Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion College admissions over - Ask me anything

We are in agreement. For athletes, a likely letter in Aug/Sep of the year of application is about a year before college starts, which is what I wrote above.

Am I the only one who thinks that Ivies recruiting athletes is totally ridiculous?

Sorry Mithawk. I misread. Recruiting athletes is not ridiculous when it comes to fundraising. So if you want all that financil aid, you need the football team.

Sorry, but that in no way justifies all the kids recruited for cross country, fencing, sailing, equestrian, squash, skiing, softball... I could go on and on, including what happens once these athletes are matriculated, but no need. I think most people get it.

MIT recruits for sailing. But as other schools of that ilk, they have to recruit kids that can do the course work. You cannot get in MIT for sailing without being able to do the coursework. And the schools want extracurriculars. They want people who don't just sit in their rooms and study. They play tennis, they run track, they play in the orchestra, start businesses -- like FB or Microsoft. Starting a business is a hook. I know a kid that got into Harvard last year framing that on his CV. All these kids have great scores. It is not that they cannot do the coursework and excel. They just differentiate themselves. Do some kids on the football team get on with weaker scores than most, I would bet on it. But the kid that gets recruited for fencing is going to have great scores. I have done a lot of work on this. I heard from a mother whose daughter got recruited by 2 ivys. She is at one. She is not a top track star. She is a really good, disciplined track competitor with top scores from a private academic feeder school. And when I say recruited, most athletes at these top schools initiate contact with coaches. They send their athletic CV with a scholatic score sheet showing they could get admitted based on scores. You cannot get athletic recruitment without submitting your academic scores. And 25% of athletes submitted for recruitment get turned down because of scores were not high enough.

I take back one thing. I do know that girls in hockey can get into Harvard without top scores. Probabaly Dartmouth et al also. But they have to be decent scores.

And, I checked out the Harvard girls sailing roster. 7 out of 10 were walk ons. No sailing experience. They did not recruited. And only of the remaininng 3 had a decent sailing CV. Hence, no one is going out of their way to recruit these kids if they didn't have decent scores. So they have great scores but they also have a hook of being pretty good at their sport. Disciplined, competitive. Things that generally make a successful person in life.

A previous post discussed an issue our junior will face and I wonder how you, or others, factored it into admission decisions?

As many users of this site we supplemented what was taught at his public school as we did not want to homeschool. Also, he now goes to a high school that does offer advanced STEM courses, MVC, DiffEQ, Lin Alg, etc., which has been wonderful. As we understand, if luckly enough to get into MIT, etc., then their Lin Alg course will be challenging even if it was taken before? However, if he attends unis lower down the list, it will not necessarily be the case.

For instance, GT would make him repeat all courses that are not AP or DE. Our instate unis will accept some of these courses, not all though. Hopefully, he gets into a tippy top and if so maybe not an issue, but if he does not he currently prefers the instate option as opposed to going to a school that makes him repeat a course that he knows already.

I have read that some unis will allow you to test out of a course and select another higher level course instead which would be much better. Does anyone have experience with this and how did you go about figuring it all out? His current plan is to apply to around 10 unis and then after acceptances are out, begin the process of contacting them to see what is possible.

I can only speak to the college my DD attends, but a placement test was used for math, as well as for several other subject areas (off the top of my head, foreign language, music theory, biology...and these were just the few DD was interested in, I suspect it was very common). I suspect it is the norm at most selective places, though if it’s important to you I would check.

The math placement testing was left up to individual students before they had to choose classes. The information was sent at some point over the summer, and most of the placement stuff was done online (I seem to remember DD having to go to a scheduled placement test during orientation on campus, but that was an exception). They also gave placement opportunities based upon AP results (though no credit- this was true for foreign language as well). So kids could take the placement test and to a certain extent, place themselves (I’m sure if there were questions you could ask for advice, but it was pretty clearly outlined). For DD the decisions included whether to take a compressed/accelerated class which essentially combined two classes into one, so even within her level of achievement (which was not advanced beyond her HS offerings) there were different paths open to her. (She did choose the compressed class, and was very satisfied with the pace of instruction- finally!). The breadth of possibilities was amazing, and at least where she is, there were no perceived obstacles, just guidance on what would work best for each individual.

Hopefully as DS gets a bit farther along in the process, we will find that many of the colleges that accept him have the same approach as the college your DD attends. Thanks!