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A list - balance (how much of what to produce an academically curious, capable adult)


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but now (as of this fall) he is at the point where the academic aspect of his education no longer fits within such strict limits and I am having to rethink the whole thing.

-Nan

 

Nan, I sooo understand what you're going through. This balance is hard to figure out. Yes, we homeschoolers should take advantage of the flexibility we have, but what about the skills needed to go that special school our kids dream about?

 

Ds17 came home this year, so that he can work on his projects. Well, his BIG project is taking off. Get this. He spent (I'm ashamed to say) $4000 of his money, which he earned designing websites, to buy a domain name. He is collaborating with social organizers in Germany and Australia to develop his site that will provide a network for people starting social campaigns or organizations. He is creating the computer applications and tools for the site, which will allow the "starters" brainstorm ideas, organize timelines, and collaborate with each other. He now needs legal and financial advice before going much further. :tongue_smilie:

 

So, Nan, I watch this amazing, creative kid, who is still willing to do the academics, but with not much gusto. Less and less each day. All he thinks about is his idea. Being young is a wonderful thing. It is sooo filled with potential and hope and faith that one can do amazing things in this world and make a difference. I don't want to squash that.

 

But...I want him to do well on his AP tests and subject tests and SATs, because I know what his dream schools want from him. I want him to learn time management. I want him to know that life is filled with mundane chores.

 

In defense of our kids, I believe it is Cal Newport that has a book called, How to be a Superstar High School Student (or something like that). He says that the most interesting kids have a lot of free time on their hands. It is during this free time that they develop their passion and talent and, therefore, have a unique resume for selective colleges. Of course, that is not the goal for many kids and their parents. But my kid dreams of Stanford. Yikes.

 

Anyway, girlfriend. I will think of you as we go on our journey. It's a journey across the high wire. Forever balancing.

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This is exactly on the money. I have read recently several laments by people at MIT etc. that they no longer get kids who spent their adolescence building things, taking things apart, doing projects like those in Make magazine, fiddling to modify machines, etc. They want kids who have shown initiative in something other than studying for the test.

 

Other scientific fields are looking for kids with good observation skills, writing ability, and computer knowledge (this is dh's personal list of things he looks for in incoming graduate students; dh is a chemistry professor).

 

The activities that several of you describe your sons doing are going to make their admissions essays absolutely fantastic. In an age when so many, many kids have the same grades, SAT scores, and AP classes, the things that make your child different -- and, you fear, not up to par -- are precisely the things that are going to stand out hugely in his favor. I would bend over backwards (in fact I already do, in different areas) to let my child have as much time as possible to pursue those interests, particularly if the child is self-motivated and initiates and carries through with ideas. Call it a junior and/or senior project as SWB suggests, adding a writing component at some point.

 

I also think Jenn is right on target when she says that older adolescents are often much more willing to do conventional work for someone else, particularly once they have decided on their goals and know their knowledge or aims are different than or beyond what we know.

 

I wonder...

 

How does one document this kind of independent project? How does one say on a college application, "I spent a lot of time tinkering around in my garage making fireworks or an invincibility suit or a network for social organizers?" What if the invincibility suit doesn't work out? What if the website is a bomb? How do our creative, independent thinkers compete with hard facts - Competition winners. National Merit Scholars. Valedictorians.

 

I know the essay is of upmost importance. But, are there any other ways we can "show" colleges that our kids spend countless hours on worthwhile projects that set them apart? I am looking for specific ideas on how to include this on a college application. We need more than a paragraph or two, don't we?

 

College has been on my mind a lot. Can you tell?

Edited by lisabees
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I wonder...

 

How does one document this kind of independent project? How does one say on a college application, "I spent a lot of time tinkering around in my garage making fireworks or an invincible suit or a network for social organizers?" What if the invincible suit doesn't work out? What if the website is a bomb? How do our creative, independent thinkers compete with hard facts - Competition winners. National Merit Scholars. Valedictorians.

 

I know the essay is of upmost importance. But, are there any other ways we can "show" colleges that our kids spend countless hours on worthwhile projects that set them apart? I am looking for specific ideas on how to include this on a college application. We need more than a paragraph or two, don't we?

 

College has been on my mind a lot. Can you tell?

 

Actually, I read recently -- and I'll do my best to try to backtrack and find where -- about a girl who started a business in her mid-teens, and it bombed. She began a blog about its collapse and what she was learning. Her college admissions essay was about her failure, and what she learned. She got into an Ivy league school (not that I consider this personally THE definition of success; but it does show that she remained extremely competitive). They LOVED her.

 

The definition of "worthwhile" doesn't have to mean competitive or conventionally successful. There are probably colleges that place a lot of emphasis on AP classes, SAT scores, and competitions; and in general I would bet that state university systems with all their massive bureaucracies are more traditional; but if you want that kind of college, you know the path to take, and it doesn't include a lot of room for the self-initiated projects we're talking about.

 

Looking through Loren Pope's books, especially Colleges That Change Lives, has made me personally quite a bit more hopeful that there are places out there for kids who learn and work in individual, non-traditional ways -- in fact, there are colleges who seek out such kids. My best friend attended New College in Florida, which looks for kids who want to plan and design their own majors, who are used to thinking and working nonconventionally. There are no grades (actually there weren't in my grad school either). New College grads, like my friend, go on to PhD programs in major universities quite happily. Pope talks about a number of colleges that court unusual kids whose resumes are not planned from babyhood to wow college admissions people.

 

I can't ease your anxiety from the outside. I know no one but myself could ease mine. I read Pope's books, I read a number of other books about people who took nontraditional paths to their careers -- take a look, for instance, at The Buccaneer Scholar. I looked at my daughter and saw how she thrived and how she learned best.

 

This whole thread is about finding a balance between the traditional academic path and kids' passions or other aspects of their lives. No one can ultimately provide a single answer for anyone else. We can only encourage. Until you let go of that fear -- I have to do it the way everyone else does because look at these kids with their perfect scores and grades and trophies -- until you read enough books that tell you about how very many kids with these perfect records are turned down by prestigious schools, you can't think clearly or creatively about options. I speak as one who has gone through (and periodically re-undergoes) this most painfully.

 

It is perfectly possible to write up a summary of one's independent project that doesn't sound lame or superficial or downright silly. But the kid should do it, not the parent. By the time college application writing comes along, the kid should be able to articulate what research engaged him, how he pursued it, what resources were helpful, what roadblocks he encountered, whether he was able to find ways around them, what the outcome of his project was, and what directions he plans to continue with his interests. He (I'm using he because people seem in general to be talking about their sons here) should have met and talked with people -- ideally found an internship or be mentored -- who can write a recommendation for him. He should have some outside documentation of his abilities, whether from these mentors or from community college professors or employers or just simple SAT scores.

 

There is a lot more information along these lines in recent books about avoiding the college admissions crisis. Perhaps we should all do a bit of googling and reading, and begin making a list for each other that might help with the enormous anxiety this whole thing creates, that we are all struggling so much to deal with??

 

Anyone interested? Should we start a new thread or just keep adding here?

 

Loren Pope, Colleges That Change Lives

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I wonder...

 

How does one document this kind of independent project? How does one say on a college application, "I spent a lot of time tinkering around in my garage making fireworks or an invincible suit or a network for social organizers?" What if the invincible suit doesn't work out? What if the website is a bomb? How do our creative, independent thinkers compete with hard facts - Competition winners. National Merit Scholars. Valedictorians.

 

I know the essay is of upmost importance. But, are there any other ways we can "show" colleges that our kids spend countless hours on worthwhile projects that set them apart? I am looking for specific ideas on how to include this on a college application. We need more than a paragraph or two, don't we?

 

College has been on my mind a lot. Can you tell?

 

If you are creating the transcript, you could create unique course titles. For example, Freshman Design, Senior Project, (I am not feeling very creative this morning!! :tongue_smilie:) You could create a category on the transcript just for design projects similar to how I plan on having a category for summer academic camps, etc.

 

FWIW, my ds is considering doing a space project and submitting it into a competition. There are a lot of design type competitions out there for high school students, so you might want to research and see if you can find one that matches your child's unique interests. Some of the prizes are quite amazing. (I read about one the other day that had a $100,000 scholarship for the finalist.)

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I think there is a disconnect between the admissions office and the professors, for a start. The colleges saying that are not thinking about homeschoolers; they are thinking about students who have gone to a goodish public school and had classroom skills banged into them. What they want are students who are innovative on top of good classroom skills. They would prefer that over students who have stellar test scores and grades. They have trouble imagining someone who can build interesting things and read The Odyssey and non-textbook science books and write a paper and meander through algebra but cannot blast through a textbook. They can imagine someone who can build interesting things but isn't academic (since we all know a few people like that) but they don't expect them to be applying to college. They don't realize there is an in-between state of reasonable academic skills (research, reading, and writing at one's own slow pace) but no textbook/classroom skills because in their world, it was nearly impossible to aquire academic skills without aquiring classroom skills at the same time.

 

The admissions department may be somewhat different. They like quantitative things like test scores and grades. It makes the job of comparing apples to apples easier. When you throw in an orange, they become suspicious because they've admitted a few oranges in the past and discovered that oranges may grow well in more tropical climes (labs and projects) but they can't survive their college's cold winters (fast paced classroom work). I, too, have read about how colleges are looking for students who have done something other than study for APs, but when you talk to the people in the admissions department, they say they still want to see test scores. If it is an alternativie type college that is used to sifting alternativie student who come with portfolios, they may be willing to go with just SAT scores, but most of them want SAT scores and some sort of proof, CC grades or exam scores, of other academic ability.

 

I wonder about the pace, too. Both my college sons agree with you about the "teachers who were born doing the math and science, but can't explain it to those who weren't". They've had a few of those and suffered the consequences. The oldest has holes in his calculus. Fortunately, he is at a very hands-on school that mostly appeals to students who aren't the best at classroom studies so there is help available. And that big bugaboo, thermodynamics, turns out to be easy and obvious to him because he had three years of practical experience as a plumber (which I guess is what you guys keep trying to tell me about theory being easier later). He says he already knows thermo; he just is learning how to say it with math. My middle son is at the same school in a different program (not engineering). He is my cloud child. Blasting through a textbook leaves him reeling in the dust. The solution - go to a school where the students aren't the blasting type and take the hardest classes twice. It is working so far, but this is definately not an ideal solution. There are precious few people with whom he has anything in common and he hasn't managed to find them yet. He is managing ok - his brother is there and he is enjoying the camaraderie of the sailing team, but he is missing out on the finding friends who are kindred spirits (as Jane calls them) part of the college experience because he isn't at a very intellectually challenging sort of college. In his case, this is a tradeoff he is willing to make in order to get the degree that will lead to the career he wants. My youngest wants to be an engineer and there are engineering schools out there full of his kindred spirits. If I guide him well, he should be able to get into one of them. He isn't the sort who can inhale a book in one breath and remember it his whole life, or the sort who is driven and passionate about one thing, so he's not headed for MIT or Stanford. I just want him to find friends like his current ones, people who, when he says he has an idea, will listen and be able to contribute to that idea and help it grow, or at least follow what he says enough to register enthusiasm rather than look blankly at him or worse, think he is totally weird. Now that I have a set of PSAT scores for my youngest, I have no doubt that there are a few engineering schools who would take him. They would be schools whose student body is mostly commuting and has their own friends at home, textbook-oriented schools. We looked at some of those when my oldest was looking at engineering schools. He decided he'd rather do plumbing. (There were other factors in that decision as well. And I am not knocking those engineering schools. I am grateful they exist and I think they serve their purpose.) Anyway... I think what I am most afraid of is that my youngest will sound attractive enough on paper to get into one of the interesting schools but then won't be able to manage the textbook part and will flunk out. Then I will definately have failed him. On the other hand, I know full well that it would be all too easy to over-emphasize the rigorous academics part and waste all the freedom of homeschooling and wind up creating a worst-of-both-worlds scenario - too much not-very-good (because of my limitations) academics and no freedom to explore and teach yourself. That's what I mean by that balance. And then there is my other question: Do I do lots of non-technical stuff with him now because he won't get that in college, or do I make the space for him to do lots of the technical stuff that will make him appealing to the more interesting sort of engineering school? Probably a little of both, right? That is another balance point. Sigh.

 

Corraleno (think I got the spelling right this time - finally) and Angela and the others who said that relationships and character are the most important - I know you are right. That is why we are homeschooling in the first place. I keep saying that we aren't homeschooling for academic reasons and I am dead serious about that. I can do the worst of jobs at home and it would be better than what happened to my oldest. Thank you for reminding me of that. I almost don't want to talk about worrying about this because I know that I am agonizing over an embarrassment of riches. My children are the center of the a huge extended circle of people who love them and anxiously cherish them. As teenagers, they at times find this family burden irksome, this knowledge that every single little thing they do affects someone else and is noticed (at least my family is good at not commenting). They escape peacewalking, only to find that they instantly attract another whole cadre of people who cherish them. I can never decide whether this all makes it easier or harder for me to work on having them "build character". They are so spoiled, in many ways. The sailing and gymnastics and peacewalking help with that, which is why I am not willing to give them up so my son will have more time to work on his projects. The price of a tight family is that family commitments take up tons of one's free time. Fitting in both the academics and the independent projects would be a BREEZE if we weren't also trying to fit in family commitments, sailing, peacewalking, and gymnastics. People keep saying something has to give, but I don't want to give up the things which are turning my sons into good, strong people in order to build a better engineer. I guess I should have explained all that at the beginning, since it is what is at the bottom of my worry - the fundamental reason that I have this huge need to be super efficient about teaching those academic skills in the first place.

 

And I guess I've just talked myself back to the place Lisa (swimmermom3) left me last spring. But that is such a general education question that it is almost useless to ask: What is the best way to teach the minimum of academic skills that a person will need in life? I have a plan for what my son will need in the future to be a good, interesting, strong, adult headed for engineering school. But of course, I am constantly second-guessing it, and my son, who has suddenly woken up to the undeniable fact that this is his own education but who hasn't put much time into researching the possibilities and limitations, is trying to alter the plan. This will be good in the long run, but meanwhile is making for an uncomfortable fall. This is the point at which his older brother presented me with a neat summing-up of my half and his half of his education. Hopefully the youngest will arrive at something similar and then we can stop arguing over who is steering now.

 

-Nan

Edited by Nan in Mass
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If I had to name the one decision that worries me the most, it is the decision not to try to do (at least at this time) any of the robotics clubs or design competitions. My son doesn't want to do robotics club at this time and it doesn't fit comfortably with his schedule anyway (he will be in Japan while they are buidling their robot). I should mention the design competitions to him again, to make sure he is aware of them. In general, though, he just wants to do his own research and design, on his own projects. That way he can abandon them if he feels like it. He's a pretty ordinary person, you know, the sort that would rather spend the weekend running around in the woods with a sword trying to think of some obscure rule that will keep him from being into an undead something-or-other when he gets caught, or hanging about in a tavern tricking people into losing their coins using sleight-of-hand, not a super-geek. He is a competative beastie, though, and would probably enjoy competing. And he is constantly designing things. They just happen to be things that would keep him from being killed and having to spend the rest of the night lying in the snow or wandering around with his fist on his head, not being able to have fun.

 

I am pretty comfortable with our decision not to do APs or perfect SAT scores. Now watch - my son will overturn that decision and try to jump onto that path, and be mad at me for not foreseeing this and preparing him for it. Sigh.

 

I also have the college app thing down. At least, I think I do. For my middle son, I ignored the conventional advice to make your transcript sound as boring as possible (English 1, English 2, English 3, English 4) and gave his classes descriptive titles. I ignored the advice to keep the transcript academic and put projects on it as extra curricular activities (he had those, too - sailing and gymnastics). I gave him credit for peacewalking: Peace Studies 1, Peace Studies 2, Japan Studies, Native American Studies. I counted some of what he did peacewalking as part of his Government course and his Geography course and Running. I ignored the advice about labeling home courses honours and marked any class taken at the community college or any class that required extensive travel as honours and marked them with an asterix and a note that said, "Honours because 3 months in Japan" or "Honors because 3 months on a Native American sacred run from San Francisco to DC" or "Honours because taken at CC". I ignored the advice about grades and avoiding pass-fail. I had a column for grades so that I could put in his CC grades and just labeled everything he took at home P. I left off dates and organized the transcript by subject. I worked hard at formatting the whole thing to fit on one side of a page. In the end, I had a conventional-looking transcript that still managed to portray accurately my son's highly unusual education. Then I wrote a page-long school profile in which I explained what his education had really looked like and what guidelines I used to translate that into a traditional transcript. Would this have worked for our state university? I doubt it. They would have asked me for grades and dates and possibly SAT2s. It worked fine for the small state college he is currently at, though. A more conventional, boring transcript would probably have worked, too, but I was feeling contrary and didn't want to play their game to the extent of making my son's education sound ordinary.

 

For my youngest, I am planning on his having several specific course titles for any projects which involved enough work to fill a conventional semester, and then having a course called "Technical Projects" in which we will bundle up the shorter ones. I would happily include a course called "Invincibility Suit Design" GRIN.

 

We go to our local Panara Bread and sit and do a crossword puzzle from time to time. It seems to be a place where alumni bring potential students to do their college interview. Judging by what I have overheard, this would be the place tell colleges about one's projects. There would be time to explain that nothing worked out and to talk about future projects one planned to do based on what one had learned during the failed project.

 

Some of my son's friends are applying to college this fall. One of them has his own business, a business that requires space in which to build and store inventory (think lots of drying paint). He said that one of his potential college had assured him that they had a number of students who came with a business that they didn't want to leave behind or close, and that they had started giving students a spare room for their businesses. I thought that sounded very promising. I am sure all of that sort of negotiation takes place during the visit and interview.

 

-Nan

Edited by Nan in Mass
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I will think of you, too, and the others here who are trying so hard to find this balance. I think it would help if it weren't such an individual spot. My path seems to be strewn with people who say, "Why on earth are you making him do that?" while at the same time, being impressed that he can do other things, or finding it useful that he can do other things, but not seeing that they are part of each other, and especially overlooking the fact that we are talking about a child here, a pretty ordinary child, not a super-driven child, and that if it isn't fun or something that he can see leading to something that he defines as fun, he is going to baulk at doing it, even on the best of days, and on a bad day, he will baulk at anything that isn't immediately gratifying. Fortunately, he is far sighted enough that he can see that he needs to work on math now in order to be able to invent things later, but it is a pretty delicate balance. I just keep hoping that he will see the similarity between the rewards of hard work and discipline in gymnastics practice and the rewards of hard work and discipline in academics, because I think gymnastics has spoiled him. To his credit, he has his own ideas of what constitutes basic academic skills and is working on them, here and there.

-Nan

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It is perfectly possible to write up a summary of one's independent project that doesn't sound lame or superficial or downright silly. But the kid should do it, not the parent.

 

 

Man, I can't tell you how much I agree with this. Why are parents doing so much for their late high schoolers, anyway? Did you all have parents who were watching closely over your studies in 11th and 12th grades? I certainly didn't, but it seems like parents do that nowadays. I don't understand it. Maybe I'll start a thread on it . . .

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Somebody watched over mine. It was either a teacher of my parents or a combination of the two.

My son has done tons of failed projects GRIN. Some of them failed because they were beyond his abilities and he couldn't find anyone to help him, some because he didn't have the money to buy the equipment he needed, some because he got bored and moved on, some because he just couldn't figure it out, some because he didn't have time to do them properly, ... Many of these I know nothing about at all. Some of them I know about because he needed my input (I know things he doesn't and I have relatively good problem-solving skills). Some I know about because he needed my credit card GRIN. But that doesn't mean that I don't have to figure out which content and skills my son needs to learn and decide how he is going to learn them. That student who was doing projects that failed had a whole staff of people paid for by her town's tax money (or her parents if private schooled) who oversaw that aspect of her education. I think you might be overlooking that? Or that some of the people posting in this thread have children for whom the regular sort of education doesn't work because of the wiring they were born with?

-Nan

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There is a lot more information along these lines in recent books about avoiding the college admissions crisis. Perhaps we should all do a bit of googling and reading, and begin making a list for each other that might help with the enormous anxiety this whole thing creates, that we are all struggling so much to deal with??

 

Anyone interested? Should we start a new thread or just keep adding here?

 

Loren Pope, Colleges That Change Lives

 

As KarenAnne has suggested, why don't we compile a list of books/resources that may guide us through this journey with our interesting kids? I'm adding some that my son enjoyed and are not necessarily about the college process. Should that be a different list?

 

Loren Pope, Colleges That Change Lives

 

Cal Newport, How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out)

Donald Asher, Cool Colleges: For the Hyper-Intelligent, Self-Directed, Late Blooming and Just Plain Different

Race To Nowhere (a film I have not yet seen, but may remind us to :chillpill:)

 

Malcom Gladwell, Outliers (won't help with college, though)

 

Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen

 

TED (Ds is involved with TEDx, local TED events that are more accessible) http://www.ted.com/

Edited by lisabees
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Resources to help learn classroom skills (so you can stay in college once you are there GRIN):

 

That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week

Going Back to School by Bruno - This is the best description of how to manage the college experience if you are starting without a school guidance department that I have found, both for applying and for managing once you are accepted

 

Choosing a college:

 

can't remember exact titles, I'll come back and fill them in

Jane's book about college exchange programs

that book about doing your whole college education more cheaply in a different country

that book about unconventional degrees by baird or beard or bear or something like that

 

About high school

 

The Student Liberation Handbook

TWTM

TWEM

 

-Nan

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Actually, I read recently -- and I'll do my best to try to backtrack and find where -- about a girl who started a business in her mid-teens, and it bombed. She began a blog about its collapse and what she was learning. Her college admissions essay was about her failure, and what she learned. She got into an Ivy league school (not that I consider this personally THE definition of success; but it does show that she remained extremely competitive). They LOVED her.

 

I read that story. Was it in the Cal Newport book?

 

 

 

It is perfectly possible to write up a summary of one's independent project that doesn't sound lame or superficial or downright silly. But the kid should do it, not the parent. By the time college application writing comes along, the kid should be able to articulate what research engaged him, how he pursued it, what resources were helpful, what roadblocks he encountered, whether he was able to find ways around them, what the outcome of his project was, and what directions he plans to continue with his interests. He (I'm using he because people seem in general to be talking about their sons here) should have met and talked with people -- ideally found an internship or be mentored -- who can write a recommendation for him. He should have some outside documentation of his abilities, whether from these mentors or from community college professors or employers or just simple SAT scores.

 

 

Yes. I have to remember there will be inevitable personal growth as ds's ideas evolves. And, you're right. He will be the one who will be able to articulate it best on his application. One way or another.

 

Obviously, I have no idea how to multi-quote!

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I think it might be in the interview and the essay, not the application itself, that the opportunity to explain this appears? Can anybody who has more experience verify this?

 

I've read a number of posts describing the application, particularly the course list, and how homeschoolers frequently add a brief description of a class if it is not self-explanatory or if they want to stress the quality of work, etc.

 

The project-type work could also appear in a letter of recommendation written by someone the student has consulted or worked with at some point in the process over the last years of high school.

 

Then of course if that's what an applicant chose, it could also feature in the essay.

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Lisa,

 

My dd spent a lot of time during her last year and a half of high school delving into an area of math that she loved her outside of her coursework. During the year, she asked some math folks she knew in that field for reading recommendations - & she had fun learning about it. She researched & developed some of ideas of her own over the summer, partly in a small group of friends, but mostly on her own. At the end of the summer, dd developed and taught a short class on this stuff for the students and faculty at her math camp.

 

We decided not to list it as a formal course for credit on her college apps, but she wove her excitement about it all into her main essay as an illlustration of the point she was trying to make. (since your son is interested in Stanford, I'll mention that it was also the subject of Stanford's intellectual vitality essay.) I also mentioned her experiences in my guidance counselor letter.

 

What probably helped a lot more was that one of her two LOR writers was a mentor from mathcamp. She wasn't directly involved in dd's work, but she witnessed her excitement about it that summer. I would strongly suggest looking for an outside adult recommender who's familiar with your son's efforts.:)

 

~Kathy

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Actually, I read recently -- and I'll do my best to try to backtrack and find where -- about a girl who started a business in her mid-teens, and it bombed. She began a blog about its collapse and what she was learning. Her college admissions essay was about her failure, and what she learned. She got into an Ivy league school (not that I consider this personally THE definition of success; but it does show that she remained extremely competitive). They LOVED her.

 

I read that story. Was it in the Cal Newport book?

 

 

 

Yes, it was in Cal Newport's How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out). I just finished the book a couple of days ago.

 

Regards,

Kareni

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Lisa,

 

My dd spent a lot of time during her last year and a half of high school delving into an area of math that she loved her outside of her coursework. During the year, she asked some math folks she knew in that field for reading recommendations - & she had fun learning about it. She researched & developed some of ideas of her own over the summer, partly in a small group of friends, but mostly on her own. At the end of the summer, dd developed and taught a short class on this stuff for the students and faculty at her math camp.

 

We decided not to list it as a formal course for credit on her college apps, but she wove her excitement about it all into her main essay as an illlustration of the point she was trying to make. (since your son is interested in Stanford, I'll mention that it was also the subject of Stanford's intellectual vitality essay.) I also mentioned her experiences in my guidance counselor letter.

 

What probably helped a lot more was that one of her two LOR writers was a mentor from mathcamp. She wasn't directly involved in dd's work, but she witnessed her excitement about it that summer. I would strongly suggest looking for an outside adult recommender who's familiar with your son's efforts.:)

 

~Kathy

 

Thank you Kathy. In the last two months, ds has been busy making contacts and applying to (and getting accepted to) large conferences. This has been a great way for him to see the value in networking.

 

A mentor, though. That's a whole different story. You're making me appreciate the importance of one. Gotta keep my eyes open...

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