This might be of interest to those of you whose children are in middle or high school.

Cognito Mentoring spoke with admissions officers at Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Williams, Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, Brown, Northwestern and Caltech, about how they evaluate student participation in extracurricular activities, for 15 colleges total.

• Colleges generally don’t prefer some extracurricular activities over others: Seven of the colleges indicated that the nature of the extracurriculars doesn’t matter, as long as the student shows passion. Two of the colleges indicated that they have a preference for students who are involved in at least some activities with other people. Beyond this, no colleges indicated a preference for some extracurricular activities over others. In general, the colleges indicated that they define “extracurricular activities” very broadly, as anything outside of coursework, which could include work, sports, participation in online communities, etc.
• Colleges generally prefer depth of involvement over breadth: Six of the colleges indicated that they have no preference for whether students engage in lots of activities or a few activities, as long as they show serious involvement in their activities. Seven of the colleges said that depth matters more than breadth. None expressed a preference for many activities.
• Commitment can be important: Six of the colleges indicated that continuity of involvement and commitment matters. None said that these things don’t matter.
• Achievement level can make a difference, but appears to be less important: Five of the colleges indicated that achievement level doesn’t matter as much as depth of involvement. Two of the colleges indicated that higher achievement helps.

Cross-posted from the Cognito Mentoring blog

Thanks for relaying what the admissions officers told you, but I don't believe them. Do you think colleges care just as much about recruiting classical musicians as basketball and football players? Below is some evidence that they don't regard all extracurriculars equally. I also think that people should not be confident in their ability to judge "passion" from someone's (perhaps heavily assisted) college essays.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html
JULY 12, 2010
How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others
by Russell K. Nieli

...

Besides the bias against lower-class whites, the private colleges in the Espenshade/Radford study seem to display what might be called an urban/Blue State bias against rural and Red State occupations and values. This is most clearly shown in a little remarked statistic in the study's treatment of the admissions advantage of participation in various high school extra-curricular activities. In the competitive private schools surveyed participation in many types of extra-curricular activities -- including community service activities, performing arts activities, and "cultural diversity" activities -- conferred a substantial improvement in an applicant's chances of admission. The admissions advantage was usually greatest for those who held leadership positions or who received awards or honors associated with their activities. No surprise here -- every student applying to competitive colleges knows about the importance of extracurriculars.

But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call "career-oriented activities" was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student's chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. "Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, "has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions." Excelling in these activities "is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission."

Probably because these are activities of the working classes rather than the aristocracy.

Which means that they are unlikely to ascend to greater glory in their professional careers.

They are on the wrong side of history and their time has long since passed.

Or something like that.

Yep, I'm another one who doesn't believe what the admissions officers said. There was an NYT article last summer from an "application reader" at Berkeley which was very revealing about how they rank applicants. There are lots of hidden rules. Another piece of fact is that, at the level of the Ivy schools, there are plenty of applicants who have amazing depth AND breadth.

And even on the application forms of private middle and high schools the student needs to elaborate how their skills can contribute to the school. I'm sure the nature of the activities matters to the colleges.

My stand is that I will let my kids do the extracurriculars that will help them become who they want to be. How the colleges look at it is simply something that I don't care. Hopefully the kids will get into a college where they can thrive, but if not the Ivy, who cares?

This thread is making me think about NIH program officers. As in, they email you and say, "Your project idea fits with our mission. I encourage you to submit a grant application. Let's talk next week." So you get all charged up.

Then you call. You realize very quickly that the program officer either never read that one-page summary he asked you to write and that you labored over, or he's forgotten it completely and didn't bother to re-read it. So you summarize your idea and he doesn't sound so enthusiastic anymore. But you keep talking, because you really have no choice.

At some point, you bring up something about your preliminary data, and he gets all perky again. He cheerfully tells you that "this program doesn't require preliminary data, because we're trying to fund risky research. We're looking for groundbreaking ideas that aren't fully developed yet." So you ask about success rates for applications without preliminary data and he starts to answer sideways.

By the end of your phone call, you glumly understand that your much-anticipated conversation with this program officer has essentially been an attempt at extracting important information from someone who doesn't care about your tiny project. And you realize that he hasn't told you anything that you couldn't have read for yourself in the NIH's promotional materials (aka requests for applications and program descriptions). And then you start to realize that a lot of NIH's requests for applications seem to be rather narrowly written. And then you look at funded projects in the NIH's public database, and a lot of them are in the same general areas. So you quite reasonably start to wonder if the NIH is looking for a certain kind of "hot" project. And honey, yours isn't it.

It's not all the program manager's fault. This is what happens when success rates are around 10% (or less!), and the number of grant applications keeps climbing because there are too many people in research. It's also, IMO, it's what happens when you put the wrong kinds of people in charge of things like this.

The upshot here is that you can substitute "college admissions officer" for "NIH program officer" / "study section" and "extracurricular activity" for "project" here, and the story would be the same. Sadly, the reality is very different from what they tell you.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/03/a_british_persp.html
A British Perspective on American Signaling
by Bryan Caplan
Econlog blog
MARCH 28, 2014

Fun footnote from Gregory Clark's new The Son Also Rises:

SO TRUE!!

I was going to say this... Nope, lots of things are not required. This really just means that you are allowed to apply and or someone will read your application (more or less). It's a different story when it comes to who is accepted.

@ Bostonian — I took it as a given that recruited athletes are in a separate category. Thanks for the article - it was also linked by gwern on Less Wrong. The reason that this issue had eluded me is that our advisees to date haven't been involved with the activities described. As for other things, the general view that the nature of the extracurricular activity doesn't matter has been expressed by people other than admissions officers, for example by Cal Newport.

@playandlearn -

(1) What criteria do you think they use?
(2) I don't know how sensitive colleges are to this, but there are always greater levels of depth, and sufficiently deep involvement in something consumes all of one's time, regardless of how impressive one is.
(3) We list some considerations in favor of going to an elite college at our page College selection: factors to consider.

@ Val — What criteria do you think they use?

1) My honest answer to your question, after reading this NYT articles "confessions of an application reader" (Aug. 1st, 2013), is: I don't know. I think I have a good idea of the minimum requirements, but beyond that, I can't articulate any. There are lots of college acceptance stats online, which will give people some ideas, but I haven't studied those much since my older one is still in middle school.

2) Yes, there can always be more depth. But college admissions likely will only compare an applicant against other applicants, instead of an objective standard.

3) I agree. I wouldn't stop my kids if they can get in an elite college. My view, though, is that an elite college is neither sufficient nor necessary for career success or personal happiness. For a lot of students, though, it could help.

In other words, I want my kids to focus on building skills and mentality to become who they want to be. If these get them into elite colleges, that's wonderful. But I wouldn't let them choose activities just because they might look like on college applications.

That does sort of presuppose that "college" here is synonymous with "elite institution of higher ed, preferably HYPS or at least Ivy."

Which I think a fair number of parent on THIS forum, even those of us with PG children who are in or heading into college have rejected as a myth.

This thread, in fact, discusses that very thing in some detail.


The Right College is a bit more complicated than looking for the right brand name-- even in this cohort.

@ playandlearn — Even if it is true that college admissions officers have preferences concerning the nature of the activities, if one doesn't know what they are, one might as well that they have no preferences.

I should clarify that in my original post, I wasn't just reporting what they said at a literal level, I was also reporting on my subjective impressions based on the whole of my conversations with them

My interest in this subject is that a lot of students sign up for lots of extracurricular activities that they're not interested in because they think that it will look better for colleges. I think that they probably have an inaccurate model of the situation, and that they would do better from the point of view of personal satisfaction, from the point of view of building skills for using later on, and from the point of view of securing admissions if they did what they were interested in.

It's not the case that one has arbitrary freedom – getting high grades in ostensibly challenging courses and high test scores is nonnegotiable, but on the dimension of extracurriculars, it seems that one has a lot of freedom.

@ HowlerKarma — I spoke with admissions officers at the top 15 ranked schools because those are the ones that people are most interested in. I believe that the same facts are true for lower ranked schools as well. The subjective sense that I got as I went down the list is that for lower ranked ones, the preferences concerning extracurricular activities are still weaker, with indifference not only to the nature activities, but also to some extent with respect to depth of involvement / commitment, etc.

... and see, I have the distinct sense that depth and commitment very definitely matter-- even at regional public institutions-- when it comes to more elite opportunities, such as merit scholarships and admission to more prestigious programs within those campuses.
That three things are needed:

1. time of commitment (can't start in your junior year)

2. NATURE of commitment-- can't be all about "me-me-me"

3. additional bonus points for unusual array of interests that paint a coherent picture of who the individual actually is.



Also necessary-- volunteering that seems long-term and genuinely about intrinsic altruism, and leadership experience of some kind.

That seems to be what separates my DD from her peers who have not gotten the kind of merit awards that she has.

So it matters. Not just at the Ivies-- this just cut my DD's undergraduate costs by 90% at a state flagship.


With all due respect, maybe "people" isn't all of us here, because my level of interest in the Ivies is pretty low, and DD's was even LOWER, if that were possible.

I honestly believe that in her case in particular, 4-H (one of the "least favored" activities in Bostonian's quote-- which is deliberately cherry-picked data, btw, for anyone who is curious-- it's a SPECULATION that this might be so via extrapolation-- there's not data behind it) was probably distinctly helpful... and her involvement in it was sufficient to have picked up several thousand more in merit scholarships from THAT, too. But this is institution specific; land grant public institutions are going to view 4H and FFA favorably, and private schools probably less so.

If only the parents of 4th graders actually had crystal balls to know exactly what those kids are going to WANT when they are 12th graders... but nobody really does. Some very particular engineering disciplines in particular, the public land-grant schools may well BE the "best" school at any price. Personally, I would not "groom" my child for an Ivy admission by steering him or her away from otherwise positive and wholesome activities in favor of things that were less meaningful, but which might be viewed more favorably by an admissions committee in ten years.

The honest truth is that there IS no way to game the system with elite schools, because by the time someone figures it out with enough time to IMPLEMENT that "plan" the tactical advantage evaporates and the applicant looks just like everyone else that thought it was a "sure thing" five to seven years ago.

So in that sense, I agree. It doesn't matter-- because even if it did, and even if you knew... it wouldn't matter in the time-frame that you have.

What I disagree with is the idea that one shouldn't worry about anything BUT the Ivies. THAT, I think is wrong, even for PG children. I'm not alone in thinking that the system is broken here.

For highly gifted young people, consider letting them stay in the area where they are comfortable (geographic region) for a built in support system if they are undertaking years of study in a particular field.

Anything that is very traditional or is some sort of already set path might not be the best for highly gifted students.

When you study their histories, they are often the ones that reject very structured environments. They are the innovators.

They might be less likely to complete a traditional program, whereas they may have if they had the program more on their terms.

The group looking for the traditional path might be more likely to be the very smart (and maybe wealthy group) and doing what is expected group, rather than the highly gifted group.

I am remembering a friend in college who wanted desperately to be a librarian, but thought it was below her intellectual level and family expectations. She totally omitted her passion in her college applications mainly because she was afraid to speak her truth.

After college, she had to be honest with herself and go for the librarian training. I encourage students to be honsest, free to be who they want to be. Please do not do activities because it looks good to some college administrator. That is a huge time waster for gifted people.

Everyone benefits when any person follows their true passion and inside instincts - these may be less likely to be found in an after school club. Also, I have noticed that the highly gifted students can end up spending a lot of time alone developing their gifts which is another reason you might not find them in a club and it might be extremely helpful to have them stay in the geographic area where they are surrounded by people who know and love them and hopefully understand and support them.

As an aside, to the extent a percentage of this group may be more cost aware or even downright frugal, the highly gifted student might go in an entirely different direction in school-choice. When you know that schooling for your career overall will take years, the overall cost has to be considered.

Whenever I was on full scholarship, I always felt a responsibility to the school footing the bill. When you pay out of pocket, you are freer to have the experience on your own terms and not worry about your transcript.

For gifted people, they might develop their gifts better, quicker without all of the conventional trappings.

I think I'm nore of a purist then. I would encourage my kids to pursue ECs that are important to their growth, NOT because elite colleges allow it, BUT regardless of how elite colleges look at them.

For all I've read, and what I understand about top universities (never left once I entered), though, I think colleges do care about the specific types of ECs. It's not that they prefer some over others for no readon, but it's more about building their strengths as an institution and using resources in a focused way. They do look for students who are a "good fit" at the institution--it's not just that students look for a university that is a "good fit" for the students.

It could be a little dangerous to think too much about what elite colleges like or don't like. Obviously plenty of people do so, and to each his own. Even "stellar performance" in rigorous academic courses could be a dangerous idea if carried too far. Plenty of high school students choose safe courses, lenient teachers, safe projects, and become very risk-averse in their intellectual pursuit, for the sake of building a stellar record for college applications. There are plenty of undergrads and grad students alike who maintain straight As in many courses yet have no clue how to use the knowledge that they learned in a situation outside of the classroom.

But in the end, it's really to each his own.

Free education is basically my target.

Since an Ivy still drains your accumulated savings, particularly with the current financial repression model being used in the U.S. (meaning interest is 0%).

I would probably also accept Duke (or other schools) at 75% off, which is what I consider "effectively free" meaning "not taking all of my savings".

You seem to be using my business model for funding, which is "free room and board" plus "additional scholarship funds." This model works just fine.

As a parent of a kindergartener it is funny to think about how his current interests would look on college applications.

DS6 is our environmentalist / urban agriculture enthusiast. He has written our city council about allowing backyard goats, wants to create a chicken and food growers club that donates the eggs from their backyard chickens and fruits and veggies from their gardens to the local food bank.
He's talked to local police officers and judges about lowering or enforcing the speed limits in areas with lots of squirrels.
He's organized neighborhood trash clean ups among the kids playing outside.
He also enjoys drama and musical theatre. Particularly using drama to raise awareness about environmental issues.

His interests have stayed within these themes of the environment, food production and health since he was about three. When he was really into learning about the human body, he was really interested in the role of nutrition.

So when we look for extras, we are going toward what we think he'd like. Things like a science club, drama classes, camps at the zoo, and 4H. And if he changes interests, we'd look at other activities.

The idea of limiting his activities in these extras because they aren't the "right"" ones seems wrong.

KJP-- your DS sounds much like my DD at that age. She never grew "out" of her community-oriented outlook, and has chosen a lot of community service and leadership roles that make sense to her in light of those interests.

It's all very personal to her. One of the reasons that she wanted to stay local for college was that she has spent the better part of a decade getting the NPO organizers here to understand that she's AUTHENTIC, and she's not "just a little kid" but has real passion for the work-- she'd have been starting over somewhere else.

One of the things she is most pleased about after being named a Presidential Scholar is that this comes with opportunities for leadership and community service-- which to her is almost as wonderful as the $$.

The essay I cited discussed the data behind it:

The main problem with Espenshade and Radford's survey data is that it is too old at this point to be realistic as a picture of current practices at elite institutions, though:


Unfortunately, the characterization of "4H" for example, as a monolithic large market-animal production thing is extremely dated. A good many modern 4-H participants don't have that kind of profile at all, and just as many of them are likely to be involved in Model UN, debate, and robotics competitions as they are FFA.


Presumably those aren't the kids who are "disadvantaged" by participating, though.

Which of course argues that there may be something inherently flawed in the analysis of 4-H participation per se being a "negative" at elite institutions. Maybe some KINDS of kids aren't considered a good fit for those institutions-- but really, if you consider a kid that has a series of agrarian-like interests and extracurriculars, and an interest in forestry management or ROTC, then maybe Princeton isn't the right place for reasons that have little to do with how "elite" the student looks as a result of the extracurriculars, n'est pas?

Lots of BLUE STATE kids are involved in some of those activities, as well.

http://blog.speakupmovement.org/uni...efense-of-the-future-farmers-of-america/

This is (IMO, of course) a good summation of the substance of the remarks about, criticism of, and clarifications regarding the statements made by Espenshade and Radford in that study-- and where they make certain assumptions (evidently without parsing effect or causation too much):

http://facultyblog.law.ucdavis.edu/...-Office-Bias-Against-Rural-Students.aspx



I have in fact bothered to look up the original study-- and read that section of the discussion (and Espenshade/Radford's rebuttals/clarifications) with some interest, given my DD's extracurriculars.

This pretty much sums up my own conclusions:

http://legalruralism.blogspot.com/2011/04/college-admission-bias-against-rural.html


Also-- it's reported variously that this particular gem was derived from either "8" or "10" elite institutions' ad-coms, via confidential communications with those individual ad-coms, apparently, during the late 80's through mid-90's. Or is it late 90's? That's also been variously reported.

@ 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.

Brief update... There is no longer a Future Farmers of America. It is the FFA Organization and has been since 1990, when delegates voted to drop the full name in order to reflect the wider range of agricultural interests included within it (beyond actual farming). www.ffa.org for anyone who is curious.

It, along with 4-H, is, in my experience, an excellent way for students to learn responsibility, leadership, project management and to broaden their horizons (particularly for truly rural students). In fact, many of my colleagues who hire graduating college students have commented that they can tell which ones are former FFA or 4-H members, because of their maturity, drive, people skills and responsibility. Obviously, that's not true of everyone who is a member, nor does it mean that those traits never exist in other employees, but it is something that's been observed often enough to draw attention.

Just sharing that for those who are not familiar with the organization. The membership includes many students in urban and suburban areas.

I'm hoping that we will be somewhere with an FFA Chapter by the time PG ODS is in junior high or high school. The leadership skills I gained as an FFA officer have been used ever since and I'd like for him (and his younger brother) to have a chance to join, too. I have mixed feelings about the hallowed institutions, having attended both top-tier (non-Ivy) private and land grant universities.

Where do my impressions come from? My network of friends/former colleagues who are in higher ed, and my own experience as an academic meaning that I get the "lingo" and can read between the lines very successfully in interpreting communications from those in Academia at such institutions. I also spent time (post-Espenshade time) sorting out who got such awards within a STEM college at an unnamed mid-sized public college. Because I was a tenure track faculty member at that institution, and because I was a perennial good departmental citizen in terms of serving on the most time-consuming kinds of committees, apparently (sigh)... and because it was a good match with my personal interests-- improving diversity and retention in STEM, that is.

People like me (and those over in admissions) are wise to the fake or overly groomed resume. They can't always do much about it, because such an applicant really DOES have an enormous number of things down there on their vitae, but it's the little things that stand out.

Some of the things that are ringers for "this is only here because of how it looks to us" are:

a) short-term but Big Ticket and Splashy vacation-time "volunteering" at some exotic location-- often overseas. (This is the "getting-it-all-out-of-the-way-at-once" model of community service or volunteering.)

b) TITLES that sound impressive-- lots of them-- as in, in EVERY extracurricular, this applicant is "concertmaster" or "president" or "spokesperson." Because why would you be involved if you aren't in charge?

c) Completely random participation in various activities-- or lots of jumping around from one thing to another.



Okay, what do I mean by that?

Well, this would be a stereotypical "groomed" resume sample of a student like this:

* Ran silent auction for Ronald McDonald House gala benefit
* Served as President for Girl Scout Council (this year only)
* Vice-president of NHS (this year only)
* President of Student Council (past two years)
* Concertmaster and principal oboe, youth symphony (this year only)
* Spearheaded fundraising efforts for {school} Mission {to Caribbean nation}
* Media spokesperson for {school} Community Service project to {Caribbean nation}
* Built a school in {Caribbean nation}-- (spring break this year)


What's wrong with this picture? Well, several things--

The first is that the last three items are all probably a bit overstated, and they are all effectively the SAME thing, really... and the rest of it is photo-op stuff, but not much TIME commitment, other than the symphony one, but even so, let's assume for a moment that the oboe was taken up at the start of high school (when it became evident what an awesome 'scholarship' instrument it is)...

It's also not painting a terribly coherent picture of this student's long-term interests and passions. Well-- it is, all right, but not the way that Mom and Dad were hoping, probably. What it says to me is that this kid is a major schmoozer... and that if I asked co-participants in any of those above activities, they'd probably sneer at some of those entries, because the person basically showed up to shake hands and sign in, and did little of the heavy lifting BEHIND the scenes. Best case scenario is that this kid is pretty skilled as a PR rep for themselves.

Okay-- so my daughter's resume does NOT look like that. What does hers look like?

Peer tutoring Mathematics-- 3 years, ~500 hours.
Local Food bank-- 8 years, ~65-100 hours annually.
Advisory Board membership-- for local government agency-- 3 y, ~70 hours annually.
Community volunteering as a board member-- 200 hours +
NHS/NJHS leadership-- 4 y as treasurer, 1y as President
NHS project leadership-- food bank warehouse work, school events-- 25 hr, over 4 years; food drives 25hr over 4 yr.
NHS-- quilt raffles for Crisis Nurseries/children's charities-- 100 hr, over 3 yr.
4H leadership-- Club treasurer (2y), Club president (2y)
Random Volunteering in community through either 4H or county government (literacy, food security, and mentoring)-- 300+ hours.
4H volunteering-- county leadership (multiple-- all low-key, behind the scenes "real" work positions-- mostly out of the spotlight, and essential to the operation of the program and/or county/state fair)


In other words, she's a kid that puts in a LOT of time, and has done so for many years. Yes, there're a significant number of entries in terms of line items, but more significantly, they definitely read as somewhat under-stated, if anything. The leadership positions are "work" positions, not titular ones.


She also lists extracurriculars that have long TIMELINES, but without any particular "accomplishments/rewards/awards" associated-- like piano, (9y)-- for example. That communicates that the is a kid who has the skills to be responsible and commit seriously to an activity, even if it isn't one where they are in the spotlight. It's a good sign in term of college, because hard work OUT of the spotlight, (and without frequent trophies and award certificates) is ultimately going to be pretty important.

Something quirky and a little bit edgy also is helpful-- like actually COMPLETING a NaNo novel, building a prototype of something odd or strange, etc. is also a good sign, because it indicates intrinsic motivation. This tells the ad-coms and committees that this is a real person-- and that at least occasionally, this is a person who does what they want BECAUSE they want to do it, not because it will look good or score points with others.

There is fundraising on her list of accomplishments, yes, but it's low $ buy-in stuff (nothing pay-to-play on HER list), and it's going to local recipients, by and large-- it also fits with the rest of her obvious 'causes,' and makes sense of what matters to HER. She is clearly someone that simply likes helping other people with basic needs-- and doesn't need a lot of rewards to keep coming back for more.


Does that help any?


I truly think that our DD, had she been 16 and not 14, would have been a great fit at MIT. But for now, the state flagship is a better place for her.

I'll also add an insider trick here:


do NOT reveal everything on that vitae if there is an interview or a separate cover for merit scholarships.

Why not?

Well, because (assuming that you have a DEEP resume), you can hint at stuff that you DIDN'T feel the need to shout about when you give more info. My DD did this.

She didn't list starting her own profit-share business and being featured in the newspapers and local media as a ten year old. She didn't list her political activities at all. She didn't list her community service via piano performances at a local nursing home (which she's done for many years). She didn't list all the Shakespeare she's seen, nor the informal stuff that she's done just because she felt like it (developing a musical adaptation of Hamlet, for example, or composing, or game development).

Please note, though, that this is the kind of hat trick that ONLY an HG+ student probably can do-- because it requires a lot of time, and a lot of FREE time on top of a stellar transcript, and most high school students simply can't do it. You'll stand out as being even MORE interesting than they'd originally thought, and as modest and comfortable with your abilities.

Saying LESS than you could say is often a good strategy, by the way. Nothing irritates committees quite like wading through entries that are clearly inflated to sound better or more important, or the suspicion that many of them are DUPLICATES of the same basic entry...




So that is how to say "Hi! I'm the other 1%. You should offer me money."

"@ 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"

Yes, if you never save any money, these programs work well.

I'd have to look at the calculators again, but I'm guessing that if I sent my two kids to Harvard, by the end of it I would end up having spent about 30% of all of the money that I ever earned on private universities.

I will have to go back and look at it to figure out that one.

Meaning the estimated percentage of "all the money I ever earned".

@ HowlerKarma — Thanks for the informative comments.

I was admitted to Yale and u penn but went to a large state school that let me go for free. I had two activities on my application (yep, just 2). I love music and was involved in my school choir and a state touring group and had been volunteering with a non-profit since 6th grade and was a regional fundraising director. That was all that I had time for. Honestly, I do not see how the students today who have a gazillion things on their resume have time to become passionate about anything. Glad admissions were not as competitive in my day;).

The answer is they give up sleep, and downtime just hanging out with friends.

Or alternatively a person's passion lies in variety as did mine which meant I was in everything except sport or music. I have no plans to discourage DS if he continues to have broad interests.

Exactly, Zen-- and this is (I hope) obviously the route that my DD has taken. She loves the variety of things that she does. We feel that it is a bulwark against perfectionism, too, so there's no way that we're discouraging it.

My point is that students that are involved in a lot of activities are not the only ones who gain admittance to elite schools (while I am sure it doesn't hurt, as long as the activities are somewhat focused). It is ok if a student only does a couple of things as long as they do them well (along with great grades and high test scores). At both of the Ivey schools that I interviewed with (with alum's) I think the face to face was the most important factor. Once they narrow down the crowd it is really a matter of how much they like you, which is pretty much like everything else in life (at least in humanities and business). I would strongly suggest that students find and attend local events for more competitive schools they are interested in.