It boils down to, if you want to run with the big kids, you need to be one of them. There are plenty of kids not crumbling from the stress. Or not even calling it stress. They thrive on their vision and balance the requirements. They have lives. I see it. The elites try to choose kids that, among other qualities, are stress tolerant, resilient.
But you don’t get into the big leagues by playing half a game. Or picking and choosing when you practice. If you don’t want the pressure, find what I call the sweet colleges - good in their own ways but without the pressure of a higher bar.
Ya know, GJ, you could pick ten colleges, visit a few in the near future. Ask questions, observe, see your D’s reactions. Then fine tune the likes, goals, targets.
Not at all. It’s just another avenue that kids can follow – one that also has the advantage of being non-competitive. So if the kid doesn’t stand a chance of becoming in Intel Finalist, doesn’t play a musical instrument, would only embarrass themselves on an athletic field, etc… there probably are volunteer opportunities in the local community. So the fact that colleges will aknowledge the value of community service means that students who aren’t superstars or award winners still have the opportunity to engage and demonstrate something of value.
There is the added advantage that volunteering/community service can be a way for an shy or introverted student to develop self-confidence and improved social skills… so a no lose situation.
And most colleges want some diversity. So for example while Harvard may want the next generation of leaders. They also want 200 or so academics. They may end up being leaders in their fields, but they are unlikely to have leaderish resumes in high school.
Different high schools make it easier or harder to “run with the big kids,” on the national level.
I did not think that a future theoretical physicist could do anything worthwhile other than taking advanced classes–and thinking! (Thinking a lot!) while in high school. One poster corrected me that her future physicist son had done some meaningful work related to theoretical physics while in high school. It took some additional posts, but it eventually emerged that her son was home-schooled. On the one hand, great! On the other hand, oh, yeah, of course. Not everyone is in a position to home school. It is difficult for both parents to pursue demanding careers while homeschooling, unless the child is very unusual. By that, I don’t mean just super-intelligent, but also having a host of unusual behavioral qualities that would make home-schooling possible in those circumstances.
But admission is evaluated in the context of the school and the community where the student lives. They don’t expect every applicant to have national recognition… but at the elite level for admissions, they expect that the student is going to have shown some initiative along the way.
Exactly. My kids might have done well if their Science Olympiad Team had been in the top three at States, but everyone has to be top performers for that to happen. So unless you choose an individual sport or activity you are stuck with the team level.
I agree with you that it won’t work the way presented above. It means it will require both. Kindness obviously is an admission’s factor from the applicant end, but there is no way that academic excellence standards will relax.
FWIW, you don’t have to play a game, their game, or anything resembling like it. From my perspective (and the experience we have had with our kids) is students can simply be themselves and have excellent outcomes. They may not be the outcomes that many on CC see as the end game, though. My kids have pursued their interests in high school, been active in outreach groups that they have wanted to participate in bc that is what they wanted to be doing, etc. Nothing about their applications was done for an admissions committee. Everything they did they would have done regardless b/c that is who they are. I think authentic kids do have very successful outcomes.
Just an interesting tidbit on this - one of my friends has 3 of the Walk On Water kids (2 were RSI kids), one of whom was hired the summer after his senior year of HS by a major medical center to do the calculations for radiation doses for its oncology patients. This kid was doing some informational interviewing the summer before he started college and the physician realized how his skills could be put to good use in a clinical setting. Not saying every kid with a good grade in physics could or should try to find a job like this, but it was an interesting and worthwhile experience for the student (and, I would hope, the patients).
@calmom If that’s the way it plays out, that would be great. If all they are doing is redesigning the applications and the supplements to allow more space to describe the worthwhile activities kids are passionate about, I have no problem with that. However, I think the language in the article @mathmom linked about reducing the increasing levels of stress and anxiety is either disingenuous or simply misguided. The stress comes from the fact that Harvard can only accept 5% of the applicants and Stanford, apparently, can only accept 4%. The stress comes from the belief that there are only 5 or 10 schools worth attending.
If applications now look for evidence of students “working in the community for long periods of time.” Students will simply add that to the to do list. There is no way to make any of this less competitive. There is one spot for every 20 students.
Truth: they have long looked for evidence of concern for others and the choices you make in how you do this, a commitment over time, not s spot hour or two here and there. Maybe not every college out there, but certainly the top ones. You all don’t like me saying it, but lol.
@lookingforward says, “There are plenty of kids not crumbling from the stress. Or not even calling it stress . . . The elites try to choose kids that, among other qualities, are stress tolerant, resilient.”
I would say those walk-on-water kids who do it all but don’t feel stress are not necessarily resilient. They may just be lucky–they were born with superior mental and physical health (and often into stable, healthy families). In my experience, the most resilient people are the ones who have to figure out how to cope with overwhelming stress . . . the ones who have dealt with chronic, serious problems (they also can be very empathetic people).
I’m sure the elite universities study their admissions methods, and it would be interesting to see the data on how their decisions work out. They should shake things up by admitting groups of wild-card students and seeing how they do in comparison to the usual admits.
The top colleges know how the, so to say, wildcards do. In addition to resilience, the ability to self advocate is important. It means the sort of kids who know when they need help, can ask for it and follow through. Next, you’re going to want to know how to show that, and if it’s part of some stress inducing checklist.
I really think this thread is starting to look like the old “What’s the magic formula?”
You don’t have to deal with extremes to develop resilience.
My kids got into top colleges without a lot of stress. They certainly are lucky to come from an intact family which encouraged reading and learning from the get go. We made the lucky decision to choose the good enough school system, not the most stressful one. They didn’t need to take astronomical numbers of APs to be near the top of their classes. Resilience? They may have learned some from learning via chess that you learn more when you lose than when you win. I dunno. Both kids are doing fine - my younger son made it through the Navy Officer Candidate School - a huge number drop out - and he got sick the first week and had to drop back a class, so he spent three weeks longer at it than he expected to.
There are kids getting in to the elites with chronic illnesses, who have lost a parent at a young age, who grew up in a homeless shelter. You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to suss out kids who have biographical reasons for having dealt with a lot of stress.
And your garden variety “my parents push me too hard/school has too much homework” stress? That’s where the teacher recommendations come in to play.
Don’t assume that “Joey is the hardest working student I have ever taught. He will work on a paper for days with constant rewrites until it is perfect” is the kind of recommendation your kid wants from a teacher.
@blossom do teachers really write these sorts of negative recommendations? It seems like a nasty thing to do to a kid. I would hope that a teacher who couldn’t say something truly praiseworthy would simply say no when asked.
Omg, yes. Lots focus on the fact thst Susie smiles when she comes in and always has her homework done. Too msny just repeat the brag sheet. Johnny’s a great asset, he’s in band and on the recycling committee and and and. Some imply issues. Eg, Billy had issues grasping the concepts but his writing has improved.
Pick well. But it’s more than creative writer or loves your kid.
I think there is a range of what teachers can say, but I would agree that I would hope that a teacher would decline writing if they couldn’t say something positive. That said, I know some students that didn’t make a lot of teacher connections, and I’m sure even if they were solidly academically, that it was more of a challenge for those teachers to write something. My daughter genuinely has a connection with a ton of her teachers, hangs with some before and after school, and eats lunch daily with her calc teacher (and friends). I had no idea how important that would turn out to be for LOR.
@mathmom Funny your mention of resilience through chess as I think that’s what really helped my son. It takes dedication and long hours of study to get a good rating. The over the board competitions builds patience, self reliance, and responsibility. The losses teach more than the wins.
@gallentjill --the “stress” is either self-imposed or parental imposed. It is no college-imposed because no one is requiring or demanding that students apply to colleges with single digit admission rates.
So maybe the answer to the question “Why applicants overreach” is that many are poorly advised.
There are many parents and many students who are smart enough to figure out at the beginning that they don’t have to enter the race to the elites. Plenty of smart kids who have fun in high school, get decent but not stellar grades, and ultimately head off to home state public U’s without jumping through hoops trying to somehow get into whatever college shows up at the top of the US News.
And there are some of us who get “lucky” – who have kids who have fun in high school, but also manage to get excellent grades without freaking out about it, and then manage to get into very reachy colleges. But these are also kids who would have shrugged off rejections and cheerfully gone off to whatever college showed them the love in the end.
There are kids who thrive on competition and stress, — and of course many of those kids do end up at Ivies.
And there are also kids who are overstressed trying to do what they or their parents think the colleges want, and most of them are probably not going to get into their super-reach colleges anyway – and they really don’t belong in the deep end of the pool in the first place.
I feel sorry for the kids who come to CC complaining of tiger parents who won’t see reason and force them to study all the time, and threaten to withhold support if the kid doen’t get into an Ivy caliber school. But again – that stress is a result of bad parenting, not college competition.
We live in a wonderful country where there are good colleges for students at every level. The major barrier to college attendance for most is financial, not competition for admissions.
This is basically my point. The colleges are not creating the stress. The hard numbers and the refusal to look beyond certain schools creates the stress. And nothing the colleges can do will alleviate it. It doesn’t matter how often they tweek the applications. No one is required to play this game. Unfortunately, some kids have parents who force them into it, and some kids put it on themselves.
My kids have pursued their interests in high school, been active in outreach groups that they have wanted to participate in bc that is what they wanted to be doing, etc. Nothing about their applications was done for an admissions committee. Everything they did they would have done regardless b/c that is who they are. I think authentic kids do have very successful outcomes.