I have the grades, leadership, and extracurriculars but I am not sure I have a hook. I wrote a very good why brown essay. Some possible hooks are that I volunteer at a suicide hotline answering phone calls and that I have really focused a lot on chemistry and wanting to be a doctor doing a lot of summer science programs (one very competitive working in a lab on my own project, paid, and presented findings at poster symposium and I sent my poster to brown and also I was able to speak about it with a brown professor) and focusing a lot of my volunteer work toward communication skills and hospital work. I also love to cook and I am a published photographer. Do you think I have what it takes?
Those are not hooks - those are EC’s. As for whether you have “what it takes,” nobody here knows, and certainly not based on just the small part of your application packet revealed here. Brown rejects 91% of those who apply - the vast majority of whom are qualified. All you can do is submit the best package you can and then sit back and wait. Good luck.
FYI, hooks are generally considered:
• Recruited athlete
• URM
• legacy
• Child of major donor or celeb
The definition of hook will vary by college and each college can decide how mush of a bump, if any, a hook will give an application. However, a hook will rarely help a substandard application.
Agree with skieurope. I’ll add that a “hook” is something that satisfies an institutional goal. If college trustees/administration decide it wants a higher percentage of first-gen students, then first-gen becomes a hook. If a college wants geographic diversity, then students from North Dakota applying to the East Coast have a hook.