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    What happens if a child is interested in many things and pursues them all and is above average but not exceptional in any? Is it necessary that to be gifted, you have to be exceptional at an early age, ie, before applying to a college? What if it takes you longer (say in your 20s or even 30s) to figure out the one thing you are going to pursue and excel at?

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    There is no reason everyone has to follow the same path to exceptionality. By definition. And I suspect there are many of us here who have explored many areas of interest before settling (for the time being) on a field of focus. Nor do I believe that one has to remain on that one thing indefinitely.

    This can be more difficult to "package", of course, which is but one of the reasons that packaging is a very low priority for us.


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    Great perspective from aeh, as usual!

    There is much to be said for being pluripotent and having multi-potentiality!

    Did you see the recent thread You Don't Want a Child Prodigy?
    The article discusses the downside of specializing too early, and the upside of breadth.
    smile

    As it relates to college packaging, a few years back parents were saying that colleges don't necessarily want well-rounded individuals, or students with a sharp point of interest, they want people who are egg-shaped... a combination of well-rounded and developing a general point of interest.

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    Wren Offline OP
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    There was mention yesterday in a news show that there are 4 million kids graduating in any one year. So 40,000 are in the top 1 % and 4,000 in the top 0.1%. In China, you have 3 X the population. So if you get 120,000 kids in the top 1% that cannot into the top universities in China and apply here, you have a lot of kids with great scores. Now those kids need visas. But even if your have 10K kids in the top 0.1%, how do you differentiate? My kid just finished 9th grade in an accelerated school. 5+ in science, 5+ in math. She also did precalc with cty during the year. Bostonian's kid gets great scores, I imagine most of our kids have great scores. Why is MIT going to take one over another. Last year, a girl from DD's school got into Harvard, legacy, then in the spring MIT and Stanford. Perfect math scores on SAT, but not much else going on, but African American girl with perfect SAT math scores. Her main interests were classics. Classics competitions for four years. Now that is different. I just see so many kids on college confidential in the ED get waitlisted, with perfect or amazing math or science scores. So many, how do they decide which to let in, which to waitlist or reject?

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    Originally Posted by Wren
    There was mention yesterday in a news show that there are 4 million kids graduating in any one year. So 40,000 are in the top 1 % and 4,000 in the top 0.1%.
    I remember that when my DS was born, a coworker of mine who had an Ivy League education gave me this piece of advice: there are almost 40,000 high schools in the US. Every one of them has a valedictorian and each of these schools has the top 1% who are presumably very talented (presumably highly accomplished in other things than academics). Add in the genius kids who homeschool, foreign applicants who are the cream-of-the-cream in their countries and financially very well off as well and then, add in the diversity factor, athletic recruitment, seats reserved for staff families, it is very hard to get into an Ivy. So, he told me to let my child follow his passion and that it will hopefully show up in the application process. In my area, a lot of kids get perfect SAT scores (and go to good schools and have college counselors helping them) and they still do not get into MIT and Stanford.
    There was an MIT recruiter blog floating around (will post here if I find the link) that advised the same to all students desirous of a seat at MIT: follow your passions and do what inspires you and they will be able to see that in the application.

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    Originally Posted by ashley
    Originally Posted by Wren
    There was mention yesterday in a news show that there are 4 million kids graduating in any one year. So 40,000 are in the top 1 % and 4,000 in the top 0.1%.
    I remember that when my DS was born, a coworker of mine who had an Ivy League education gave me this piece of advice: there are almost 40,000 high schools in the US. Every one of them has a valedictorian and each of these schools has the top 1% who are presumably very talented (presumably highly accomplished in other things than academics). Add in the genius kids who homeschool, foreign applicants who are the cream-of-the-cream in their countries and financially very well off as well and then, add in the diversity factor, athletic recruitment, seats reserved for staff families, it is very hard to get into an Ivy. So, he told me to let my child follow his passion and that it will hopefully show up in the application process. In my area, a lot of kids get perfect SAT scores (and go to good schools and have college counselors helping them) and they still do not get into MIT and Stanford.
    There was an MIT recruiter blog floating around (will post here if I find the link) that advised the same to all students desirous of a seat at MIT: follow your passions and do what inspires you and they will be able to see that in the application.


    She is quite confident of her ability. I am not so sure about that.

    I think if you have your heart set on going to a specific school or HYP and the like in general, there is a high probability to be disappointed for anyone. These places are more or less putting together a bouquet, who knows which instrument, which sport, and which remote western state in a given year will be their cup of tea. Wren mentioned the probability of getting into a top Chinese university above. I would argue the difficulty to predict a child's chance of getting into a top university in the US is a lot harder than in China.

    The good thing about the US is that there are so many colleges. And other than the very top, being good academically is probably enough and you can be not too strategic about the extracurricular and just do what you want.

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    Many Chinese universities are now in the top 20 in the world, so they are now preferable for Chinese students compared to coming to the US, Canada, UK. The Chinese government has and continues to invest copious amounts of money into them. We had the president of Alibaba give a talk at my daughter's school. He is Canadian, went to Princeton, then Goldman Sachs. I asked him speciifically about Chinese universities and he said they were way ahead technically, because the government is investing, why they have the fastest supercomputer, ahead in plans space exploration. The kids that cannot get into those schools apply to the top schools here. I met some people and their son was at a Canadian university, a good one, not top 5. They told me that if you don't get into a Chinese university, you look abroad. But with the trade wars, visas are an issue. Last year, there was a huge drop in kids getting into US schools from DD's school. This year, more than double, probably because Canadians can get in easier than some countries. DD is american so it is not an issue. But I check the trends.
    DD is at a marine science technology camp this summer. Mostly kids who want marine science. I notice on the schedule next week they have a chat about admissions. I was a little shocked. But most of the kids are interested in this top school in marine biology. And they want to give them a heads up about applying, I guess.

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    Interestingly, the Chinese universities have in recent years discontinued the practice to add points for being proficient at piano, being an elite athlete, being an award-winning artist,what have you to the GaoKao exam. Using extracurricula to get an advantage was prevalent in the last twenty years or so but the universities(ordered by dept of education?) went back largely to admission based on academics only. This is partly because the game of extracurricular activities are largely played by the rich/upper class and seen as unfair advantage.

    Another major difference between Harvard et al and Beijing University and the other elite Chinese schools is that the Chinese universities really would like or at least don't mind filling their school with highest academic performers. They believe that academic trumps everything else. So in a way, they are all behaving more like a more extreme version of Cal-tech or MIT. The HYPs are definitely defining talent more broadly than IQ and academics.

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    Canada is all about the grades, but no standardized exams. Hence the universities, except for U of Toronto and Waterloo are not as desirbable as universities elsewhere. Waterloo is totally about grades and you have to have a 5+ to be considered for their CS or engineering programs. Kids get recruited out of their tech programs as easily as MIT and Caltech for Silcon Valley. But because there are not standardized tests, they will weight a kid from DD's school, or some other specialized STEM program higher. Not officially.

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