Admissions Spikes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What the heck is a humanities spike?! Are there really humanities activities that are that unique and unusual?!

Yeah, winning an Oscar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What the heck is a humanities spike?! Are there really humanities activities that are that unique and unusual?!

Published in Concord Review or Adroit.
Iykyk.

[Anonymous]

you are grasping at straws. son is at princeton and isn't spikey at all. just tippy top stats plus a ton of service work and captain of varsity sport and class president. no bizarre or disingenuous spikes. strong in humanities and stem equally. high rigor curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What the heck is a humanities spike?! Are there really humanities activities that are that unique and unusual?!

Grammy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the heck is a humanities spike?! Are there really humanities activities that are that unique and unusual?!

Published in Concord Review or Adroit.
Iykyk.

TCR (academic & historical writing)
Adroit, Blue Marble (literary journals)
Scholastic Gold
YoungArts
John Locke
Princeton HS Poetry Prize (11th only)
NHD/WHD
State Youth Poet Laureate
Foyle Young Poets
Bennington
JFK Profile in Courage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the heck is a humanities spike?! Are there really humanities activities that are that unique and unusual?!

Published in Concord Review or Adroit.
Iykyk.

TCR (academic & historical writing)
Adroit, Blue Marble (literary journals)
Scholastic Gold
YoungArts
John Locke
Princeton HS Poetry Prize (11th only)
NHD/WHD
State Youth Poet Laureate
Foyle Young Poets
Bennington
JFK Profile in Courage

Have you seen the list of winners? Many are fake just to get in to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some random common ones that I’ve seen at our kids school:

Aerospace engineering, or something to do with aerospace, combined with history, (military war history in particular) and HS research projects involved with aircraft involved in modern warfare (+ pilots license)

Writer (published) and historian also focused on great Jewish books and Jewish history, merging literature, history, and Jewish studies as a major (research project in Israel and Europe on “how the Jews became white”)

Literature and Asian studies, focused on writing poems and haiku’s and other literature and entering it into award-winning journals (TASP attendee)

Classics and archeology major, involved with ancient coin collecting and archaeology. Research projects and docent at various history museums (plus linguistics minor).

Arabic and women’s studies or International relations. All American blonde who was born in the US but moved to Dubai with her family for 10 years and is fluent in Arabic and has done research projects on evolving female identity and social movements in Middle East countries as an observer.

Obviously, there’s way more extracurriculars to each of these spikes, but this is what I remember off the top of my head.
There are so many more!

what do the ECs look like for these spikes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My senior has one - combo of sport and academic area. Unusual. Developed on own with a teacher’s mentorship.

Have an 8th grader and now I see everything differently - can already see what that younger kid’s spike will be - or at least directionally based on interests.

It’s funny how once you go down this road, you start to see everything so differently

What question were you answering?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you are grasping at straws. son is at princeton and isn't spikey at all. just tippy top stats plus a ton of service work and captain of varsity sport and class president. no bizarre or disingenuous spikes. strong in humanities and stem equally. high rigor curriculum.

Feeder school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some random common ones that I’ve seen at our kids school:

Aerospace engineering, or something to do with aerospace, combined with history, (military war history in particular) and HS research projects involved with aircraft involved in modern warfare (+ pilots license)

Writer (published) and historian also focused on great Jewish books and Jewish history, merging literature, history, and Jewish studies as a major (research project in Israel and Europe on “how the Jews became white”)

Literature and Asian studies, focused on writing poems and haiku’s and other literature and entering it into award-winning journals (TASP attendee)

Classics and archeology major, involved with ancient coin collecting and archaeology. Research projects and docent at various history museums (plus linguistics minor).

Arabic and women’s studies or International relations. All American blonde who was born in the US but moved to Dubai with her family for 10 years and is fluent in Arabic and has done research projects on evolving female identity and social movements in Middle East countries as an observer.

Obviously, there’s way more extracurriculars to each of these spikes, but this is what I remember off the top of my head.
There are so many more!

Please. You got this from chatGPT

[Anonymous]

Being a Davidson Fellow is a good spike.

https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-programs/fellows-scholarship/fellows/current-and-past-fellows/2025-fellows/

[Anonymous]

MOP or IMO medal (gold, but silver is fine too)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some random common ones that I’ve seen at our kids school:

Aerospace engineering, or something to do with aerospace, combined with history, (military war history in particular) and HS research projects involved with aircraft involved in modern warfare (+ pilots license)

Writer (published) and historian also focused on great Jewish books and Jewish history, merging literature, history, and Jewish studies as a major (research project in Israel and Europe on “how the Jews became white”)

Literature and Asian studies, focused on writing poems and haiku’s and other literature and entering it into award-winning journals (TASP attendee)

Classics and archeology major, involved with ancient coin collecting and archaeology. Research projects and docent at various history museums (plus linguistics minor).

Arabic and women’s studies or International relations. All American blonde who was born in the US but moved to Dubai with her family for 10 years and is fluent in Arabic and has done research projects on evolving female identity and social movements in Middle East countries as an observer.

Obviously, there’s way more extracurriculars to each of these spikes, but this is what I remember off the top of my head.
There are so many more!

Please. You got this from chatGPT

LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the heck is a humanities spike?! Are there really humanities activities that are that unique and unusual?!

Published in Concord Review or Adroit.
Iykyk.

TCR (academic & historical writing)
Adroit, Blue Marble (literary journals)
Scholastic Gold
YoungArts
John Locke
Princeton HS Poetry Prize (11th only)
NHD/WHD
State Youth Poet Laureate
Foyle Young Poets
Bennington
JFK Profile in Courage

Have you seen the list of winners? Many are fake just to get in to college.

What makes you think the winners are fake? Do you know the winners?

You can't fake most of this. My kids are involved (and won) several of these and it's all natural interest. There is nothing I can do to help them with it... in fact, I'm usually telling them to stop writing, stop reading, stop playing your instrument, stop singing and do your schoolwork. In fact, it is a constant battle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some random common ones that I’ve seen at our kids school:

Aerospace engineering, or something to do with aerospace, combined with history, (military war history in particular) and HS research projects involved with aircraft involved in modern warfare (+ pilots license)

Writer (published) and historian also focused on great Jewish books and Jewish history, merging literature, history, and Jewish studies as a major (research project in Israel and Europe on “how the Jews became white”)

Literature and Asian studies, focused on writing poems and haiku’s and other literature and entering it into award-winning journals (TASP attendee)

Classics and archeology major, involved with ancient coin collecting and archaeology. Research projects and docent at various history museums (plus linguistics minor).

Arabic and women’s studies or International relations. All American blonde who was born in the US but moved to Dubai with her family for 10 years and is fluent in Arabic and has done research projects on evolving female identity and social movements in Middle East countries as an observer.

Obviously, there’s way more extracurriculars to each of these spikes, but this is what I remember off the top of my head.
There are so many more!

what do the ECs look like for these spikes?

We know one of the private plane flying/military history buffs. Did very, very well in the T20 process.
Same with archaeology (no classics with it) - but have seen that combo on Reddit a lot.
Tbh, these are all kind of common (with the exception of the 2 highlighted).

I'd imagine ECs are easy to add on, its really just the passion project/research or whatever you want to call it.