Is being a full-pay international applicant considered a ‘hook’?
No, but it helps at need aware schools.
Also at the top schools?
Types of Hooks:
Alumni connections
Don’t assume that you’re a shoo-in just because your mom or dad went to your dream school, but you can expect that your folder will be reviewed very carefully. If you’re denied for any reason, the decision will be painful for the college.
Athletics
Playing a sport can give you an excellent boost come admissions decision time. If you’re a superstar you can earn a full scholarship, but even a less exceptional track record can up the odds for your college acceptance. However, some students (and parents) overestimate the weight that athletic ability carries in the admission process and expect an athletic scholarship to be their financial saving grace. Don’t assume you’re getting an award until you get one.
Ethnicity
Colleges normally give you the option of describing yourself as a member of one or more of these groups: American Indian or Alaskan Native; Black or African-American; Mexican-American or Chicano; Puerto Rican; Other Hispanic-American or Latin American; Asian American or Pacific Islander; or multiracial.
Many colleges aggressively recruit students from underrepresented minority populations, and financial aid opportunities are great. Most admission offices have a counselor who is in charge of this effort, and this person can serve as good source of information as well as an advocate in the admission decision process.
Talent in the arts
If you’re a painter, poet, musician, or perhaps a dancer, you can really make your application stand out — unless you’re applying to a specialty school in the arts. In that case, your talent must compete against the talent of all the other applicants. However if you’re applying to a more generalized institution, being an artist may balance any weaknesses in your application and may improve your chances of receiving a college admission letter.
Geography
At a public college or university, being an in-state resident is obviously a hook. At many institutions, coming from an underrepresented region can also be an advantage. Southeastern colleges love to see North Dakota and Montana zip codes on applications, while Southwestern schools welcome candidates from Vermont and Maine.
@kfromgermany No it is not. Many schools encourage all students to apply for financial aid. Most top schools are need blind as well.
Don’t let the fact that you are full pay influenceyour application strategy.
No. Most top schools have around 40-60% full-pay students in their student bodies, and honestly they could fill up their student bodies 100% with full-pay students if they wanted to. There’s no shortage of people willing to pay the big bucks for their kid to go to Harvard or Georgetown or Amherst.
The only way that your money might hold a little sway is if you are are a serious development candidate, and by that I mean your family can give a seven-figure-plus sum to the school.
I also wouldn’t call artistic talent a “hook” any more than I would call superior academic achievement or prowess at math or writing a “hook.” To me, a hook is something that you can’t really control about yourself - your race/ethnicity, geography, gender, legacy status, connections. Also, I don’t think talent in the arts helps the same way athletics or legacy status does - you’d have to be truly exceptional, like playing at Carnegie Hall or getting an exhibit at the Met or something.
The more elite the school, the fatter its endowment, and the less it needs to rely on full pays.
Example: annual earnings on Harvard’s $36+ billion could easily fund every undergrad to attend for free, plus buy each undergrad student a Ferrari every year.
** $36,400,000,000 ** Harvard’s endowment
** $1,820,000,000 ** 5% earnings
** 6,600 ** undergraduate students
** $275,758 ** annual earnings per undergrad
So the answer is NO. Being full pay doesn’t help you at the top schools.
That said, being a “development case” is a totally different category from run-of-the-mill fullpay. If your parents can donate a $20,000,000 (yes, that’s 7 zeros) new dormitory or library wind, then that is a hook.
Not explicitly, except at the few need-aware schools.
However, full pay applicants commonly come from wealthy families who can provide an advantageous educational environment that allows the student the best opportunity to present the best admissions credentials to colleges. In addition, many of the colleges’ admission processes and criteria tilt the playing field further in favor of some categories of full pay applicants.
Post #6
- Harvard’s endowment supports 21k total students, not just 7k undergraduates.
- Harvard earns about $1.2 BILLION/year in tuition (grad and undergrad)
- Undergrad tuition income at Harvard is >250 million/year
More important than any of that, Harvard’s financial situation isn’t indicative of even the Ivy League, let alone any reasonable group of top schools - there aren’t more than about 1/2 dozen schools remotely in the same neighborhood financially. Using Harvard as an example is pretty much ridiculous.
Thanks for all of your replies. I knew that it wouldn’t help me at Harvard, I was rather talking about NYU, USC, etc.
Also, you said that many of the top schools are neee-blind. I thought it’s only HYP and Amherst?
NYU gives lousy aid.
Most universities in the US are need-blind for admissions, although some may have criteria skewed so that high (or sometimes low) income applicants are more likely to be rated highly in admissions readings.
But relatively few of them try to give good financial aid to all students. So in most cases, there will be need-blind admissions, but low income students often get unaffordable net prices due to insufficient financial aid. A few universities that do try to give good financial aid to all students are need-aware.
OP, quite a number of universities and LACs claim to be need-blind, “guaranteeing” that all financial need will be met. (That depends on their definition of need, of course, not yours or your family’s…)
The Ivy League (all eight schools), Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, WUSTL, Vanderbilt, Rice, Georgetown, Emory, and some more top universities… and many top LACs… all claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need. Generally, those schools do give quite good financial aid, but some students do graduate with debt.
How? Because, like I said, the school’s definition of what a family can afford to pay sometimes does not reflect either what the parents are willing to pay or the liquidity of their assets.
@GMTplus7 I know, but I was talking about increased chances for internationals not applying for FA.
Ok, I obviously was wrong, then. I thought these schools were need-blind for US students but need-aware for internationals…
Some schools may be need-aware for international students, or may give worse financial aid to international students, even if they are need-blind and claim to have good financial aid for US domestic students. You have to check each school to see if any of these is the case.
OP, I apologize – the schools I listed claim to meet all demonstrated need of domestic students. I don’t believe they offer the same for internationals, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that you wouldn’t receive some aid.
Like ucbalumnus said, check each school to find out how much aid they grant to international students.
And do check out LACs – some of them are known for giving decent aid to international students. Here’s a list of LACs with which to start (to give you some ideas):
Williams
Amherst
Pomona
Swarthmore
Wellesley
Middlebury
Bowdoin
Carleton
Haverford
Claremont McKenna
Wesleyan (in Connecticut)
Harvey Mudd
Vassar
Washington & Lee
Hamilton
Grinnell
Davidson
Colby
Reed
Bates
Smith
Bryn Mawr
Oberlin
Macalester
Barnard
The most common hook, athletic talent, is absolutely within the applicants’ control. Coaches don’t recruit all 6’10" students, only those with superior basketball skills.
I think a better definition of hook is an attribute that helps a college meet an institutional objective.
If that’s your definition, then just about everything becomes a hook.
While being a good enough athlete to be recruited almost definitely involved lots of hard work, practice, dedication…for the most part, high level athletic talent is something most people are born with.
And as for your specific example - Manute Bol was not recruited because of his basketball skills - he was recruited for his height and his more generalized athletic ability (coordination, reflexes, whatever you want to call it) that showed his potential to be a good basketball player.
@NickFlynn - Yes, that’s my definition but, no, that doesn’t mean “just about everything becomes a hook.” The generally agreed hooks are race, legacy, athletic ability, extreme wealth with a likelihood to donate, and political connection. That is because each of those helps further an institutional objective. Having more left handed, tall, short, blue eyed, or heavyset students doesn’t further important intuitional goals.
As a parent of two recruited athletes (for the record, both were also National and State AP Scholars), I strongly disagree with your contention that “athletic talent is something most people are born with.” To some degree athletic potential may be inate, but athletic talent and skill must be nurtured and developed for a student athlete to rise to the NCAA level. This is distinctly different from Julliet’s “something you really can’t control…”
Like most semantic arguments, this is kind of pointless, but your statement that “anything that furthers important institutional goals is a hook” is NOT the way most people define hook, because if you take that seriously then “high test scores are a hook” would certainly be true, and that’s just not what the term “hook” means to most people.
The “outside of the applicant’s directly control” IS the most commonly used distinguishing characteristic of hooks, and the fact you object to “recruited athlete” being classified that way is your own idiosyncratic choice.
And honestly, who cares? Most of us can agree on what is a hook and what isn’t - it doesn’t matter what the theoretical justification for the classification is, does it?