How early to start preparing kid for attending a good college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP if your kid wants something at the level of Harvard, Duke, or Princeton, she probably needs to have already shown some signs of excellence or unique talent at this point (8th grade). Have you been seeing that/have her teachers been mentioning it?

Ding ding ding!
By 8th grade you already know if your kid is Harvard material. It’s not even about talent per se, but rather about drive, focus, ability to do things she sets her mind to quite well.
Signed,
Scholarship student at LSE with a son who will most likely not advance past the regional flagship (if that)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure why so many here are criticizing OP, who clearly wants what's best for their child.

If you think about it, the odds of any US student in a graduating class in any given year to get into an ivy are LESS than the odds of a football player getting drafted into the NFL that year.

Do football players who want to play in the NFL start practicing a year or 2 before? Of course not! These players probably started playing when they were 5 or 6.

If you really want to prepare your kid for an ivy or top college, they need to start showing some passion and act upon it from middle school or at the latest, their freshman year in highschool.

Don't just have them write an essay about how interested they are in computer science and AI. Sign them up for programming classes, have them earn certificates, internships, maybe start some non profit to teach lower income kids how to code ...

These are the type of kids who get into the top schools.

Good grades and SAT scores are not enough. These will give top colleges a reason not to reject you but not a compelling reason to accept you. Top colleges can fill their incoming class 10 times over with kids who have straight As and 90th percentile SAT scores.

One thing I've noticed is that far too many kids are trying to be the 453rd computer programmer/app developer at Stanford. It's unsurprising when they are not admitted. There are also a lot of kids who develop a persona that's not really genuine or interesting. Stanford's not looking for the national honor society president (someone who specializes in getting A's in their classes)--they're looking for someone who's going to bring something unique to the campus that they don't already have. That might be someone who has researched indigenous music in rural Mexico, or traveled to an archive to write an original piece of history using primary sources, or something like that. Ultimately Stanford wants alumni who will become leaders in their fields, and the person who explores some otherwise unoccupied niche is more likely to become a leader who somehow pushes out the boundaries of human knowledge.

I think the right way to do it is this: (1) if your kid shows early academic promise, make sure they're in an environment in which they aren't held back unduly by their teachers and peers and become angry or resentful of academics, but also ensure that they feel they are in the driver's seat--this means provide resources, but don't force it--once you get to high school your kid has to independently make the decision to succeed; (2) inspire a love of learning from an early age--take your kid to the science museum, the symphony, the art museum, read exciting books about exploration and invention, talk about cool math concepts, play games that grow their math skills in a fun way, allow them to watch shows like Square One TV; (3) allow your child to fail and face the consequences when it doesn't matter, that is, elementary and middle school--until you fail to meet expectations it's very hard to understand what you need to do to exceed them; (4) encourage your child to develop unique and interesting hobbies by doing such activities with them at an early age--they'll either keep up with the parent's activity, as I did, or develop their own unique interests; and (5) don't talk about college admissions with your kids at all.

None of this guarantees getting into Stanford or an Ivy League school, but it is a way to raise a successful adult who can become a leader in his or her field. And keep in mind that college admissions are Round I. I had a number of high school classmates who didn't go to Stanford undergrad with me, but later completed their PhDs there.

Oh, and #6: keep them off iphones and social media so that they can develop the focus needed to become the top student in their class.