am interested in hearing about others’ experiences, schools, and communities. My sharing was never meant to invalidate YOUR experiences but to share similarly our experiences and how they differ and I have said all along, a lot of the differences are due to different types of communities and schools.

CollegeDirt · May 25, 2006, 9:43pm

Hey. I am confused: literally and figuratively. I searched on what ec’s college admissions really want – I read with interest TaxGuy’s 1st posting (with a Rockville posting whom I might add is local to me and therefore of increased interest to me in his college musings) and now here we are 37+ pages later on a different tangent. My son was an athlete, but had surgery after his soph year for a correction of a birth defect and has since changed direction. His EC record looks spotty w/out an explanation that they may and may not take time to look for. What do you suggest I do?

calmom · May 25, 2006, 10:20pm

If a record looks spotty without an explanation, the answer is simple: explain it. 
Somewhere on the application, your son writes “I had to give up participation in athletics after undergoing surgery in 10th grade.”

But don’t panic and assume that you need to explain what doesn’t need explaining. The EC record does not have to read like your kid is a superhero. If he has a very busy schedule doing things other than athletics… there really is no need to explain. Many kids drop one EC in favor of another when their interests shift. You don’t want your “explanation” to bring attention to a weakness they wouldn’t have noticed if you didn’t bring it up.

MrsP · May 26, 2006, 12:05am

soozievt, that frenzy you talk about is real. A woman told me she didn’t sleep well for a year because their whole family was worried about where her child would go to college. They had a nightmare year, her senior didn’t get into any of her acceptable choices, and then ended up becoming very excited about a safety school. Looking back she said the mistake she made was trying to control everything, when it was all out of her control just like it should have been.

DRJ4 · May 26, 2006, 12:14am

CollegeDirt,

I second CalMom’s comments. Your son’s experiences may even make a good essay. Major surgery can be a life-changing event and your son’s surgery seems to have changed his life - at a minimum, it kept him from playing sports. How did he feel about not being able to play sports? What did he learn from his experience? Has the change in his high school ECs affected his college choices and, if so, why?

Sometimes things that seem like college admission “problems” can actually be advantages.

Dizzymom · May 26, 2006, 12:58am

Not every college application offers a neat little box where you can “explain” anything and I agree that not all kids’ experiences always fit into their “indicate which years of high school you participated in x, y, or z.”

The good thing about that is that it does give your student a potential essay topic. The bad thing about it is that maybe he/she just wanted to write one sentence about it; not an entire essay.

It makes me curious as to what the admissions folk think about kids who not only think outside the box but may actually WRITE outside of it as well – do they take kindly to notes in the margins or post-its attached to explain what there isn’t room to explain?

calmom · May 26, 2006, 1:08am

My kids never thought twice about that – if there wasn’t a space to put in specific info that they wanted to get across, they created one; my daughter also made sure that her g.c. included certain explanatory information in the recommendation letter.

My d. chose not to use the on-line common app precisely because the computer format seemed to limit the type of info that could be put into certain fields. (This wasn’t a problem with most other on-line submissions - it has more to do with the design of the interface than with the fact that it was online). The point is, a paper app gives more flexibility.

marite · May 26, 2006, 6:53am

Dizzymom:

About app forms. My S used the common app for one of his two apps, but printed it out.Since he was sending supplementary materials anyway, printing out the form made sense. When he wanted to include more or different information than was possible through the form, he would fill in “see attached sheet.”
On the sheet, he would write in the information he sought to convey, carefully numbering each item and providing a title.

CollegeDirt · May 26, 2006, 8:45am

Thanks. I appreciate your insight.

soozievt · May 26, 2006, 10:46am

I agree that there are many places where the student could explain this situation (like Calmom, I also prefer paper apps and they are more flexible).

First, some apps have a question that asks if there is anything else you want to let the admissions know or any special circumtances to explain. A note could be written there or also “see attached”. For instance, one of my kids graduated a year early. She chose to include a supplemental one page statement about why she had chosen to graduate a year early. This was not one of her regular essays and was not a creatively written piece but just a statement of rationale and supporting reasons. As Calmom points out, the GC also can mention any special circumstances within his report. For instance, we asked the GC to also write something within his report that addressed our D’s choice to graduate early and his thoughts on that decision and her readiness for college. As well, if you think this is something worthy of an essay, it could fit there but often a “special circumstance” is just worth pointing out but not necessarily for an entire essay. Then again, setbacks that are overcome or have had an effect on someone can be a good essay topic. Another place where this change in EC could be noted is on a resume. My kids wrote annotated activity/award resumes. Now, D1 did not have anything like your son did with the surgery that caused him to stop a certain sport. Each of her ECs were ones she had been doing since she was quite young and so she not only noted which years of high school she did each EC (as is asked on the apps), but she added total number of years if it was at least 9 years and sometimes as many as 13 years. But one of her ECs, JV softball, only went up to ninth grade, and while she had done it for nine years (little league and all), it is obvious that this EC had stopped after ninth grade. In her annotation of that activity, she explained her love of the sport over the years in Little League up through JV but that due to conflicts with her spring performing arts endeavors, she had to switch spring sports to another sport she had played and loved for years, tennis. Now, this is not a big deal like your son’s surgery but my point was that within the annotation of the activity, she included why that EC had stopped after ninth and why Varsity Tennis where she began as the number one seeded singles player, started in tenth grade. There was a logistical reason and not just flitting from one EC to another. Each sport had been a lifelong one but one team worked out where the other did not (honestly due to one coach allowing her to attend her All States in Music and also her annual dance performances and one coach not, but she didn’t get to the nitty gritty other than schedule conflicts).

So, there are various ways to explain a circumstance on an application, particularly if using paper apps.

Susan

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