@ HowlerKarma — We haven't looked into merit scholarships and honors programs at public schools – thanks for pointing them out as things to investigate. Where do your impressions about the extracurriculars that they look for come from, aside from the anecdotal evidence that your daughter got in whereas her peers didn't?
@ Wesupportgifted — I'm sympathetic to a lot of your points, but I don't understand why they favor going to a local school? How are local schools less traditional and structured than elite schools are?
@ playandlearn — You might be interested by my article
High School, Human Capital, Signaling and College Admissions, which touches on some of the same things
@ JonLaw — It's worth noting that depending on your income bracket and savings
going to Harvard can be cheaper than going to Berkeley after financial aid is considered@ KJP — That sounds great. I don't know if you were responding to me or somebody else, but I wasn't arguing that one should choose one's activities based on how they look for colleges, rather, I was reporting on finding that it doesn't seem to matter, so that doesn't seem like something that one should worry about even if one is concerned about college admissions.
@HowlerKarma — If you feel like sharing, what kind of community service is she involved in?
@Bostonian — How did authors show a causal relationship? The correlation could be spurious.
