<p>The worst was one time my friend and I were walking down the street, and I said something vaguely uncomplimentary about somebody. (Along the lines of “oh my gosh, he is quite a character”) He was right behind us. Then we turned left, I thought he turned right, and was like “wow that was awkward”. No, he was still right behind us. Then later that day I was telling that story to another friend and hello, Mephistopheles! A third time in a single day. Awkward.</p>
<p>I think that’s just a product of CC’s rhetoric. Your chances are slim, but that’s because, like Sikorsky said, almost everybody’s chances are very slim. Unfortunately, I can’t be that optimistic about your chances, then, but I think CC over-emphasizes the magic role of less-than-amazing hooks. Strong hooks, obviously, are a different story, but there aren’t that many of them, I think.</p>
<p>In the categories of “strong hook” and “weak hook” for each of legacy, sports, and URM, we have:
-legacy whose parents’ name is on one of the main buildings of campus
-legacy whose parents don’t donate millions of dollars to the school every year</p>
<p>-that one quarterback prospect the football coach is dying, simply dying, to have
-that pretty good track kid or soccer player the coach would like to have, and has recruitable times on the 100 yard sprint or a good I don’t know what statistic in soccer, but isn’t so good the coach couldn’t easily do without him</p>
<p>-a hispanic kid from a gang-ridden neighborhood in Los Angeles who supported his broken family and did much of the parenting of his little sister while his mom was sick in the hospital for a few years
-some white kid’s application, if I changed nothing else about his high school, his family situation, his extracurriculars, his economic background, except that I changed the “race” box from “white” to “URM”
(The thing about the first one is that that would still be a really strong story if I removed the word “hispanic”! So yes, probably a higher rate of URMs in a given score bracket get in, but given the current society of the United States, a URM is more likely to have had more challenges to overcome than the average applicant.)</p>
<p>My impression is that weak hooks, the latter of the two in each category, make a difference for the maybe 5-10% of the most borderline accepted students, but that most people are “yesses” or “nos” with or without those factors. I also don’t think that the number of strongly-hooked people is all that large. That’s my impression of the difference in CC’s picture and the reality of hooked H admissions. I hope that helps. Again, I wish I could just say “oh, they’re totally wrong to say you’re out if you’re not hooked,” but…yes, almost everybody will be “out,” regardless of hooked status. 
Good luck, though!</p>