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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ask your school counselor where the last 5 valedictorian and salutatorians have gone.  Your school will have better data than the private counselor.[/quote]

This is excellent advice.

Keep any school he loves on his reach list, at least for RD, and I would not encourage him to ED a target school (which, for him, Tufts probably is) unless he REALLY loves it. ED is for the school you re dying to attend, regardless of other acceptances. The same kid who REAs Harvard would not REA Stanford; ditto to MIT EA, IMO. At most of those schools, applying early does not give you a real edge. I would not ED any school that has ED2 unless it is his absolute favorite.

Don't get caught up in the "my white son will not get into a great school," because it honestly just buys into a racist trope - and by the way, being full pay is the single biggest advantage any applicant has at any school. His grades and scores seem as good as they can be, assuming highest rigor. The lackluster ECs matter less, IMO, than the story they can tell. If they do not yet tell a compelling story, preferably tied into his academic interests, I would make that happen between now and November. Both my kids had what most on this board would consider lackluster ECs - theater, sports (did not go recruitment route), etc. But both put real work not just into writing their personal statements, but in creating the application as a whole, and they used the summer before senior year to close that loop with summer ECs that made their apps truly sing. Both had, I am sure, excellent LORs, and both got into their early schools in December and never looked back.

Best of luck.[/quote]

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