I was very fortunate to be one of the few out of a pool of incredibly talented students to be admitted into a top tier university. I am very pleased and happy, and my parents want to know exactly what about my application was so special, because I have a little sister who will be applying within the next few years.
If I contact the admissions office to ask for specific information on my profile and thee notes that they took, will they be willing to give it to me? I have heard stories of parents posting about their children, and some of them have had responses from the admissions officers about their portfolios.
I doubt the college will tell you. Agree that it would probably be obvious to experienced posters out here. But I feel a little sorry for your sister. She is set up for constant comparison with you, and who knows if your school would even be a good fit for her?
You can probably leverage FERPA to get what you want if you spend enough time reading the fine print and are diligent. Universities don’t like it, though, and they have started destroying records to avoid having to give it up.
A better approach would be making friends with an admissions officer (preferably your regional one) at admitted students event and getting them to tell you. Admission officers will say a lot if you’re friendly enough, especially if they’re young, recently graduated, and not jaded yet so they’re still proud of all the insider information they know about the closely guarded secrets of top tier admissions.
I would not ask for that information. Admissions will not give out their private, internal notes on your file. IMO even asking will make you look really bad. You are in - be happy-- case closed. Don’t give anyone any reason to re-visit your file.
There is no magic formula for admission to the top tier schools and unless you won a Nobel Prize or something there is likely no one reason that you were accepted. You can safely assume that the school was impressed by your entire package including academic stats, essays, ECs, and recommendations.
Well the admissions process is holistic and super subjective, not to mention that a lot of personal information went into those essays, recs, and supplements. I agree that the best is through the admissions officers themselves, who have understood the full extent of the application. Unless I post everything, including the interview, teacher recs (which I waived through ferpa so I have no idea how good they were), supplementary recordings, and personal essays, I doubt that College Confidential can give me an accurate reasoning as to why the university wanted me based on just the superficial scores, ECs, and vague x/10 ratings of the supplements.
Accept that you did enough right to capture their attention. Your area rep may point to something, if he/she remembers. Often, they do. But that won’t be the whole picture and you won’t get enough to use it to advise others. It’s subjective, yes. But there are many factors they consider, not just, “Well, you cured cancer.”
Wht difference does it make? Colleges craft classes of admitted students. By the time your sister applies, it is very possible that whatever caught the adcom eye in your application won’t catch anyone’s eye.
Plus, your sister’s application needs to reflect her personality, interests, and accomplishments…which might just be different than yours.
OP, I agree with posters above who said not to bother the admission office for a post-mortem and also, please try not to put any pressure on your sister. Do your parents know what a crapshoot the Ivies are?
BTW, I’m an alumni interview for the school that admitted you and was more than a little annoyed when I received notification from the admission office last spring that a current student I had interviewed had gotten access to my interview report through FERPA (even though I had only complimentary things to say about the applicant). Just saying.
Thank you all for your feedback, they were all greatly appreciated!
I showed my (tiger) parents this thread and they have come to terms with your suggestions and hopefully won’t be bothering anymore about the subject.
And yes, those are my stats. I guess I’m also kind of curious as well, but of course I won’t bother contacting the university. If y’all have any insight, I’d still appreciate it! As the older sibling, I’ll still be giving my sister advice. She’s actually asking questions already, and has her sights on Yale (but knowing her, she’ll probably change her mind a few times before senior year).
Your situation is irrelevant to your younger siblings anyway. Had you applied last year or next year, you may not have gotten in. Also, decisions are made based on all aspects of your application. It is probably not just one aspect that nailed it for you. and, if one thing changed, but any one thing, the outcome could have been different. So apparently your application all worked together in a way that resulted in an acceptance. Would you have been admitted with slightly lower scores? Who knows? Not even the adcons who advocated for you could tell you that.
^indeed. It’s been years since I went into chance forums with any degree of regularity but does anyone applying to top schools with top school level GPA/SAT or ACT stats rate their essays below a 7 ever?
I do feel a bit sorry for your sister and I hope that your parents are disabused of the idea that a student can be tailor made to ‘get in’ in a way that they can keep pumping one out every year. If they discover your ‘secret to success’ they can go into the college advising business and make a fortune once every kid they advise ‘gets in’.
And for the record, if you do file a FERPA request, I would recommend doing so after you’ve enrolled rather than now between your admission and enrolling. Probably being overly paranoid here, but I just have a bad feeling about doing something like this before you’re officially a student and it becomes much harder for the school to do anything to you about it if it ruffles any feathers.