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He was probably going to do it until he saw the "two short surveys" part. I'd probably procrastinate if I saw that too
Even then, I have offered to help him with that. After twenty years of consulting, I can come up with bullshit like the best. I could’ve given him guidance on what to write.
Had the same issue with his Common App essay. I told him to ignore the prompted questions and instead freestyle the response. When I saw him the next day, he was frustrated after spending four hours trying to respond to one of the prompted questions.
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Man my son is munch younger. Only 11, but this post really struck me. We need to be all over him all the time to just do basic stuff.
I wonder how he will function as an older kid or young adult. Part of me is thinking we just stop riding him and let him fail. I think he just has a lack of self motivation or organization. He also lacks confidence and self worth. I’m worried this is going to just blow up at some point. The thing is he’s really smart. Constantly in the 90s on state tests etc. And he gets all As. But we are helping him stay organized a lot.
My 9 year old son is totally different. Self motivated, confident, great athlete, just gets his shit done.
I don’t want to compare the two. But yes I’m comparing the two.
What kind of colleges is your boy looking at? Are you considering the type of place that would do a lot of hand holding?
P1 - thanks. It has been difficult because we can’t visit campuses. And he is confused about what to do. The only thing he knows is he wants to attend an urban campus and he likes Political Science (that was my degree — which explains my 20 year career in IT consulting. 😀)
He was thinking military academy until he found out the fitness requirements (he is pretty fit as he has a black belt, but ask him to run two miles? Forget it). I leveraged a book called “Hidden Ivies” to find candidate schools and a just released book called “Who gets in and why?” to understand the admissions process.
All we have done with my son is stay on top of him. Daily reminders to check his homework. Ask him about upcoming projects (there was the time in Middle School where five minutes before he was about to board the morning school bus, he looked at his mother and asked “Do we have any Picassos in the house? I need one for a project today.”)
Even staying on top of him doesn’t always help. Two Sundays ago, he was playing video games and, despite us encouraging him to check his homework, he waited until after dinner to find out he had a huge AP Economics assignment due at midnight (remote learning has changed the due dates to include weekends).
To make it worse, we have encouraged him NOT to take a job due to COVID. My wife and I live near both sets of our parents and both of us are caregivers for them. We can’t risk exposing them to COVID and most high school jobs are public facing. His lack of job hasn’t helped him pick up a work ethic. He does complete his assignments and he does well in school (3.8 GPA), but he procrastinates.
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Thinking about this more. My 11 year old just doesn’t understand the chance he has in life. My wife and I were middle class children of immigrants. We both went to state schools and took on debt. I was admitted to fancy private schools, but didn’t think I enough scholarship money to make it worthwhile. MIT, CalTech, Carnegie Mellon. Looking back, I wish I just took the plunge and went there instead of Georgia Tech. Which is a fine school and went I went it was like $3/year. But I over weighted the ranking and didn’t realize the kind of people you would meet at these private schools. My kids will get to go anywhere they can get in. I just want them to do something they love, be kind, and have fun!
You should be very proud of a degree from GT. That is a great school. I went to Case Western Reserve. A private college has some nice things, but I sometimes wonder how different things would’ve been if I went to a big state school. It wasn’t like we had big time athletic events at Case.
In he case of my son, we think he will be overwhelmed at a big school. The biggest school on our list by undergraduate numbers is Pitt. It isn’t small (19,000 undergrads), but it isn’t nearly as big as Penn State (40,000). That, plus Pitt is in a city. BU has 17,000 undergrads. Fordham is about 17,000. But places like Colorado College, Pitzer and Macalester are small (2,000).
*high school* transcript.
Any updates?
Thanks. We managed to get the scholarship submitted in time. His first college application should go in tonight. We’ll be submitting them about once a week for the next 7-9 weeks.