I am not sure why so many here are criticizing OP, who clearly wants what's best for their child.

If you think about it, the odds of any US student in a graduating class in any given year to get into an ivy are LESS than the odds of a football player getting drafted into the NFL that year.

Do football players who want to play in the NFL start practicing a year or 2 before? Of course not! These players probably started playing when they were 5 or 6.

If you really want to prepare your kid for an ivy or top college, they need to start showing some passion and act upon it from middle school or at the latest, their freshman year in highschool.

Don't just have them write an essay about how interested they are in computer science and AI. Sign them up for programming classes, have them earn certificates, internships, maybe start some non profit to teach lower income kids how to code ...

These are the type of kids who get into the top schools.

Good grades and SAT scores are not enough. These will give top colleges a reason not to reject you but not a compelling reason to accept you. Top colleges can fill their incoming class 10 times over with kids who have straight As and 90th percentile SAT scores.

OP, these answers are pretty unfair.

I have a senior who decided in 6th grade (yes , I know) that he wanted to attend a specific school. We laughed it off for a year, but he never wavered. It wasn't an Ivy, but still a huge longshot.

What we did:

1. Got him on the proper math track. For him, that meant some catch-up Khan Academy work in middle school, so AB would ultimately be on his application transcripts.

2. Worked on his shyness, knowing he would have to eventually interact with admissions officers and alumni interviewers.

3. Let him bounce around EC's in middle school until he found one he loved. We knew he would need to focus on one in high school, and we wanted it to be something he chose.

4. Got him used to leadership roles ASAP. In middle school this was just trying out roles in Boy Scouts. He didn't stick with Scouts, but he had the background and was comfortable jumping into things in high school.

Perhaps we got lucky, I don't know, but he made himself into a solid candidate and was accepted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Birth or In utero

This is a little silly, but there is a kernel of truth: reading a wide range of fiction and nonfiction to your young child constantly (and reading more difficult but still age-appropriate content) will help—but it’s not a guarantee. Promote learning for the love of learning, not college admissions.

+1

Anonymous wrote:Birth or In utero

This is a little silly, but there is a kernel of truth: reading a wide range of fiction and nonfiction to your young child constantly (and reading more difficult but still age-appropriate content) will help—but it’s not a guarantee. Promote learning for the love of learning, not college admissions.

Anonymous wrote:If you're just starting in 8th grade your DD is totally screwed. You need to start, at the LATEST, by 4th grade to set them up to be doing Algebra 1 by 7th grade. Their writing skills need to be very solid - you can't just start now. You should readjust your DD's expectations to something more like Boston College or Northeastern.

Not true at all.

Birth or In utero

Anonymous wrote:I think you need to think further out than just getting into a prestigious college.

What does your child want to be doing when he or she is 45? Now work backwards from there. What jobs does he/she need to be doing at 40? 35? 30? Any graduate school required? What are the requirements to get into a graduate school that will get him where he needs to be at 30? What colleges will get him to one of those graduate schools? Etc etc…

But everything he is doing now should be looking beyond “a good college”. If you’re building your resume backwards, the “good” college will come. And you will find “good” means “college that will be prepare me for the next step” and not “college that will impress mom’s coworkers”.

This is sound in logic but hard to do in practice with a teen

Anonymous wrote:I think you need to think further out than just getting into a prestigious college.

What does your child want to be doing when he or she is 45? Now work backwards from there. What jobs does he/she need to be doing at 40? 35? 30? Any graduate school required? What are the requirements to get into a graduate school that will get him where he needs to be at 30? What colleges will get him to one of those graduate schools? Etc etc…

But everything he is doing now should be looking beyond “a good college”. If you’re building your resume backwards, the “good” college will come. And you will find “good” means “college that will be prepare me for the next step” and not “college that will impress mom’s coworkers”.

That’s great…but how in the heck does the kid know what they want to be at 45, other than rich as heck and lying on the beach.

I think you need to think further out than just getting into a prestigious college.

What does your child want to be doing when he or she is 45? Now work backwards from there. What jobs does he/she need to be doing at 40? 35? 30? Any graduate school required? What are the requirements to get into a graduate school that will get him where he needs to be at 30? What colleges will get him to one of those graduate schools? Etc etc…

But everything he is doing now should be looking beyond “a good college”. If you’re building your resume backwards, the “good” college will come. And you will find “good” means “college that will be prepare me for the next step” and not “college that will impress mom’s coworkers”.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at who gets into RSI, that group is already super selective. Lots of high achieving kids. MIT gets 3000 applications, and accepts 80.

+1 and Coca Cola scholars accepts 150 out of 100,000 applicants, absolutely nuts

At that point it’s purely a lottery, right?

Yes, but selected from the most high achieving kids, no doubt. Not every student has an equal chance of being selected.

OP if your kid wants something at the level of Harvard, Duke, or Princeton, she probably needs to have already shown some signs of excellence or unique talent at this point (8th grade). Have you been seeing that/have her teachers been mentioning it?

Anonymous wrote:You are ridiculous and setting your kid up to fail. There is literally nothing you can do to “prepare” because it’s a crapshoot even for the best of the best.

How about you back the hell off and focus on finding some joy in life.

totally

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at who gets into RSI, that group is already super selective. Lots of high achieving kids. MIT gets 3000 applications, and accepts 80.

+1 and Coca Cola scholars accepts 150 out of 100,000 applicants, absolutely nuts

At that point it’s purely a lottery, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at who gets into RSI, that group is already super selective. Lots of high achieving kids. MIT gets 3000 applications, and accepts 80.

+1 and Coca Cola scholars accepts 150 out of 100,000 applicants, absolutely nuts

That makes sense if they're mostly feeding kids to Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Yale, and Princeton...

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at who gets into RSI, that group is already super selective. Lots of high achieving kids. MIT gets 3000 applications, and accepts 80.

+1 and Coca Cola scholars accepts 150 out of 100,000 applicants, absolutely nuts

That makes sense if they're mostly feeding kids to Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Yale, and Princeton...