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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the main reason parents pay for private school. They will make sure your child has every EC opportunity. That plus grade inflation + poetic recommendations = T20 admissions.

+1 It's much easier to make a sports team in a private school with a grade of 70 kids than a public school with 400 kids in a grade. Bigger fish in smaller pond. That said, grade inflation is rampant at private schools too.

[Anonymous]

OP-you exaggerate and also have unrealistic expectations. Very few kids (statistically) will ever win a national championship or get internships at prestigious places like NASA.

Sports teams can also be very competitive, particularly at bigger high schools, but there are many private sports options for those who can pay. I haven't found band/orchestra/chorus to be as selective, and there are private pay options for most extracurriculars like robotics but YMMV.

[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.

There are plenty of activities that you can join and they don’t have to be associated with the high school. As for all As you don’t need that for almost all of the colleges. You look for colleges that fit your profile and you’ll find plenty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the main reason parents pay for private school. They will make sure your child has every EC opportunity. That plus grade inflation + poetic recommendations = T20 admissions.

Ummm, privates don’t have grade inflation. And good luck making a spot on the team where basketball has 6’10” freshmen recruits and football top NFL prospects, baseball an MLB straight out of HS. That’s our private.

Ummmmmmmmm, yeah, right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the main reason parents pay for private school. They will make sure your child has every EC opportunity. That plus grade inflation + poetic recommendations = T20 admissions.

Ummm, privates don’t have grade inflation. And good luck making a spot on the team where basketball has 6’10” freshmen recruits and football top NFL prospects, baseball an MLB straight out of HS. That’s our private.

Ummmmmmmmm, yeah, right.

Yeah, whatever. Show us the evidence that your privates don’t have grade inflation. You can start by linking to the distribution of grades published by your school on its website for its college profile, because of course, you private is transparent about its outcomes, right?

[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.

There are plenty of activities that you can join and they don’t have to be associated with the high school. As for all As you don’t need that for almost all of the colleges. You look for colleges that fit your profile and you’ll find plenty.

Colleges care about being involved in your school community. And I don’t want to waste money on private sports clubs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

And yet you are writing on a board that is focused on the DC area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Are you trying to say that you aren't in the "have a lot of money" category because the cost of your kids' tuition is "only" $80K in after-tax dollars?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the main reason parents pay for private school. They will make sure your child has every EC opportunity. That plus grade inflation + poetic recommendations = T20 admissions.

Ummm, privates don’t have grade inflation. And good luck making a spot on the team where basketball has 6’10” freshmen recruits and football top NFL prospects, baseball an MLB straight out of HS. That’s our private.

Ummmmmmmmm, yeah, right.

Yeah, whatever. Show us the evidence that your privates don’t have grade inflation. You can start by linking to the distribution of grades published by your school on its website for its college profile, because of course, you private is transparent about its outcomes, right?

Our public has 200 valedictorians out of 500 students. We have 1 out of 250. Our public is known for rampant grade inflation.

Our AP exam profile is 5 for almost all exams. My kids read countless books, write real papers, don’t get re-takes or re-dos. Their midterm exams are 30% of first semester grades. Kids do fail courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Are you trying to say that you aren't in the "have a lot of money" category because the cost of your kids' tuition is "only" $80K in after-tax dollars?

I’m guessing it’s in reference to the poster that ways Catholic school was cheap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

And yet you are writing on a board that is focused on the DC area.

this is an international board now. DC's ivy roommate is from Canada and parents knew about this site.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the main reason parents pay for private school. They will make sure your child has every EC opportunity. That plus grade inflation + poetic recommendations = T20 admissions.

No grade inflation at our private but we have the rest. Yes it’s worth it.

Same, though due to the grade deflation T20 was never going to be an option for my kids, which is fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is one of the main reason parents pay for private school. They will make sure your child has every EC opportunity. That plus grade inflation + poetic recommendations = T20 admissions.

Ummm, privates don’t have grade inflation. And good luck making a spot on the team where basketball has 6’10” freshmen recruits and football top NFL prospects, baseball an MLB straight out of HS. That’s our private.

Ummmmmmmmm, yeah, right.

Yeah, whatever. Show us the evidence that your privates don’t have grade inflation. You can start by linking to the distribution of grades published by your school on its website for its college profile, because of course, you private is transparent about its outcomes, right?

Top privates don't have many kids clustered around the top. At our school of 80, you had zero kids with a 4.0, about 5 kids with a 3.95+, 5 more with a 3.9+, 10 more with a 3.85+ and on down to about a 3.0.

This makes it very easy for colleges to differentiate between kids based on GPA alone (and his is how they distinguish between them).

It's different then a public which may have a few dozen kids who have an 4.0 UW or a 4.5 W or whatnot.

NOT saying that public kids aren't as smart or accomplished or anything. SO CHILL OUT. Just that the way grading is done at private schools, it's easy to differentiate between kids on grades alone and having 15 top extracurriculars isn't needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

Not every year, but there have been graduating classes in the DMV who have had averages over 1500, but more typically the averages are in the 1400s, which is still outstanding and still supports PP's point that an average GPA of 3.0 would be insanely low for that cohort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

And sometimes that thing you gave up as a kid comes back, tweaked slightly, as a really important part of your adult life. Sure, it probably won't get your kid into Harvard, but it may be something truly delightful for the 60+ adult years that they aren't in college.