How are students supposed to build good extracurriculars when everything is impossible to join?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you’re overestimating the importance of stellar ECs for anything other than the most elite college admissions.

On the other side of the ledger, private school parents on here saying that their schools don’t have grade inflation are also wrong (just look at the average GPAs) on the profiles for private schools, where B+ is the norm) and kids from the best privates aren’t getting into top colleges because the schools allow them to pad ECs. It’s because they practice selective admissions and the typical student arrives with innate abilities and scores higher on standardized tests etc.

Private schools aren’t not winning the elite college admissions battle because their kids have more impressive ECs. Nope.

The top private schools require kids to have all As for admission in middle school or for 9th grade. Then these kids go on to graduate in classes with an average GPA of 3.5 and an average SAT of 1500 and generally 5's on the APs. How to you propose "grade deflating" those kids more? Since apparently you think an average of 3.5 is "inflated"? You want to give kids C's in classes that they get 5's on the AP exam in? You want to teach to an average GPA of 3.0 while the cohort has an average SAT of 1500? Do tell.

Well, for starters they’re aren’t any private schools—at least not in the DMV—where the average SAT is 1500.

Beyond that, if you looked at the average GPAs of private schools in the DMV over the years and decades you’d see that they’ve steadily gone up. That’s the very definition of grade inflation.

Maybe it’s not the DMV?
Shocker

[Anonymous]

Work around 20-30 hours a week, get promoted and maintain stellar grades.

[Anonymous]

You don't need the high school to provide opportunities to showcase ones strengths. But you do need initiative. Rather than complain, think about your kid's authentic interests, abilities and academic areas of strength. Then start using Google and search functions to begin and researching opportunities that allign with your kid. My kid was a great dancer and the school program was fun but lame. So, my kid danced outside school and found summer intensive programs to develop their skills. My kid was curious about a subject not taught at school, so found an inexpensive college summer class where they were able to research a topic of interest. They liked a language not offered at school so did duolingo online. And after they showed commitment, I found them an inexpensive tutor via wyzant to help them continue. Opportunities are endless and you don't have to be captain of a team or president of every club. But you can't be passive at school. Sign up to lead something, volunteer to help tutor younger kids, ask a teacher of a favorite subject for additional reading recommendations on a topic of interest. If your kid likes stem, encourage them to learn a new skill or build something. Show curiosity, show initiative, show commitment. When it comes to college essays, it helps if kid can write about and reflect upon one's interests, experiences, and challenges. And yes, kid needs stellar grades and testing if shooting for highly selective schools. If you don't want that, then don't worry. Rather than follow others, find your own path. It works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is just untrue, OP. Be careful about adopting a defeatist attitude. If your kid wants to compete for and do the same activities that everyone else is vying for, then yes it can be tough to get in, but colleges do not care that you have the cookie cutter resume. They just want to see that your kid is involved with *something* they are passionate about. For example, if there is a cause they care about deeply they can volunteer and do some good for that organization. They can play an instrument or join a chorus or other community arts group, and it doesn't even have to be the competitive group. They can get an actual job after school or during the summer. The point is to be engaged in something they care about and where they can demonstrate initiative, responsibility, or skill.

Being mediocre in everything you do isn’t compelling for admissions officers

Then don’t be mediocre. Do your thing well. But there are a zillion kids with activities like what OP described and they aren’t going to stand out either unless they genuinely love what they do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is just untrue, OP. Be careful about adopting a defeatist attitude. If your kid wants to compete for and do the same activities that everyone else is vying for, then yes it can be tough to get in, but colleges do not care that you have the cookie cutter resume. They just want to see that your kid is involved with *something* they are passionate about. For example, if there is a cause they care about deeply they can volunteer and do some good for that organization. They can play an instrument or join a chorus or other community arts group, and it doesn't even have to be the competitive group. They can get an actual job after school or during the summer. The point is to be engaged in something they care about and where they can demonstrate initiative, responsibility, or skill.

This!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Scouting - takes years but one of the best ECs if your DS/DD can get to Eagle. Bonus: do a great community service project and you have lots to write about in supplementals.

+1 Eagle Scout or Girl Scout Gold Award, this is the way. Shows years of commitment as well as community impact with the project.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know how people get national championships in anything or get internships in NASA. Everything is impossible to join in the high schools here. You can’t make the high school JV swim team if you haven’t swam since 6. Band, model un, and robotics are all very selective too. I don’t know how people are easily able to get straight As and easily achieve in all the extracurriculars here.

It’s frustrating because colleges know NOVA is a wealthy region, so they have high expectations. But they don’t care about how hard it is to get anything here. The people who are varsity sports captains and also somehow started clubs or did research just seem like Jesus to me.

Anecdotally based on the one student I know who got this, they were scary smart and driven, even as a freshman. Plus they had a relative who worked there.

Some of these things are easier in private/Catholic schools or the not-so-wealthy public high schools, so the smaller environments that are acquired either by virtue of having a lot of money or none at all.

The bolded is one of the reasons a lot of middle class parents feel so defeated these days. You will work hard to be able to afford to live in a "good" public school district, and you will struggle to save money for college while also paying for a house in said school district and saving for your own retirement, which for many middle class families means forgoing a lot of other stuff. And then your kid will wind up in a total rat race in HS, competing against both all the other middle class kids and the cohort of truly wealthy kids at the school for sports, ECs, internships, APs, teacher recs, etc, with the wealthy kids having massive advantages because their parents got them a private lacrosse trainer in middle school and they've been doing French immersion since they were 4 or whatever. Then when it's time for college, these middle class kids are mostly not accomplished or "pointy" enough for top college admissions even if you've spent years trying to help your kid become as accomplished as possible, and their options will be state schools or small, lesser known SLACs, both of which will expect you to be full pay because you are not poor enough to qualify for any kind of aid except loans. And even those state schools and lesser known SLACS have sometimes been competitive in recent years because there are also plenty of full pay rich kids who don't want the striver culture of top schools and wind up aiming for these as well.

It's frustrating to people because they feel like they've done precisely what they were "supposed" to do and it will only bite them in the a$$. Their kids are stressed and disappointed and have often been deprived of having a more normal, rewarding adolescence building friendships and exploring what they might actually want to do with their lives, while they were striving, striving, striving for a more upper class lifestyle. And far from feeling closer to financial security for their kids, they feel farther from it, having sunk so much money and energy into winning prizes that will remain out of reach. It's not worth it but a lot of families don't realize this until their kid is a junior in high school.

I don't know if this is a thing outside the DC area. Probably? But I think it's particularly bad here because there are so many people in this area who were the smart, ambitious middle class kids in their high school class, and got into top schools based entirely on just being smart and reasonably hard working, and maybe playing one or two sports that did not require them to play a decade of travel sports in order to make varsity. But that's not a thing any more, the entire landscape changed.

You realize I pay $35k/ year for my son’s and $45k/ years for my daughter’s private Catholic HS. You have a misconception about sticker price and who attends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know how people get national championships in anything or get internships in NASA. Everything is impossible to join in the high schools here. You can’t make the high school JV swim team if you haven’t swam since 6. Band, model un, and robotics are all very selective too. I don’t know how people are easily able to get straight As and easily achieve in all the extracurriculars here.

It’s frustrating because colleges know NOVA is a wealthy region, so they have high expectations. But they don’t care about how hard it is to get anything here. The people who are varsity sports captains and also somehow started clubs or did research just seem like Jesus to me.

Anecdotally based on the one student I know who got this, they were scary smart and driven, even as a freshman. Plus they had a relative who worked there.

Some of these things are easier in private/Catholic schools or the not-so-wealthy public high schools, so the smaller environments that are acquired either by virtue of having a lot of money or none at all.

The high school NASA programs are fairly easy to get into, about 25-30% acceptance rate. They are less selective than VA Governors school summer programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Scouting - takes years but one of the best ECs if your DS/DD can get to Eagle. Bonus: do a great community service project and you have lots to write about in supplementals.

Scouting does not get you into top schools. And most liberal families here hate scouting for obvious reasons

We're deeply involved in Scouting and about as left-wing as you can get - along with our extremely liberal friends who are also part of the program. Scouting units take on the personality of their members and their leadership. Don't knock it until you've joined up and seen the extent to which the experience can be customized to those who are running it.

[Anonymous]

I'm a big believer in the idea that all kids need a "thing," even though that thing will naturally change repeatedly over time. Even when they are quite young, they need to try out caring about something, learning about it, and taking steps to interact with it on their own. It doesn't have to be high-level sports or music. It could just be learning everything about a given musical artist, or drawing, or joining an intramural sport or club after school, or conscientiously looking after a pet. It doesn't have to cost a great deal of money as long as kids learn that following or participating in something energetically can provide a sense of purpose and sometimes even a sense of identity. For us adults it's harder: we sometimes have to feign interest, or encourage, or even cajole. Or the opposite: maybe we end up driving all over creation for years on end because the thing is a THING. And then just when the thing gets interesting and starts to feel worthwhile _to_us_, we may have to give it up gracefully because the kid moves on. But eventually some thing may stick. And the positive effects of all of the things, taken together, help to shape the kid who eventually writes those college applications.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I worked at a Boy Scout camp once upon a time. It had both gay scouts and Mormons in various troops and on staff as well. Kids who love guns and kids who love flower identification in the mountains are all in scouting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know how people get national championships in anything or get internships in NASA. Everything is impossible to join in the high schools here. You can’t make the high school JV swim team if you haven’t swam since 6. Band, model un, and robotics are all very selective too. I don’t know how people are easily able to get straight As and easily achieve in all the extracurriculars here.

It’s frustrating because colleges know NOVA is a wealthy region, so they have high expectations. But they don’t care about how hard it is to get anything here. The people who are varsity sports captains and also somehow started clubs or did research just seem like Jesus to me.

Anecdotally based on the one student I know who got this, they were scary smart and driven, even as a freshman. Plus they had a relative who worked there.

Some of these things are easier in private/Catholic schools or the not-so-wealthy public high schools, so the smaller environments that are acquired either by virtue of having a lot of money or none at all.

The high school NASA programs are fairly easy to get into, about 25-30% acceptance rate. They are less selective than VA Governors school summer programs.

You pulled those numbers out of you a$$ because a lot of bright straight A students get denied

[Anonymous]

My kid is at TJ and doesn't have any issue joining stuff. Doesn't really get more competitive than that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know how people get national championships in anything or get internships in NASA. Everything is impossible to join in the high schools here. You can’t make the high school JV swim team if you haven’t swam since 6. Band, model un, and robotics are all very selective too. I don’t know how people are easily able to get straight As and easily achieve in all the extracurriculars here.

It’s frustrating because colleges know NOVA is a wealthy region, so they have high expectations. But they don’t care about how hard it is to get anything here. The people who are varsity sports captains and also somehow started clubs or did research just seem like Jesus to me.

They're smarter than you.

That's OK. You can still be successful and happy as an adult without having a top IQ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah I worked at a Boy Scout camp once upon a time. It had both gay scouts and Mormons in various troops and on staff as well. Kids who love guns and kids who love flower identification in the mountains are all in scouting.

Agree. My family has been involved in scouting for 10+ years. My husband has been a den leader, assistant scoutmaster, scoutmaster, district advancement chair. I’ve been a den leader, committee member (outdoor activities chair, troop advancement chair). Everyone is welcome. Have had athletic football and wrestling jocks earn Eagle, awkward science nerds earn it, theater kids, band kids, average “try a little of everything” kids earn it…
They learn and experience leadership, service to the community, how to plan and budget.