Reply to How did your super high stats kid fare (1550 plus and 4.5 plus with max rigor)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I think that is one of the reasons colleges want strong extracurriculars, the  primary reason being they want engaged students adding to campus life.   Perfect grades and top SAT scores while spending 30+ hours a week doing other activities shows they can handle the rigor.  
I don't think colleges really want students who will struggle academically, at least not many of them.[/quote]

LOL. How does a student spend 30+ hours per week on EC's in addition to actual school? [/quote]

I have a kid like that, he's my energizer bunny type kid.  He has long days, and busy weekends.  [/quote]

I also had a kid who spent about 28-30 hours a week on ECs: 20 for performing arts and 8-10 on clubs, volunteering work. Took every hard class possible and loved the challenge, a wall of 5’s on the app, had done all the hard ones by the end of junior year. They were just more efficient and naturally intellectually quick so they spent very little time on homework compared to other students near the top of the class. They are at an ivy. Many of their peers are of the same mold, but it is definitely under half. They remain near the top in a competitive and difficult major. No one was their level in their high school. They needed a T10/ivy for fit to finally study among a large group of similar minds and not always be the smartest and fastest thinker in the room. [/quote]

Your kid did not need an ivy to not be the smartest thinker in the room. There are several universities (even far outside T20) where your kid would not have been the smartest in the room by a long shot. University of Alabama for example has a very large cohort of insanely smart ivy/ivy+ accepted/level kids, due to  huge scholarship $ and very specialized top level programs.

Not every family can afford an ivy, no matter what type of academic rockstar their kid is -- that is to say, there are large concentrations of kids like this at many universities, not just ivies.[/quote]

There are also creative, intellectually quick people who don't test well, and even struggle getting through high school.  I went to junior high with several of them in the 1970s, and I see no reason to believe that anything has changed.  High GPAs with rigor and top of the chart SAT scores can identify them, but they also identify privileged conformists.  AOs probably recognize this, and struggle to sort one from the other, as well as find others with these traits with lesser stats within the confines of institutional needs, which is why the admissions process is so challenging.  [/quote]

There aren't a lot of very smart people who don't test well.  These test are generally pretty good at measuring cognitive ability.  High test scores are a better predictor of college performance, graduate school admissions, published research, patents, etc than pretty much anytime else we have.  The admissions officers are largely twenty something  LAC grads using a rubric with no better idea of how to gauge academic talent than the average high school teacher.  Of course there are exceptions but as a general rule, they're mostly bright but young and often inexperienced recent grads.[/quote]

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