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[quote=Anonymous]I would say that my kid is a pretty typical middle class East Coast suburban kid.  He's a rising sophomore at a well regarded public high school with a 3.2 unweighted GPA, and a 3.64 weighted.  He tests about the middle of his grade on most things.  If that holds true he might make an SAT score around 1700, but of course that's a guess.  Plays a couple of sports and sings in the chorus, but isn't a star at any of them, and really likes to volunteer.  He's also a very nice, kind, well behaved kid.  He's not the "doesn't live up to his potential" kid I seem to hear about a lot, he's doing pretty well for the talents he has.

I am sometimes torn on how much to push him.  I'll make grand plans to get him a math tutor, or sign him up for some activity that will sound really good on a college app, and then I drop the ball.  Not because he wouldn't do it if I asked him to, but because I get busy, or because he's busy, or because I just have mixed feelings about pushing him.

So, I'm wondering, for a kid like this, how much of a difference would pushing make?  Let's say he brought that GPA up to a 3.4 unweighted, or added a couple extra AP's over the course of his high school experience, or took a series of SAT courses that added 200 points to his score, or even did all of those things,  what does that mean for college, and then for life?

Right now, he's saying he likes small schools, and I like instate tuition, so let's imagine that he's looking at Frostburg, Salisbury, and St. Mary's.  Naviance makes that look like safety, match and reach in that order.  If I push, and it puts him over the edge from Frostburg to Salisbury or Salisbury to St. Mary's, how would his experience be different, in terms of what college would look like, or career or grad school opportunities at the end?  Also, which kid is better prepared for life, the kid who juggled a pretty full schedule independently, and ended up with a lot of B's, or the kid who was helicoptered a little more by mom and tutors, but got some more A's, but still not straight A's.

Just curious.

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