More confused than ever, Valerie doesn't hesitate to contact Trent with a request for help, which goes beyond simply asking for a letter of recommendation. She also realizes that, even though, for MIT, she would need one recommendation letter, but from a non-STEM teacher (here the band teacher), everywhere else she may as well use whichever teacher knows her best outside of Trent.
She ends up writing not only about what made her realize using others for furthering their own goals is unacceptable, for Common Application purposes, but also for what sparked her initial passion for math and, from there, mathletics, because it tied into one of MIT's short essays, as well as one essay at Caltech.
When she finally gets an appointment with Trent, she notifies her parents about it around the dinner table later that night. Glen is a little nervous.
"I'm going to see Trent at his home tomorrow. He will help me set things straight for my college applications, and I want to meet with him without you" Valerie notifies her parents, especially Glen, whom she feels would place undue pressure on him.
"I'm a little confused. After you publicly announced on parish radio that you were eliminated from the race to the IMO right out of the gate, do you think it's wise to go see him after such a spectacular failure at the TSTST?" Glen asks him, while visibly annoyed by Valerie's suggestion.
"He knows that college applications are upon us for rising seniors" Valerie then tells her father about the whole radio thing. "Telling publicly that I lost is being honest with the parish, including but not limited to him. However, I didn't want to tell the whole parish about you using me as a pawn in getting the parish's schools back in order, as I still believed there was work to be done to actually get the parish's schools back in order, and getting you fired as a superintendent would not help me at all, much less the parish"
"Before Glen took office, the parish school board was dysfunctional, and there was little to no accountability. So Lacassine could get away with using ESSER money to buy two-sided LED signage, supposedly to increase student engagement, and VA could somehow operate as two separate administrative entities, one for grades seven and eight, and the other for grades nine through twelve, despite sharing one campus" Selena then explains the changes between the old parish school board administration and the new one. "Sure, he had the whole parish install the same LEDs as Lacassine, but it was instead for raising advertising revenue"
"But why without me, however?" a puzzled Glen asks Valerie after Selena ran down the before-after of superintendence.
"It's personal to me, I think he would be able to help me out with the essays, too; he's less biased than you"
I need to take my time to write these essays. But what confuses me most is about which one to do REA (restrictive early action) at between MIT, Caltech or Stanford. I'll just do regular decision at all three of Tulane, LSU and Carnegie Mellon, while remaining mindful of not stepping on Chantal's bounds. With so few people vying for Ivies and Ivy-equivalents this year, it's really between her and me, Valerie then muses about this entire process is going to strain what relationship she might have with Chantal for the coming months.
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The following day, when Valerie arrives at Trent's home, he can feel like Valerie is a little distraught, and she comes to her coach for answers.
"Hi coach, I need to sort out which one to do REA or ED (early decision) at. I have no idea what kind of student they're looking for, which one I align best among the following: Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Stanford" Valerie makes the facts clear.
"Valerie, you think these colleges look for a specific kind of student. You probably know that it's better to excel in one or two areas, hence your preliminary list. Especially critical given the two-team policy in place here. Might want to add an Ivy or two in RD if REA/ED fails. However, it's a gamble only at that level of colleges. If you decided that, say, Baylor, UF or Wisconsin was a good fit, like Éliane back in the day, no biggie, these are certainly safeties" Trent tells his mathlete.
"I can only roll the dice once per round in early admission, I want to make it count"
"Out of past star VA mathletes, I would say that you're closest to Krista. Granted she got in at Caltech off the waitlist, but it was a good fit for her. My big problem with you at MIT is you're not really an entrepreneur. Also I think the University of Chicago might be a good idea" Trent suggests her.
"No thanks, Chicago is a poor fit because they emphasize breadth in undergrad too much. I want to have some room in how I choose my non-major courses. Stanford then?" she asks him, still in doubt.
"Stanford is a little unpredictable at times. There is no single kind of student they seem to let in. Rest assured that I will address the extracurricular limits in place in my letter of recommendation; by now you know that so many hopefuls at elite colleges attend schools where kids in your position stack up as many as ten clubs and teams"
Caltech would then feel like a much smaller version of CMU. CMU always hit me as a geeky kind of college from the moment I stepped foot in there, Valerie then reflects on her experiences at MOP and what would that imply for her life at Caltech.
"Why UChicago? It's not the first time you suggested UChicago to a mathlete! I get that it's not intensely careerist the way, say, Harvard might be, provided you don't major in economics anyhow, but it's not for everyone"
"There's always graduate school if push comes to shove, and, in math, it's generally considered easier to get into Ivies or equivalent for a PhD than for undergrad. You see, I myself went to UChicago for graduate school, but I dropped out of that place because I fell ill. And I had no real hope to go there for undergrad back then, even with the standards of the time, let alone today's"
There's only one rising senior I know for whom UChicago is a good fit and can realistically attend: Anna, even though she will no longer be a VA. Chantal struck me as laser-focused on international relations and, for her, mathematics was just a means to an end. Gaston lacks Anna's intellectual curiosity, Daisy is not that accomplished, to say nothing of the other debaters or quiz bowlers, who aren't anywhere near Daisy's 1500 on the SAT or even Gaston's 32 on the ACT, even with a 3.8 or better. For some reason the people who perform best on the SAT or ACT are on the academic teams, Valerie runs down her classmates' profiles in her mind.
"That doesn't answer my question! Chicago does offer opportunities for undergraduates to engage in research in nearly every department undergrads can major in, much like CMU, MIT, Stanford or Caltech, and I think I won't like Stanford that much since, as much as I wouldn't mind a diverse student body, there's probably too much entitlement, from what one of the instructors at MOP told all of us"
"The way you talked about UChicago, I would probably recommend Brown or UPenn, but stay away from Columbia for undergrad. If you have your heart set on Caltech, please contact Krista" Trent then gives Krista's institutional email address to Valerie.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Krista would probably have dozens of Louisiana kids asking her about Caltech by now, mostly from schools such as Benjamin-Franklin, Isidore Newman, LSMSA (Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts), Bâton-Rouge and Caddo Magnets. I think comparing Valerie to Krista is a pretty apt comparison given their respective track records as mathletes, as well as personal qualities, Trent then wonders if giving Krista's Caltech email address to Valerie was a good idea.
"That's a lot to think about, and I feel your peers and the academic experience is not the end of what makes a college a good fit. However, that's what past mathletes ended up caring about most. Thank you" Trent then ends the meeting with his mathlete.
If some of the kids not on academic teams are any indication, some of them might be willing to pick a college based on whether their girlfriend can attend, partying, to name the most common, Valerie reflects on what can drive others to make their choices of colleges, but she also knew that top students tended to be more sophisticated.
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Once she returns home, she still processes all the information her peers at MOP gave her, as well as what Trent told her. While, of course, she could reasonably expect several MOPpers to be gunning for the same schools as she is, and, for some, attend them as well, because her parents are footing some portion of the bill, she needs to enter the information into the net price estimator for Caltech before she can discuss applying REA at that school with her parents.
Upon returning home, she discusses the new insights and what they imply to her parents:
"Ouch. Caltech will be a bit expensive since the best I could hope for is roughly a half-ride. On the other hand, Caltech is perhaps the best fit I could get" Valerie then tells her parents.
"Stanford might be cheaper... we're caught between a rock and a hard place, choosing among equally selective institutions. By going to Carnegie Mellon, MIT or Caltech, you understand that most of the people around you will have STEM backgrounds if you study STEM disciplines. On the other hand, at Stanford, the first half of college will be spent with people who will be highly accomplished, yes, but in a much wider array of disciplines, and the student body, and often the students themselves, will be much better-rounded, too" Selena warns her daughter.
"I don't want to squander the family money, nor these years of mathletic efforts!" Valerie then lets the harsh financial reality sink in.
And yet, the family didn't spend nearly as much on Valerie's mathletic development as had some other families of MOPpers, so the parents' skin in the game is much more limited. What they really spent was 3 plane tickets for Valerie, and that was pretty much it for out-of-pocket expenses.
"Whether a better-rounded student body is good for you or not, it's for you to decide. However, be prepared for the size of the funnel effects; while here there were only a handful of kids like you, if you attend any of these institutions, everyone will be on your level. MOP might have lessened the impact for you" Glen warns his daughter. "Roll the dice wherever you want in early admission, but pay attention to the strings attached"
Valerie spends the rest of the night finishing her essays for Caltech, and then sends the whole set of essays to Krista in an email, alongside her questions about life at Caltech, answered with the assumption that Valerie is the same as her, both academically and intellectually. With minor adjustments, Valerie feels like she's ready to submit these essays when the time comes to submit the application, and she can then take her time over the summer to write her other essays as well as do what she put off doing because of this relentless pursuit of mathletic glory.
Even though it's only symbolic now, she then texts Faith: "I apologize for any inconvenience it might cause you, but, since I let the entire state down at the TSTST, I hereby hand over the captaincy of the math team to you."
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When Glen runs into the widower of the late Robert at the grocery, it's then that he realizes that the local population starts gossiping about not only the newcomers to the various teams, sports or academic, but also the collegiate plans of rising seniors on either one.
"I guess I never paid attention to gossip around kids' collegiate plans, even when Dexter or the oldest were in high school. I don't think there was much gossip at all outside of recruited athletes back then" Glen then comments on the gossip about people such as Gaston, Chantal, and, yes, Valerie, that Robert's widower is doing right in front of him.
"And I never mentioned my nephew's collegiate plans either. Oscar plays HI for Kinder" Robert's widower then tells him. "He plans to wait until the end of senior year to decide where to apply, or even whether to do so at all"
"I mean, I can't blame him. If he's hoping to capitalize on a Nats or ToC berth to go to college, or get better financial aid, so be it. If he thinks he could get better ACT scores until then, that's fine, too"
For as long as I can remember the "neighboring parish" even doing debate or quiz bowl, they were always crushed against the VAs in both. This time around, with Anna playing quiz bowl for our rivals, and Myriam not measuring up to her yet, maybe quiz bowl will be more hotly contested. Yet Anna would very easily become the neighboring parish's freaky genius, if it's really as brains-starved as some believed it is, Glen muses as memories of the history of how the inter-parish rivalry plays out surface.
"Chantal though; man is she destined for greater glory. Princeton seems to be her favorite and it may be worth rolling the dice" Robert's widower then tells him. "I confess that Anna isn't followed much despite her role in quiz bowl successes"
"For some reason I believe the current principal of VA doesn't seem as willing to encourage the use of debate as a form of enrichment in humanities and social studies, so that's probably why there does not seem to be much fresh blood in debates"
The confirmed roster for next debate season includes Gaston, Daisy and, of course, Chantal. One public forum pair, two more Congressional players and one new POI player, Robert's widower runs down that roster, especially since she was made to judge PF on behalf of the neighboring parish when they still played PF. As such she had an idea of who else played for the VAs on the debate floor.
"Are we gambling the parish's debate future on some POI (program of oral interpretation) player about whom we know nothing?" Robert's widower laments. "More specifically, nothing beyond his prowess in language arts and social studies. He'll probably push harder in class because playing even POI..."
"You could say the same for Myriam in quiz bowl, or Valerie at Caltech, MIT, Stanford or what-have-you; in all cases, it's going to be a gamble, but not all dice are rolled yet"
"Because playing even POI would brand a kid as a smart kid by association with the rest of the debate team, here or in the neighboring parish. Except for humorous interp, in which case you're a class clown"
My own daughter should apply broadly in RD, if Caltech proves unaffordable for us. Not just MIT, Stanford, CMU, but she can always try Brown, Duke or UPenn, or Yale even. Applying to more colleges will cost more, though. But with the Chantals and Valeries of this world, it seems it's like they should either aim for the stars or go for the full-ride, Glen then attempts to formulate the rules for Valerie to follow when applying to colleges.
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Upon returning home from the grocery, Glen feels like he's due to give additional instructions for Valerie regarding application to college.
"OK, Valerie, here's the deal: apply to LSU around the same time as you would whichever one you pick for early admission. All other applications must wait until after the early admission deadline. You're welcome to tack on another safety, if you feel like LSU doesn't cut it for you. And no writing about the nervous breakdown at MOP!"
"The hard part is where to apply between LSU and Carnegie Mellon; there's a pretty large gap but most of the schools I could see myself attending between these tiers tend to be public ones like, you know, Minnesota or even UIUC. You know what that means for financial aid... all aid I could get would be merit-based. Case Western might be a good idea, though"
"Good: you understand the dilemma you face that your less-accomplished classmates don't. The average college-bound kids in here might be in a sport, in band, FFA or theater, but they don't have nearly as much choice as you. Typically they will apply to one or two colleges and attend the cheapest one"
I don't expect the profile to have changed that much since I was principal, but when I was principal of what became VA, the majority of the college-bound kids were in the 3.5-3.8 range, and they usually sported ACT scores in the 25-29 range. Top quarter basically. But even LSU was seemingly content with a single team for 4 years even though you accomplish nothing while on it, Glen then reflects upon how VAs tended to approach the college application process. He is therefore reminded of how the stress of college applications scaled with the strength of the student. It really only seemed to stress out the top ~5% of kids or so.
Yet Valerie ends up filling out a dozen applications or so, but only submits 2 of these on August 1.