Hi Bewildered,
Welcome. I don't post often here, but wanted to welcome you and start the discussion so that you can get (hopefully) lots of advice and perspectives. Our DD's situation is not dissimilar to your DS (grade skip, subject acceleration, young at graduation, taken lots of AP). This has impacted her ability to get involved with some groups due to age cutoffs for volunteer opportunities and jobs. To improve DD's chances of admission, she has taken some targeted actions to add leadership to her volunteer and club involvement and to make sure that she has multiple years of experience with the same groups. All of these things represent activities and interests that she really enjoys and they will also help "normalize" her application. Over the summer, she plans to start applying to colleges. We've convinced her to apply to the classic mix of Reach, Realistic, and Safety schools. Since DD does not have a "compelling personal story" we've gotten advice to look at the GPA & SAT scores for admitted freshmen and use that for determining how likely she is to get in. Yes, she wants to go to a specific top tier school. No, none of us is counting on it. We've watched the older kids at her school and being in the gifted program may help get the kiddos in, but only if they have the grades, activities, and scores to compete on the national level. That said, your son sounds like he will be competitive for grades and scores. Does he have a real passion that can shine through in his applications? He still has some time to really demonstrate his commitment and zeal for that subject or activity. Another thread has been talking about the "parenting arms race" and it is certainly easy to get carried away. That said, most of the students that I have seen get in to ivies do either "have it all" or have a compelling personal story.
