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Imagine this scenario: you’re a parent of a teenager and your teenager happens to very bright. Your kid gets things right, likes to read, excels at school, and is generally curious about the world in a way that other kids aren’t. You think about college and hope that your kid’s chances of being admitted are probably pretty good, but you’re also nervous because you have heard that undergraduate admissions has become crazy in the last ten years. And it has. You hear horror stories about friends’ kids who didn’t get in to colleges they figured were safe bets. But your kid is different, remember. She is really smart. But is smart enough these days?“Going Geek: What Every Smart Kid (and Every Smart Parent) Should Know About College Admissions” is a new guide to college admissions for very bright kids and their parents. Admissions consultant John Carpenter wrote it having in mind those high achieving kids who love learning but often get overlooked in a competitive admissions world because, as bright as they are, they don’t know how to represent themselves effectively. With the exception of the few who do have access to savvy counselors, many smart kids never get the specific guidance they need to know how to highlight their geeky nature in a college application. Entire book is available at Amazon.com http://amzn.to/qAx4tc
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Going Geek:
What Every Smart Kid (and Every Smart parent)
Should Know About College Admissions
John Carpenter
Going Geek: What Every Smart Kid
(and Every Smart Parent)
Should Know about College Admissions
by John Carpenter
Introduction
If you go to the library or to a bookstore, you’ll find dozens of books written about how to get
into college. From “insider’s guides,” written by former admissions officers who claim to have
the secrets of undergraduate admissions, to rankings and descriptions of the most selective
universities and colleges, they all seemed geared to help you find the quickest, most sure-fire
way to get into the college of your dreams. And that’s good--except for one thing: most of those
books are written for the mass public with the idea that everyone thinks the same way, wants the
same thing, and should go about it in the same manner.
This book is different. The idea here is that if you’re reading this book, then you’ve already set
yourself apart from most people. You’re eager to go to college not just for all the fun--and
believe me, college is fun, but you’re one of those people who really likes to learn, and you’re
looking forward to exploring all you can without the restrictions of high school hanging over
you. You actually enjoy learning things. Some folks might find you to be a little odd, but you’re
okay with that. In fact, you may be smiling right now, thinking about just how smart you are and
how much you love the weirdness that goes along with being smart.
Going Geek is for the intellectually gifted kid who gets it. You. Because, let’s face it, you’re the
one who’s going to lead the planet to a better place and undo all the crap that the people ahead of
you have created. And later, many of those other kids who--well, who just aren’t that bright--
will be looking to you for leadership and will be waiting to invest their money in your projects.
But first you have to get there--wherever there is, and before that, you have to get into a school.
Into college. And you’re in luck because despite whatever you read in all the other guidebooks
or hear from admissions officers around the country about being phenomenally well-rounded or
having great community service or possessing amazing leadership skills, it is the really smart
kid who excites professors, and every dean of admissions knows it.
This book is written to help you, the kid who genuinely gets excited about geeky things, show
off your best attributes. It is designed to help you create an application that reflects the brilliant
star that you are--no matter what your grades look like, no matter what your SAT or ACT scores
might be, no matter what obstacles you’ve had to overcome. So if this sounds interesting to you,
get ready to think because I am going to challenge you a little bit as you put together an amazing
application.
Chapter One: Identifying Your Inner Geek, Part One
Let’s talk for a minute about the kind of geek you are. What? You didn’t realize there was more
than one type of you? Sure you did. Haven’t you taken one of those on-line geek tests before to
see where you fall on the nerdy scale? Actually, those “tests” are pretty funny, and you might
enjoy rating yourself, but I digress--and it’s only the first paragraph! My point is this: standing
out because you enjoy thinking is a good thing, so let’s figure out the kind of thinker you are and
start from there.
Like just about anything, there are several ways of being really bright, and the challenge for you
(and for people in college admissions) is to identify who you are as a learner and also as an
academic performer. I can’t emphasize this enough: your best shot at convincing admissions
officers that their institution will benefit from your contributions is to let them see how you think
and act in an academically challenging environment. So, our first steps have to be for you to
understand exactly the kind of learner you have been up to now, with examples.
The important thing is to be able to describe yourself honestly. Knowing who you are is the best
place to begin. Being able to articulate how you learn, how you process what you learn, and how
you use what you learn will increase your chances of being admitted to any college. Your goal is
be able to present a very clear picture of who you are as someone who gets excited by academic
ideas. That all starts by understanding the kind of geek you really are.
Here are six high school seniors--mostly fictitious but comprised of very real characteristics of
actual students who have already graduated and gone on to college. See if any of their habits or
personalities resonate with you. Of course, being the unique person you are, you won’t be
exactly like any one of the students described here, but you may see some of yourself in two or
three of them.
Marco
As a junior, Marco was a high school national mathematics champion. He loves math at all
levels and finished AP BC Calculus as a sophomore, with a 5 on the exam. To continue in math,
he has taken courses at the city campus of the state university where he lives. By the time he
graduates, he will have earned 5’s on his AP exams in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, US History,
Economics, and French Language. He loves reading but prefers studying for a purpose. He has
formed study groups for each of his subjects with two or three other kids, and his idea of a fun-
filled evening is reviewing class notes for his Econ class, recounting the ways that his teacher,
who is also brilliant, uses very weird humor as he finds tiny errors in the way the students have
constructed their work.
Marco has earned the highest GPA in the class, and he has a perfect SAT in math as well as in the
three subject tests he has taken. His SAT reading and writing scores were only 780 each, a
shame he bears good naturedly. He is the oldest in his family of four siblings, and neither one of
his parents attended college. He knows that he will have to depend completely on scholarship
and financial aid money in determining where to go to college.
Marco is large, non-athletic, and always happy. He’s the kid who tells the joke about two guys in
the jungle who come across a desperate, starving man-eating tiger. One kid whips out his i-
phone and looks for an app where he can enter all kinds of data about the tiger’s approximate
size and speed to calculate how fast he has to run to escape the tiger’s deadly jaws while the
other kid starts tightening the laces on his sneakers. “What are you doing?” the second kids asks
his friend. “I’m figuring out if I can outrun this man-eating tiger,” he replies; “what are YOU
doing?” The second kid smiles and says, “I’m just getting my shoes tied so that I can outrun
you.” At first glance, many people would think that Marco would be the guy punching data into
his i-phone, but in reality, he’s the smarter one who understands he really only needs to run faster
than his buddy even though the chances of Marco outrunning anyone are pretty slim indeed, and
he knows it.
Hannah
Hannah loves to talk. At times, she drives the rest of us mad with her need for conversation, but
she finds real pleasure in the exchange of ideas and the subtle challenge of contradicting people.
Some of her teachers don’t understand Hannah and think that she is trying to draw attention to
herself. She has friends, but none of them fall into the popular group at her school. That doesn’t
bother Hannah in the least. Most of the kids in that group aren’t really interested in thinking
about why things exist the way that Hannah does.
Hannah’s school doesn’t offer a class in philosophy, which she loves, but in Latin she learned
about the Epicurean Catius who wrote about finding the highest good within the physical world.
(De rerum natura et de summo bono for any Latin geeks.) So, she starts the philosophy club after
school, which becomes really popular among the artsy kids, meets her current boyfriend, and
falls into bliss. Topics include the impermanence of beauty, measuring time, and whether or not
anything can really be known. And while the club goes on very successfully for the whole
semester, Hannah’s real love continues to be science as she considers engineering and biology
possible majors at college.
Hannah loves language obviously, and she is a beautiful writer who creates clear and readable
prose effortlessly. Her mother is Nicaraguan, her father Italian; she has traveled widely and
speaks both Spanish and Italian fluently. She scored higher than anyone else in her eleventh
grade class on the PSAT, but because she isn’t a citizen of the US, she wasn’t recognized by
National Merit.
Weisheng
The only child of a single Chinese parent, Weishing came to the US when he was three. He and
his family gained citizenship through a lottery. Weisheng attends a public school. He is fluent in
English and spoken Chinese. He has never been back to China.
He loves theatre and alternative music, but he is not so crazy about anything else related to
school. He is a constant worry to his mother though the two have a close relationship. His GPA
hovers around a 2.5 but his SATs are all in the very high 700’s.
As a sophomore, he memorized the entire version of the Odyssey in his English textbook and
recited it for his class, stunning everyone. He sang the role of Judas in the school’s production of
Jesus Christ Superstar, stealing the show from more popular student actors. He plays classical
piano at home as well as bass guitar, flute, and synthesizer. On weekends, he is often found
guest-performing with local bands in under-18 clubs. His i-pod is always on.
Almost everything in school is easy for Weisheng, but classes are boring and most of his
classmates seem ridiculously immature. He doesn’t care about sports or school spirit or
community service. He does, however, love poetry and has read and also written more poetry
than probably any of his teachers. By the time he graduates, he will have had two poems
published in national literary journals though none of his schoolmates will know about it.
He wanted to take AP Englilsh as a senior because he recognized the authors on the reading list,
but his low grades as a junior prevented him from being approved for the course. Without telling
anyone, he read every book on the list over the summer before his senior year, and took the easy
class, Writing for Seniors, instead. People automatically categorize him as a user even though he
doesn’t use drugs nearly as much as most kids in his school.
Ernie
A violinist since age four, Ernie is also gifted in math and language. Things are easy for him, but
his time is always compromised. He practices violin at least three hours a day during the week,
and on weekends he studies with a private tutor and performs with a community group of
musicians at the local arts center. His school music program is underfunded, and though well-
intentioned, the director can’t provide Ernie with the level of challenge or teaching that he needs.
He is breezing through IB Music, higher level, and he is one of a small group of students at his
school who are taking a full IB Diploma program.
Ernie sometimes can be hot-tempered, but he never really means to be unkind. He has little
patience for teachers who get hung up on process instead of looking to find the answers. And he
seldom has time for homework due to his violin lessons--a situation that has had a slight effect
on his GPA.
At the mid-semester marking period during his sophomore year, Ernie’s teacher gave him a C
even though he had made perfect or near-perfect scores on every quiz and test; what Ernie hadn’t
bothered to do was homework. When he explained that he didn’t need to write out the
homework because he understood the problems when he read them at home, his teacher laughed
at him. So that same night, Ernie stayed up all night and wrote out every homework problem in
the textbook for the next nine weeks, in order to get it all done and out of the way.
Ernie really wants to attend college at a selective national university where he can continue
studying music while also majoring in history or pre-law, but he realizes his 3.5 GPA might not
be high enough.
Suriya
Some girls just seem do to everything right, and Suriya is one of those people. She is detail
oriented and highly organized; she is involved with about ten different projects any given week,
ranging from Arts Council to Special Olympics; she is a champion debater who has led her
school to victory in many tournaments. She is active and well-liked.
Her parents are both doctors, and Suriya is also considering a career in medicine, but she also
likes several different subjects equally well: English, history, art, dance are all as appealing to
her as math and science. She spent a summer working in a graduate studies research lab,
recording the percentage of lead concentration in various samples of drinking water; it gave her
the opportunity to use various reactors, to work alongside professors doing real research, and to
have her name as a co-author on the finished scientific paper published in a journal of geological
sciences. She also was named a national science scholar as a result of this research.
Suriya loves football, too. She is a huge fan of her school’s team as well as her state university’s
team though she considers the state school her fallback option and secretly only plans to attend
there if she doesn’t get in at a top private school. She has a good head for sports statistics and
often amazes people by how much she knows about any football team’s passing numbers, NFL
or college ranking, or odds against other teams. She is amazing at football trivia.
She reads novels as fast as she can pick them up, but there never seems to be enough time for her
to read as much as she would like to. She really enjoys Jodi Picoult novels, but also loves a good
biography or historical novel. In grade nine, she read all the Bronte sisters and then moved on to
Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins.
Angela.
A huge fan of history, Angela fell in love with Abraham Lincoln in the fourth grade. While many
kids outgrow their grade school interests, Angela only added to hers, reading everything she
could about statesmanship, slavery, equal rights, and the Civil War. She convinced her family to
spend their summer vacation in Pennsylvania one year to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, in
Illinois one summer to visit the Lincoln museum, and in Ontario later to pay tribute to where
many people escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad.
She knows just about everything about the history of her own city in the Midwest, in a matter-of-
fact kind of way. On a visit to any historical society or museum, she often recognizes people in
obscure portraits or those for whom buildings and institutes are named. She knows who all the
streets downtown were named for, too, and their significance to local history.
Her dream is to become a historical authority on all things related to Civil Rights and to write
several books. In fact, she has already begun her first real attempt at a historical novel, having
finished about 200 pages, based on women serving as spies in the Civil War. Angela has a small
group of friends, but most people think her passion for history is a little over the top, and
secretly, Angela occasionally wonders if she should take more interest in pop culture as most of
her peers do.
Angela has suffered many a teasing over the years for her single-minded love of the past, and her
number one goal in finding a college is that it be a place where people treat one another with
respect, thus giving her the freedom to explore fully the topics she cares about. She has no
interest in sororities, but she does love sewing and dress-making, and cares deeply for the small
circle of girls who are her friends.
--
Each of the students in the preceding pages is different from the others, but one thing they all
have in common is that they are intellectually curious. They may appear very different in what
they like and in what they like to do, but a strong desire to discover things, to see connections, to
learn more unites them.
You are also part of that group if you can identify an area where no matter how much you learn,
it seems that you just can’t get enough. You’re always interesting in learning more, in continuing
to read, in finding out what else there is to know. This is what college professors love--students
who share their enthusiasm for a topic. And it is exactly the kind of student whom admissions
officers are eager to admit--when they can identify them.
Admissions officers are the good guys here, but they have an impossible job--especially at highly
selective institutions where the ratio of admitted students is somewhere around one out of five to
ten. Our goal is to make it easier for them to see your strengths.
So, let’s begin with an assessment of YOU. If you were to write a short description of yourself
such as one of the descriptions of Marco, Hannah, Weisheng, Ernie, Suriya, and Angela, what
would it include? Try that now. And then ask a close friend to write a short description of you as
well. And finally, ask your parents to do the same thing. Once you have all three, compare
them, and see what common threads exist.
What we are beginning to build here is the fundamental concept of the kind of learner you have
been. Eventually, we will add to it, modify it, and shape it into a description that shows off your
wonderful geekiness. But for now, don’t think so much about how it might look at the end; just
write.
Identifying Your Inner Geek, Part Two.
In the last section, you took a good look at yourself as a learner. What did you discover? What
were some words or phrases that came up again and again about the things you like? What were
the ideas that you, your friends, and your parents all recognized? What did they see that you
hadn’t?
Using the observations of people around you is important in self-examination. It’s like using a
mirror to see what you look like from a different point of view--or two mirrors even. Of course,
the philosopher inside us will remind us that reflections are never true images but rather
approximations of who we are, and that perception is always skewed and never perfect; however,
this combined point of view is much more complete that none at all, so let’s go with that as we
work to understand ourselves better.
In the 1950’s two psychologists named Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham created a model to help
people develop self-awareness in interpersonal communication. They called it the Johari
window because a) their names were Joe and Harry, and b) the diagram of the model looked like
a window.
The basic idea is that of the four sections (or window panes) of the diagram, one represents all
we know about ourselves that other people also know about us; one is what others see in us that
we do not recognize; one represents what we know about ourselves but others do not; and the
last stands for what is not yet known or cannot be known about ourselves by us or by anyone
else.
The window panes that admissions officers see are the first and the second, and your goal is to be
sure that what they see represents you accurately. That means being aware of your public self
(the person that you will present in your college application) by being intentional about it, being
as aware as is philosophically possible about your blind spots so that nothing is working against
you, and making others aware of your hidden self by sliding some of that (the good stuff) over
into your public self. One huge error that many high school seniors commit is not realizing how
much of who they are and what they have to offer a college or university often remains unseen in
that third window pane, the hidden self, and as a result, if no one but you (or your mother) sees
your gifts, your talents, and the kind of learner that you are, then no one can admit you to their
institution. The college application is the perfect vehicle for transporting some of what lies in
your hidden self over to the public self--that is, for those who are smart enough to realize it. And
clearly you are one of those smart people.
One word of caution, however: because we’re all human, there are probably things in our hidden
selves that should remain hidden. Think of the inappropriate postings you’ve seen on Facebook
and you know instantly what I mean.
So, let’s continue with discovering who you are as a learner in order to communicate that
effectively through your application. Let’s talk about your grades. Are grades important to you?
They are to admissions officers. And no matter how fair or unfair they are, your grades
communicate a strong message about how successful you might be in college.
So, right now, own your current GPA--whatever it is. What it reflects is the way you have
performed in the classroom over the last few years. Most GPAs begin with first semester in
ninth grade, but some don’t include grades until your sophomore year. Some schools weight
grades--meaning you get extra points for classes that are considered tougher or honors classes;
some schools consider all grades equally. Whatever your scenario your school uses doesn’t
really matter as much as where you fall in the spectrum of GPAs at your same school. Also, you
should probably count on the fact that many college admissions offices have practices that
include refiguring your GPA, using their own system. For those that do, they sometimes take off
the extra points (if you have a weighted system at your high school), and they usually don’t
figure in grades for religion courses or arts courses. But don’t sweat any of that right now. What
we need to figure out first is where you fall GPA-wise in the range of kids at your school.
Most schools now use an on-line resource that gives you access to all kinds of statistics so that
you can compare your GPA to the GPAs of other kids from your school in the past who applied
to the same colleges you’re interested in. Check that out. It is really helpful in guiding you to a
place where you can understand what your statistical odds are to be admitted. Don’t worry if
your GPA is slightly lower, and don’t be too confident if it’s slightly higher than the average
GPA of an admitted student from your school, but do use that info wisely in helping you choose
where you’ll apply. We’ll talk about that more in the chapter on how to figure out where to
apply. (Chapter Five.)
Your grades do not define you, nor do they define your potential at the undergraduate level, but
college admissions officers do use them as one factor in trying to figure out if they should admit
you. Obviously, the higher the better, but the number is only as important as the way you have
risen to academic challenge all along.
And your grades also tell part of a story, but seldom the whole story. What do your grades tell
about you? Do they explain some of your other commitments? Do they reflect your ability to
pursue a topic in-depth? Do they show a progression from year to year?
Remember Ernie, the kid who practiced violin every day? He’s worried about his GPA not being
high enough, and he actually has reason to worry at some colleges. At very highly selective
institutions where five times as many qualified people apply and where numbers are a priority,
Ernie might get overlooked for another student who has higher grades. However, at many of
those same colleges that are competitive in admissions, Ernie might have a chance if he presents
a complete picture of how he learns, how he has performed, and how he will thrive once he gets
to college.
Or what about Weisheng, the kid who memorized the entire Odyssey, loves poetry, and plays
beautiful music but whose GPA was a 2.5? He has a huge obstacle to overcome, and his options
for college will probably be fewer, but by presenting a complete picture of who he is as a learner
and highlighting exactly where he has been successful, he may still have a chance at many pretty
cool schools. Interestingly, his options for college may even represent more creative approaches
to an undergraduate degree--especially at really competitive places. But much of his chances
will ride on how successful he is at communicating his love for ideas to college admissions
officers.
The key phrase is complete picture--as in comprehensive, thorough, and consistent. GPA is a
factor in that total picture. Whatever yours is, own it, present it, know the story it tells, and don’t
make excuses for it.
Let’s go back to the self-description you wrote and what your parents and friends told you, and
now factor in your GPA. You are beginning to see the outline of the geek that is you. Let’s flush
it out a bit more with the grades. Answer these questions:
why is your GPA so high (or low, or medium)?
how did that happen?
what does it say about your priorities?
what does it say about your test-taking or homework skills?
what does it say about your follow-up?
what does it say about the way you communicate to your teachers about what you’ve
learned?
what does it say about your outside time commitments?
what does it say about your most enjoyable subjects?
what does your GPA really represent?
For some people, the GPA says, “Hey, I love working hard and getting all the answers right!”
For others it says, “It wasn’t always easy, but I have worked very hard and here’s proof that I
have been successful.” Or this: “I took courses that were really hard and wasn’t able to put as
much effort into them as I wish I had.” Or this: “I didn’t try nearly as hard as I could have, but
you know what? I didn’t really care about grades and still don’t. I enjoy learning, but I’m not all
that excited about doing a lot of the required work.”
Whatever your GPA says about you, add that to your description for now. If what it says isn’t
exactly what you wish it said about you, relax. By the time we finish looking at the complete
you, there will be enough of everything else that’s good about you to strike a balance and present
a pretty good picture of your intellectual self. In the interim, however, continue to think about
what are the things that you really like to learn and where you have been successful learning
them.
And for however much time you have left at high school, get the highest grades you can get.
Work hard. Lean into the inner geek that craves conventional rewards.
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