Reply to How normal is it for parents to set up non profits, research, etc for kids to get into college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a high school junior and I’m noticing many PARENTS doing much of the heavy lifting for their high school children, especially in setting up non profits, start ups and research. My kid does science Olympiad and several of the winners have parents do most of the building for the competitions.

DH works at a high profile job and also is associated with a top grad program. Be gets parents asking DH to write recommendations for kids he doesn’t know. The parents try to set up internships. The parents hire writing tutors to help write college essays.

I’m just wondering if this is normal and if colleges can tell when it is the parents or the kid. [/quote]

Sadly, completely normal and it absolutely works to give those children a huge leg up on admissions.  Especially in a "test optional" world.[/quote]

This isn’t really true. These contrived “super elite” ECs and educational prizes are really only the cost of doing business at the Ivy+ type places. It’s because everyone or the vast majority are 1500 plus that applicants are desperate to distinguish themselves in other ways. What you really hate is holistic admissions. Lower down on the top 25 national universities and all the top 25 SLACs, you just don’t have to play those games quite as much. Credentials have to be on point, obviously, but these manufactured research opportunities and non profits are not prerequisites for admissions at the vast majority of even highly selective schools. You want to continue to rail against TO because your kid tested well, have at it. But those types of ECs really only matter at a small number of TO schools like Duke and Princeton which I think are both still TO, or were last cycle. Pretty silly to have your heart set on Princeton (or the like). Also pretty silly to think you should have a materially better shot because of an SAT score. At best that should keep applicants out of the auto reject pile, assuming other objective data is together. [/quote]

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