does any t50 college especially care about a kid who is fluent in 3 languages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

I completely disagree. It is VERY hard to be multilingual unless you grow up in a country where several languages are actually routinely spoken and written. Even with an ESL parent, it is hard to be bilingual. Most Hispanic kids at our school cannot write Spanish well and do not get a 5 on the AP exam. I fully agree with the actual immigrant here, as an immigrant myself. True fluency is hard and impressive.

Spanish lang is an easy 5 for any ESL student, at least down here in Texas. The Spanish literature exam is a different story but it’s the most rigorous Ap humanities exam

Not sure what AP Spanish language is like, but I saw people comparing it to B1-B2 level. This is not very impressive. My kids passed B1 DELF and they are far from being fluent in French.

In any case, languages that are spoken in the household are not very important. What matters is the language that peers are speaking, and language used for schoolwork. Look at it this way - grandchildren of immigrants know literally zero language. If parent-child transmission was anywhere close to significant it would take many more generations to lose it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Middlebury

Does Midd give a bump to kids with multiple languages? I've got a kid who has done DLI in one language and will likely pass the AP test, and is also obsessed with Japan and Japanese, has completed Duolingo in Japanese, and has spent two summers there now with family friends (note, we are not Japanese). I am thinking of encouraging him to take online high school credit courses in Japanese, which will be easy for him. He has no desire to major in linguistics. Midd would be a great fit for him, particularly with a sport he likes, so it's worth considering if adding Japanese would be a bump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

I completely disagree. It is VERY hard to be multilingual unless you grow up in a country where several languages are actually routinely spoken and written. Even with an ESL parent, it is hard to be bilingual. Most Hispanic kids at our school cannot write Spanish well and do not get a 5 on the AP exam. I fully agree with the actual immigrant here, as an immigrant myself. True fluency is hard and impressive.

Spanish lang is an easy 5 for any ESL student, at least down here in Texas. The Spanish literature exam is a different story but it’s the most rigorous Ap humanities exam

Are you sure or just saying this? Bc I know many Hispanic students (raised in the US, but with two ESL parents) and very few got 5s.

[Anonymous]

Nope! Trust me - not at all.

[Anonymous]

I would like to know how many of the people saying it's not impressive are monolingual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

Huh. Weird had 2 humanities LOR (Spanish and English).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

I don't find this story particularly interesting, either. It feels kind of thin, overly crafted and not very authentic. The kid is a go getter, clearly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

Huh. Weird had 2 humanities LOR (Spanish and English).

Maybe it was to thrown them off from the real plan (pre-med). I guess kids are now pretending to be pointy in a false direction so that they get admitted via a false, less competitive major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

I don't find this story particularly interesting, either. It feels kind of thin, overly crafted and not very authentic. The kid is a go getter, clearly.

Seems standard for admissions to that many T20 schools tbh.
And those LOR were probably "Best in my lifetime" which gets you a perfect score at Harvard and Stanford in the scoring rubric.
You can actually add up his score right now and its crazy impressive... given uw GPA/rigor/rank and test scores, combined with these LOr + depth and impact of awards.
Looks like he didn't apply to stanford, which was probably a miss.
Looks like a lot of "texture" in the application which is what Stanford likes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

Huh. Weird had 2 humanities LOR (Spanish and English).

Maybe it was to thrown them off from the real plan (pre-med). I guess kids are now pretending to be pointy in a false direction so that they get admitted via a false, less competitive major.

People have been doing that for more than a decade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

I read the whole link. Honestly, the writer seems like a nice, earnest kid who is really into a language-based niche interest. Also, he may be hispanic - not a big deal, but demographics do matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

I read the whole link. Honestly, the writer seems like a nice, earnest kid who is really into a language-based niche interest. Also, he may be hispanic - not a big deal, but demographics do matter.

Yes, that's what I think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

kid seems to have an interesting story. See below from that link.

Letters of Rec (if I had to guess my strongest section)

AP Spanish 10/10 - We were super close, I would talk with her a lot inside and outside of class, and on last day of class she hugged me and told me I was her favorite student she's ever had and one of the reasons she is so happy she became a teacher. She then emailed my mom like a three paragraph long note that made her start crying. If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the letter talked about my independent study in Spanish Lit, love for languages, and personal attributes.

AP English 9/10 - She loved me and I was really good at her class. I was one of two students out of 40+ she had that she gave an award to and I would often conference with her. I would imagine that she wrote about the ELL inequality research paper I conducted in her class, other minor writing assignments, and my general academic strength.

CEO of immigration center in EC#1 10/10 - I don't think additional reccs are always worth it but I think in my situation this one helped a ton. She likely spoke about me becoming the youngest ELL director the organization has seen, the work I had done with this organization, and especially about one of the ELL students I had been working with for over 4 years now and had helped through a lot of pretty major life situations. I think this gave a great deal of context about the impact of EC#1 that couldn't be conveyed with 150 characters.

Essays

I think my essays were strong but this is ultimately quite a subjective section.

CommonApp: I wrote my CommonApp about my complicated relationship with Spanish growing up and how I ultimately went from seeing language as a skill that needed to be perfected to a gateway into connection and community.

Supplements: I absolutely despised writing my PS but loved supplements. Topics included homonyms, pigeon vs. paloma, and my grandmother cooking a cat.

Huh. Weird had 2 humanities LOR (Spanish and English).

Maybe it was to thrown them off from the real plan (pre-med). I guess kids are now pretending to be pointy in a false direction so that they get admitted via a false, less competitive major.

People have been doing that for more than a decade.

I was not aware.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

I am from Eastern Europe - a place someone mentioned previous as a hotbed for multilingualism. Laughable. Maybe one in a 500 is at C2 level for one foreign language (English).

"One parent speaks Spanish, other French" - means next to nothing re: languages their children will speak. Even if their kids attend weekend school regularly they will barely crack A1. Those kids can't take college level classes in Spanish or French. It requires a tremendous effort to get them to that level.

Not sure what do you mean by "international students being smarter" but certainly you will agree that getting accepted to a top school while speaking a foreign language, scoring 1600 on SAT etc, is more impressive coming from a student who is not a native speaker of English?

The more you reply - the more it seems that you don't know how to be multi-lingual. You think attending weekend classes will make you fluent? You think having parents that are fluent in that language makes no difference?

And International Students are already fluent in English that score a 1600 on the SAT. Which I'm saying is misleading.

If you want to know how to be fluent - it starts with immersion. Immersion either by: TV, family conversations, or being there and forced to speak the language. No one "Normal" person is fluent by attending a weekend class and going through DuoLingo.

You can be a kid in a multi-lingual family only that only watches English and speaks English - this will not make them fluent. If you want to use this case then OK. the kid had an opportunity that didn't use it - nice hard life.