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Great post, brilliantcp. Yes, all of that.

The point I was trying to make, Bostonian, is that if someone had gone through all the stduents at DD's school (identified by number only, let us say) and taken students with the highest math GPAs and standardized test scores to nominate for math club or team, my daughter would surely have been on that list. (I don't know how she would have done on math contest try-outs, but let's leave that aside for now.) But she would never have considered joining the club (I did ask her when the letter came home, as it did to all students). It is mostly boys and she does not consider it her venue or her thing. She had already had the experience of feeling outnumbered, socially alone and ignored at chess club. Mind you, I think the worst part was feeling socially alone--you do want to have friends at your afterschool activities.

polarbear, my son had a hard time at chess club sometimes last year because he was a kindergartener who was quite good at chess, and that really did not sit well with the older boys. A few kids called him "Kindergarten" in a not-nice way. He stuck it out because he loves chess and probably recognized some of this as sour grapes. This type of atmosphere is also not fun for many girls, who have been socialized to not be into this (or are just not into it...whatever).

= general mutterings of society as a whole that my DD has been subconsciously listening to her entire life. No wonder at age 6 she decided she would never again discuss her STEM interests at school

I can understand that the older chess club kids might be tough on a kindergarten kid. But as our kids got older, if it was an activity they wanted to do, we told them it was not about being with your friends. You don't need to be friends with the other kids on the chess team, math team, baseball team, etc. You just need to be polite and respectful, and be a teammate.

My eldest played her sport with kids who were not her friends - she was not in that group. They seemed to be okay with her, but they were downright nasty to some other kids. When they were about to graduate HS, these kids apologized to her for being not so nice in their younger years (though my kid certainly didn't receive the worst of it from these kids). However, they were teammates on the field and worked together on the team (even placed 4th in the state in their sport one year). They just weren't buddies outside the team.

As for conflicts, there will always be conflicts with various activities. You can't always participate in all of the activities you would like to do. As kids get older, they often must choose one or two activities and drop others. Anyone who is seriously into math competitions, a travel sport or similar will quickly realize that these things take a lot of time. My kids play a travel sport and the tournaments consume every weekend in the spring/summer (and they have played travel since 2009). They also know kids who are very serious about math competitions, as in making USAMO (one kid did so every year from 8th grade on) - then it isn't just about padding the college application.

Now after I said all of that, I admit that middle kid did Mathcounts because of the friend thing. Her friend's dad was running the Mathcounts club/team and the friend didn't want to be the only white kid there. So she asked middle kid and one other friend to come to Mathcounts so she wouldn't feel alone. They ended up having fun - the dad does a lot of fun math projects and provides plenty of snacks. When middle kid was in 7th grade, a couple of the good team members were sick on the competition day, so middle kid and the other friend had to sub on the team. Turned out to be an all-girl team (two white kids and two Asian kids) and middle kid and friend hadn't really done much practice, but the team managed third place at the county level out of about 24 teams.

So if a kid thinks they might like an activity, tell them to give it a fair chance. They don't need to be friends with the other kids, just be a good teammate and treat others with respect. This might not be a good approach for really young kids, but once our kids hit 9 or 10, this was our approach (and I think it has worked out pretty well, at least for our kids).

Is that so? My son is heavily involved in both chess and math, to the point where he has won a national title in the former and is very competitive at the state level in the latter. He spends a *lot* of time on both activities, by choice, because he NEEDS mental stimulation every day.

He was also just elected school president in a school with 900 kids so these "NERD" activities obviously haven't affected him socially. It is not the activity that determines social acceptability. It is the child and how they interact with others that determines social acceptability.

Hopefully the main benefit is that they enjoy the activity.

I am separating this last part of Dude's statement because so many people have this incorrect perception.
Selective colleges are NOT looking for well-rounded applicants. They are looking for a well-rounded CLASS. They can put together a well-rounded class by getting the star athletes, the champion debater, the musical prodigy, the politicians, accomplished actors, and yes, even the math and chess prodigies.

Some very specific examples:

* My nephew, who graduated from Yale a few years ago had the 4.0GPA & 2400 SAT (one sitting) and had done some science research with a professor while in high school. His words were "Yale doesn't want well-rounded people. They want pointy people!"
* My next door neighbor has a daughter who is a math prodigy. She is finishing or has finished her PhD in Harvard.
* Two doors down, their son was high school President and near the top of his class, and was accepted into Cornell.
* D's best friend's older sister is now in Harvard. She was a state champion debater.
* My boss has two children in HYPSM. One child was state-level competitive in both debate and track. The other was exceptional in math.

Mithawk, that's all anecdotal. It doesn't prove anything.

Val,

My nephew's comment about pointy people was something told to him by someone in Yale (it's been a few years so I can't remember who it was).

Think of it a different way. The most selective colleges have plenty of kids that can succeed academically at their college, to the point where have to refuse about 80% of the academically capable kids.

So what makes an admissions officer say "We want this kid" over the many others with similar test scores and grades? Will it be the well-rounded kid from an upper-middle class family that dabbles in five different activities?

Or will it be the kid that achieved exceptional grades despite being shuttled around six different foster homes? Or the kid from a highly under-represented demographic. Or the exceptional oboe player that can replace the graduating senior. Or the kid that won the USAMO gold medal? Or the girl with crew ERG times better than anyone. Those are accomplishments that admissions people can point to to choose one child over another.

Now, this really only happens at the 25-50 most selective colleges, and people can make a very good case that this competition is not good for most kids. That is an altogether different discussion.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread any further so I may start a new thread about this soon.

This is where my D goes to college. They are making great strides in getting women into STEM areas where there is less representation. My D toyed with the CS major, and is even researching in it this summer, but recently changed her mind and switched to physics.

http://theconversation.com/closing-...-making-a-difference-in-many-lives-41422

I find their splitting of the intro CS classes up especially interesting. My D hadn't coded much at all before college, and it was great for her to have an intro course where she wasn't trampled by kids who had been loading Linux on their machines at age 11. And after the first semester, the tracks merge and she has done fine in her CS courses.

Harvey Mudd gets very bright students, so I could see this approach working there. Programming, like many other things, is a skill. Smart kids can pick up the basics quickly and solve moderately difficult abstract problems.

However, others become reasonably proficient through years of experience in learning what problems to avoid. So I wonder how well this approach would work in a lower level college.

As the book "In! College Admissions and Beyond" by Lillian Luterman and Jennifer Bloom, two college admissions consultants, says, "be alike but spike". "Be alike" means have very good test scores and grades in demanding classes. Mithawk gave examples of "spikes".