Reply to My son is in 8th grade, I'm an immigrant - give me the College 101 please!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I didn't go to school in the US, and am feeling woefully under-prepared for my son's college application process. He's only in 8th grade but I need more visibility on what's ahead, so I can start nudging him in the right directions.

The basics: My son is STEM oriented, 4.0 GPA, does all schoolwork without any parental involvement and has always read way above his grade level.  But he has zero motivation to do anything else -  he doesn't even organize friend meetups unless his friends organize them, and his only sport is soccer because he's been doing that since kindergarten. In other words, he needs a heavy push to prepare for any major life change.

My questions:
1-Does he need to have any special skills/accomplishments to get into a place like UMD, aside from his 4.0 GPA? (I realize 4.0 GPAs are fairly common now.)
2-He has intermediate knowledge of Japanese and French, does that count for anything?
3-When does the 'resume building' need to start? 
4-Does paid work count as a substitute for fancy academic accomplishments - for example, if he tutors?

[/quote]

In my opinion: If your son is a self-starter who's getting good grades, and he reads a guide to college admissions, so he knows how admissions in the United States works, then you should let him do what seems to make sense to him, then help him use tools like Niche.com to find schools that fit who he really is.

A school that's right for him will think that soccer and tutoring are great activities.

Admissions officers at about 100 U.S. colleges may turn their nose up at his activities, but, if a school is going to turn its nose up at a kid with a 4.0 GPA and strong test scores because he didn't win a science fair or publish original research, why would he want to mess with that school? Why would he want to pretend to be something that he's not to get into some college where he'll be in way over his head?

He'd be better off at a respectable school (possible examples: the University of Indiana; the University of Wisconsin; the University of Iowa) that's happy to admit a student with such great stats and doesn't expect him to come in with spectacular extracurricular activities.[/quote]

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