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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DS is a 10th grader at a suburban public.  He is in all AP and Honors courses and a straight-A student.  Just got back from PSAT and was in the 98th percentile without prep.  He is a smart kid but seems to have no interests or EC that will make a different.  He is on the golf team, and that's all he really does at school, and he isn't a great golfer/won't be recruited.  I am trying to figure out how to make him interested in college apps and start to develop a passion or interest in general.  Summer after 9th grade he did nothing.  He wants to go to a place like MIT or an ivy, and that just won't happen even with good ECs of which he has none.  I mentioned this to my friend who works at a top DC private and she bluntly said, well he will get into a school like UMD or BC/BU if he is lucky.  I was taken aback as this is a kid who is at the top of his grade and views himself as "better than" a school like UMD or a 40/50 school like BC or BU.  He won't be hooked for admissions anywhere, aside from us being full pay which I know is not a hook but she said it can make a difference at some SLAC.  What do I do??????????[/quote]

He is not ivy level, nor MIT or any top 10. [b]The unhooked kids at those schools are naturally 99th percentile on standardized tests their whole lives , without prep. A large portion are 99.7-99.9.[/b] Thats  why that person is telling you not possible or atleast highly unlikely. [/quote]

Not sure about that.  Some of those high scoring kids have had SAT prep since middle school or even elementary school![/quote]

Most have not. Mine are all 99th %ile and so were their friends from the high school who ended up at ivies and T10. These kids all discussed SAT and psat. None had any significant prep because they were already high scorers. There were several other high scorers who took the hard classes and who were still shut out of t20. The kids who prepped were the ones who were chasing the top kids, usually ones who got around 1300 on the 10th grade psat. These kids were the same ones who had tutors in middle school just to barely stay in math trVk that did BC in 11th and Multi and Modeling in 12th. Almost 25% of the graduating class was 98-99%ile. The school released all of this data on CTP/ERB testing throughout the years. The school placed into the top math group and top reading/latin group based on these tests in 4th grade. The superstars stayed the superstars for the most part, and the next group who got added to the top math later were the ones with the middle school tutors. Only the hooked ones in that group ended up at ivies/stanford/etc.
The Psat is easy for any true 99th percentile kid: no prep needed especially for math and for one who has any shot at MIT or stem at a t10. OP is quite borderline. Even if they got in, they would be in the bottom 1/4 on all the curves. That is a self esteem destroyer, to mostly B and C in college. Ivies grade inflate but bottom 1/4 is still B- and Cs in stem. It is B+ in humanities and athlete-easy classes but these are joke and employers and grad schools expect A’s in those. They expect more A than B in stem, as do med schools, in other words at least top half in ivy stem. 
OP needs to aim for BC or Wake or the like for stem, or RPI or RIT for engineering. [/quote]
DP. Prep can come in the form of acceleration and enrichment from an early age. Not just specialized prep. But, of course you'd like to think that your highly enriched kid is just naturally brilliant.[/quote]

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