Reply to Balancing advanced HS classes/APs with having a happy high schooler

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are something like 2000 4-year colleges and universities. Regardless of whether he takes calc AB or BC, there will be a good fit for him.

There are two approaches to college. One is too pick the kind of school you want and then forces your son to be the kind of high school student who can get in. The second approach is to choose the high school classes and experience that are best for your son's skills and temperament and then see what colleges follow from that.[/quote]

That sounds good in theory.  But I don’t think any of the kids with the profiles built to get into top20 colleges just love taking every AP class possible, grinding through 4 hrs of high school (and probably middle school too) and building “non profit” organizations. They are only doing this to get into top school to maximize professional opportunities as adults.  Either your kid is willing and wants to put into the effort or they aren’t.  But I really don’t think it has anything to do with the student actually enjoying it [/quote]

Do you know kids admitted to top 20 schools? The ones I know (including two to Yale, one to Brown this year) do not fit this profile at all. They are smart, intrinsically motivated kids who pursued stuff they enjoyed and were really good at it. Sure, maybe they made some marginal decisions to boost rigor—e.g., taking AP foreign language even though they don’t love the subject—but they didn’t do the stuff people on here assume is necessary to get into a top school. [/quote]

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