Band kids at least in our experience have the busiest schedules in the entire high school. My senior leads over 200 peers, it’s really incredible. He’s dialed in and on fire but we are careful to make sure he has plenty of downtime - not a lot of demands other than school and band. Volunteering is out of the question, he actually has plenty of volunteering required in the band. He loves being busy and productive. He’s got a motor for sure, gets it from me. He enjoys down time but he likes to earn it. His social life is rich and he loves the travel, bus time with friends, and the camaraderie. For college I think of it as a club more than anything but one that will eat up his time - in a good way. He wants to continue that and he loves the big time football atmosphere (LT has it at the HS level) from the perspective of a band member.
we are kinda banking on drum major and band generally to propel him. His grades are great but his electives aren’t bump classes so he’s not had enough AP type classes to move into the top 10% even. His SAT is meh, not a good test taker, gets that from me too. I scored 20th percentile but performed 10th percentile consistently. Unweighted GPA he’s killing it.
looking west it’s his personality but continent too where diversity essays (trans parent, lesbian step mom - remains to be seen if we play that card) and test scores are still ignored.