Is This What it Takes to Get Into a Top School Nowadays?

[Anonymous]

George Santos is that you?

[Anonymous]

Nobody writes up an EXHAUSTIVE document like that but then carefully cuts out the names of the print publications and the names of the broadcasters, etc.

Look at the biographies of the Coca-Cola scholars. They document everything. This Reddit post is 100% smoke and dance moves.

Its BS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nobody writes up an EXHAUSTIVE document like that but then carefully cuts out the names of the print publications and the names of the broadcasters, etc.

Look at the biographies of the Coca-Cola scholars. They document everything. This Reddit post is 100% smoke and dance moves.

Its BS

People on Reddit do it all the time for anonymity, that’s literally the point of Reddit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart accomplished kids exist, but in this case I think it’s a troll, or at least there’s a lot of exaggeration in the description of his accomplishments.

One thing that’s odd is that he’s taking AP Physics 1 and 2, then also AP Physics C. Really strange to do this since it’s the same material but at different levels of difficulty, particularly since he’s not interested in a stem degree. Same thing with math, there’s little reason to load up on math in 12 grade with stats, linear algebra and differential equation if your passion is political science. Only advantage is checking a box on a large number of advanced courses.

Looking at time commitment at his extracurriculars, first for research, nobody is going to let him design experiments, that’s a gross exaggeration, he’d probably be given a lower level task that he can handle. Then, a good graduate student will publish a paper maybe once a year, working at least 40 hours a week. To include a high school volunteer on the paper with all the hand holding guidance and mentoring he’d have to put in at least 20 hours per week. Most likely he’ll rarely see the professor but mostly the grad student he’s helping. Also really odd to ask for a recommendation from the math teacher but not from the research mentor or writing internships since if true they would be the highest accomplishments that not many student have.

Do an estimate for all activities and the heavy course load you’d realize he’d need to clone himself several times over.

Research internship 20 hours/week
Writing internship 20 hours/week
Local youth 4 hours/week
Local leftist 4 hours/week
Restaurant job 30 hours/week, summertime only
Soccer team captain: 12 hours/week, underestimate likely more
Knowledge bows with regional and stat champ 12 hours/week likely more
School debate team captain 4 hours/week
Informal debate club 4 hours/week
Philosophy club 4 hours /week

The total for extracurriculars is 84 hours excluding the summer job. Add in the regular school hours 8 hours a day, and the need to study and do homework, one hours for each class, you end up with 164 hours. The 7 day week has only 168 hours.

Sure, maybe he meets fit the philosophy club only once a month for an hour, but I’d question how ethical it is to include it on the list of extracurriculars. Most clubs meet once a week and if you are the president you’d have to also do time consuming administrative stuff. For state and local championships, those kids practice a lot, you need to add at least 10 hours a week.

Crazier people than him exist, you don't understand the type of effort some kids are able to put in. On the previous topic about Coca-Cola Scholars, someone shared one of the scholarship winner's bios and it's more time intensive: https://www.sabrinaguo.com/about

Holy cow, did she have time to sleep?

Wow! She even made her website in 2018! All of that time devoted to so many other things and still had the foresight to buy a URL domain and setup a profile when she was in the 7th grade!

Domain Information
Name: SABRINAGUO.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2329959973_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Domain Status:
clientTransferProhibited
Nameservers:
NS63.WORLDNIC.COM

NS64.WORLDNIC.COM

Dates
Registry Expiration: 2023-11-06 17:32:11 UTC
Updated: 2022-09-07 08:15:10 UTC
Created: 2018-11-06 17:32:11 UTC

Extraordinary

Lol, a truly impressive 7th grader! Makes you wonder how much of her “accomplishments” were set up by mom and dad.

To be fair, DS built a website in middle school. We would have had no idea how to help him. He taught himself 2-3 coding languages by watching universities’ free classes. Yes he was in a magnet where they were teaching python. But it’s doable.

[Anonymous]

I don't know if I buy the write-up either. Also, I know Duke is a great school but I definitely wouldn't make the same decision, at least without a big $$ difference. OP could probably have gotten a lot more $$ out of Duke too prior to committing. They have merit $$ they love to use to entice people from the HYPS schools and have been known to get a little competitive! I would clearly feel like I left missed out some here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know if I buy the write-up either. Also, I know Duke is a great school but I definitely wouldn't make the same decision, at least without a big $$ difference. OP could probably have gotten a lot more $$ out of Duke too prior to committing. They have merit $$ they love to use to entice people from the HYPS schools and have been known to get a little competitive! I would clearly feel like I left missed out some here.

Most people aren’t mature enough to choose the school that’s right for them so you aren’t alone!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart accomplished kids exist, but in this case I think it’s a troll, or at least there’s a lot of exaggeration in the description of his accomplishments.

One thing that’s odd is that he’s taking AP Physics 1 and 2, then also AP Physics C. Really strange to do this since it’s the same material but at different levels of difficulty, particularly since he’s not interested in a stem degree. Same thing with math, there’s little reason to load up on math in 12 grade with stats, linear algebra and differential equation if your passion is political science. Only advantage is checking a box on a large number of advanced courses.

Looking at time commitment at his extracurriculars, first for research, nobody is going to let him design experiments, that’s a gross exaggeration, he’d probably be given a lower level task that he can handle. Then, a good graduate student will publish a paper maybe once a year, working at least 40 hours a week. To include a high school volunteer on the paper with all the hand holding guidance and mentoring he’d have to put in at least 20 hours per week. Most likely he’ll rarely see the professor but mostly the grad student he’s helping. Also really odd to ask for a recommendation from the math teacher but not from the research mentor or writing internships since if true they would be the highest accomplishments that not many student have.

Do an estimate for all activities and the heavy course load you’d realize he’d need to clone himself several times over.

Research internship 20 hours/week
Writing internship 20 hours/week
Local youth 4 hours/week
Local leftist 4 hours/week
Restaurant job 30 hours/week, summertime only
Soccer team captain: 12 hours/week, underestimate likely more
Knowledge bows with regional and stat champ 12 hours/week likely more
School debate team captain 4 hours/week
Informal debate club 4 hours/week
Philosophy club 4 hours /week

The total for extracurriculars is 84 hours excluding the summer job. Add in the regular school hours 8 hours a day, and the need to study and do homework, one hours for each class, you end up with 164 hours. The 7 day week has only 168 hours.

Sure, maybe he meets fit the philosophy club only once a month for an hour, but I’d question how ethical it is to include it on the list of extracurriculars. Most clubs meet once a week and if you are the president you’d have to also do time consuming administrative stuff. For state and local championships, those kids practice a lot, you need to add at least 10 hours a week.

Crazier people than him exist, you don't understand the type of effort some kids are able to put in. On the previous topic about Coca-Cola Scholars, someone shared one of the scholarship winner's bios and it's more time intensive: https://www.sabrinaguo.com/about

Is this from the earlier post:

"Beginning to explore scholarship opportunities for DD and kept seeing the Coca-Cola Scholarship pop up. Seemed like a great program that my DD would very much like to pursue, but then I saw the photo of their top 5 colleges. Is it basically pointless to spend time applying for, and if so what are other scholarships that are more accessible (doesn't need to be as large as Coca-Cola)? For context, she's a good student (4.0 unweighted) with good test scores (1550+) but doesn't have any mind-blowing awards that would make her particularly stand out."

The bios of these kids are next level

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart accomplished kids exist, but in this case I think it’s a troll, or at least there’s a lot of exaggeration in the description of his accomplishments.

One thing that’s odd is that he’s taking AP Physics 1 and 2, then also AP Physics C. Really strange to do this since it’s the same material but at different levels of difficulty, particularly since he’s not interested in a stem degree. Same thing with math, there’s little reason to load up on math in 12 grade with stats, linear algebra and differential equation if your passion is political science. Only advantage is checking a box on a large number of advanced courses.

Looking at time commitment at his extracurriculars, first for research, nobody is going to let him design experiments, that’s a gross exaggeration, he’d probably be given a lower level task that he can handle. Then, a good graduate student will publish a paper maybe once a year, working at least 40 hours a week. To include a high school volunteer on the paper with all the hand holding guidance and mentoring he’d have to put in at least 20 hours per week. Most likely he’ll rarely see the professor but mostly the grad student he’s helping. Also really odd to ask for a recommendation from the math teacher but not from the research mentor or writing internships since if true they would be the highest accomplishments that not many student have.

Do an estimate for all activities and the heavy course load you’d realize he’d need to clone himself several times over.

Research internship 20 hours/week
Writing internship 20 hours/week
Local youth 4 hours/week
Local leftist 4 hours/week
Restaurant job 30 hours/week, summertime only
Soccer team captain: 12 hours/week, underestimate likely more
Knowledge bows with regional and stat champ 12 hours/week likely more
School debate team captain 4 hours/week
Informal debate club 4 hours/week
Philosophy club 4 hours /week

The total for extracurriculars is 84 hours excluding the summer job. Add in the regular school hours 8 hours a day, and the need to study and do homework, one hours for each class, you end up with 164 hours. The 7 day week has only 168 hours.

Sure, maybe he meets fit the philosophy club only once a month for an hour, but I’d question how ethical it is to include it on the list of extracurriculars. Most clubs meet once a week and if you are the president you’d have to also do time consuming administrative stuff. For state and local championships, those kids practice a lot, you need to add at least 10 hours a week.

Crazier people than him exist, you don't understand the type of effort some kids are able to put in. On the previous topic about Coca-Cola Scholars, someone shared one of the scholarship winner's bios and it's more time intensive: https://www.sabrinaguo.com/about

Holy cow, did she have time to sleep?

Wow! She even made her website in 2018! All of that time devoted to so many other things and still had the foresight to buy a URL domain and setup a profile when she was in the 7th grade!

Domain Information
Name: SABRINAGUO.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2329959973_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Domain Status:
clientTransferProhibited
Nameservers:
NS63.WORLDNIC.COM

NS64.WORLDNIC.COM

Dates
Registry Expiration: 2023-11-06 17:32:11 UTC
Updated: 2022-09-07 08:15:10 UTC
Created: 2018-11-06 17:32:11 UTC

Extraordinary

Lol, a truly impressive 7th grader! Makes you wonder how much of her “accomplishments” were set up by mom and dad.

To be fair, DS built a website in middle school. We would have had no idea how to help him. He taught himself 2-3 coding languages by watching universities’ free classes. Yes he was in a magnet where they were teaching python. But it’s doable.

One needs a credit card or online banking to buy a domain and renew it each year. If this kid had their own credit card and/or checking account in the 7th grade THEN I'm impressed.

Also, please tell me where my kid can get a credit card when they turn eleven.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart accomplished kids exist, but in this case I think it’s a troll, or at least there’s a lot of exaggeration in the description of his accomplishments.

One thing that’s odd is that he’s taking AP Physics 1 and 2, then also AP Physics C. Really strange to do this since it’s the same material but at different levels of difficulty, particularly since he’s not interested in a stem degree. Same thing with math, there’s little reason to load up on math in 12 grade with stats, linear algebra and differential equation if your passion is political science. Only advantage is checking a box on a large number of advanced courses.

Looking at time commitment at his extracurriculars, first for research, nobody is going to let him design experiments, that’s a gross exaggeration, he’d probably be given a lower level task that he can handle. Then, a good graduate student will publish a paper maybe once a year, working at least 40 hours a week. To include a high school volunteer on the paper with all the hand holding guidance and mentoring he’d have to put in at least 20 hours per week. Most likely he’ll rarely see the professor but mostly the grad student he’s helping. Also really odd to ask for a recommendation from the math teacher but not from the research mentor or writing internships since if true they would be the highest accomplishments that not many student have.

Do an estimate for all activities and the heavy course load you’d realize he’d need to clone himself several times over.

Research internship 20 hours/week
Writing internship 20 hours/week
Local youth 4 hours/week
Local leftist 4 hours/week
Restaurant job 30 hours/week, summertime only
Soccer team captain: 12 hours/week, underestimate likely more
Knowledge bows with regional and stat champ 12 hours/week likely more
School debate team captain 4 hours/week
Informal debate club 4 hours/week
Philosophy club 4 hours /week

The total for extracurriculars is 84 hours excluding the summer job. Add in the regular school hours 8 hours a day, and the need to study and do homework, one hours for each class, you end up with 164 hours. The 7 day week has only 168 hours.

Sure, maybe he meets fit the philosophy club only once a month for an hour, but I’d question how ethical it is to include it on the list of extracurriculars. Most clubs meet once a week and if you are the president you’d have to also do time consuming administrative stuff. For state and local championships, those kids practice a lot, you need to add at least 10 hours a week.

Crazier people than him exist, you don't understand the type of effort some kids are able to put in. On the previous topic about Coca-Cola Scholars, someone shared one of the scholarship winner's bios and it's more time intensive: https://www.sabrinaguo.com/about

Is this from the earlier post:

"Beginning to explore scholarship opportunities for DD and kept seeing the Coca-Cola Scholarship pop up. Seemed like a great program that my DD would very much like to pursue, but then I saw the photo of their top 5 colleges. Is it basically pointless to spend time applying for, and if so what are other scholarships that are more accessible (doesn't need to be as large as Coca-Cola)? For context, she's a good student (4.0 unweighted) with good test scores (1550+) but doesn't have any mind-blowing awards that would make her particularly stand out."



The bios of these kids are next level

Is it really that surprising? A program that sends the majority of its kids to Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Yale, and Princeton is bound to be full of kids with pretty incredible accomplishments and academics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

It is possible if he lived in a small tiny Podunk town

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

You're actually clueless about what kids around the country do, it's funny to see some people here have such confidence about things they don't know about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a girl in my DDs 8th grade class like this. She sleeps no more than 5 hours per night and has done this for years. Put into a time intensive sport relatively rare in DMV at age 4, and 4 musical instruments. The whole point is college admissions. So when you look at these profiles, it is very true that there is a lot of intentional shaping from early on. Now: the kid has to rise to the challenge, and that is where it gets interesting. Some actually thrive on it.

+1 these people exist and are way ahead of the game in high school. We knew another family that prepared their kids this way and they did extremely well in college too, so it wasn't just prodding from mommy and daddy. Hope this guy makes the most of his opportunity at Duke. It's a good sign that he was able to prioritize his fit, not a lot of high schoolers can say no to Harvard. But Duke is super prestigious too so it's not a big deal. I'll be over the moon if my kids even go to UVA.

I don't believe the Reddit post was legit

The guy has other, helpful comments on Reddit, and his post is actually missing some important things, like campaign volunteer experience,that would have been easy to get or fake.

I think that the post is real, and that this is a bright, mature kid who found college admissions web forums very early.

So, he found school easy, and he knew how to play the game early on. And, thanks to COVID, maybe he was able to do things like “intern for a popular newspaper” without putting in a lot of time.

No, it’s made up stuff.

Only high school intern at prestigious newspaper writing tons of articles? No, that’s not how it works.

It is possible if he lived in a small tiny Podunk town

Podunk towns are, by definition, insignificant places. No newspaper. No radio station. No media and, frankly,.no commerce.

You didn't grow up around here did you?