<p>My hook is that I love writing and I have a trustee writing me a rec letter haha</p>
<p>my hooks are I did a france home-stay/immersion program, I started a free the children (a charity to end child slavery) group at my school, and I have been on 4 BWCA trips (canoe trips in northern minnesota in which you are fully and completely immersed in the wilderness for 2 weeks, only carrying with you the bare necessities for survival) and since I live in Hawaii, I’m currently volunteering to help build a replica of an ancient hawaiian voyaging canoe (which will be used by a group of people to replicate the journey of ancient hawaiians to hawaii from marquesas). do you think this is enough? i’m worried I don’t have enough good extracurricular things 
</p>
<p>I am an over represented majority, both geographically and racially. However, in my applications I wrote about appreciation for where I come from and how I’ve learned to take advantage of my heritage. </p>
<p>I’m a speechie and I always double enter in prose and impromptu (interesting combination, i know), and I place in the tournaments. I think that would be a hook considering it’s difficult to place top 6 in a pool of 50ish competing. </p>
<p>my “hook” is that i want to be a doctor and my passion in science… thats a hook right…</p>
<p>a “hook” is an attribute that:</p>
<p>1) fills an immediate need the school has identified, or
2) gives the school bragging rights about you</p>
<p>or:</p>
<p>3) adds to the FP pile (probably a form of GMT’s #1 above)</p>
<p>As we finish up our third year, I’m almost positive CK’s hook was grossly underrepresented geography and last-minute decision to be FP. CK had no sport whatsoever and only two ECs. At revisit day, with all the newly admitted kids in the auditorium, Choate’s director of admissions told a story about fishes and ponds and ended by saying that Choate saw “something ‘big fish’ in each of you.” I told him recently that next year, before we say our goodbyes, I’m going to ask him to answer a question for me. He said would do so. I’m going to ask him to re-open the file and tell me what he saw that was ‘big fish’ in CK. (Ray, if you’re reading this, don’t groan.)</p>
<p>Edit: Yikes! Don’t get the wrong idea. CK was every bit as qualified as all of you; I don’t mean to take anything away from him, but the numbers game makes it a crapshoot for almost everyone. I’d just like an honest answer to “why my kid?”</p>
<p>Ok, so Moosieboy’s hook would be that he’s an URM, captain of his last two soccer teams, and that’s about it. He plays piano pretty seriously, too, though he’s by no means a prodigy. I think being an URM is a HUGE hook for him bc the small school he’s applied to has less than 1% of our racial background and they’re really trying hard to incorporate more minorities into their numbers. His big drawback is that he would need full or near full FA. “On paper,” he’s a shoo-in for the school, but we all know that “on paper” means nothing come admissions time!!!</p>
<p>Would 2 AP courses with a score of 5 in both be considered a hook?</p>
<p>As has been stated on this board over and over, great grades, top test scores, your eloquently stated aspirations, etc. are not hooks. Those are common themes in the applicant pool of every school. Here are some examples of hooks:</p>
<ul>
<li>Olympic level/nationally ranked athlete</li>
<li>Music prodigy (or plays instrument needed by orchestra)</li>
<li>Recognizable last name</li>
<li>Full-pay student from the Sudan</li>
<li>Highly qualified, single applicant from a state/country with no representation at that school</li>
<li>Family on the Forbes 50 list</li>
<li>Parent is a monarch</li>
<li>You, the student, are able to write that tuition check from the proceeds of your wildly-successful web business</li>
</ul>
<p>THOSE are hooks.</p>
<p>what about high marks in a piano competition ranking you among the top scorers in the country?</p>
<p>If the school doesn’t have an urgent, specific vacancy for a piano player in its orchestra, and/or you are not going to be publically showcasing your piano talent at the school so that the school can brag what a prodigy they have, then scoring high points in piano playing just makes you a nice, well-rounded kid.</p>
<p>Swimmergirl-- for that one it depends. Just like individual coaches get to send the admissions office their “wish list,” directors of music programs at many BS ( at least ones that have strong music programs) also send the AO a wish list. They may get a few people off that list ( as long as they’re otherwise qualified). But it’s doubtful they’d know about you just because you listed the competition on your application. If you met the music directors and played for them-- or sent them a DVD of yourself playing-- and they liked you, THEN it could be something of a hook. The problem with just listing it under your ECs is that the admissions officers won’t really be able to evaluate what it means themselves, without input from the music people-- and the music people meet lots of kids who do music, so are kind of unlikely to put anyone on the list they haven’t heard play. If you didn’t go this route, it MIGHT still be possible to contact the music director or chamber music director and send a DVD really fast or, maybe more efficiently, a link to a YouTube performance. It might be too late, but it might be worth a try.</p>
<p>One hook would be recruited athlete, not just captain of soccer team. Also geographic diversity…Wyoming, Dakotas etc. Also, one kid I knew who got admitted to Andover last year as a repeat 9th grader played 3 Varsity sports–the school I think saw him as a triple threat, able to play a Varsity sport all trimesters.</p>
<p>One of the coaches at one of the schools took her club team to a senior meet and we were able to have a nice conversation and she was able to watch me swim and talked to my coach. I know this isn’t a hook, but I think it helps. </p>
<p>I don’t think that this would be considered a “hook”, but would being half white/ half indian at least give me advantage? I think I’m screwed though I come from a HUGELY over-represented area and my only strength is art Most of the kids from where I live are the white, old money, legacy kids who are recruited by BS’s for lacrosse/hockey. Would being out of the norm for my area help, or am I hopeless?</p>
<p>Do you mean Native American or India-Indian?<br>
Native American = URM, an admissions plus
India-Indian = ORM, probably neutral for BS but the kiss-of-death for college admissions</p>
<p>Most of the kids who are admitted do NOT have hooks. And having a hook is still no guarantee. </p>
<p>There’s no point in micro-obsessing over whether one’s attributes are officially hooks or not. It’ll be moot in 17 days.</p>
<p>I mean India-Indian. I know what you mean about it being the kiss of death for college, but I haven’t seen an overwhelming amount of Indians at BS. </p>
<p>NChopeful - being from the New England area, I can tell you there is an overwhelming Indian population specifically because of the vast number of colleges and universities in the region. I know when we went to Visit day at two of the schools, there were considerably more Indian visitors than any other minority that I could see. At one school, we were the only non-Indian family in our little group that went in to meet the Headmaster (they brought us in a few families at a time so that we could get more personal time with the Headmaster). I cannot speak for other schools, but the three schools we visited seemed to have a disproportionate amount of Indian students visiting than other minorities, and I’ve read it here on CC as well as a few other places that Indian students are ORM in most cases.</p>