<p>Elite colleges obviously receive a lot of highly qualified applicants who all have similar grades, scores, essays and have show interest in outside activities. How do most colleges determine who to accept when everyone is so similar?</p>
<p>Well it is very important that an applicant stands out. Hooks are very important when choosing between similar students. When there are almost no differences between students, it then becomes somewhat of a crapshoot, I would think. Recommendations are also very important.</p>
<p>Correction: most applicants to the top colleges have stellar academic stats, but not essays. A current Harvard alum and interviewer on these forums, 1987Crimson, once posted a thread in the Harvard forum where he/she offered to chance people. After about 5 pages or so, he/she concluded that just about everyone who posted their stats in the thread was academically qualified, but that many essays/essay topics that were proposed to him/her via PM came across as uninteresting. People on these forums often say that their essays were “excellent”, but how do they know that for sure? Their English teacher might agree with that evaluation, but ultimately, the English teacher is not the admissions officer and doesn’t know what the admissions officer is specifically looking for. </p>
<p>I definitely think that for top colleges, essays carry a lot more weight once the applicant’s academics/ECs are deemed satisfactory…</p>
<p>Once applicants meet a threshold for “stats” (in the schools average range), many variables are considered. First of all you have applicants with “hooks” … recruited athletes, legacies, professors children, who can dominate the acceptences in the bottom 30 percentile of the acceptence pool. Geographic diversity comes into play…are you one of only 5 applicants from North Dakota, etc. Male / female / nationality is accounted for to insure diversity. After all of that the essays & letters of rec. are a window into the apllicants personality & give an idea of how involved they will be on their campuses & contribute to the overall “campus vibe” that the particular college is aiming for.</p>
<p>Just want to hear what others post.</p>
<p>Same. For top schools is it once you hit a great ACT/SAT and a solid GPA in tough classes (at a good HS if that’s possible) they look to essays and ECs and recs (which are probably all pretty similar, no?)</p>
<p>What is the “threshold” for a regular, unhooked Asian applicant to top schools? Certainly that should be higher than the “average”, which includes legacies, athletes, geographic diversity, etc.</p>
<p>Anyone have any opinion?</p>
<p>For the Asians that come to mind: Low income, single parent home, immigrant family where English is not spoken at home, did well but not perfectly in urban school where they managed to luck out with the better teachers, nice guys able to tell their interesting story. One was student body president and spent his free time doing community service, including creating two HIV/AIDS education conferences for his underserved community. Both were/are way more than their stats which I’m sure were enough to show they could do the work but were not tippy top; I don’t think either were vals/sals.</p>
<p>What about in general? There is a place for race in college admissions somewhere else on this site, and it’s clear that colleges are affirmative action institutes. Race is another factor, bur is there that threshold or do they look at grades/STD tests (haha not that kind) without a threshold level.</p>
<p>Anyone else?</p>