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.
There are many college guidebooks out there for sure, but even among the good ones there is a void when it comes to speaking to highly motivated, academically high-achieving kids -- the very kids that professors want admissions officers to find, yet also the very kids who, ironically, often don’t end up being discovered. ”Going Geek” speaks to kids who want to learn, who are eager to grow intellectually about how to build their platform for being admitted.
Chapters cover things such as identifying and highlighting intellectual passions (Finding your Inner Geek) and leveraging high school teachers and counselors (Who Else Speaks Geek at Your School?) and even making sure that test scores become an advantage (The Standardized Geek).
The brightest students should be the ones who need the least, but by the bizarre nature of selective admissions, the bright kids are actually the ones who need it the most. Usually, they don't understand that every other kid applying to (let's say) Stanford is just as strong an applicant as they are (or stronger), and because they have always been at the top of their class, they assume they'll be among the top here, too. And they can't be--not when admit rates are less than ten percent. The national scenario created by competitive admissions is hyper-complicated, and the smartest kids are the ones who lose most often because they don't understand how to use their resources as well as they could. ”“Going Geek”” is about empowering the bright kid so that he or she can create the best application with intentionality in all aspects of the process.
With about 16,000 high school students classified as National Merit Semifinalists each year (and another 30,000 as Commended Students) of the 1.5 million eleventh-graders who take the PSAT every October, and with selective national universities drawing over 20,000 applicants each, often for a class of under 1500 (think Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Wash. U., Duke, Georgetown, and so on), the market for a strategy aimed at bright kids is strong. While the really smart kid is the target for this book, ”Going Geek” will appeal to book-buying parents, too, and there is something in it for every student who wants to craft a stronger college application.
“Going Geek” is a vital resource for parents, counselors, and students looking for an edge in the hyper-competitive world of elite college admissions.
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.
There are many college guidebooks out there for sure, but even among the good ones there is a void when it comes to speaking to highly motivated, academically high-achieving kids -- the very kids that professors want admissions officers to find, yet also the very kids who, ironically, often don’t end up being discovered. ”Going Geek” speaks to kids who want to learn, who are eager to grow intellectually about how to build their platform for being admitted.
Chapters cover things such as identifying and highlighting intellectual passions (Finding your Inner Geek) and leveraging high school teachers and counselors (Who Else Speaks Geek at Your School?) and even making sure that test scores become an advantage (The Standardized Geek).
The brightest students should be the ones who need the least, but by the bizarre nature of selective admissions, the bright kids are actually the ones who need it the most. Usually, they don't understand that every other kid applying to (let's say) Stanford is just as strong an applicant as they are (or stronger), and because they have always been at the top of their class, they assume they'll be among the top here, too. And they can't be--not when admit rates are less than ten percent. The national scenario created by competitive admissions is hyper-complicated, and the smartest kids are the ones who lose most often because they don't understand how to use their resources as well as they could. ”“Going Geek”” is about empowering the bright kid so that he or she can create the best application with intentionality in all aspects of the process.
With about 16,000 high school students classified as National Merit Semifinalists each year (and another 30,000 as Commended Students) of the 1.5 million eleventh-graders who take the PSAT every October, and with selective national universities drawing over 20,000 applicants each, often for a class of under 1500 (think Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Wash. U., Duke, Georgetown, and so on), the market for a strategy aimed at bright kids is strong. While the really smart kid is the target for this book, ”Going Geek” will appeal to book-buying parents, too, and there is something in it for every student who wants to craft a stronger college application.
“Going Geek” is a vital resource for parents, counselors, and students looking for an edge in the hyper-competitive world of elite college admissions.
