Reply to Lessons Learned- College Admissions- If you had to do it all again.....

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What do the boxes say after most rigorous?[/quote]

According to my child's HS counselor, the next box is "very demanding", which is what she gave his transcript. 10 AP/IB classes but didn't do the full IB Diploma.[/quote]

I don't get this category. Are they going to keep escalating until 16 year olds are have to produce Ph.d thesis level work?  At the same time, they want kids to "follow their passion", but how can they do that with 20 AP classes?  And while showing commitment to band, foreign languages, service, sport etc etc. [b]And then the colleges will turn around and chose the girl who grew up traveling on the rodeo circuit anyway.[/quote][/b]

This is funny and so true. I am so much more laid back about my 10th grader after seeing the grind my 2 older kids went through. DC just picked 11th grade classes and really didn’t want AP biology. Fine with me. DC will be plenty challenged at school without it. Life is too short and so what if DC ends up at Bucknell instead of Colgate or Indiana instead of Wisconsin. DC will be fine![/quote]

What's funnier is that I actually heard the rodeo thing from the admissions officer on a tour.  They admitted the rodeo kid as well as a girl to chemical engineering who said that she was interested in nail polish.  I think these admin people are bored out of their brains.[/quote]

Aargh!  
This is what is so frustrating and stressful about the process. It also feels a little like a personality contest - a bunch of people in college admissions deciding whether you are “cool” or “interesting “. [/quote]

What’s funnier to me is people who think they know better which students the colleges want then the colleges themselves.

If they like rodeo girl because she’s into nail polish and they think she can do the work, then what is the problem?[/quote]

They were two different kids.

What's frustrating is they make this poor high school kids jump through hoops to do the most demanding courses, then turn round and say "yeah, nah, we want the fun kids".[/quote]

So each kid needs to follow their own path and not stress about the comparison. And parents the same. Some kids can do and want to do all the APs. That’s great. Some kids don’t want to or can’t.  That’s great too. No one, though, should be thinking that anything is a guarantee into a ‘top’  school  unless you have major hooks.

Resist the notion that these “top” schools can make or break your life, people! They don’t. [/quote]

+2!  [/quote]

+3!  I'm the PP with the "very demanding" 10 AP/IB kid.  I think the idea of a transcript rating can be valuable for kids at a school that doesn't offer a lot of options, so they are not getting dinged for only taking 5 APs if t hey took everything available to them.  But it does create a toxic arms race at these big, competitive HS's where you can fill your entire schedule with AP classes.

To be clear, my DS was a pretty laid back student early in HS but ramped up the last couple years (half of his AP/IB classes are in senior year).  Also did not do a lot in ECs but spent time on things that were important to him but not impressive resume-builders, which is totally fine with me. Personality-wise, I absolutely never expected him to be competitive for nor a good fit for the T20 schools.  The main impact probably was that he wasn't in the running for UVA. That was fine with me since I thought VT was a better fit anyway for what he wants to do and he did get in there (feeling very lucky in this crazy year). He did apply to UVA but it felt like he applied mainly because all his friends did and he just wanted to see.

I also have a 10th grader coming up who was much more of a focused student. But she also has inattentive ADHD and struggles to balance the workload so she will also not be a "most rigorous" student. She's opting out of some APs most kids take in order to focus on the things that she cares more about (sciences). We'll find the college that is right for who she is rather than fixate of making her look like the right candidate for some college just because of where it is on a publication's ranking.

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