If your kid is unhooked and aiming for HYPS, it seems like having this sort of branded, curated story is necessary:
https://www.coca-colascholarsfoundation.org/about/2023-scholar-bios/ I can’t imagine having time for an active social life and the freedom and mental space to really get to find yourself (which is really the main goal of adolescence) if you’re hyper-focused on achievement to this level. These profiles really make you reevaluate your values and who you want your kids to be. |
I scrolled through. Noticed a lack of SAT scores or other objective measures of accomplishment. Competed in the math Olympiad is better than won the math Olympiad |
If you go to a weaker HS, it’s easy to get straight A’s and have time to do lots of ECs. For one thing, the school won’t have a lot of clubs, so you can found plenty of them yourself and be the president of all of them. As for the nonprofits— usually the parents help with this. |
And it looks like very few are athletes, which can free up 20-25+ hours/week. |
These kids seem to be making a difference in their communities, whether curated by parents or not. I applaud them! The truth is that I can’t even get my 10th grader to join an actual club at school, so these accomplishments are especially impressive to me! My DC plays a sport, takes rigorous classes and gets good grades, but has little to no interest in school clubs. |
There are 3+ million graduating seniors in the US. Why think that one-thousandth of one percent of them could not be high achievers without something unscrupulous going on in the background? Or should all 3.6 million kids do what you/your kids do? |
So bright kids that attend a “weaker” high school are handed A’s? Good to know. |
I googled the "non-profits" from about 20 profiles. Most have inactive sites, dead links, Instagrams with 50 followers or no web presence at all.
Some are definitely legit but many others were clearly for college admits only. |
How many non-profits do you actively follow on social media? What makes you think these high school kids have big budgets for web design ? Maybe they are busy doing community service, not posting it on insta ? |
My father actually had ECs at or above that level when he was in high school, at a very competitive high school, and wasn’t really considered anything that special at the time. I think the kids who do things like this have to be pretty bright; often have entrepreneurial parents who know things like how to get a business license; and have a combination of light autism, light ADHD and a powerful visions about what they want to do. It’s not easy for most people to parent a kid like that. |
My kid was a Coke Scholar. There is no real magic. Apply and see what happens. Good luck! Yes, kid went to HYP. Recruited athlete, top private, started a foundation, won national writing awards. |
I mean, they're bound to be pretty exceptional kids since the scholarship is so competitive, and what they do isn't necessary to get into a top school. Just think of Coca-Cola scholars as a feeder to the best colleges in the country, and know that each of these elite schools have thousands of undergrads who didn't do what these Coca-Cola scholars did. But if you want to be confident your kid gets into a top school, it doesn't hurt to look at Coca-Cola scholars as the results speak for themselves:
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My dad started an extremely cool, real company when he was in high school that lasted for 20 years and morphed into another business that lasted 35 years. He certainly had some support from his parents, but he started his business and his parents had no idea how to do most of what he was doing. So, there are kids out there who start out with an entrepreneurial bent. One thing my father had going for him was a strong high school Junior Achievement program. Maybe what a lot of the kids who build real organizations have in common is exposure to Boy Scouts, Junior Achievement or some other program that taught them the basics of how to set up a small charity or business |
Wait! You stole that line from me in another thread! Weird |
The thing I see play out in our competitive private HS is the kids who start down this path launch some tutoring or advocacy NFP (even though an almost identical one already exists) and tries to recruit 20 of their classmates to sign on as volunteer tutor (advocate, senior home visitor, whatever) for 10 hours a week. So there are - if it goes off as designed - 20 or more kids putting in a lot of work so 1 kids gets a great line on his activity list.
It's a little too Tom Sawyer's fence painting for my taste. |