Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ivy League Admissions.

I'm trying to understand how and why "elite" colleges (not necessarily just Ivies) select students to admit using not just academics, but also "Extra-Curriculars" (ECs).

I came across this book "The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton" by Jerome Karabel
http://www.amazon.com/The-Chosen-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355X
I won't read this 738 page book, but the reviews give a good idea of the history.

Can anyone suggest anything more succinct to read about this baffling topic?

Does anyone have any insight?

I imagine a discussion on this topic could get quite wide ranging but I'd specifically like to hear actionable information and actual experiences.

I remember a discussion or two about this subject not too long ago. Might come up for you if you run the search.

In a nutshell, I recall reading somewhere that this was done to keep the number of Jews down in the universities (rampant anti semitism at the time). Apparently there were too many Jews for the admissions committees comfort at the time (the 40s maybe?). The idea was that Jews would easily be admitted using academic measures. But if other measures were introduced, admissions committees could use the extracurriculars as a way of excluding people. Am I the only one who has heard this?

I'll add a couple of questions. Do you do anything about this (i.e. try to build an "EC resume") or do you just ignore the whole thing and see where your kid gets accepted? (And be happy not to go to a place that rejects your kid for the wrong reasons.)

Also, can anyone explicitly name which universities put weight on ECs at the expense of academics?

Visit College Confidential, where this is discussed non-stop .
A book I liked was

The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College (2003)
by Jacques Steinberg

which profiled the admissions process at Wesleyan.

I believe that it is pretty much always AND, not "instead of."

It's just that with grade inflation being what it is, and with AP coursework not being what it used to...


well, there isn't so much to indicate which kids are the authentic article and are likely to succeed at a genuinely rigorous/prestigious institution.

Okay-- that's the official line, anyway.

Cynical me says that extracurriculars requiring ANY of:

passport, numerous vaccinations, special riding clothes, equipment which can only be purchased at auction and for a lot of money,

and most critically-- heaps of cash--

probably also signify to admissions committees that they are looking at the vitae of future alumni who will donate even larger heaps of cash eventually.

I second College Confidential-- just be aware that everyone there has very definitely been drinking the Kool-Aid, and quite a few of them have been drinking doubles or triples, neat.



But it will give you a sense of the sheer extent of the frenzy, anyway.

Yes, College Confidential is the place to go. Be warned, it is like crack for parents of college bound students, though!

One book that I really like that can help you think about ECs vs academics is:

How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out) by Cal Newport

I think it comes down to the stats of the kids who apply to the elite schools. Most applicants have stellar GPAs and SAT scores; the admissions folks need to look at other aspects of the application. Somewhere I recall reading that about 85 percent of Yale's applicants are "qualified", but since they admit less than 10 percent, other factors come into play.

For example, here are some stats on Brown applicants/admitted students:
http://www.brown.edu/admission/undergraduate/about/admission-facts

You have 2,457 applicants with an 800 SAT Math score. Brown admitted 2,759 students, so if they went strictly by scores, then you probably shouldn't even bother applying if you were less than perfect on the math section.

A kid with a 770 or 780 in math (one question wrong) isn't a weaker applicant than the 800 kid. Once you get to a score of about 2250 on the SAT, there isn't much difference from a perfect 2400 (just a few questions wrong on each portion can bring you down 150 points).

I guess I drunk some Kool-Aid myself, because I'm Brown grad. When I got in – a long time ago –, when it was certainly much easier than it is now, Brown's
line was that they wanted people who were passionate. Their story was that they were looking for young people who really cared about something, and were willing to take a risk to pursue it. I will say this. I recently went to my (gulp) 25th reunion. Most of the people that I reconnected with there had done some really interesting things with their lives. There were lots of doctors, a handful of lawyers, and many professors. There were nonprofit CEOs, and political activists. Movie directors, and social workers. There were very few people who had made a killing in financial services or business. It does seem that, at least as it pertains to my graduating class, there was something to the propaganda.

Oh, and since we're in the thick of this right now, (the college shopping extravaganza, I mean) given that DD is a rising HS senior, I should have answered the first part of the post.

A. I refuse to participate in this toxic arms race. I have more principles than that, and I do not wish to signal to my child that a limitless variety of means are justified by some end which is largely of mythical importance anyway. This is what I would call-- The Moral/Ethical High Ground. These children are being actively coached to OPT OUT of the elite college machine. NO WAY would their parents send them to an Ivy, even if they wanted to go.


B) Children must be prodded, coaxed, and bribed into the right choices. When that doesn't work, do whatever is necessary to demonstrate participation and move on to another activity that looks... er... elite. Sure, he doesn't love Chess, but he needs to learn that we all do things that we're good at. Save love for your grandma.
All the other parents are helping their kids get {competitive opportunity/award/etc}, so it's not like he's got much of a chance if I don't do his science fair project. I'm sure not going to feel guilty about helping MY kid get ahead of everyone else's kids... if they want their kids to get ahead, they need to be doing it, too.

C) I'm going to click my heels together three times and hope that this goes away. FAR away. On the other hand, every time I open one eye even a teensy slit, I find that college tuition has jumped another 5%. Maybe I should help. All the other parents seem to be doing it. Gosh, what if allowing her all those hours in girl scouts/dogging/reading/playing in the mud/babysitting was WRONG?? Oh no... sure, she liked it. But maybe we should have pushed her harder in fencing, cryptography and water polo. She liked those things too. We should probably have been more ruthless and forced her to spend her summers working at a volunteer job rather than visiting my mom and her cousins in the country. Aughhhh... I hope she knows that we just wanted her to be happy and enjoy her childhood. What if she wants to go to Snooty University and we BLEW it??

D) I know that he'll get into a great school... because I've made sure of it. But what then?? What if he hates it?? He certainly seems to have resented the process of getting his resume into that condition. He'd never practice at all if we didn't tie him to the sofa. I hope he can handle the pressure year after next. He doesn't seem very happy, though. Hopefully Elite College will be better for him. We've done it all for him, after all. I'm sure he knows we only wanted the best for him.

Us?

We fall most near C-- like most parents these days, save the ones we avoid (the B and D types). I completely understand the motives of the A parents, though. Boy, do I ever.

I'll also say that a good many C-type parents are stunned to see just how much the landscape has shifted under them since they were applying themselves. They really thought it was mostly talk from hyperventilating helicopter parents and that it would be relatively low-stress for THEM, because, well, they already knew what college admissions were like, having done it themselves once upon a time.

It wasn't all Kool-Aid then. I'm convinced of that.

The other horrifying thing is that most institutions now want the value of assets like your residence, your retirement savings, etc. in calculating your child's "need" for assistance in writing checks to the tune of 45-70K annually.

I don't know too many middle class-- even UMC-- families that can do that. It feels extortive, frankly.

As I still have nightmares about college and consider it the absolute worse experience in my entire life (yes, worse than practicing law), I am going to recuse myself from this discussion.

We have been through the process twice in the past five years (youngest D will be a college freshman in 6 weeks!). Really -- go to College Confidential's discussion area. You won't find enough people on this forum who have successfully navigated it recently to get solid advice. On CC you can really learn the ins and outs of how to maximize your need based and merit based financial aid, hear about how to balance grades vs. test scores vs. ECs when looking at your kids chances for schools, get suggestions on reach/match/safety schools, explore the pros and cons of visiting and what to do on visits, endlessly discuss the pros and cons of Early Action and Early Decision applications, and just about anything else you could ever think to ask regarding college. The landscape HAS changed unbelievably since we went to college, but CC is a fantastic resource to help you navigate through it.

Thanks intparent for the experienced based input. This type of discussion tends to have too much whining about reality and wanting a different scenario.

The world is different and you gave actionable advice to give your kid advantage in a highly competitive environment.

Having heared from parents going through the process this year, I heard good stories about fairly easy admissions to USC and Columbia, with good scores, not perfect and not big ECs. The USC stories seem to be generous about scholarships. But these are anecdotal. Good luck.

At this point I am hoping against hope that Texas's current rule where the top X% of high school students are granted automatic acceptance to state schools sticks around. When I graduated it was 10%, last I heard they'd dropped it to 7% or something.

Another resource that may be helpful is your school counseling staff. That is situational, obviously-- but if your child's school regularly sends it's top 15% (or more) into elite schools, then it's a safe bet that it isn't happening by accident. Ours is mostly not very helpful, but yours may be different.

Another resource that doesn't provide advice, per se, but just the numbers and admission requirements:

College Board's College Search feature Be sure to check out the "how do I stack up" tab under each college entry. Don't rely on that as set in stone, however-- colleges can and do shift their admissions requirements periodically-- but it's a good way to plan whether or not your child will want to take subject SAT's or not, for example, or a fourth year of foreign language versus a third year of laboratory science. It also gives you a feel for what kind of percentile your child would be at, achievement-wise, at a particular institution. Consider whether your child wants to be in the middle of the achievement distribution-- for some of our kids in particular, that would be a shock to them. Could be good, could be bad.

Anyway-- the College Board search tool also tells you about the relative weighting of test scores, transcripts, essay, and EC's in admission decisions.

Start this process-- at the very latest-- before the child's junior year of high school.

Ideally, you begin looking ahead to the interlocking steps of testing, academics, and extracurriculars when your child enters high school, if not before. If you haven't, of course, it's not too late at that junior year mark, but it is later than most of their peers will have done.

It's way better for most schools if the child has at most 2 or 3 extracurriculars that they are passionate and committed about-- not seven or ten. Better still if they are somewhat related to a larger whole that indicates who that child is as a person. This can be something of a problem with HG+ kids who often have high levels of multi-potentiality and NEED many quite diverse EC activities in order to fully explore different facets of who they are.

If you are low income-- look into QuestBridge and programs like it. My DD has four classmates that have been matched with Ivies via QuestBridge. We also know another bright, but not spectacular, somewhat nontraditional (older-- mid-20's) student who recently received a complete full-ride at Reed College, and another at Stanford. There is merit aid-- just less than was once the case, and more of it is directed at a smaller slice of the top students.

One other problem that we've noted is that if you have a grade-accelerated student, they may not be fully capable of comprehending the gravity of the situation there. On the one hand, you walk a fine line w/r/t perfectionism, but on the other, yeah, that "B" in Spanish is likely to make at least some difference-- to someone, somewhere.

Oh, and the other thing that I have both heard-- and seen in print recently as advice to high schoolers and their parents-- getting into an Ivy isn't appreciably harder than it's ever been. That is, if you'd have been a highly competitive candidate to get in at Harvard 30 years ago, you're still likely to get in at an Ivy. The real difference is that you may not get into Harvard now-- could be Yale, could be Princeton instead.

I'm seeing that this seems anecdotally to be true, from observations of our kids in youth activities and DD's classmates-- about the same number of them are matriculating at the same elite schools as when I was in high school, and it's the same 'slice' of kids in terms of ability/achievement.

More kids are applying to more schools, though-- this is largely because of Common-App. That does mean that ONLY applying at a particular Ivy is probably unwise, though.

DD will probably apply at 6 or 7 schools, but she's not interested in an Ivy. Her college list at the moment:

a) Reed College
b) UW
c) a local college, which would likely be a full ride, but is far from prestigious, though reasonably high quality.
d) USC
e) Rice
f) U-Chicago
g) Carleton
h) Claremont-McKenna
i) UVA
j) Trinity Dublin
k) UBC or Simon Fraser
l) ? She's looking into a Swiss one, a Parisian school, and another in Austria.

Oh-- and at only a handful of those does she fall in the "middle" of the green bars at College Board's site-- mostly, she's well above the middle 50% of students at the institutions.

Another tip:

look into what reciprocity agreements exist regionally if you are worried about out-of-state tuition.

MOST elite institutions, this isn't an issue since they are private, but that's a big reason why DD's list is mostly private schools, to start with-- often out of state tuition rates are 200-250% of in-state. Who wants to pay that for an "adequate" college when it elevates tuition into the same range that one would be paying at a place like Rice or Harvey Mudd, anyway??

International college used to be "too expensive" to really be worth considering seriously for most people. That has changed, but it is more complicated to live internationally as a student.

HK, are you concerned about your dd being grade accelerated (2 grades?) and how her scores will look on paper compared to the other applicants? Or is she still out-performing them?

The reason I ask, of course, is that ds11 is about to skip 6th grade and so everything from here on out, ACT, SAT, etc, will be harder for him to do exceptionally well on. Or maybe that's my misconception. Making the kind of decision we did feels like a huge leap of faith and I hope we haven't hurt his chances for choices later in his life.

The alternative is status quo, and that didn't really work for my older HG son, whose focus and grades slipped now and then because he never really learned to work at something.

It already has been a factor, unfortunately. DD isn't a kid that (apparently) does College Board tests exceptionally well-- I'm not sure if it's the format, or if she still has safety concerns that ramp up her anxiety to performance-attenuating levels, or what. It seems quite probable, now that we have an N of two.

Anyway, she certainly scored 99th percentile on the PSAT, but because of the timing of her 3rd skip, she didn't get a 'practice' run at that one, and therefore that was her very first out-of-home, formal testing experience. She missed the cut-line in our state by about a single question, and there is NO question that if she'd made that cut, she'd be a major contender for NMS, given the rest of her resume and her transcripts. Most of her practice tests had been VERY comfortably above the cut line. Interestingly, at home, when she's been tested by teachers from school, her scores are stellar relative to practice, so I do think that unfamiliar environment and disability-related anxiety is a major part of the performance attenuation happening. I am not entirely sure what the acceleration has done there.

As you note, the alternative to having that additional acceleration is virtually unthinkable either way.

Her scores are high enough for all but a tiny handful of institutions, and I'm not so sure that she wouldn't be competitive there, too,

The short answer is that yes, there MAY be some impact on test scores, but it's hard to say what it is. In practice that seems to have meant that on any given day, DD's SAT scores are "above 700" rather than higher. She has only taken the SAT once, and honestly, her endurance is part of the problem with that one. In light of that, we've determined that having her take the SAT again probably wouldn't matter. Sure, her math and writing scores might be higher, but she's unlikely to top the reading score that she has, since it's already near 800. On any given day, though, the math or writing COULD be higher quite easily. She's definitely hit repeated home-runs on the writing, scoring 800's routinely in practice exams. The SAT is a grind-- maintaining your focus on something that is inherently not that challenging or absorbing, but IS that stressful, over the course of 5 hours is-- a bummer, to say the least. Especially when you're done with each section in about 1/3 the allotted time, and just get to SIT there doing NOTHING while time runs out, which is what happens. Even if you test with accommodations or individually-- you sit for the full time allotment in each section.

Given how HG+ kids read multiple choice exams that are written for bright but NT people, 'perfect' scores are not necessarily a given no matter how capable the individual is, anyway, and so it may be that waiting to take them as an older student wouldn't really be helpful anyway. DD did a lot better on SAT practice done for fun a few years ago than she has in the past 6 months, when they 'counted.' As she grows cognitively, it gets harder to read those questions as-intended.

In my opinion, and this may only apply to kids who are EG+, I don't know-- it's probably a wash whether acceleration helps them or hurts them in terms of SAT performance. The further they go "past" NT for that cohort, the harder it may be to read superficially enough to get near-perfect scores. On the other hand, more life-experience means better executive skills, etc. which improves that 'on-demand' focus and ability to get inside the internal logic of the test.

We're thinking that the ACT probably would have showcased her better, being both shorter and not as choppy, as well as having a science subsection, but seeking accommodations complicates things substantially for her and frankly I'm not able to do it again just for the ACT-- too much energy output. If she does take the ACT, I've already told her that she'll have to do it without accommodations and hope for the best. Not ideal.


That brings up another really good point, though, and that is that for 2e parents-- you MUST make sure that your IEP/504 is both current and adequate to gain your child the accommodations that s/he needs in order to take those standardized tests. Do not assume that it's a given just because the school has been doing them, and allow at least 3 months to get them squared away with College Board or ACT either one.

Thank you, for all of this detailed information. I guess we'll have to wait and see what challenges the new school year brings for ds.

We have a pretty good counselor at my kids' school, and a good ratio (she is helping about 60 kids in grade, and has some additional staff helping her). She was an admissions counselor at a top 20 LAC, so knows the ropes. That said, my D had the best results of the senior class last year, and we mostly "did it ourselves" (with a lot of CC help). My D got into U of Chicago, Swarthmore, Carleton, Harvey Mudd, Kenyon, Mt. Holyoke, Lawrence, and Macaleter -- every place she applied, no wait lists. Only one of those schools that offered merit aid did not give her any, too. Your school GC will be helpful, but they are not all you need. One area in particular where I think they are not usually strong is the finances side, which is a huge issue in the college search process today. I also think the GCs start kind of late. They don't really spend a lot of time with the junior class until very late in junior year because they are worried about getting the seniors into college -- a lot of your work should be done by that time as a parent/student duo.


Reed does not offer any merit aid. If this student has a "full ride", it is either need based aid (certainly with some loans involved) or from an outside source that is not the college. No merit aid is one of the reasons my D did not apply there (not the only reason, but it was a factor).

One thing to note from HowlerMonkey's posts is to think about test scheduling. Most kids will want to take the SAT twice to try to get their best score. My D also took the ACT -- she actualy did very well with no prep other than one practice test the weekend before -- but her superscored SATs were slightly higher, so she used those. And if your kid is applying to top schools then most of those schools want at least two SAT Subject tests as well. And... my D was not happy with her first Math II subject test (required for Harvey Mudd), so she took that one twice. It adds up to a LOT of Saturdays for testing, and can get complicated with extra curricular activities -- my D said up front she did not want to miss Quiz Bowl state tournament or nationals for testing. It is also a really good idea to have almost all testing done by end of junior year. All my D had left to do fall of senior year was the repeat of the subject test. All of her visiting except two colleges was done by then, too. That meant she could focus in fall of senior year on her applications -- she knew where she was applying and what her odds of admission were because she knew her scores. A lot of kids are still visiting and testing in the fall -- try to avoid most of that by doing it early.

My D said to me recently that she is the only one of her friends who never cried over the college application and admissions process. Because we started early, had an organized search, and used a lot of outside resources to understand the landscape, she had the best results AND the least stressful search of all of her friends. It was long (kind of like a long presidential campaign!), but she says it was worth it to do it that way.

I agree, and this has been our experience, too. I wanted DD to take her school's "test prep/college orientation" class much earlier than spring of her junior year, but that is when the school offers it to students. Which is dumb, at least for the top 2% of them, who NEED to be looking further ahead.

Because of DD's skip, we're operating about 6-8 months behind schedule. There was just no way for her to do everything else (including a spring break international trip) this year and get caught up.

Pay close attention to what your child's target colleges require-- and what they prefer-- as far as academics and testing go. Some want multiple SAT subject tests, which means many test dates. Some prefer the ACT. If you are 2e, quite honestly, my advice is to really think hard about those schools, because if you have to test with accommodations, getting it all in is going to be seriously challenging no matter how early you start. If you have out-of-the-box accommodations you may have to really work hard to be seated for ANY exam you take. This has been our experience thus far-- DD has taken two of those suckers, and I just don't see it being POSSIBLE for her to do subject tests given the barriers that exist.

Waiting UNTIL your child's junior year is no longer a good idea. At all.

We didn't have a lot of choice, because DD's third grade skip was 9th-to-11th and we didn't have a ton of lead time to plan the outward ripples from it well. To my credit, I at least realized that it meant scrambling to get College Board approval for testing accommodations for the PSAT/NMSQT, but it was a near thing even so. Literally just days to spare.

Ideally, this is a smooth process that runs from freshman course selections and four-year-planning through fall semester of the senior year, as intparent indicates above. You don't need to have a college list by the end of your sophomore year, but you SHOULD have an idea what you'd like a college experience to have to offer... and be narrowing your wish list. That College Board college search engine is VERY powerful, I might add-- you can tweak it about 35 different ways to emphasize what is most important to you/your child. It may surprise some to know that the most selective colleges aren't all Ivies, strictly speaking.

As an aside, I have no idea what the nature of the aid was at Reed, other than to note that it was not loan-based, and may have been specifically awarded as a result of some diversity/returning student initiative with a college partner or benefactor. But it is a four year, full-meal-deal. I asked specifically because it shocked ME, too. I know Reed well, and I was very surprised.

That points out something else, too, though-- you don't really know unless you are a college insider at an institution-- or until you apply-- what is possible aid-wise. Many colleges have a "no merit aid" policy, but the fine print still exists-- individual departments may well offer merit aid to majors.

Oh-- and don't be fooled by lower tuition rates at public universities-- they may REALLY not offer any merit aid. Then again... students like most of our kids here? The sticker price isn't OUR price, either. Learned that one this past year when a friend's son could have attended {local land-grant school} for 20% of what the apparent published going rate is. Just because he had such awesome transcripts and test scores.

Also don't be put off by the high dollar amounts at private schools, but don't be fooled by "100% need met" either. Details, details, details. If that means loans, that's quite a different matter than 90% of need met without loans.

Usually when College Board grants accomodations for the PSAT, they grant it for all of their tests at the same time (PSAT, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and AP). You do need to register early if you need accomodations (like extra time), not all locations offer them. Another reason to lay out the testing calendar early for the OP.

I do not think any colleges express a preference for the ACT vs. the SAT. Almost every college takes both. And I think there is only one college left (maybe Georgetown?) that wants 3 subject tests -- all the rest take 2 now (since writing was added to the SAT & ACT). So whatever your kid is best at will be accepted anywhere.

Yeah-- there can be additional complications if you have particular types of accommodations, such as "breaks as needed" for a medical condition. That automatically means individual testing, not at a "center" but at a school, and if you aren't in an urban area in a large school, then you may have to beg a seat with another school. Obviously if you homeschool or use a virtual school, you don't have a "home school" to test at, so you have to call around to find one willing. That sounds trivial, but it's not.

Outside of urban centers, scheduling tests is really not trivial. I'm emphasizing the need to look-- specifically at which tests are offered on which dates and at which local locations. It's complicated. It's hard to avoid needing to test at a school/site not your own, basically.

Different test site coordinators may be more-- or less-- helpful with kids not their own, too. That's kind of a pain when you test under normal conditions-- but it's REALLY a hassle if you're testing with accommodations of any kind.

(Thus my aside about just not seeing how DD can possibly do a subject test... yes, she has accommodations, but it took moving heaven and earth just to get her a seat for the one time she took the SAT. Lots of butt kissing on mom's part, let's just say, and revealing just how well she did on the PSAT. Apparently being "elite" material meant that she was "worth" the trouble of accommodations... to the test site administrator. :gag: ) The reason we sought accommodations via College Board rather than ACT (they are different entities) is that AP, CLEP, SAT, PSAT, etc. are all administratively under the same umbrella. Technically, that meant that a single approval could be used to test with the same accommodations for any of those tests-- in perpetuity. The practical reality is that the barriers that exist to getting a "special" seat for a test mean that it takes months and months of phone tag and uncertainty to get a testing ticket anyway.

Oh-- and get a state-issued ID (or that national thing that I can't mention that lets you back into the country... ) because your child WILL need that to be seated for a standardized test, regardless of age.



Seriously: plan ahead. If you have any-- ANY-- special circumstances, TRIPLE that planning time. At least.


We're already looking and there are just four places that DD can take the ACT any time prior to the end of 2013 around us (and by around I mean within 65 mi)-- without accommodations, which still makes us pretty nervous. That one varies regionally-- being in the west means that the SAT much more widely offered than the ACT.

I'd say that parents ought to start thinking critically about what kinds of people their kids are as students and as individuals about middle school. That's going to guide a LOT of college decision-making. It's probably not a good idea to start that process sooner, though, because kids change so much during adolescence.

For example, we were looking at fairly rural settings and very small schools-- Grinnell, Bryn Mawr, etc. until recently, when DD decided that she really wants to live in an urban setting for undergrad. Then we started looking at places like Reed, Drexel, Claremont, Rice, etc.

We also wanted a mixture of both STEM and arts/humanities, with some established culture of interdisciplinary studies, since DD leans both ways and hasn't decided yet precisely what she wants to do. A school that has a history of very young matriculants gets a bonus score, and it's the reason that UW made our list.

Also be aware that more and more campuses are moving toward mandatory freshman dorm residency. If that is not part of your vision, keep that on your radar as a preference.

Oh, and one other thing to remember about public versus private institutions-- different categories for the purposes of disability. Likely as not that isn't a major consideration for most students, but it's something to be aware of.

That was from the book I referenced in the OP. It was the 1920s. (I've only read some reviews, not the book itself.) Apparently over time things have changed, but what has changed is the specific groups that are favored or disfavored.

My spouse and I were never educated in the USA, but we live here now and our children are born here. (By the way our oldest is 7 so we have a long time to plan.) This whole "Extra-Curriculars" (ECs) as a part of university admissions criteria is completely outside our experience, and I just cannot wrap my head around it at all. I certainly don't believe it's a legitimate method of selecting the best students. I want absolutely no part of it. But I have to be informed and try to understand it.

One thing I do understand is the pricing of colleges. The key observation is that if you are in the bottom 75% of household incomes in the USA, up to $90k/yr, see here
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?ref=business&_r=0
(or maybe even bottom 90% of household incomes, up to $140k/yr), the private universities are much cheaper than the (out-of-state) public universities, and the more elite the cheaper. I could send a kid to Harvard, Princeton or Stanford for about $10k/yr, but an out-of-state public university would cost $30k/yr or more.

So it's a huge financial windfall to get your kid admitted to an elite private university. It saves you a mountain of money. So it's important to understand what it takes to get into these places.

One thing that should be said is that some of the academic admissions criteria, such as High School Grade Point Averages, SAT or ACT scores etc. have low ceilings giving the false impression that all the students clustered near the ceilings are roughly equal, and that they can only be separated by non-academic considerations. But this is nonsense. They could simply have much tougher academic tests to really see who really are the academically stronger students. The universities surely know this, so it's curious that they choose not to have more revealing rigorous testing. (It's a bit like selecting for a gifted program by using an IQ test that has a ceiling of 120, and then choosing who gets accepted by seeing who has the most interesting (or expensive) hobbies.)

Looking at http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_do...0W_PercentileRanksGenderEthnicGroups.pdf , a 750 on the SAT Math is the following percentile for various groups:

Asians 92
Whites 98
Latinos(not Mexican or Puerto Rican) 99
Mexican-Americans 99+
Blacks 99+

A higher-ceiling math SAT would disproportionately benefit Asians, since they are more likely to be hitting the current ceiling, and it would not help blacks or Mexican-Americans, for whom it is already a high-ceiling test. This is not what elite universities want. Furthermore, to identify math stars, they look at results on the AMC/Math Olympiad and participation in summer camps such as Ross.

Ah, I missed that your kid is only 7 years old. You are setting your kid (and yourself) up for a miserable upcoming 10 years if you focus all your efforts on trying to get your kid ready for admission to one of the most elite schools for financial reasons. If you are really worried about cost or quality of education, move to a state where the public universities are strong, as obviously in-state tuition is more affordable (Michigan has U of Michigan, California has Berkley, Texas has UT Austin, North Carolina has University of North Carolina, Virginia has UVA or William & Mary, Wisconsin has U of Wisconsin Madison -- those would be among the top public university choices.) Not sure what reciprocity choices there are other states for these colleges -- at the moment I know Minnesota students can attend U of Wisconsin Madison for in-state rates. But it is hard to know whether any of those agreements will be in place in 10 years given the current financial difficulties many colleges have. But if you live in a state with a strong university, then you have that as a financial and academic option even if your kid does not get one of those very few spots at the top 2 or 3 colleges.

The Cal Newport book I recommended above is probably also something you should read because it is intended for exactly what you want -- figuring out a way to leverage ECs that are unusual/go against the normal tide of activity to get into top colleges. The basic idea is that every year there are 10,000 validictorians, 10,000 salutatorians, and just as many sports team captains, student body presidents, yearbook editors, etc. competing for the spots at top colleges. It is very difficult to compete head to head with that pool and stand out. Even things like AMC and the Olympiads are strongly represented in the applictant pool. So his idea is to follow things that interest you into some depth and stand out by being different (in a substantial way) from the rest of the applicant pool. It is an interesting perspective. But I do know this from having two kids who are past that stage (23 and 18 now) -- you can't force them to do things they are not truly interested in, it is easy to snuff out their interest and damage your relationship with them by pushing them too hard, and you can't make them into something they aren't for college admissions purposes.

One other thing I would recommend (other than saving your money, that is really the best strategy) is starting when your kid is in about 9th grade to spend some time on the financial aid topic. You can position yourself better in terms of assets and income stream if you understand what the colleges look at. It is really too early to worry about it now. And don't let anyone tell you that saving is a waste of time because it reduces financial aid. Most colleges take about 5% of your assets into account when awarding aid -- I would much rather be the family that saved 1/3 or 1/2 of what is needed than the family that has no savings. One bit of advice now is to NOT put any money into your kids' names or let any family members do so. That is weighted much more heavily in the financial aid picture.

What matters is the cumulative "tax" on savings, not just the annual levy. Let c = 5%, the "tax rate" on savings.

If your children will be in college for N years, the fraction of your savings you get to keep is

(1-c)^N

which equals 81% for N = 4 (1 child) and 54% for N = 12 (3 children).

I ran the numbers (based on my current 50% savings rate).

They would drain a lot of the money I saved over the years.

Bostonian, the calculation is different if your kids are in college the same years (they still only look at 5% regardless of how many kids you have in college). I guess that is a bonus of having them close together.

Really, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of college topics. CC has thousands (literally) of threads on stuff like this, and also many very knowledgeable posters. There are a couple of people who are college financial aid professionals (work in the area) on the FA board that can cut right to the chase on stuff like this. If you want the straight scoop, that is the place to go.

Jon, not sure what you are saying. Ultimately we as parents and our students are responsible for paying for our kids' educations. No one owes us any financial aid -- by the time we are done our family will have saved about $250,000 to spread over two kids (starting when they were wee, so it isn't quite as painful as it sounds), plus we have and will pay out of current income as well. And our kids have saved and will work summers and in school for some expenses as well. Of course it will drain money you have saved. But everyone has the option of cheaper colleges (in state, community college with a transfer, living at home during college). And honestly, those are the options that most low income students do take, along with loans.

YES, yes, yes. But-- those with middle schoolers should begin thinking strategically.

Some states with traditionally strong systems are in deep, deep financial trouble within those systems at the moment.

There's a reason why no UC schools are on my DD's list-- even though we're relatively local and one parent is a product of one of the top-notch schools within that VERY fine system. Right now? I wish that I lived in NC. Seriously. But I wouldn't predict that to remain true for a decade, so if my child were seven, no way would I move there for the opportunity that exists right now.

Look at rates of tuition increase over the past two decades within the institutions that you're eyeing. The UC system is particularly eye-watering there, but a good many elite schools have also gone from "no loan" policies to "oh well" in the past seven to ten, too, as their tuition has skyrocketed.

We have found-- at least theoretically-- what Jon posted to be true. The very, very elitest of the elite? They offer no merit aid-- because they don't NEED TO. Oh, sure, they offer financial aid-- to those who qualify. If you're above the 75th percentile in income, that's not going to be much, and even if you're not, "loans" are often the underlying answer to "how do you make sure that 100% of student need is met at your institution?"



This is the conundrum that we find ourselves in. DD is in for a truckload of financial aid at most public institutions because she's at the 90th percentile (and then some) at most of those. Not so much for places like Rice, Reed, the Ivies, etc. where she looks like a more-or-less average admit. (Aside from the fact that she's 3-4y younger, I mean.) Take a look at the College Board's stats on places like Virginia and the University of Chicago-- how many of their admits are in the top 10% of their graduating classes?? At some elite institutions, it's 95% or more of the student body. Why would they offer merit aid? There are 100,000 of those students for the picking of those top 100 colleges and universities... every.single.year. It's a giant game of musical chairs, and because parents will do whatever it takes (second mortgages, loans, etc) they really don't need to offer merit aid.

Different institutions are perfectly within their rights to consider whatever assets they like as "fair game" when it comes to determining what your ability to pay actually is, as well. That's not whining or doomsday talk-- it's just reality in this particular era. Be prepared to pay until it hurts. A lot.

Honestly, our plan for paying is to bump our household income by 30-40% and just write the checks.

I also LOVE intparent's advice re: EC's and interests off the beaten track. This is why we haven't pushed DD into math competitions and chess, and have encouraged her to do things like 4-H. Elite college admission planning? Good luck with that, honestly... you're aiming your child at a moving target whose transformations are largely irrational and unpredictable.

Remember when everyone wanted their kids to take Japanese since that was what the future had in store for North America?? Now, it's the Chinese and everyone wants them learning Mandarin. You can't play catch up like that and hope to guess right as you peer 10-16 years into the future.

Encourage your kids to do what they love, to develop passion and determination and commitment to some things, and the rest? Realize that there's no real way to control it, and little way of even predicting it from more than 5-6 years away.

You are looking in the rear view mirror.

Yes, again.

You can also find employment with the university in question.

That often gets you 75% off.

I think that lots of people are playing the wrong game.

Ahhhhh-- you DO know my plan!

Alas, since the rollout of adjunct and fixed term teaching, it's often more like 20-50%, and those are prized 'benefits' that aren't offered to anyone less than full time. "Adjunct" as a category, by the way, is often by definition <0.49 FTE at an institution.

There's also the matter than without ties TO an institution, getting hired into an elite campus is easier said than done. But there are always lab positions. They just don't pay very well.

Here's another resource for general college planning (not specifically 'elite' and in fact, much of his advice is about cost savings, NOT considering 'worth' of colleges based on how good they are):

FrugalDad-- common sense for college He does have a couple of really good blog entries-- pay particular attention to his discussion of freshman versus renewable aid from colleges, something that is very easy to overlook.

Another resource:

College Data

Some of the information here is a reprise of what is over at College Board, but there are also financial particulars that College Board doesn't address or make public, too. There are built-in calculators at that site, but it is behind a registration wall.

Considering that the point of working for them isn't to collect a paycheck, the pay doesn't really matter.

U of Chicago actually does give some merit aid (my D got some, much to our surprise). But don't count on a lot -- but something is better than nothing.


Jon, I have one who graduated from college last year and one entering college this fall. So I am not looking in the rear view mirror. I know exactly what the college bills look like these days, and what the pros and cons of the various choices are.

That's not the rear view mirror that I'm talking about.

My point is that it does not appear that the next 30 years are going to look anything like the last 30 years.

... which is why it's really difficult for parents whose kids are only 6 or 7 to know what the right thing to do is, from a strategic standpoint.

Ask parents who planned that way in California.

Many public university systems are edging nearer toward insolvency all the time, and that is having real consequences, not just for tuition rates (which are a symptom of the larger problem) but also in terms of institutional infrastructure in an educational sense. If I had a 6yo, I wouldn't plan on sending her to a public university in ten years. No matter how storied or robust. That system (in general) is currently on quicksand.

The reason that I think this conversation is a valid one here (as it is not in most online communities) is that we are all the parents of the kinds of kids who are inherently "Ivy League Material" in some way by virtue of their HG-ness.

If you start from a position where that is not the case, then there are only two real reactions to this kind of question (meaning, "How do I make my first-grader Harvard material and insure his/her eventual admission?").

1. TigerParenting. These are the parents that never even question whether the goal is reasonable or achievable, nevermind worth doing. They figure that it's merely a matter of figuring out HOW to make it so, and doing whatever is required to see it through.

2. You're insane. Your child is a little kid, and you've got a screw loose to be worried about college planning other than to be saving as much $$ as you can.


I think that this community being what it is, there is a legitimate middle ground that involves neither 1 nor 2, but it is predicated on the fact that any child of a poster here is probably legitimately destined to be competitive at a range of Elite colleges, pretty much regardless of what we as parents do in the interim.

With that said, understand that my remarks have much more to do with questioning the assumptions in response 1 than they do with judging people who opt for a goal-oriented approach. I also question the possible worth of looking more than 4-5 years away in attempting to out-play one's fellow parents at this game. Unless you have limitless resources and the ethical sensibilities of a sociopath, outplaying that particular field probably can't actually be done. Please see Tiger Mother for details. While she was writing tongue-in-cheek, um-- she was still actually DOING all of those nutty things to?/with? her kids. I couldn't bear to prune and snip and mash on my DD's character and interests to the degree necessary. I'm not a human Bonsai master, basically, and I do think that is largely what it takes to go the conventional, low-risk route to a guaranteed Ivy admission.

I also think that choosing your child's college is probably not entirely wise, and even less so when they are not yet in middle school. There is no college which is "perfect" for every student in every field of study, and much of the data needed isn't available until a child is 2-5 years from matriculation.

I don't think that it's a crazy question for parents of young PG kids to be thinking about, though.

Which is why I fully intend on continuing my and my wife's family tradition of getting into the Ivy League and then telling them that the only way we attend is if they agree to pay full freight like the other colleges.

If they can't pay, then they don't deserve our children's attendance.

Sorry, but them's the breaks.

I'm with you, Jon.

On the other hand, my DH is not. He's old school-- "you get in, and we'll handle the money-- wherever you can get in and want to go, we'll find a way."

That's so thirty years ago, frankly...

It's *undergrad*.

That's like high school these days.

You don't *pay money* for undergrad.

In fact, your goal in *undergrad* is to get a 3.8 so you can go to dental school or get a Ph.D. or whatnot.

Look, the Tiger Children are all hammering at the Ivy League where they all get to compete with each other in some sort of insane perfectionistic Adderall arms race to nervous breakdown land.

Put your child where they aren't.

Use the Ivy League *admittance* (ideally more than one, the lesser Ivies might work best for this) to get *more* money out of the university that's already offering you lots of $$$.

Jon, you can do that if you want to... but they will not adjust their financial aid based on what you WANT to pay. There are plenty of kids on the waitlist who will take the spot if you don't pay. I would suggest you not have your kids waste their time on Ivy applications if the net price calculator does not show what you consider to be a reasonable price for them. The NPCs have changed the game somewhat in the past few years. Now you can have a better sense of what the cost is going to be ahead of time. College apps (and the financial aid process) are a LOT of work. I would not waste mine or my kid's time on applications to colleges you know they can't afford to attend. It isn't worth it to say "My kid got into...." if you know you can't pay the bill.

Now... I do have that attitude toward schools that are not as strong, but still don't give merit aid. Franklin & Marshall, for example, might have made a fine safety school for my science oriented D2. But they do not give merit aid. Sorry, a lower ranked school that won't reduce their price for a high stats kid isn't even getting an applications. And (sorry, HK) -- Reed is on that list as well for us. My D was on the high end of their stats and "their kind of kid" in a lot of ways. But they didn't offer enough that we wanted to make it worth paying full freight if their FA was poor (which their calculator indicated it would be). But top colleges can find students who will pay and/or borrow to attend. If you don't want what they are selling at that price, then go find other options.

HK, I do think Berkeley still offers a world class education even with CA's financial issues. I probably wouldn't encourage my kid to go to any other California state system college, but they start from a very high place. Also, in our state the legislature stopped some of the slide in funding this year. They froze tuition in-state for the next two years, and started putting some money back into the university system that had been stripped out during the recession. It may be that more states will do that in the next several years. The slide we have seen as a result of the recession may not be permanent.

The thing about the "next 30 years" is that you are all looking at shorter horizen -- 10 years or so until the OP's first kid hits college. We all thought 10 years ago that it also couldn't go on this way (college couldn't POSSIBLY cost $60K/year by the time our kids attend). Guess what? The trajectory did not change. You have to also assume it will not change for you. Start saving -- a strategy that includes savings, some merit aid (don't aim for the top schools, but go to 2nd tier if this is important to you and your kid doesn't like your state schools), paying some from current income, and making your kids at least own their spending money and book expenses can work (tell 'em now, they can start saving grandparent birthday checks for college -- no kidding, my kids did). And possibly some small loans. If the trajectory does change and it ends up cheaper (or your kid gets that golden ring of a top 3 college acceptance with a cheap price), celebrate with a trip to Maui or some extra into your retirement account.

Jon, just read your previous post. Ivy league admittance won't do a thing for your FA at another college. Now if you have a better FA offer from a comparable or better college, SOME schools will review your FA with that in hand (we did it last year, so I know). But some colleges won't budge (example: Swarthmore) no matter what other offers are on the table. But I think Ivy League acceptance means nothing in the FA negotiations with other schools.

Yeah, I'm actually in agreement-- with all of that.

If it's the RIGHT school, then that has to include financial considerations. It just has to. That's not to say that we'll get to name our price, though. LOL. I wish.

Reed isn't seriously on my list, either-- but it's a relatively local "fit" (the only one within 600 miles of us that isn't a "safety"), let's just say, and an admission there can be used-- as Jon notes--

to leverage additional merit $ from public/less prestigious schools that still have good-to-very-good programs in my DD's interest areas.

Places like UW, Linfield, Gonzaga and Cal Poly, basically. It's possible that this is a regional thing. There are fewer "top" students vying for merit aid at places where population is sparser. We do know several people who have been able to leverage prestigious admissions this way within the past four to seven years, though, so it's a real effect.

Also-- at an increasing majority of college campuses, the notion that it couldn't keep going like that has proven to be true. It hasn't, in spite of gut-churning annual tuition increases. 72% of college courses are now being taught by non-tenured/non-tenure-track faculty. Adjuncts, post docs, and fixed-term faculty. It's the money. The other problem is that courses are full, thereby increasing time-to-degree. Even Berkeley isn't quite what it used to be there, which is why we've opted to bag that entire system in spite of the loyalty that we naturally feel. Five years ago, I'd have felt differently, but it really does feel too fragile to continue-- and we're hearing that from insiders (faculty and admin) within the most prestigious UC campuses-- they are advising their OWN kids to look elsewhere, basically. That has shifted just within the past 24 months or so. It's a disturbing change.

Our state has frozen tuition increases temporarily, too. But everyone knows that is merely a band-aid. The student loan bubble is fraying around the edges, and I don't think that anyone knows for sure where those particular ripples are going to wind up.

Can I just goggle in admiration at this feat of verbal navigation for a moment? Let us appreciate:


You just won the Science Olympiad, Jimmy! What are you going to do now??

:cue cheesy grin at the camera, and a big thumbs up from Jimmy:

I'm going to Nervous Breakdown Land!

That's not the point of the exercise.

You show your child that you are the one who is trying to dictate the terms, not the university.

They could make it free, but they choose not to make it free. So, your demand is not fundamentally irrational. It is within *their power* to act, but it is *their choice* not to.

They are then free to decline your demand. But it was your demand, not theirs.

This is a very useful tool to develop in terms of negotiation because creating a frame that defines the transaction is particularly useful in life.

It's a learning exercise.

The Tiger Cub http://tigersophia.blogspot.in/2013/07/cultural-faux-pas-and-fourth-of-july.html , who is attending Harvard, is spending the summer in India working at a gifted school for rural youth. I read her blog and have noticed any signs of a nervous breakdown (and one would not wish that for anyone). My colleagues and I have good jobs and stable families and are graduates of Ivies or flagship state schools like Berkeley or Michigan. Pretending that most Ivy league grads (or their parents) are miserable or sociopathic sounds like sour grapes to me.

I honestly didn't realize the problem existed until I spoke with a Cornell professor about their local problem. (What do you mean another one just threw themselves into the gorge near your office??? This happens a lot???)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-fishman/the-gorges-of-cornell-uni_b_498656.html

And another relatively recent valedictorian overachiever medical student suicide from perfectionism.

http://www.whiteville.com/news/what...04c4c54-ada9-11e2-aed3-001a4bcf887a.html

Apparently this problem is well-recognized within the various counseling departments at these institutions. It was, however, news to me.

And please.

Amy Chua is a relatively nice well-balanced person who just happens to be particularly obsessed with intellectual social climbing (Yale Law or Bust!) and box-checking. It's her thing. And it's a *good* trait to have as a law professor where status really *is* everything.

And I'm not talking about schools like Berkeley and Michigan.

Those are the schools that you *should* be attending because they are *not* saturated with Tiger Children.

I have to say that this is true. There are schools which children and their parents choose-- which are good, logical reasons, well-considered and based upon the facts available to them...

and then there are the TigerParents who are most concerned with the appearance of the thing, and not the thing itself. In this instance, a very fine education.

I pretty much think that anyone who posts here is by definition not in the latter category to start with. We've all been bitton by "but it's the GIFTED PROGRAM" (so what more do you want, exactly? Actual RIGOR??)

That is not to say that the Ivies are not very fine schools. But there are schools which are probably equally fine (for individual students) which do not carry the same social cachet.

Admission statistics, emotional patina, and social currency aren't the whole story. Not by a long shot.

Sorry... this is like telling your kid to stop the tide, and saying they get a moral victory because they tried (even though they didn't stop it). You are playing with your kids' hopes and emotions with the idea of having them apply to schools you KNOW you can't afford for them to attend, then telling your kids to just thumb their noses and walk away from an acceptance and feel good about it because they rejected it on their own terms. This feels cruel to your kids. There is no negotiating power on your side in this process with the top colleges -- they honestly don't give a fig about whether your particular kid chooses to attend because of the thousands (literally) of other kids waiting to take your kid's place if you don't want to pay. Example: U of Chicago put something like 14,000 (!!!) kids on their waitlist this year. Not really sure why so many... in the end they probably took a few hundred if most (no idea what their stats are for that this year). But they did. You are NOT in a buyer's market with the top colleges unless your kid is Malia Obama or Emma Watson or Chelsea Clinton. Our kids are GREAT -- but they aren't famous. And you and I aren't rich enough to endow a new building for them. Those are the ONLY students who have real leverage. Don't make your kids waste their time and hopes on a school they cannot attend -- an Ivy or tippy top college won't bend for them.

One thing a lot of parents don't realize is that top schools accept quite a few more students than they expect will say yes to their offer. They offer more acceptance than they have actual space for because they know some kids will turn them down. And they have the waitlist for backup if more kids say no than they expected. Your little snowflake is special to you, but to the top colleges they are one of a crowd of qualified applicants.

Great analysis... although...

I can easily see my own DD 'bothering' to apply (assuming we'll pay the fee) to a school she has little intention of attending in order to play a strategic game with the institutions she IS interested in. In her case, she just-- really-- isn't interested in an Ivy. She's thought about it, and just isn't. So in her case, those "reach" schools would NOT be places that she'd seriously want to go if she were admitted, and therefore it would be merely strategic for her. In that case, it wouldn't be cruel. Though I do agree about the time required to do the applying. (ay yi yi)

Of course, this also only works if your child isn't really interested in attending one of those top 50 or so institutions to start with, and it also means giving up on having him/her with similarly able peers (though even that is not necessarily told by the numbers... a kid that gets perfect scores on the SAT after ten tries, and has a 4.0 due to many grueling hours with a tutor isn't really "just like" my DD).

I know just enough about how admissions works and just enough about the current arms race to seriously question whether-- anymore, I mean-- the statistics on admitted students are actually reflecting that those are-- as they might well appear-- HG+ kids. Or are they hothoused bright and nearly-MG ones?

My gut says that it is increasingly the latter. I'm pretty sure that there is no college placement that will put my DD with only "true peers." Nature of the beast. We're hoping to put her with enough peers that she can find a few to connect with.

Well, it is fun to point out to a Ivy League grad that you got paid to go to college and they had to take out $$$ loans and that, amazingly, you ended up in the exact same place.

The reaction is pretty priceless.

I think the fact that our last names are not Clinton, Bush, or Obama, and that we lack sufficient cash to endow a potted plant, much less a building...

means that maybe she's not so likely to regard those kids as "peers" in some senses of that term.

Hmm.

In all seriousness, I do think that this is an important consideration. I'm being flippant, obviously, but we have thought about how comfortable we want DD to be-- and how far out of her comfort zone is wise, in terms of educational benefit. This relates to the major reason why I think elementary is way too soon to be short-listing colleges. I would have very strongly predicted one set of answers to those introspective queries a couple of years ago when DD was 11-12, and have quite different answers NOW. Luckily, we've left our options as open as they can be. She could decide out of the blue that she simply MUST attend a super-elite school, in spite of what she's always indicated. She still has over 6 months before she MUST know where she's applying.

That revolves largely around peers (how many? who are they? how similar are they to dd SE/IQ-wise? cultural differences?) and the individual 'culture' of a campus. It's hard to capture that with numbers-- which is why it's NOT good to decide on a college based solely on its relative reputation, without ever seeing it in person or knowing alumni.

I, too, am a graduate of Berkeley, but I do think that the game has changed somewhat since I applied many years ago. Back then, I got mostly As with a few Bs in high school, worked at the mall at a nut and candy store, babysat, didn't volunteer much at all, didn't attend academic summer programs or do internships, had very good but not perfect SAT scores, only took the SAT once with no prep beforehand, was a NMSF as were a number of my classmates, but no one communicated with me the steps toward becoming a NMF so I never applied, and generally was a good kid. I don't think that with that record I'd get into Berkeley today.

The kids I see bordering on nervous breakdowns are the ones who are trying to do everything and at a level beyond what they would naturally be driven to do without the worry and pressure that it is necessary to succeed in life. A full 10% of my dd14's class (they are going to be juniors) have GPAs above a 4.0 meaning that they've never gotten a B and they've also taken the only one or two AP classes that have been available thus far at their grade level. Really, it would only be one AP that was available by your sophomore year unless you were accelerated enough in math to have finished pre calc by freshman year. Many of these kiddos also sign up for zero hour classes, meaning that they start school at 6:15 a.m. rather than 7:30; they are enrolled in numerous extracurriculars, members of many clubs, work, volunteer,etc.

I don't know that it should all be about that degree of sheer quantity.

Okay, Cricket2, that sounds really awful. No wonder they're bordering on having nervous breakdowns.

I went to an elite women's college in Massachusetts. My high school experience sounds similar to yours, except I had really no clue about the national merit scholarship competition. Definitely not my thing anyway. My SAT scores were all 90th percentile+, but not perfect, either. Like you, I don't know if I'd get in today. Probably not.

As far as I'm concerned, this is all completely insane. We're beginning to embrace the idea of opting out in this house, that's for sure. The kids will be welcome to apply anywhere they like, but we'll have heard-to-heart talks with them about the state of affairs and why they should not be upset by rejection letters.

HK, I don't see that admissions to a higher ranked college gives you any leverage in the financial aid for a lower ranked or equivalent college. I have heard no stories on College Confidential of success with that strategy... What I have heard is asking for a "review" of your Financial Aid. The colleges will all say they don't "match" FA offers from other colleges. But if you can show them evidence of lower cost of attendance at a higher ranked or comparable college (they want the financial aid letter and/or any scholarship letters to look at), SOME schools will negotiate to match that FA (even though they hate that word). In our case my D's top choice school looked back over our FA information, asked a question about one account (did not require any written proof of the answer), then granted more aid. But just for freshman year, who knows what will come in the future? It may very well evaporate after that point. But you have to show a cheaper cost of attendance at a comparable or higher ranked school to even have a chance with this strategy.

Val, honestly... your kids will probably not thank you for opting out entirely. To some extent you are in anyway if your kids are going to college. Some of my D's friends had pretty awful senior years due to lack of planning and preparation in their families for the college process.

My DD's transcripts DO look like what Cricket describes (her GPA is a weighted 4.4, unweighted it's 3.96) and she has hard-core leadership experience in 4 different EC's, has 3 other EC's, and has hundreds of hours of community service to her credit. Her test scores are well over 90th percentile-- and one subscore at 99th. One shot, and no subject tests, no AP scores. She should graduate in the top 3 in her class.

This sounds like a lot-- and it is, in terms of scheduling everything-- but DD still has plenty of free time. This is because she simply doesn't have to work that hard to do most of it; it DOESN'T take her four hours to do her homework at night-- only 30 minutes.


We've not really pushed her to do all of those things she's got on her resume, but we definitely see some peers who DO get that kind of pressure. As I've noted before, these are parents who are pushing MG or bright NT kids to look as though they are PG. The genuine article doesn't require so much effort to look like that, YK?

My child is probably NOT a good bet for a top-10 or even top-20 admission. She's merely 'competitive' there, and she doesn't have anything particularly flashy about her other than her age. She hasn't placed with INTEL, done an international academic Olympiad, or won the National Spelling Bee.

Yes, I do think this is insane.

intparent-- I'm merely going by what I've heard in some detail from parents we've known pretty well. The upshot is that the gap between the school which has admitted the student and the one offering additional aid has to be REALLY significant. Significant enough that they want your kid there to improve their department/stats. In other words, most parents of kids here probably wouldn't use this strategy because they wouldn't want their kids headed to a regional public uni or anything.

As I've said before, dogging is definitely good for $$$$.

My SIL (now a pediatric dentist) cashed that in back in 2003-ish.

Yeah, I was all over the opt-out bandwagon, too...


until I realized-- and more to the point, my DD realized-- that just going to "Local Uni" meant that her classes were going to be filled by the same caliber of classmates that she's been suffering through in her honors coursework for the past several years.

In other words, she NEEDS for college to be different, and she recognizes that the kids at the homegrown option.... just... aren't bright enough. This trend is a bigger problem than it used to be what with initiatives that have expanded "college-for-all" to include those students who would have been conditional admits at best ANYWHERE when we were in college 25-30 years back.

Well, colleges accept them and do what they can to RETAIN those students now.

Having read that post, I'll say one thing - that cub is a fine writer.

It is also rewarding to see that gifted is rewarded and not pilloried over there. Getting into the school that she will be interning at makes getting into an Ivy like a cakewalk.

That's because college is now high school.

Literally.

Your second to last paragraph sums up EXACTLY why I am busily trying to sock away the moolah right now

Yes... this is one reason I was all over the college search from early on. As hard as parents work out here to get acceleration and differentiation for their kids in the lower grades, you have to realize that most state universities and lower priced colleges also do not have a lot of intellectual peers for our kids.

My D attended THINK at Davidson for a couple of summers, and one thing she said in several of her college essays (the "Why College X?" essay so many schools want) was that the reason she wanted to attend their college is because they matched the intellectual environment she found at THINK. Seemed to resonate with admissions. She only used this with the colleges where she truly felt it was the case (did not say it for her "safeties"). But I think it was the deepest desire for her in her college search. And she would not get that at our state university -- at least not in our state.

The point of college right now (from the administration's perspective) is apparently to vacuum in as much "free" government debt as possible.

With every passing year, this problem is getting worse.

However, I don't expect the system to break or anything major to change anytime soon. I don't see a reason for it to change.

I simply expect it to keep getting worse for some time.

The students are clearly functioning as excellent sources of tax revenue (now at 6+%), the colleges are happy (free $$$), parents are happy (college is good! education is good!), and students are happy while in school (look at these perks! We have a spa! the government is giving me beer money! Yay!!!).

I also expect the median wage to continue its punctuated decline (in real terms). I expect that the next recession (whenever it hits) to drop this lower.

http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2013/household-income-real1-13a.gif

The system seems to be solidly locked into making things worse because there are enough people who are getting what they want at the moment.

I expect health care to be a major "problem" before college is really noticed as a problem.

See, I think that the difference on our end is a couple fold:

1) dd's school has the most bizarre weighting system that I've ever seen. I thought that dd misunderstood what they said until we reached this year when she was taking AP classes. For an A in an AP class, you get a 4.02 rather than a 4.0 figured in. They also take nine classes per semester. So, if your unweighted GPA was a 3.96 coming out of your junior year, I don't think that you could get the weighted number much over a 4.0 even if you'd taken every AP class available and gotten As in all of them when you are only getting an additional .02 points per AP classes and spreading that over the 54 classes you would have taken by that time. Also, to have gotten to AP science courses by your junior year, you would have had to have taken two science courses each year since pre-AP bio, Earth Systems, and pre-AP chem must all be completed before any AP science that is weighted. There is no AP lit class available until 11th grade either and pre-AP gives you no GPA bonus.

2) my dd is not blessed with speed. Her processing speed is very average or even a bit below. Her depth is amazing and she out performs her grade peers on achievement tests by a lot (still 99th percentile compared to national and her school's norms) but the other kiddos seem to be able to do good enough work to get As faster or they just aren't sleeping - lol!

If I am defining "effort" as time, she does require as much as the bright and MG kids easily. Where she differs is that the quality of the work she is putting out (like writing for instance) is beyond what those kids can do even with a lot more time than she.

Right-- and the system as it stands is poised to mostly reward kids like mine (or those who can be made to LOOK that way, anyway)--

who can pack more than seems humanly possible into a day-- every day. I feel very strongly that this is WRONG, by the way. A kid like Cricket's ought to look like a great prospect for college by virtue of the quality and depth of her output.



A word about GPA here-- 'weighted' is very significant at some high schools, and hardly at all at others. AP is about twice the volume of work compared with the standard issue course, but an A in an AP course is a 5.0, and the standard course, it is a 4.0. An honors course is not that much more work than standard (but all the assessments, etc. are different and more... erm-- 'enriched') and that is a 4.5-- which explains why my DD's GPA is what it is, I hope. She does have a couple of A-'s and a B on her transcripts. She's just packed a LOT of classes into her past four years.

We also successfully lobbied for her to be able to take some things at the AP level without having had a full year of the regular course first (which I think is stupid-- at least for kids that actually BELONG in an AP class to start with, let's just say). Physics, for example. Policies like that really hobble highly capable kids from distinguishing themselves come college time. Grrr.

Because they are on semesters and use Carnegie units to calculate graduation credit, she will graduate with-- I think-- 26? maybe 27 Carnegie Unit "credits." That's nine classes a year-- on average-- and technically, students can graduate with only 24 credits.

This is why admissions offices use unweighted GPA, though. Trying to parse what it all means otherwise is Byzantine. To say the least.

The hardest part of all of this (back to the OP's question, I mean) is that with a super-accelerated kiddo, you wind up DRIVING THEM to all of this stuff that they do...


And with that, I'm off to pick my DD14 up from her internship and schlepp her to a piano lesson, after which I'll take her downtown again, to a local writer's group moderated by a YA author... before swinging by the grocery store on our way home in at 8:30 PM.

She has been at work since 7:30 this morning-- after working with the dog for 45 minutes before getting ready for work.

This is a TYPICAL day in her life.

I wish that our school gave some credit for pre-AP/honors/dual enrollment courses. Thus far, dd has taken and gottens As in every pre-AP class available save for one that she chose to not take at the pre-AP level b/c she didn't like the subject that well and because she already had two other pre-APs plus multiple science classes that year (she did get an A in the regular class, though). The pre-APs easily have double the work of the regular level class and cover a lot more material, but there is no GPA bonus for taking them.

She has her first dual enrollment class next year along with some APs. The APs will give that +.02 bonus, but the dual enrollment, like pre-AP, has no GPA bonus either. She is, none the less, probably going to take physics as a dual enrollment her senior year rather than as AP because she'd have to take two science classes again next year to get the pre-AP physics in first before getting to AP. Her school really is not willing to flex on that for anyone.

No..I don't believe this is true (again, go read that Cal Newport book recommended near the top of the thread). I think the admissions officers are aching for kids that are not just crammed so full of activities that they don't have time to breathe. There is a minimum they are looking for in GPA and test scores. But beyond that -- I think they want kids who are not "flat Stanleys". They want texture and evidence of true intellectual interest. My kid who got into Swarthmore, U of Chicago, Harvey Mudd, and Carleton last year had a 3.7 GPA (unweighted, her school does not weight or rank, and they can't take AP courses until senior year anyway). She had great test scores, but NO leadership. She was busy in high school, but a lot of the time was with activities that were not what everyone else was doing. And some things were outside of school (eg, entomology, took her collection to the State Fair through 4H).

This does bring to mind a question for me: how does one ascertain if the culture of a school lends toward a HG+ kid with deep passions finding intellectual and emotional peers?

We are just starting the college visiting tours with dd14 as she's going into her junior year in the fall. We are going to kill two birds with one stone so to speak later this summer by visiting family out of state and looking at a uni that is near those family members that has been in dd's top few for some time. While we're there, we are also going to try to look at another campus that someone recommended that is fairly close. Over spring break of her junior year, I plan to send her to visit my mom in another state and have my mom take her to look at another school that is in her top few list.

She's hoping to get a feel for what these schools offer and whether she likes big or small, but everyone is going to tell us that they have a great fit for her socially I'm sure. How does one know if that is true? FWIW, she is not interested in Ivy League schools, just normal "good" schools like UW Seattle, Stetson in FL, etc. partially because these schools have an undergraduate major in her very specialized area of interest.

Step 1: Find where the school ranks on "Top Party School" on a scale of 1 to 10.

Step 2: Find where the school ranks on per student athletic spending on a scale of 1 to 10.

Step 3: Find a high quality list of academic reputation on a scale of 1 to 10.

Create an optimization program on Excel that minimizes (1) and (2) and maximizes (3).

It is more art than science... we started our search with the Fiske Guide to Colleges and a pack of post-its to mark the schools that looked interesting. Then looked at SAT test score ranges. Then visited. It was easy to find reach (and expensive) schools that fit the bill. Much more challenging to find matches and safeties. We found you really have to set foot on campus to tell. And my D didn't really know for sure until going back for accepted student days (so 24 hours on campus) at her top choices. She ended up picking what was her 3rd choice going into those final visits.

Ah, my D did mostly stay away from schools with Greek life and Division I athletics. But to be fair, you can find a significant number of HG kids at a college like University of Michigan. They just co-exist with the other types...

I would know how to search as to whether schools are Division I athletic schools, but are you also saying to avoid schools that have any Greek presence at all? Are there any universities with no sororities or fraternities? I'd agree that dd isn't interested in that being her social outlet and doesn't want a party school.

That's really good to hear, intparent. My DD also tends to gravitate to stuff that just interests her-- not what seems like it will 'sell' well. She's busy, all right (hey, it's the run-up to fair, and she's a 4-H kid with several project areas), but hardly frenetic, in spite of how it sounds. We don't do the over booking thing, and we're pretty confident that the EC's that she does as social activities like RPG-tabletop gaming aren't going to even be on the applications.

What we've found to be true is that as much as we wish her age didn't matter-- it does. There is this underlying assumption that-- whatever she does-- we're somehow behind the scenes pulling her strings like a puppet. Bizarrely, she is judged WAY more harshly than typically aged peers, and her grade skips are counted as "lack of experience" in some ways, which boggles my mind. I mean, seriously-- how the heck is a kid who SKIPPED two grades since 5th grade supposed to have EC's for those years? She's done at least a third more than most of her peers every year, but the elapsed time is sometimes what matters anyway. "Oh, this kid has been doing this for six years." There's no real concept of how to handle the kind of compression that PG kids have to have academically. Scouting and 4-H have both proven problematic here, particularly whenever there is an "also" that specifies a lower limit on age. DD is a fair target shooter, but because she only JUST turned 14, she can't really do it through 4-H, because she'll get less than a year in the project.

This is a big reason why a college like UW that has a lot of experience with young PG students gets a huge bonus score in our personal ranking system. They stand to understand that being radically accelerated 3-4 y comes with some strange baggage on the side.

As I said earlier, we never really worried about all of this much because we figured that we were opting out and then-- well, then she started really considering what kind of intellectual peers she wanted/needed out of college. Then we took a hard look at just what kind of students are now the majority at even reasonably good public universities, and realized that she was going to be-- again-- at the 95th+ percentile or higher. Not good.

At the start of their junior year is NOT a good time to suddenly decide that you aren't opting out after all, because it leaves you all scrambling to document things and schedule everything that has to happen.

Just saying that if Greek life dominates on campus, then partying also probably dominates. One thing the Fiske Guide tells you is what % of the men & women on campus are in the Greek system. A high percentage is something we personally tried to stay away from. Some colleges have no greek presence (Carleton doesn't, I am thinking maybe Mount Holyoke didn't).

However, my oldest D went to a LAC that does have sororities and fraternities. She did not have any trouble finding a group of like-minded friends (good students, very light partiers), and wasn't bothered by that aspect of the campus. But she is not my PG kid, either...

You can't avoid partying altogether at colleges today unless you send your kid to BYU or a very religous school like Liberty. But as JonLaw said, you don't want one with a huge party reputation, either. You can read between the lines in Fiske and get a feeling. Also, College Confidential has a forum for pretty much every college -- you can go read past posts there and get a pretty good idea for a given school what the culture is like, I think.

On the other hand, 44% of the students at MIT are in the Greek system.

I thought this article would fit nicely somewhere in this conversation:
Dear Eighth Grader...

Although from 2012, I believe the advice is still relevant.

Dandy

The article brought up some good points and by the time DD is applying, parents will have strategized an EC path to optimize intellectual curiousity.
Reading the college search,I am glad I am out of the US college insanity. My parents were not even involved in my college search. I did it myself, applied myself, and accepted and then told my father.

There is little evidence for the predictive ability of unstructured interviews (although applicants must deal with the system as it is):

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~danajd/interview.pdf
Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion
by Jason Dana, Robyn M. Dawes, and Nathanial R. Peterson
Abstract
Unstructured interviews are a ubiquitous tool for making screening decisions
despite vast evidence of their invalidity. In three studies, we investigated the propensity
for "sensemaking" - the ability for interviewers to make sense of virtually anything the
interviewee says – and “dilution” – the tendency for non-diagnostic information to
weaken the predictive value of quality information. In study 1, participants predicted two
fellow students’ semester GPAs from background information and, for one of them, an
unstructured interview. In one condition, the interviewee secretly answered questions
according to a random system. Consistent with sensemaking, random interviews did not
perturb predictions or diminish perceptions of the quality of information that the
interview yielded. Consistent with dilution, participants made better predictions about
students whom they did not interview. Study 2 showed that merely watching a random
interview, rather than conducting it, did little to mitigate sensemaking. Study 3 showed
that participants believe unstructured interviews will help accuracy, so much so that they
would rather have random interviews than no interview. Impressions formed from
unstructured interviews can seem valid and inspire confidence even when interviews are
useless. Our simple recommendation for those making screening decisions is not to use
them.

Parents strategizing to optimize the intellectual curiosity of children sounds like a contradiction in terms to me.

Dandy, I love it and I've printed it out. Thanks.

Because the "lack of experience" is often true, regardless of intelligence.

Some things need to be experienced to be known. And experiences take time.

Interesting study. It gives a name "dilution" to what I've often thought about our company's pre-employment interview process. I never had a study to back up my inkling, but it's comforting to know that I wasn't completely nuts.

Although the study suggests that the interviews might be useless for the decision-maker (school), the interviewee (student) should danged well be prepared and aim for impressing during the meeting. After all, the alum and/or school might not be familiar with the study and still give too much weight to the interview.

Some of the Ivies require the interview, but there is very little weight placed on the interview. Unless you really mess it up, it is just something checked off on the list of application requirements.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...issions-interviews-as-success-slips.html

At some other schools the interview can sway a decision.

That value isn't what I'd call "high" however. My DH and I have both seen campuses where the ranges encompass Greek participation from a low of 0% to a high of 90%+.

It is true that there is a rough-- very rough, as it happens-- correlation between Greek system participation and party culture. However, the highest value was NOT at a party school, and one of the two with the lowest participation was a notorious party school. Our personal cut-line (and we're approaching school selection EXACTLY the way that intparent described) is at about 60-70% Greek. Not because of party culture per se, but for the same reason we're seeking schools with on-campus residency less than 80-90%-- because being PG makes you a singularity already, particularly if you're young-for-college. Why make it worse by choosing two OTHER means of making one's self an outlier?

Kids who are likely to want to be a part of the Greek system (which does, by the way, have many opportunities for leadership if that's your kid's thing) would evaluate those criteria differently.

Similarly, Div1 athletics and academic quality. Just looking at the traditional Pac-10 schools, you have UW, UCLA, and Cal in that grouping; all are very good public universities, ranked in the top 100 in the world for certain disciplines. Duke is a basketball powerhouse and has been for decades. Gonzaga. Boston College. UVA.

Personally, having done undergrad at a place with almost no athletic program to speak of, and then grad school at a Div-1 school, it was both interesting and a lot of FUN to attend big-time football and basketball games-- get your face on ESPN in the crowd, laugh at the antics of the crazy undergrads, cheer with the band, all that jazz. It was just fun. We're thinking a bit differently than some parents about this, however-- DD's attendance at an online high school means that she has NOT had a lot of personal experience with this kind of thing, and therefore it's a facet of the college experience that we would like her to have available. She has enjoyed the Div 1 athletics that she's experienced growing up in a Uni town.



It really just depends on such a complex cocktail of factors, I'm afraid.

This is TERRIFIC as a blueprint for finding a good fit.

It's also what we're finding-- there are a number of "reach" schools (most of which are also solidly out of our league financially), and then the rest are all in the 'safety' category (and so far to that side that they're almost academically unthinkable), though many of them are also out of reach for financial reasons.


Indeed. I wholeheartedly agree.

I mean, I can suggest to DD that some things will "play" better than others in terms of scholarship payoff and prestige with college admissions, but she IS going to do things her own way. I'm actually rather glad of that, because as has been pointed out numerous times in this thread alone, while I can THINK that I know what will play well with college admissions committees, even though I have direct insider knowledge, the bottom line is that it's inherently rather difficult to predict accurately.

Ergo, I would be advising her to quit being herself-- which certainly has a clear cost... and a not-so-clear benefit which is mostly conjecture.

We really didn't have to strategize... my D's ECs were pretty much on the mark for this. She was a top quiz bowl player in our state (that was really her top EC), went to THINK for two summers, was one of only 2 girls on her FIRST Robotics team, collected insects and did some other wildlife biology activities, was in a fencing club (just practiced, no competition prior to applicatons), and won a few awards in visual arts. And had fantastic test scores and good teacher recs that I think backed up the intellectual impression. And she knew immediately what she would write on for her common app essay (thankfully she did not have to agonize over her topic for that particular essay!) -- she wrote about how she has tried to emulate Sherlock Holmes in her life since first encountering him in literature in 3rd grade. We really did not try to make her into something she wasn't... and when colleges could see clearly what she was, they seemed to want to admit her.

Also, my D is pretty introverted, and interviews would have been a nightmare for her. So she chose not to interview at all. None of her colleges required it (no Harvard application like the one in the article). College reps from a lot of the schools she applied to came to her high school, so she made sure to attend those sessions and take a couple of good questions for the reps. Usually only a few kids were there so the rep got their names -- that is as close as she came to interviewing. Although it would be a great skill for her to develop, we felt like the stakes were too high for her to struggle through interviews for college (she has been practicing on the summer job circuit this summer instead :)). Now my older D was a great interviewer, so she interviewed everyplace, and I am convinced it helped her get more merit money at the school she attended. So your milage may vary on the interviews depending on your kid and the school -- if you think this is a weakness for your student, then consider avoiding them if possible.