Things you wish you knew…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:start crafting ur child’s narrative in middle school - after that it’s too late to appear authentic -

BS. Both got in UVA in state plus multiple T25/top LACs and that is not needed.

Let the kids be themselves, take the classes they want to take. Students who will really soar at T10s will take the top classes and be in the top whatever % in their HS without parents pushing. Usually these are the same kids that are already 98-99%ile on standardized tests at baseline, since they were younger (CTP, Cal Achievements, etc)

100%

My son did not have any clue where he wanted to go as a sophomore. He's a smart kid that just focused on high school, his sport, community service, a club from Freshmen year that a teacher urged him to join and he ended up loving, and a summer job one summer.

I made a point to try to not exude any stress or pressure or even talk colleges. He's a kid that puts a lot of pressure on himself anyways.

Everything he did, he did because he wanted to do it without any care how it would play to a college (or if it even would). He had time for friends.

He's having one helluva run this cycle. 1 WL (at a school that was a safety and he didn't really like) and 8 acceptances (5% SLACS, T10s, etc.). No rejections. I'm sure that will end with Ivies tonight--or he'll keep running the sh*t out of this. lol

We tuned everyone else out. We did not hire a private college counselor and we even did not apply to any of the suggested colleges by the HS counselor and applied to mostly reaches and a target or two.

Personally, I think all these people hiring private college counselors and tiger momming the sh*t out of it since middle school end up with kids that sound like every other kid.

Looking back, if we had listened to the HS counselor he would not be in any T20, let alone T10 school.

Wow this so smug, it’s gross.

+1

Curious to hear how Ivy night went for this fam.

In Yale! WL Harvard

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:start crafting ur child’s narrative in middle school - after that it’s too late to appear authentic -

BS. Both got in UVA in state plus multiple T25/top LACs and that is not needed.

Let the kids be themselves, take the classes they want to take. Students who will really soar at T10s will take the top classes and be in the top whatever % in their HS without parents pushing. Usually these are the same kids that are already 98-99%ile on standardized tests at baseline, since they were younger (CTP, Cal Achievements, etc)

100%

My son did not have any clue where he wanted to go as a sophomore. He's a smart kid that just focused on high school, his sport, community service, a club from Freshmen year that a teacher urged him to join and he ended up loving, and a summer job one summer.

I made a point to try to not exude any stress or pressure or even talk colleges. He's a kid that puts a lot of pressure on himself anyways.

Everything he did, he did because he wanted to do it without any care how it would play to a college (or if it even would). He had time for friends.

He's having one helluva run this cycle. 1 WL (at a school that was a safety and he didn't really like) and 8 acceptances (5% SLACS, T10s, etc.). No rejections. I'm sure that will end with Ivies tonight--or he'll keep running the sh*t out of this. lol

We tuned everyone else out. We did not hire a private college counselor and we even did not apply to any of the suggested colleges by the HS counselor and applied to mostly reaches and a target or two.

Personally, I think all these people hiring private college counselors and tiger momming the sh*t out of it since middle school end up with kids that sound like every other kid.

Looking back, if we had listened to the HS counselor he would not be in any T20, let alone T10 school.

You sound like the person who won the lottery telling people you just need to pick the numbers that feel right to you. It’s great it worked out for you, but you should not feel like this is some pathway to college admissions success.
I know plenty of tiger moms whose kids are raking in the ivies right now. I’m not one of them and my kid did fine but I’m not acting like it was thru the magic of my hands off parenting.

And there are even more tiger moms whose kids aren’t doing well in admissions.
The point is why push when it guarantees you nothing. Let your kid be themselves.

+1
And the tiger moms who do push their kids in? Guess how the T10 goes? Kid gets well below means on tests, parent mad that T10 courses are hard, parent tries to micromanage and doesn’t understand school “not helping” kid, tries to get tutors, all the normal parents whose kids got in without all this and are handling the bumps by digging in and going to office hours eyeroll silently on the parent pages and resist the urge to state the obvious —tiger mom’s kid isnt ready for T10 and is spiraling (i have kids at different ones—this is reality at both the ivy and the non).

It all works out. But it works out best if you leave the kids be and let them get in with minimal guidance or not.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I don't know what I would have done differently. While I hate to say this, but reading this board and college confidential really helped manage expectations in terms of what colleges DD should apply to. Ultimately, she got into 10 out of 12 schools. The schools that she didn't get into were schools that were high reaches for nearly everyone- Carnegie Mellon and University of Pennsylvania. Also, knowing how difficult it is to get into those schools made the rejection completely fine. I know some people have the attitude of "just apply" or "you will never win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket" - but we wanted to limit our lottery tickets because we weren't sure how bad the mental toll would be upon seeing rejection after rejection. Having said that, DD has strong stats and got into all the top schools in the state (W&M, UVA, etc), but we knew that even with strong stats, the chances of getting into the reach schools that DD got denied from were in the single digits. Also, we never discussed "dream schools."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:start crafting ur child’s narrative in middle school - after that it’s too late to appear authentic -

BS. Both got in UVA in state plus multiple T25/top LACs and that is not needed.

Let the kids be themselves, take the classes they want to take. Students who will really soar at T10s will take the top classes and be in the top whatever % in their HS without parents pushing. Usually these are the same kids that are already 98-99%ile on standardized tests at baseline, since they were younger (CTP, Cal Achievements, etc)

100%

My son did not have any clue where he wanted to go as a sophomore. He's a smart kid that just focused on high school, his sport, community service, a club from Freshmen year that a teacher urged him to join and he ended up loving, and a summer job one summer.

I made a point to try to not exude any stress or pressure or even talk colleges. He's a kid that puts a lot of pressure on himself anyways.

Everything he did, he did because he wanted to do it without any care how it would play to a college (or if it even would). He had time for friends.

He's having one helluva run this cycle. 1 WL (at a school that was a safety and he didn't really like) and 8 acceptances (5% SLACS, T10s, etc.). No rejections. I'm sure that will end with Ivies tonight--or he'll keep running the sh*t out of this. lol

We tuned everyone else out. We did not hire a private college counselor and we even did not apply to any of the suggested colleges by the HS counselor and applied to mostly reaches and a target or two.

Personally, I think all these people hiring private college counselors and tiger momming the sh*t out of it since middle school end up with kids that sound like every other kid.

Looking back, if we had listened to the HS counselor he would not be in any T20, let alone T10 school.

You sound like the person who won the lottery telling people you just need to pick the numbers that feel right to you. It’s great it worked out for you, but you should not feel like this is some pathway to college admissions success.
I know plenty of tiger moms whose kids are raking in the ivies right now. I’m not one of them and my kid did fine but I’m not acting like it was thru the magic of my hands off parenting.

And there are even more tiger moms whose kids aren’t doing well in admissions.
The point is why push when it guarantees you nothing. Let your kid be themselves.

+1
And the tiger moms who do push their kids in? Guess how the T10 goes? Kid gets well below means on tests, parent mad that T10 courses are hard, parent tries to micromanage and doesn’t understand school “not helping” kid, tries to get tutors, all the normal parents whose kids got in without all this and are handling the bumps by digging in and going to office hours eyeroll silently on the parent pages and resist the urge to state the obvious —tiger mom’s kid isnt ready for T10 and is spiraling (i have kids at different ones—this is reality at both the ivy and the non).

It all works out. But it works out best if you leave the kids be and let them get in with minimal guidance or not.

Kids whether they were at the top of the class in high school with no tutors and no parental involvement or at the top with parents being involved often have to learn when/how to ask for help in college and use the resources there. And whether you have a free-range parenting style, tiger parent, or somewhere in between there should always be an element of taking into account your child’s maturity and giving space for the role/relationship to change over time.

For, one of my kids I was heavily involved checking grades in 9th, not really in 10th, even less in 11th etc . It was a bumpy road at times but I wanted intro play out when we were there to be guardrails and could help them get support . My other has been pretty independent about high school but I worry that in college being that the perfectionist tendencies and being able to get by without needing help makes it hard to ask for help in college before it becomes a bigger problem. They also can get by with procrastination for assignments in high school (while still getting good grades) a way that won’t work in college. So beyond getting into college I would say in high school if your kids can learn to advocate for themselves in different situations and learn good time management skills (breaking down work and not procrastinating on big assignments)- those will be life skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to listen to the hysteria.
Go with our own instincts/research- which we did for course selection and schools to apply to.

My senior has done fantastic this cycle.

We wouldn’t have applied to as many schools (17) if we had listened to ourselves.

We didn’t craft a narrative or any of that nonsense. He just did what he loved.

^ which was pretty routine. It’s how you write about it that matters.

Agree with this, especially for a kid that has strong interests. Our kid had HS, travel, and rec teams in his sport as well as a job coaching and working camps. Some of his coaching was in the language that he studied in immersion K-8.

He helped a neighbor who was a retired biologist with some research for fun over the summer and did an international research summer program in the same field and in his immersion language purely for fun.

Put together, all of that told a story of a kid with 3 strong interests that had interconnected throughout his life. Nobody was trying to “craft” anything, kid just did what he liked.

Now, in college, DS is majoring in a field related to his HS research and minoring in literature of immersion language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:start crafting ur child’s narrative in middle school - after that it’s too late to appear authentic -

+1

I remember reading this advice back in the day here and it was probably the best piece of college advice I got here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:start crafting ur child’s narrative in middle school - after that it’s too late to appear authentic -

+1

I remember reading this advice back in the day here and it was probably the best piece of college advice I got here.

Is a real narrative like a Soundbite?
Short 2-4 sentence description of who the kid is, what moves them, what they want to be, and where they want to go??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:start crafting ur child’s narrative in middle school - after that it’s too late to appear authentic -

BS. Both got in UVA in state plus multiple T25/top LACs and that is not needed.

Let the kids be themselves, take the classes they want to take. Students who will really soar at T10s will take the top classes and be in the top whatever % in their HS without parents pushing. Usually these are the same kids that are already 98-99%ile on standardized tests at baseline, since they were younger (CTP, Cal Achievements, etc)

100%

My son did not have any clue where he wanted to go as a sophomore. He's a smart kid that just focused on high school, his sport, community service, a club from Freshmen year that a teacher urged him to join and he ended up loving, and a summer job one summer.

I made a point to try to not exude any stress or pressure or even talk colleges. He's a kid that puts a lot of pressure on himself anyways.

Everything he did, he did because he wanted to do it without any care how it would play to a college (or if it even would). He had time for friends.

He's having one helluva run this cycle. 1 WL (at a school that was a safety and he didn't really like) and 8 acceptances (5% SLACS, T10s, etc.). No rejections. I'm sure that will end with Ivies tonight--or he'll keep running the sh*t out of this. lol

We tuned everyone else out. We did not hire a private college counselor and we even did not apply to any of the suggested colleges by the HS counselor and applied to mostly reaches and a target or two.

Personally, I think all these people hiring private college counselors and tiger momming the sh*t out of it since middle school end up with kids that sound like every other kid.

Looking back, if we had listened to the HS counselor he would not be in any T20, let alone T10 school.

This is the approach we have taken with our kids. Will know next year if it was a good one. Although I don’t know what counselors have told him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any safe advice for early high schoolers? Things you wish your child knew? Things you wish you knew? Activities? Resources? All of it?

Learn your DC’s college matches early and often. Do not tell ANYONE where your DC is applying. Learn “the game” for your top match and play that game HARD. You’re welcome.

"the game"? what does that mean?

This confused me too, I have no idea what this means

The whole college admissions process is a sick twisted game with a secret set of rules - and our kids are the losers for it….

I think this sounds insane.

[Anonymous]

Let your kids go for it. I told mine to not apply to Harvard and she got in!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any safe advice for early high schoolers? Things you wish your child knew? Things you wish you knew? Activities? Resources? All of it?

Learn your DC’s college matches early and often. Do not tell ANYONE where your DC is applying. Learn “the game” for your top match and play that game HARD. You’re welcome.

"the game"? what does that mean?

This confused me too, I have no idea what this means

The whole college admissions process is a sick twisted game with a secret set of rules - and our kids are the losers for it….

I think this sounds insane.

Settle down.

[Anonymous]

Apply TO most places - better likelihood for success!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish we had pushed harder on grades from day 1. Not in a crazy “you can’t have a life” kind of way. But, I was judging grades as they were regarded in my day. And I also thought people still cared about an upward trend. Nothing matters but gpa anymore.

Uw GPA is all that matters….. maybe it will change with a return to test scores. But prob not.

The guidelines that ppl throw around here are good.

[Anonymous]

Read Jeff Selingo's book and dcum (even though some info is toxic and incorrect). These things will at least give you a decent idea of what to expect. Also, understand that the cost of college is insanely expensive - you just don't want your kid to get into his/her dream school only to be told by you (parent) that you cannot afford to send them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The parents school are the biggest indicator of who gets in where. For the most part kids are following in their parents footsteps, if you went to an Ivy your kid will end up at the equivalent school or slightly lower. In our community, I haven’t see a senior end up at a school ranked higher than their parent’s alma mater .

This is interesting. And weirdly right.
And looking at our private and the outcomes, it is actually pretty accurate.

The kids who are going to large Flagships had parents who went to large Flagships.

The kids who are going to lower tier Ivies had parents who went to Duke or Northwestern and they did not get in as legacy.

Fascinating- will need to see if I find an exception….