Is This What it Takes to Get Into a Top School Nowadays?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

You're actually clueless about what kids around the country do, it's funny to see some people here have such confidence about things they don't know about.

Yeah right, he’s interning a prestigious newspaper writing tons (! Lol) of articles but is not involved in the school newspaper or even the yearbook. And he doesn’t get a letter of recommendation from any of his main accomplishments. I just wrote one such letter of recommendation for an undergrad intern. He put in 40 hours a week for 12 weeks.

The internship and research extracurriculars are fake.

Many colleges don’t accept supplemental recommendations and you would never substitute a teacher recommendation with an EC/job recommendation.

Also, even colleges that allow supplementals don’t ascribe much value to them unless coming from a big donor or some kind of luminary.

Not a single schools of the ones he listed doesn’t accept supplemental letter of recommendation. A letter from the editor or research advisor would mean much more than a teacher rec.

[Anonymous]

Given that he claims solo debate placements at Nationals, he has to be an LDer. There aren’t going to be very many kids with multiple nationals placements in LD, much less from a public school in the Southeast. Should be incredibly easy to identify this kid or prove that he can’t exist/at least parts of the bio are made up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

You're actually clueless about what kids around the country do, it's funny to see some people here have such confidence about things they don't know about.

Yeah right, he’s interning a prestigious newspaper writing tons (! Lol) of articles but is not involved in the school newspaper or even the yearbook. And he doesn’t get a letter of recommendation from any of his main accomplishments. I just wrote one such letter of recommendation for an undergrad intern. He put in 40 hours a week for 12 weeks.

The internship and research extracurriculars are fake.

Many colleges don’t accept supplemental recommendations and you would never substitute a teacher recommendation with an EC/job recommendation.

Also, even colleges that allow supplementals don’t ascribe much value to them unless coming from a big donor or some kind of luminary.

Not a single schools of the ones he listed doesn’t accept supplemental letter of recommendation. A letter from the editor or research advisor would mean much more than a teacher rec.

Absolutely wrong…but hey, have your kid go that route which will just result in an unforced error helping the other applicants.

[Anonymous]

Do you need something like this for UVA??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

You're actually clueless about what kids around the country do, it's funny to see some people here have such confidence about things they don't know about.

Yeah right, he’s interning a prestigious newspaper writing tons (! Lol) of articles but is not involved in the school newspaper or even the yearbook. And he doesn’t get a letter of recommendation from any of his main accomplishments. I just wrote one such letter of recommendation for an undergrad intern. He put in 40 hours a week for 12 weeks.

The internship and research extracurriculars are fake.

Many colleges don’t accept supplemental recommendations and you would never substitute a teacher recommendation with an EC/job recommendation.

Also, even colleges that allow supplementals don’t ascribe much value to them unless coming from a big donor or some kind of luminary.

Not a single schools of the ones he listed doesn’t accept supplemental letter of recommendation. A letter from the editor or research advisor would mean much more than a teacher rec.

Absolutely wrong…but hey, have your kid go that route which will just result in an unforced error helping the other applicants.

You sound like you’re still in high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you need something like this for UVA??

LOL

[Anonymous]

I got in to MIT a long time ago and had a much stronger application than this guy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got in to MIT a long time ago and had a much stronger application than this guy.

If you need to say this, you didn’t go to MIT.

[Anonymous]

I think point is this is an incredibly strong application for someone without a slew of major awards like the fine young lady that a PP linked a website for. I’m not shocked this young man got into so many good schools, I think he was that good. Best of luck at Duke to him!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This kid also goes to a school with at least 8 periods per day.
My kid's school has 6 and I'd estimate that at least 90% of kids take 5 classes.

Colleges don’t like the 1-2 study hall kids versus full load, even with unweighted class electives / passions

[Anonymous]

Aren't you not allowed to apply Early Action to Georgetown while also applying Early Action to others (MIT, Chicago...)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren't you not allowed to apply Early Action to Georgetown while also applying Early Action to others (MIT, Chicago...)?

No you can, you just aren't allowed to apply ED to another university. So you can't do Georgetown EA and Vanderbilt ED, but you can do Georgetown and MIT EA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aren't you not allowed to apply Early Action to Georgetown while also applying Early Action to others (MIT, Chicago...)?

No you can, you just aren't allowed to apply ED to another university. So you can't do Georgetown EA and Vanderbilt ED, but you can do Georgetown and MIT EA.

This. It’s an informal understanding between Georgetown and Notre Dame, and the Catholic schools mostly seem to respect it by eschewing the December round of ED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

You're actually clueless about what kids around the country do, it's funny to see some people here have such confidence about things they don't know about.

Yeah right, he’s interning a prestigious newspaper writing tons (! Lol) of articles but is not involved in the school newspaper or even the yearbook.

Why would he? It would be like taking college prep physics as a USAPhO student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

You're actually clueless about what kids around the country do, it's funny to see some people here have such confidence about things they don't know about.

Yeah right, he’s interning a prestigious newspaper writing tons (! Lol) of articles but is not involved in the school newspaper or even the yearbook.

Why would he? It would be like taking college prep physics as a USAPhO student.

+1