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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly? Hired a consultant at the start of junior year or even sophomore year. Shaping a clear "narrative" probably would have given DC a real shot at an Ivy. [/quote]

You can create that narrative on your own - I did for my kids. You need to look at their activities - find the common threads. Frankly feed the activities list into DeepSeek, Claude, Gemini or Chatgpt (only the paid versions) and ask it to analyze it for:

1. Evidence of major and which one (then choose the one that's the least popular for purposes of admissions)*
2. Give it an example of a narrative (you can get from the book soundbite, or from various national firms who do admissions webinars) and ask it to put a narrative together for you
3. ask for areas of weakness and what types of things kid can do over next summer or year to strengthen position
4. ask for suggested research topics for a capstone project that ties into narrative or standalone research
5. ask for ideal ECs at college that appear to correspond to these interests.

done and done.[/quote]

[b]But then you need a 16 or 17 who will follow mom's suggestions verbatim about how they spend their free time. There is no way in the world mine would or did. [/b]. I did a ton of research, suggested a lot of things (all sorts of fed internships, DC volunteer work, etc) and my kid said "no mom, this is not your life."
He was not going to go volunteer on the campaign trail or do bench research at NIH because I suggested it.  At 16 he 100% had his own agency about what he was interested in and what he was not interested in.  Sure, I could shame him, bribe him or punish him into it but I chose not to turn this into a war. I'm happy to share that he has very top grades, scores, recs and a random list of extracurriculars of his own choosing and he did get into a top20 school ED this past December.

I think shopping this "strategy planning" out to a consultant works a bit better because then activities (AKA the life plan) are suggested by a neutral third party.

[/quote]

the narrative is most important for kids who don't have either top grades or scores. So if TO, you need a narrative or something to distinguish you. If strong all around already, narrative is less important.[/quote]

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