Well, having spent some time at the dump up Mass Ave from MIT, I can tell you, there are a lot of things in life more important than schools or brass rings. Your kid will do fine academically and in his career regardless of where he goes to school. That'll never be his problem. Maybe it's just the crowd I run in, but of the people I know who wish they had taken a different path, it's never (like literally never) "boy, I wish I had just worked harder and done more hard stuff."I saw that article last week but thanks for sharing again. I mean MIT gets 65000 applications annually and accepts about 1000 and waitlists about another 200 for their "yield rate". So an acceptance rate of about 1.5%. When you think about it, you've got 65000 uber smart kids who all probably have 4.00 GPAs and several 5's on AP exams in classes that count, oh and they're likely 35-36 on ACT (or 1350-1400 on SAT or whatever their new corresponding scale is), you're trying to pick out 1000 Nemos with the special fin out of a school of 65000 clown fish. It's a daunting task I'm sure. My son took the MIT news better than I did....I was disappointed for him.
And he knows stuff now that he wishes he knew 3 years ago. The stuff about doing research or, and this one seems to be a big deal for the Ivys and MIT/CalTech types, starting your own business or non-profit in HS, even if it's mowing lawns, tends to move the needle at those places.
Kids should start a business or non-profit if they have a passion for it, not as a box to check for college (it's not fun to do). They do it but don't really want to and then they end up with a bunch of kids who do have a passion for that and then what? I talked to my freshman about starting a non-profit and she's not interested so I didn't push it. She's a kid, she should do what she has fun doing. She's smart and works hard, she'll be successful no matter where she goes to college, I want to pressure her to have fun, she has plenty of pressure on achieving.