Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

The list of acceptances is impressive but the ECs not that much. I am wondering if this is the full story.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

I completely disagree. It is VERY hard to be multilingual unless you grow up in a country where several languages are actually routinely spoken and written. Even with an ESL parent, it is hard to be bilingual. Most Hispanic kids at our school cannot write Spanish well and do not get a 5 on the AP exam. I fully agree with the actual immigrant here, as an immigrant myself. True fluency is hard and impressive.

Spanish lang is an easy 5 for any ESL student, at least down here in Texas. The Spanish literature exam is a different story but it’s the most rigorous Ap humanities exam

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

I completely disagree. It is VERY hard to be multilingual unless you grow up in a country where several languages are actually routinely spoken and written. Even with an ESL parent, it is hard to be bilingual. Most Hispanic kids at our school cannot write Spanish well and do not get a 5 on the AP exam. I fully agree with the actual immigrant here, as an immigrant myself. True fluency is hard and impressive.

Anonymous wrote:This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Clearly the colleges were impressed though, given these were his results. Linguistics is the way to go. I've gone down the reddit rabbit hole (r/collegeresults "linguistics) and its fascinating.

Acceptances:

Yale (Defer REA --> Accepted!)

Princeton

Brown

Johns Hopkins (Hodson Trust Scholarship 55k/yr!!) —> Committed!!

Duke

WashU (Ervin full tuition scholarship!!)

Emory (accepted to Atlanta, Woodruff full ride scholarship through Oxford campus!!)

Rice (Trustee Scholarship 20k/yr!)

Case Western Reserve University (Nord Scholar + 45.5k/yr scholarship!!)

Williams

Amherst

University of Rochester (25k/yr!)

Trinity (Global Health Gateway, research scholarship)

William&Mary (Monroe research scholar)

Duke Kunshan (in China, half tuition scholarship!)

Boston College

Fordham (full tuition Fordham University scholarship!)


Waitlists: Vanderbilt (didn't accept spot); Northeastern (no)


Rejections: Harvard

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

I am from Eastern Europe - a place someone mentioned previous as a hotbed for multilingualism. Laughable. Maybe one in a 500 is at C2 level for one foreign language (English).

"One parent speaks Spanish, other French" - means next to nothing re: languages their children will speak. Even if their kids attend weekend school regularly they will barely crack A1. Those kids can't take college level classes in Spanish or French. It requires a tremendous effort to get them to that level.

Not sure what do you mean by "international students being smarter" but certainly you will agree that getting accepted to a top school while speaking a foreign language, scoring 1600 on SAT etc, is more impressive coming from a student who is not a native speaker of English?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal. Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.

Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language.

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.

This doesn't impress me so much, honestly. It is infinitely harder to win a major piano or violin competition or to make it to the finals for any academic olympiad team.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look at the bios on Reddit/collegeresults and A2C of linguistics majors.

They do a ton of ECs with languages. A ton. Are you doing that?

like what?

Here’s a good one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeresults/s/exo45zJDHQ

Other common ones are below. This isn’t rocket science people.


Awards: National linguistics Olympiad

ECs:
1. founder and president of school linguistics club & team, school honored club and national representative etc
2. co-founder of Tolkien club (literature, linguistics, arts and such)
3. Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics (rarely have high schoolers)
4. city-wide linguistics competition director
5. Translator/tutor for volunteering services

How common are these types of ECs (from the reddit link)?

Sorry meant to paste.

ECs

ELL (English language learning) director at immigration org in my city. Ran the ELL department, tutored ELL students of all ages, looked over volunteers and students each week. There is a lot I did with this and this was a major part of my four years in high school.

Students and later class representative as part of Spain's Ministry of Education International Immersion program. Spanish language and culture classes run by Spanish diplomats, as well as some fun cultural immersion activities (like presenting on a Spanish news channel + meeting some big figures in Spain's government!). I graduated from the program the summer of my junior year.

Linguistics club president! Member sophomore and junior year and then ran it senior year. Super fun club to geek out about languages

NSLI-Y virtual Turkish program. Somewhat selective US State Department program to learn critical languages for US foreign policy. I recommend this a million times over to anyone who loves foreign languages - 10 week course and I even got some Turkish sweets sent in the mail.

Part-time job at tutoring company. Pretty standard high school job that I held for most of junior and senior year.

English teacher at a sleep-away camp in Spain! Two week camp where I was one of the camp counselors in charge of the English learning activities. A lot of fun but definitely a test to how easily I can handle loud 5-11 year olds for hours at a time...

Native American language revitalization project! I was an intern at a Native American org and worked on documentation research for Apache and Lakota language families and even helped compile a children’s book in Lakota!

GeoBee organizer for my town's middle school. Covid led NatGeo to shut down their GeoBee which was a huge bummer because I loved that so much growing up, so a few friends and I decided to set up the geo bee at our school again and as a geography lover it was a lot of fun

Warehouse associate! I worked as a warehouse associate over the summer after my junior year which was definitely interesting and I learned a lot about packaging/deliveries/returns/shipping.

Varsity track and field. I ran track in the summer and did sprinting and jumping events. I wasn't too crazy at it but I decided at the last minute to cram it on this list!

Awards:

Congratulatory citation from my state's Congress. Signed by governor + a few state reps and it was awarded due to my first place selection in an essay contest that led to a 3k donation to org in EC#1 on my behalf!

Certificate of completion of course in EC#2 along with a CEFR C1 distinction in Spanish (awarded due to same course)

Volunteer award from town volunteer foundation for work with EC#1 org. One youth recipient per year.

Seal of biliteracy in Spanish + French as well as NSLIY certificate of completion for Turkish course.

English department award + book award (both from school)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look at the bios on Reddit/collegeresults and A2C of linguistics majors.

They do a ton of ECs with languages. A ton. Are you doing that?

like what?

Here’s a good one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeresults/s/exo45zJDHQ

Other common ones are below. This isn’t rocket science people.


Awards: National linguistics Olympiad

ECs:
1. founder and president of school linguistics club & team, school honored club and national representative etc
2. co-founder of Tolkien club (literature, linguistics, arts and such)
3. Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics (rarely have high schoolers)
4. city-wide linguistics competition director
5. Translator/tutor for volunteering services

How common are these types of ECs (from the reddit link)?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look at the bios on Reddit/collegeresults and A2C of linguistics majors.

They do a ton of ECs with languages. A ton. Are you doing that?

like what?

Here’s a good one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeresults/s/exo45zJDHQ

Other common ones are below. This isn’t rocket science people.


Awards: National linguistics Olympiad

ECs:
1. founder and president of school linguistics club & team, school honored club and national representative etc
2. co-founder of Tolkien club (literature, linguistics, arts and such)
3. Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics (rarely have high schoolers)
4. city-wide linguistics competition director
5. Translator/tutor for volunteering services

Whoa. That link - crazy ECs

But only has C1 level in one language - Spanish.

But kid did a ton with it. Compelling applicant.

Right. However, not exactly evidence that "trilingual fluency is very common".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look at the bios on Reddit/collegeresults and A2C of linguistics majors.

They do a ton of ECs with languages. A ton. Are you doing that?

like what?

Here’s a good one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeresults/s/exo45zJDHQ

Other common ones are below. This isn’t rocket science people.


Awards: National linguistics Olympiad

ECs:
1. founder and president of school linguistics club & team, school honored club and national representative etc
2. co-founder of Tolkien club (literature, linguistics, arts and such)
3. Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics (rarely have high schoolers)
4. city-wide linguistics competition director
5. Translator/tutor for volunteering services

Whoa. That link - crazy ECs

But only has C1 level in one language - Spanish.

But kid did a ton with it. Compelling applicant.

Anonymous wrote:Also noticing that the kids hid they wanted to do premed, and another commenter said they did the same - pretended to be all about linguistics while gunning for premed instead.

That’s pretty common though

Kid needs to:
- start multi-lingual club at school asap
- apply to some nationally recognized linguistics all-star programs (some mentioned above), including Congress Bundestag Youth
Exchange and NSLI-Y (virtual)
- do language tutoring for immigrants or refugees

Also noticing that the kids hid they wanted to do premed, and another commenter said they did the same - pretended to be all about linguistics while gunning for premed instead.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look at the bios on Reddit/collegeresults and A2C of linguistics majors.

They do a ton of ECs with languages. A ton. Are you doing that?

like what?

Here’s a good one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/collegeresults/s/exo45zJDHQ

Other common ones are below. This isn’t rocket science people.


Awards: National linguistics Olympiad

ECs:
1. founder and president of school linguistics club & team, school honored club and national representative etc
2. co-founder of Tolkien club (literature, linguistics, arts and such)
3. Leiden Summer School in Language and Linguistics (rarely have high schoolers)
4. city-wide linguistics competition director
5. Translator/tutor for volunteering services

Whoa. That link - crazy ECs

But only has C1 level in one language - Spanish.