Do "hooks" really help?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Not the URM, or first college student in the family kind of hook, the "jazz tap" kind.</p>

<p>Background: I'm a long time lurker, just recently started posting. One son starting 3rd year of college, another starting his freshman year of college and a daughter starting high school this fall.</p>

<p>Just skimming topics here was enough to induce major flop sweat when I first found CC. We didn't even start thinking about college until my oldest was starting his Junior year of high school and told us he thought maybe he could use some tutoring before he took the SAT. </p>

<p>At some point during that year I stumbled onto CC and thought, "We completely missed the boat here. All these people KNOW so much. There's so much we should have been doing, and making him do, for all these years." We just let him participate in ....well.... whatever sports and activities he was interested in, at whatever level. </p>

<p>However, he got into his first choice for college, and has had a terrific first two years.</p>

<p>With my second we knew earlier how many things we had missed by not "grooming" him to create a "hook" for applications. I began to understand why other parents had sort of forced their kids to focus on just one sport, or to drop sports to concentrate on clarinet, or to change from clarinet to bass clarinet or bassoon. </p>

<p>And yet, despite our lack of "packaging", despite his lack of a hook, he also got into his top realistic choice along with 6 other great colleges. Would creating/forcing a "hook" have gotten him into the 3 colleges that rejected him? I don't know, but I doubt it.</p>

<p>So I wonder, does all the grooming, focusing, jockeying, strategic positioning, packaging, endless test prep and working to develop a hook really make a difference in the end? </p>

<p>Do kids more or less end up where you might expect them to anyway?</p>

<p>Do you think people are trying too hard to mold their children, to create artificial hooks that the kids wouldn't have developed on their own? Or, is it worth it?</p>

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<p>I think it is our job as parents to raise happy, healthy children to adulthood. It sounds like you did just that.</p>

<p>The grooming, etc may make a little difference (not a lot IMHO) and at what cost? Will the students regret not being able to do more than one sport or not being able to play the instrument they wanted?</p>

<p>Who cares what college your kids get their degrees in as long as the student is happy and you can afford it?</p>

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<p>Most true hooks really can’t be “groomed” into a kid. I define a hook as something that meets a college’s institutional priorities. College admission offices have mandates from administration to have geographic diversity, athletes, first-generation kids, etc. A hook for one college might not be a hook at another. A college that just built new chem labs might want more chem majors, so that would be a hook for that particular school. So a true hook really does help with acceptances. </p>

<p>Most of the packaging your talking about (with the exception of recruited athletes), has nothing to do with hooks. What can work is figuring out what your kid offers, and find colleges that want that. </p>

<p>Many kids get into great schools having no hook at all. Sounds like that happened for your two kids.</p>

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<p>I think that making an artificial hook doesn’t make sense. The thing is to encourage your child to find what they love to do and then show that on the application. That’s their hook. My daughter loved kids and turns out that most of her EC’s had to do with children or service activities. An ed major was a natural choice. I don’t think a hook has to be something as elaborate as working in a lab and curing cancer, it just means an interest in something other then getting good grades and playing video games.</p>

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<p>Here’s an example: I have an aquaintance who truly believes that her kid NEEDed to continue on the football team his senior year because college admissions people don’t want to see slacking off. He was a starting player, but not a star, not getting recruited, (at least not by any school he was interested in attending as a student), and was carrying a very heavy load of AP classes as a senior. The football team was a powerhouse in the state, going to the state playoffs every year, but this boy was just burned out, and wanted to play rugby (for fun, not a varsity sport) that fall. His parents insisted he continue in football. He was accepted into a number of fine universities, and is attending one of the top 20 in the country (not playing any sports), but I personally think he would have gotten in had he dropped football his senior year anyway. </p>

<p>Would any college really care about a senior dropping varsity football to play rugby for fun? </p>

<p>When do extracurriculars, and WHICH extracurriculars, move into the realm of overkill? </p>

<p>I’ve read threads here where we discuss which camps “look better”, which summer activities are more likely to “help” in college applications, what kind of community service is “better”. I have friends who are very involved in finding the “right” summer spots for their high schoolers. These kids are shadowing professionals (doctors, engineers, researchers), and earning no money. Their parents would insist that unpaid shadowing is a better use of a summer than working part time year round as a, for example, lifeguard at a YMCA for 3 years. They insist colleges would rather see the shadowing that the paid work. It that true?</p>

<p>After two rounds of shepherding a child through the college application process, I honestly am confused about what extracurriculars matter, or whether any of it really matters much for the 99% of our kids who are bright but not developing robotic arms in their garages in their spare time.</p>

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<p>Well ,I just sent my 4th kid off to college last year . Over the years my kids have done well ON THEIR OWN . I would step back , and just let their lives unfold . Of course , I gave advise where needed but they made their choices . I never felt any stress ,and 3 out of 4 make me a very proud mom ! One is still finding a path …</p>

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<p>Luckily, I found CC after my oldest D had finished applying to college. If I found it sooner, I definitely would have an ulcer by now. She took the SATs twice, and the ACTs once, and never took a prep class or had a tutor. She may taken one or 2 practice tests the night before the test. I am sure that if she took a class, her scores would have been outstanding, instead just really good. She took all of the honors and APs that her school allowed, and had some very good ECs- all by doing things she wanted to do, not because someone thought it would look good on her college ap.</p>

<p>She plans to major in engineering. She applied to 7 schools, was outright accepted to 6, and waitlisted at one, which she turned down a spot, since she got in to her first choice school with very decent merit aid. She had no desire to attend an Ivy, or some of the super top engineering schools, since she didn’t feel as if she fit in.</p>

<p>I think that "hooks’ can be good for kids who need to focus, but I wonder if colleges can see through that in an application.</p>

<p>Let kids be themselves. I often wonder if kids who are accepted at some of the elite schools because of the careful management of their high school transcript and ECs do well at those schools.</p>

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<p>A lot of my friends and co-workers are just now starting to worry about college (we are done! I am old!)</p>

<p>So I hear a lot of this talk.</p>

<p>I have observed dozens and dozens of kids with their applications over the last 10 years- and heard about dozens and dozens more.</p>

<p>I have two observations relevant for the OP:</p>

<p>Never lose sight that these colleges are, at their core, educational institutions. No amount of “clown college” or medieval jousting or latrine-building in Haiti is going to change the fact that these are educational institutions looking to admit students who are going to take advantage of what they have to offer, and in turn, give back something to the community they live in. So much of the teeth grinding and hook-building and machinations are really a waste of time. Your kid could be the next Mother Theresa- but before the adcoms get to that part of the application, they need to wade through the boring stuff- scores, grades, curriculum, did your Mother-Theresa-in-Training take four years of high school English like they recommend, and how did she fare with trigonometry?</p>

<p>The only exception to this rule I have observed is the performing arts/audition programs, where a truly talented kid can literally get the rest of the application ignored. All the other categories that we like to obsess over on CC- child of a US Senator, famous movie star, Gold Medal at the Olympics athlete-- these kids need the academic chops to get accepted. Their scores don’t need to be as high, and if they took two years of Spanish not three that’s probably OK- but it’s not like Hopkins or Northwestern or Harvard or Cornell are admitting kids with scores in the bottom quartile of test-takers just to get bragging rights. There are enough kids with the goods; they don’t need to dig that deep. Children of Presidents and foreign heads of state get rejected from colleges every year.</p>

<p>The second observation is that in a world like ours it is almost impossible to manufacture a hook. Your kid is a high scorer in the international physics olympiad. Your kid is a nationally ranked chess champion. etc. But more likely than not, your kid is sitting on the sofa as we speak watching another episode of The Simpsons that he knows by heart, or texting another round of OMG and LOL’s to the BFF. And if you think that by dragging that kid off to chess camp you’re going to create a hook-- well, I have a bridge to sell you.</p>

<p>I know so many kids who had their childhoods curtailed by the endless rounds of tutors and private coaches and obsessing and mortgaging the future to pay for enrichment-- and guess what- even after the private college counselors, many of these kids still trundle off to Adelphi and Quinnipiac and Hofstra. Nothing wrong with these schools- absolutely nothing- but nobody is spending 10K on a college counselor, plus all the hook manufacturing, to have their kid end up at Hofstra. Kid could have done that on his own (which is sort of the point.)</p>

<p>I also think the adcoms get savvier every year about who has a manufactured element to the application. The last two years particularly- even as people on CC whine that someone from their HS who wasn’t even Val got into Dartmouth or some such nonsense-- I see kids with the “perfect” applications getting turned down in favor of the kid who worked his way up from cashier to manager at a fast food chain, or the kid who had no leadership activities whatsoever (never founded a 501 C3? And you have the audacity to apply to Brown?) but who has been studying Akkadian and Sumerian on her own for 10 years, getting accepted to their “high reaches”. </p>

<p>If you know a way to get an 8 year old interested in learning Sumerian- then you have a shot at making a hook. (and you should publish a book.) Otherwise- enjoy your kids. They are all special, the time goes so fast, you will wish that every hour you spent car-pooling and shlepping you could get back, to take a walk, bake some brownies, and just sit and talk to them!</p>

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<p>The example of the boy playing football or not his senior year would have absolutely no impact on his admission to any college, some parents are reading into this WAY TOO much.</p>

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<p>So I wonder, does all the grooming, focusing, jockeying, strategic positioning, packaging, endless test prep and working to develop a hook really make a difference in the end? …</p>

<p>I’ve seen it make a difference in the Ivy league and tippy top uni’s and LACs. I also see it making a difference in winning outside scholarships with a compelling essay and accomplishments, especially in starting a community service that has really made a difference.
Athletes on the international/national level have gotten into amazing schools that they would not have gotten in to anyway. That takes parent commitment and I know parents who have done this solely for the college admit with no expectation of becoming a professional athlete. Same with acting or singing (pop) professionally, takes a big parent commitment.
I’ve witnessed parents help in submitting to prestigious academic and art competitions and those wins have paid off with an impressive resume that has gotten their child into a school that was a whole level above what they would normally be targeting.
These are smart kids with rankings in the top 20% and decent SATs but not the usual applicants you see here in CC.</p>

<p>To me the real question is if that impressive diploma made a big difference in their lives.</p>

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<p>Blossom’s post should be a sticky.</p>

<p>I wonder if a moderator could make a thread of other great posts that summarize the situation, and label it “Read this thread before you get an ulcer”.</p>

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<p>How does grooming help, not hooks…</p>

<p>Example:
A kid wanted to get into a top tier school (Ivy to be more specific), didn’t take the hardest courses, well rounded, but didn’t have any major hook. Looking at all the top tier schools, determined Cornell Hotel was easier to get into, and also knowing it’s possible to transfer to other Cornell schools or take classes at other schools (another word, it didn’t really matter whether someone is enrolled at Hotel, CAS, ILR…). One big requirement of the Hotel school was to have expexperience in the hospitality industry - parents arranged for it. Paid for 1:1 SAT tutoring, got good enough scores to be a contender. Applied for ED to show commitment and love. Admitted.</p>

<p>Example of no grooming…</p>

<p>Similar stats (well rounded, no major stand out), but at a private school. Parents let the kid applied wherever she thought would be a fit for her. WL at parent’s Ivy alma mater (didn’t apply ED because she wasn’t sure she wanted to be at such a small, cold, isolated place), only worth while acceptance was at IS flagship (luckily it is a great State school). Parents tried to pull all strings to get her off the WL, but it didn’t happend.</p>

<p>I am very close to those 2 applicants, and watched the whole process last year. At the end of day, both of them are probably going to the right school for them.</p>

<p>I agree that you can’t artificially create a hook for an applicant, but could an applicant be packaged better? College application process is one of the biggest marketing campagne one will ever do, and the marketing campagne will just continue as one continues with career growth.</p>

<p>Have you ever gone to a grocery store looking at so many varieties of soft drinks, cereals, pasta…you had even a hard time of just picking out one? Which one did you pick if price wasn’t a major issue? The one that probably looked better packaged, you have heard of, or seen on TV or maybe one you had before. Would any of them be just as good as another? Yes. Did you ever regret your choice? Probably not, because they probably all tasted the same. No different than 30+ applicants, those schools probably could fill their class 5 times and could still have very best cohesive class.</p>

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<p>Blossom’s post is fantastic. Sums it all up so beautifully…</p>

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<p>I checked our school’s acceptance and the yearbook’s pictures to identify which activities that matter to college admissions at top colleges. None of these matters with the exception of athletes(Olympic level) who are URM and have top grades.</p>

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<p>Absolutely agree.</p>

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<p>I agree. Blossom, your post is excellent. Actually, all of the responses on this thread are excellent.</p>

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<p>Blossom’s post is excellent but don’t overlook oldfort’s post. Planning and thinking ahead in a PRODUCTIVE manner does help, not just with college applications but with most of life’s goals.</p>

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<p>Bump, because this thread seems to be closely related to "What Are Good EC’s For Asian Kids?</p>

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<p>Blossom and oldfort have said so much. But I’ll add that I think whatever a parent does to encourage a kid to follow his/her own interests, try new things because they interest him, and to facilitate that kid’s interests (driving, driving, or spending 4 hours in the woods looking for butterflies or whatever)-- that’s an investment that will pay off big in so many ways, no matter what happens for college. I think these things often grow into hooks, because a kid who has the sense that his/her interests are worth following out will do more and be more grounded.</p>

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<p>I also like Blossom’s post, but I’ll be the contrarian on this one…especially when it comes to the most competitive colleges.</p>

<p>Admissions officers at top schools really like kids who have consistently been on sports teams - especially state-winning teams – even if they are not a starter. It shows commitment and persistence. They will wonder why a kid participated in an activity for 3 years…and not senior year. So…it will likely need to be explained, in a postive way, in an interview or some other format. Maybe they didn’t get along with the coach or maybe they were injured (one of these responses is “better” than the other!!) If it was to concentrate on getting better grades on AP’s, or taking more AP’s…that will not be so well received. Why? Because they already don’t have space for applicants who have great grades, AP scores, Test scores — and have committed 4 years to 1 or more sports, have leadership in an EC or two, and have volunteered somewhere (or many somewheres.) </p>

<p>Participation in the senior year of a sport won’t matter for admission to a numbers driven school, and won’t matter for many of the schools beyond the top tier. But it will be a potential admissions red flag for the most competitive schools.</p>

<p>As for shadowing or perceived “high value” summer positions vs a “regular” summer job, I continue to reference something written a while ago by the Harvard admissions director, which they still keep on their site:

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<p><a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/time_off/index.html[/url]”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/time_off/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;