Hi everyone,
Wow has it been a crazy month. As many of you know last month I only got a single acceptance, to my state school (documented in this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1876770-what-did-i-do-wrong-p1.html). The ups and downs have really been astounding and this has been one of the most turbulent times of my life. However, I’m really touched by the outpouring of support I’ve received from total strangers here on CC. I’ll copy my original post+stats below. I realize my situation is unique in many ways, but I hope this serves as a cautionary tale to future applicants. Sorry for major tl;dr - a lot of people have reached out by PM asking what I decided to do/what I’d learned so I thought I should do this properly.
As I already noted, I’m not actually from Arkansas but I do have some minor media coverage in my real state which includes my real name and address, which I’d like to keep anonymous. Where you see Arkansas, read “South/Midwestish state” and where you see UArk read “state school ranked at about #110 on USNWR”.
There was no one “red flag” or fatal mistake, but a combination of factors contributed to the admissions snafu that I faced. If this bores you, scroll down to Looking Ahead for my final decision.
Lack of outside advice
High school guidance counselors are not in general especially well-informed about admission to Top 20 schools, because it’s not their primary job. While some know more than others, the vast majority of students they advise at any school don’t even apply. My GC is a very well-meaning person who knows adcom members around the state, but that’s just it - most people he advises stay in-state/go state school, and for the vast majority of schools, SAT match+GPA match = match. He even thought it would be a waste of money to apply to schools where I was above their 90th percentile because they’d reject me for having scores that are too high!
Do seek honest outside opinions. I didn’t get an honest and informed outside opinion on my app. I talked to parents of kids who went Ivy, but Asian parents, always overestimate the achievements of other people’s kids while staying modest about their own children’s exceptional achievements. Even your interviewers, who only meet you for an hour or two, have a distorted view of the current state of affairs, as admission is a lot more competitive than it was 20, 10, or even 5 years ago. I had the opportunity to consult with a private coach who could have pointed a lot of these things out, but passed on it needlessly.
More isn’t better
Nobody wants to be a jack of all trades, bouncing between things but not getting deep in any one. I always thought it was no big deal that I did a lot of things because I did all of them well. However, psychologically it’s easy to conflate doing a lot of things to a high level and being a dilettante and only superficially touching on a lot of things without focus – this is true of the student as well as the admissions officer.
Don’t succumb to the temptation to put everything on your resume. You get a sense of pride and ownership of things you know you’ve put effort into and want other people to see that. But all they might see is that you don’t have a clear focus on anything. Leave stuff off that doesn’t fit into your narrative, even if this means you have to leave a couple lines blank in your activities section.
Longer isn’t better
We’re always told that colleges value commitment to something over a long period of time. This is true with a qualification – that you can show you’re getting better at it. Just doing something for four years without any advancement or leadership positions to show for it can hurt you. For me it was piano – I’ve been playing for 14 years but I’ve never won any national awards or even anything above the city/state level. I like how my dad put it: think about someone applying for a new job who has been in the same entry-level position for 14 years – the reaction won’t be “Wow he must be really committed” but rather “Why hasn’t he advanced?”
Like above, don’t list all your activities. Leave stuff off that you did lacklustre for 4 years without any leadership or awards to show for it. It’s better to have a few things in your activities that all relate to each other and that you really put your all into and have leadership and awards in, than to fill it up with random unconnected stuff. I should have left some non-relevant achievements (such as my tutoring work or work with HfH) off and concentrated more on the fact that I have done chemistry research at a university for two years and am taking junior-level college chemistry courses.
Half-measures are the worst
You can’t get judged on what you don’t do. I didn’t get rejected just because I didn’t do MUN past freshman year. However, you can get judged if what you do do is not the very best you can do. For instance, I did research for two years.
A family friend who is a professor at a Top 50 and sits on graduate admission committees said he doesn’t hold no research experience against otherwise qualified applicants, but a lack of journal publications despite research would raise flags - either it was suspected that I exaggerated the experience or I was only involved in menial tasks and not in creative or original research (which is to an extent true). We do have publications “in the pipeline” but unfortunately for various reasons they have not yet been published. I only worked full-time for two summers and didn’t have a project that was really “mine” until a month before senior year started. If I had done less random stuff, I could have been involved part time during the year as well and could have pushed my projects forward so I’d have publications by now. No half measures.
The Asian factor
I am an upper-middle class Asian male applying for a STEM major. Admission for Asians is harder, which I knew, but more importantly also a lot more unpredictable. My stats might have been an almost-sure admit (assuming good essay, LOR, interview) if I had a hook like URM or legacy, but being Asian, non-low income, and non-first generation is almost like an “anti-hook” that I had to overcome, but the rest of my app just wasn’t strong enough to overcome that. My regional Dartmouth rep said my essay was strong, but even so, indirectly reminding adcoms of the above points probably did not do me any favors.
Don’t be Asian? XD