Colleges

Actually, I'd think that if you went to a comparable UC (ie: Bezerkley or UCLA) then your GPA would be relatively the same.

 

I think Erik makes an excellent point with picking your school carefully, and according to how it fits you. Having just finished the college process, I can now reflect on the education world. As a macrocosm, it might seem beneficial to go to the best college one gets admitted to. However, that notion is not entirely correct. Although the top top schools clearly have an edge on those of "lower ranks," there is not an immeasurable gap between the two; similar to sports cars-- 0-60 times of 4.3 and and 4.1 are hardly different (for most practical uses, not racing)-- it is what one gets out of driving a certain car that makes it useful. The only difference between those higher and lower schools are the students. The higher schools, as Erik said, are mainly comprised of #1,2,3 students. The lower schools will tend to be more "diverse" in the academic spectrum. Now, the big difference I see (and my point, the importance of picking your school carefully) is that one can rise above the rest and become more distinguished more easily in the lesser schools, yet they are not far from the higher ones.


I've experienced this phenomenon first hand. I am Currently a senior at a prestigious, and very and rigorous private prep school in Delaware. With only 54 ( almost all very intelligent) kids in my class, the competition is unreal. That competition has made high grades almost impossible to achieve. I am currently holding a 3.25 GPA, and working pretty hard. Had I gone to Unionville (my local public high school), I would have earned a higher GPA (higher probably being around 3.6-3.8). I got "snafued" by attending the better school. Yes, my the education I recieved was great. I am very knowledgable, but my grades are NOT representative of that. The problem is that college admissions counselors at Harvard or Yale don't know my school. All they see is a 3.25, and that's obviously not good enough.


If I were to go to Colgate, or another very "high" school, I could encounter the same scenario. That is why I am choosing to go to the 5-year co-op program in Economics at Drexel. I feel than in addition to real life experience (something I would never get at a run-of-the-mill liberal arts school), I will be able to distinguish myself better, and therefore look better on resumes for grad. schools or businesses. Yes, obviously the top students at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton will have more/ possibly better options than me, but I'm willing to accept that. I'm willing to accept that, because not only do I want a life, but I also know that being at the top of any graduating class at a respectable university will get me almost as far. I won't complain being the 360 modena as opposed to the Stradale. After all, two tenths of a second aren't that much.

Joe

 

Well said Joe lol
Erik

 

Of course the optimum course of action is to go to a very hard private school where you learn a ton, finish #1 in the class then go to Harvard and finish #1 in the class there as well... haha.

But this is another thing that parents should think about - where their kids go to high school. There are two approaches. Go to a school that no one really knows about, and be by far the best student there. Take the absolute hardest curriculum that you can take and make sure that the admissions counselors know this (you put it on your application) when you are applying for college. You only have 8 AP's because that is all your school offered, you tell them that, or whatever. You finish #1 and are by far the standout. You are going to have to do your own marketing because your counselors aren't going to know anything, but then again you are by far the best student so if you are persistent this will help you.

Or you could send your kid to the top school where you know they send 2-3 kids to harvard every year, 2 to MIT, 5 to Cornell, 4 to UPenn, 3 to Duke, etc. Your kid is on the grind like everyone else, finishes #10 in his class and gets his pick of the top schools.

It is funny how stuff like this works. This is why I pretty much hate grades. You could coast at a barely-competitive high school in some place like Ohio (me) and get into a pretty good school. If you are #1 in your class maybe you will get into Columbia. You could coast at a bad high school in Wyoming, be #1 in your class, and go to Harvard. You could coast in a good high school in Texas, and barely make the top 10% and go to UT, or work really hard in a really good HS in Texas and STILL maybe only go to UT, because you don't spend a ridiculous amount of time grade-grubbing at an ultra-competetive school. Or you could work really hard, be one of the top 10 students in your class and go to a place like Rice or Duke or one of the ivies.

 

Exactly.

 

Thanks.

 

For me, this was the advantage of IB in Florida. My school sent similar numbers of kids to similar schools, but I was honestly never interested in Ivy schools because of the reasons I set forth earlier (concerning undergrad v. grad school). I got my full ride to Florida and thats all I wanted, even though I was accepted to Ivy schools.

I guess the economist in me (undergrad degree) just thought about a free education from a great public institution (Florida) v. a $200,000 education from a private institution. Now that I'm in graduate school I have no problem paying for the private education because I took a fairly optimal route (utilizing college credits from high school and graduating in three years) and saved my parents a considerable amount of money.

I know that weighing these issues in simple monetary terms is very basic and does not consider many factors, but I think it still works on the whole for most situations.

 

What you're really talking about is research. Sad to say, however, that forcing all American kids to study math and science is NOT going to produce more quality researchers.

If you assume a normal distribution of IQ, which we probably should, there are only X amount of geniuses in any given country. If you assume that 1% of the population qualifies, at 300 million for the US, this means that we have 300k people who might make good researchers.

China, at 2 billion, will have 2 million. India, at 1 billion, will have 1 million.

Are you starting to see the problem?

The key, thus, is that we need to identify those 300,000 people and provide them with the resources and training to suceed. Sadly, our education system focuses primarily on the losers.

If we don't turn this around, I'm afraid that our primary export will be capital, not genius.

Dale

 

That's the end result of the 'no child left behind' act, it endorses, and approves mediocrity.

 

OR you could have parents who both went to Cornell and then that good ol' legacy comes into play

...(yes my brother will also be graduating from Cornell next spring lol).

 

I don't disagree. Producing more engineers/scientists will naturally mean increased competition and therefore the cream will rise to the top. Perhaps the total employment of engineers will be the same, but they will be better.

 

Ah ok, it took me a while to understand what that was at first but it seems this is the PLAN, rather than the PSAT. The PLAN is a pre-ACT, basically. I am pretty sure it is scored with a max of 32 where as the real one is scored with a max of 36 (in each category, then you average them together and at .5 you round up to get composite).

So with a composite score of 25/32 that is pretty good for a 10th grader I would say. If he continues to work really hard and get great grades, he is going to be able to have a fighting chance for admission at really good schools. As of right now, those scores aren't going to be a stand out on his application, but they are solid, and combined with good greats and great other activities (which it sounds like is by far the category where he stands out, with his music) he will have good application to any of top 20 schools.

I would just encourage him to maybe take a look at some books to study for the SAT/ACT and take them multiple times starting next year. I took both 3 times and I think I ended up doing my best on the third time on one test and maybe the 2nd time on another test (I don't really remember).

He might want to look into starting testing in December of next year (his junior year) and then again in the spring, and maybe either the summer or the following fall. Usually the last scores that you can submit to schools are going to be from the tests that you take in October/Early November of your senior year. He has a good bit of time still to improve as much as he can and he is starting from a great point as well.

You are going to be very happy with where your kid ends up

 

I know that I am relatively young, but after taking the PSAT in 7th grade for T.I.P. (Talent Identification Program), the PSAT in 9th grade, the SAT in 10th grade, the ACT in 10th grade, the LSAT in my sophomore year of college...I'd say the one facet of the test that I would warn anyone about: Time Management.

In my honest opinion, its not about "Can I do the problems?" Anyone can do those problems. Its "Can I do these problems in 30 minutes, and can I last for 5 hours?" The whole point of those classes is repetition; hitting you with problem after problem so that when you actually step into the room for the test, everything is automatic. Thats where practice pays off.

If you get the books for him early on, make sure that he's practicing under timed circumstances. Too many people just take the sections and see how they perform without actually timing themselves, or giving an extra minute here or there. You don't have the luxury of an extra minute on the test, and you wont score as well as you did on the diagnostics. If anything, trim the time down more and more to two or three minutes below the time limit.

 

A little more advice about those tests:

I noticed that most of my friends who did really well on verbal were the ones who were readers. Does your son like to read a lot? This will help him. I think they changed the format of the verbal section a bit on the SAT but it remains basically the same - if you can read complicated materials and digest them, and think/analyze them critically then you are on the road to good scores. The people who got 800s in verbal that I know were all people who read Dostoyevsky in their free time.

Math is pretty easy, there are a set number of things they test on, so if you learn them all and practice you will do really well there.

Writing can also be studied for - although it is obviously going to help to be a good writer and practice that a lot, as well as reading a lot. I know people who went from mid 600s to high 700s/perfect 800 on the SAT II Writing from studying for a week or so(which I believe is basically the same as the new SAT writing section).

Also, it is never too early to start thinking about college admissions. If you want to be proactive maybe next time you have business in Houston bring him with you and have him do a campus tour. Set up a meeting with the admissions officer from Texas and have a conversation with her so she gets to know your son. Maybe she will remember his name when he applies 2 years down the road.

Also since he is into music, maybe start emailing admissions people in the music schools he is interested in, or the teachers of his instruments in the music schools and asking them what kind of calibre player it takes to make it into the school and how he should be practicing/working if he wants to make it to that level.

 

James, the advice you're getting here is right on the money. If you son sticks to it and preps for the standardized tests, he should have a lot of options.

Finally, my son is a senior at local private school, and this is acceptance letter week. All the joy and saddness reminds me of another reason to shoot for a "Top-20" school, which is money. My son, for example, was offered $5k to go to Emory, but Tulane offered $17k. His friends are seeing similar offers. Point being that the "Below-20" schools are using money to recruit kids. So you may want to aim high, but deal low!

Dale

 

You're not quite getting it. My life experiences have shown that the cream either rises to the top or it burns off. I'll use my daughter to illustrate.

She has an IQ of roughly 160. Fortunately, I could afford to send her to one of the best high schools in the country - Phillips Academy at Andover. While there, she worked on the genome project with a post-Doc from Harvard. She also spent a summer at Johns Hopkins.

However, when she went to Dartmouth, she avoided math and science like the plague. Simply put, it was boring. She went instead into creative writing, which is probably one of the most useless degrees one can get, unless, of course, you become a creative writer.

Am I, as a lowly bean counter, upset?

Nope.

I'm actually very proud of her. She has a talent and only she can say what is best for her. Cramming her into a box would be the worst thing that could happen to her.

My biggest fear is that she'll end up going to law school...

Dale

 

, you only hate us till you need us, then we're your best friend.

 

or you could row. The count of rowers going to ivy league schools, not on scholarship, in my school this year. 4 Princeton, 5 UPenn, 6 Columbia, 2 Yale, 2 Dartmouth, 1 Harvard, and 3 Cornell.

Its so ridiculous, they ruined any other students chances in my school of going there. All they do is pull an oar up stream for a hour or two, its ridiculous.


I just finished the college search and will attend Fairfield University in the fall. Joe and Ralessi already said what I was gonna say. Its all really a crap shoot. I had a friend who had a 4.0 GPA(which is very hard in my school), 1580 SAT, 2 sport captain, awards up the wazoo, and had letters written by board members. He got flat out rejected at Stanford. I would love to see why.

 

Probably because they want people that have fun.

 

Learn about this painting, and you'll see exactly why your friend was rejected from Stanford.

http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/711bg.jpg

Stanford (and just about every other college on earth) doesn't want a blind automatons.

Disclaimer: my choice of that picture should NOT be interpreted as any particular position on inter-war Germany or the politics of the period.

 

While I understand your frustration, it is not just rowers. Athletic admissions across the board take seats from other potential students. (The Ivies don't give athletic scholarships, but they do have athletic admissions.)

That said, crew is probably the hardest academic sport. Many of these guys and gals end up with bad backs for the rest of their lives.

Dale