Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Blake
Alexa... you may be right about a lot or even the majority of FIRST Dean's list Finalists and their academic (objective measurements) and their extracurriculars / recommendations / essays (subjective measurements) NOT being good enough for M.I.T. and Yale despite having Dean's List Finalist in their quiver.
But, in my son's case, he applied with a 99.6 GPA, 13 AP-level and 13 PreAP-level courses, HIGH SAT score (5th highest in his class of 604 seniors), FOUR _killer_ recommendations/assessments (including ONE on FIRST letterhead)... and AP Scholar... and an award-winning poet and writer in his district of ELEVEN high schools and in Texas... and FOUR years of _competitive_ marching band and concert band playing TWO different instruments; the clarinet and the bassoon. The rest of his life was pretty-much dominated by FIRST and competition robotics, hence the D/L Award.
AFTER he received his 2012 Dean's List Finalist award, the following summer he took a _non-paid_ internship at the FIRST Central Region/Texas (Alamo) where he worked projects, built a 3D printer from the open-source RepRap model, built a holonomic drive FRC demo-robot for the district, and took that robot and FTC/FLL robots on the road around San Antonio to PROMOTE FIRST ROBOTICS where he presented to/spoke with about ONE THOUSAND middle-school students (SEVEN events total) who were attending summer PREP (pre-engineering) programs at area colleges.
STILL, it wasn't enough for those, at M.I.T. and Yale, who are represented to "love" and "want" Dean's List Finalist applicants...
--Michael
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I'm going to be blunt here: it honestly sounds like you're just bitter that your son was not accepted to these schools and are searching for a reason why. Nowhere does FIRST claim the Dean's List guarantees you admittance.
Seriously, going to MIT or Yale is awesome if you can get in, but it's not the be all and end all of your life. Smart people are going to do well no matter what. I don't understand why you're so up in arms about this.
Also, if you're really serious about being sorry that your son was a Dean's List finalist, I'm sure FIRST would allow you to return the award. If you were pushing your son to do things specifically to win that award, then you were in it for the wrong reasons. I sincerely hope you're not saying that you/your son took that internship and promoted FIRST just so he could put it on his application for MIT or Yale.