Reddit Reddit reviews How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out)

We found 8 Reddit comments about How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out)
How to Be a High School Superstar A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out Without Burning Out
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8 Reddit comments about How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out):

u/pigs_have_fl0wn · 6 pointsr/edmproduction

I would check out most of Cal Newport's recent writings. He received his PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and is now teaching at Georgetown.

His main thesis is deliberate practice consists of lots of different facets, most of which aren't necessarily thought about. While his work focuses a lot on improving work in "knowledge fields" it is drawn mostly from creative pursuits. He argues that thinking about your habits for practicing and learning (meta-habits) are just as important as sitting down to practice or learn. For example, knowing how to build a clear path of improvement and success in learning the piano is as important as sitting down and working through the hard parts. Sometimes the hardest part is simply figuring out where it is wisest to invest your time.


His article "The Deliberate Creative" I found to be particularly enlightening, among others. He's also been published in the New York Times, The Economist, and has five bestselling books.

On a side note, I originally found him looking for ways to improve my study habits, which is what he originally wrote about as an undergraduate. Any current high school or college students would benefit GREATLY (IMO) from his blog and first three books. Seriously, the guy has some great stuff.

u/coreyalexander2 · 3 pointsr/stanford

You're starting early, which is best. I would recommend this book to you: How To Be A High School Superstar. It details what you should do to get into top colleges.

Overall, I'd say strive for straight A's, score well over 700 on each section of the SAT, and try to find ONE thing your son is passionate about and follow that to the highest level possible.

Don't be one of those boring "well rounded" students who has great grades, test scores, and is on a club. They're looking for people who make impact. As I was told from a former Duke admissions officer, "Every student body has to have a President, Every year book has to have an editor, but who are the movers and shakers? Who is making impact?"

Winning awards like Nextel Science competition is major, doing research in a field is impressive, etc.

Overall, make sure your son is "different." He's going to apply 4 years from now, and at the rate things are going, I would assume that there will be probably 45,000+ applicants by then. What is going to make him different from those other applications?

Make sure he loves learning for the sake of learning and is taking control of his own education. Make sure he follows his passions during the summer, because elite schools want to know what these kids are doing during the summers. Make sure he leaves an impact in his school and forms a strong bond with his teacher.

Make sure he's "high impact" in some type of field. The keyword being "impact."

Here's a link to a youtube video of a former Stanford admissions officer :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96XL8vBBB7o




http://www.amazon.com/How-High-School-Superstar-Revolutionary/dp/0767932587/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459262515&sr=8-1&keywords=high+school+superstar

u/no_mo_usernames · 1 pointr/Parenting

This book has some good advice: How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767932587/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_y1wODbFY1ZB5X

There are others like it on Amazon. Maybe go to a bookstore and scan a few books like this to see if they’d be worth buying, or check them out from the library.

u/misplaced_my_pants · 1 pointr/Physics

Unpaid internships are essentially slave labor, or at least indentured servitude. That's a terrible idea.

I'm not sure what you would describe as your dreams, so I'll give you a possible alternative track for a possible set of goals that may or may not coincide with yours.

Let's say your goal is to get a well paying job and have a reasonably deep understanding of physics. Perhaps you'd also like that job to be intellectually stimulating. Here's a rough outline of what you could do to accomplish that:

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Before college

You're in 7th grade. First step, use this collection of links on efficient study habits to destroy and master your school work (check out Anki, too). At minimum, treat school like a day job. (Hopefully you'll have great teachers that teach you a love of learning and a value for a well-rounded educational base that includes the sciences, arts, and humanities.) Do all the exercises from Khan Academy from the beginning to fill any gaps in your knowledge and use sites like PatrickJMT, Paul's Online Math Notes, BetterExplained, and MIT OCW Scholar to supplement school and KA. Also, read these two books.

Once you've got school under control and are getting the most of what's available to you through that avenue, use the Art of Problem Solving Books to get a vastly deeper understanding of precollege mathematics. I'd say it should be a higher priority than learning calculus early in terms of ROI, but you can learn it if you want to.

See if you can find a group near you to train for a Math Olympiad or similar competition (like the ones listed on AoPS). Aim for the gold, but realize that it's unlikely and the real prize is how the training will bring up your mathematical maturity so you can tackle evermore challenging problems, concepts, and subjects.

Also, use sites like Coursera, edx, and Udacity to teach yourself programming. Once you've got a reasonable handle on programming, check out a site like Topcoder and maybe try to compete in the Coding Olympiad. Also, mess around with a Raspberry Pi.

You could also check out any big research universities or even decent state schools in your area. They often have youth outreach like summer camps for kids who love math to come and learn things not usually taught in schools. You could also see if there are any researchers willing to take on a hard working and science-loving high school student for a research project (this is how most of the winners of Intel science competitions get their start).

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College (Undergrad)

If you've done the first paragraph of the previous section alone, you should be able to get into any top 20 program in the country without any trouble. Chances are you'll be competitive for most Ivies and top 10 programs. Do any of the stuff beyond the first paragraph, and you'll be a shoe-in with a huge advantage over the overwhelming majority of college applicants in the country. The link about scholarships in my earlier comment will guarantee that you get a free ride. Also, read this book.

So now you want job security and financial security. Any sort of engineering would do, but I think you'd be more interested in computer science so let's say you do that and double major in physics.

Every summer you do paid internships for CS at various software firms for work experience. This will be the best way to make sure you are extremely hireable after graduation for lucrative positions with interesting work as a software engineer. That's Plan B.

For physics, you find a lab that does interesting work and start doing undergraduate research. You might change labs a few times to find a better fit. You might stick with the first one until graduation. Doesn't really matter as long as you gain real research experience.

You also study your ass of for the Physics GRE from your first semester. A few hours per week you do problems from old tests from subjects as you learn them. As in, do mechanics problems your first semester, do mechanics and E&M problems your second semester, do mechanics and E&M and thermo and optics problems your third semester, etc. (This may be different depending on how your school organizes its physics curriculum.)

You talk to your advisors and grad students and fellow students and professors about applying to grants and graduate school. They'll be able to give you actual advice tailored to your situation.

Either in the spring of your junior year or the fall of your senior year, you take the GREs and apply to graduate programs in areas that interest you and apply to grants to fund you and wait for the offers to return. Assuming you've followed my advice, at least some of them will contain acceptance letters with details of stipends. More than likely all the acceptance letters will include stipends you can live off of.

If you just get rejected, you'll at least have a BS-worth of physics knowledge and have experienced real research and can go off and enjoy your well-paid life solving interesting problems as a software engineer.

Or you can try and get a job at a national lab somewhere putting your physics background and programming chops to work and just apply again another year while saving up more money.

And all of this was debt free because you had the forsight in high school to apply to hundreds of scholarships.

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Also, read this thread on what it takes to kick ass at MIT. The post and the ensuing discussion should drive home what you could train yourself to become. (I think the reply by the twin is particularly enlightening.)

You can either shoot for the stars and hit the moon, or you can read magazine articles about gravity on the moon.

u/rmarden · 1 pointr/getdisciplined

You are definitely not "fucked". You can easily turn things around. Even if you go to a "mediocre" college, you can still do incredible things.

I'd recommend getting this book: https://www.amazon.com/How-High-School-Superstar-Revolutionary/dp/0767932587/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JJZN9DVPA6KDVKY71SFS

Great guide about how to get into the college you want. In your situation, I'd recommend you get it ASAP. Follow it and results will happen.

u/ACTforyouandme · 1 pointr/ACT

I would assume you would have a solid shot at Cornell. Cornell is actually the most transfer-friendly of the Ivies. I just applied to Cornell as a transfer student with a 34 and am waiting on my decision. However, most of the other Ivy League schools take a more limited number of transfers. Not to say that it would be impossible to transfer somewhere like Yale, for example, but your shot would be significantly lower than that of a first year applicant's. I think you should check out Cal Newport's "How to Become a High School Superstar." The title may sound corny, but the author details the stories of many successful gap year students. Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/How-High-School-Superstar-Revolutionary/dp/0767932587. Also, as a prospective transfer student I've read a lot of material on the tips and tricks of transfer admission so feel free to PM me if you'd like to ask me anything! Hope this helps!!

u/Meloman0001 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Better you learn in it in your last year of high school than your first year of college. I highly recommend reading these books b4 stepping foot in college:

Book 1
Book 2

I think there's a high school version which might help you out with grade 12.

u/Neoking · 1 pointr/ApplyingToCollege

Read How to be a High School Superstar.

Other than managing your grades and standardized test scores, the majority of the book is about building achievement in your extracurricular activities. It's certainly not too late as a rising junior, but you do have limited time, so get started on this endeavor immediately.

This is all assuming your grades are good (3.8+). Take a practice ACT and new SAT this summer. Figure out which test you prefer, which should usually be the one you find easier and score higher on. Find suitable resources (college confidential, as hated as it is, has a lot of test prep advice) to raise your score as much as possible. Sign up for the October administration of your chosen test and make sure to take practice tests in the weeks leading up to it. If your score meets the threshold of the universities you wanna attend (assuming 34+ and 1500+ for top tier schools), you're done with testing. If not, keep studying and try to get that done by the end of the semester. Take your subject tests in June.

Wish me good luck as a rising senior!