<p>Maybe I’ve lost the plot, and the differences between major and minor hooks, but I thought hooks were: legacy, development (rare in this day and age), recruited athlete, and URM. Consideration is also given to first generation college and/or extra challenges from low SES. I don’t see where accomplishments (musical, scientific, etc.) are hooks. </p>
<p>For the record, DS is the least hooked kid of all time but was accepted SCEA at Yale. He had the grades and scores, ECs, etc., but I think that what set him apart was a thoughtful essay. </p>
<p>I think great accomplishments (vs. great aptitude) are hooks.</p>
<p>I doubt development is that rare. Considering how well the 0.1% have done, the amount of wall street money and money from overseas, I would expect they are doing quite well on development. Stanford raised almost a billion last year and over a billion the year before and Harvard and others have done really well in fund raising. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of those donors had some influence.</p>
<p>The word “hook” is an interesting choice. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but I thought the idea of using that word is that there is something specific about the applicant that hooks the admissions officer. As in "whoa, we have to think hard about this applicant and maybe have more of a “why we shouldn’t accept them vs. a why should we accept them” attitude.</p>
<p>There are plenty of things that catches an admissions officer’s eye, a great essay, perfect scores, a great recommendation, but a hook seems to be something at another level.</p>
<p>@Bartle I’m sorry, but I was a bit disgruntled by your post. Perfect scores in both the SAT and ACT shouldn’t necessarily set off your uninformed “BS detector.” There are many plausible reasons for taking both of the standardized tests. For instance, many Ivy League schools very strongly recommend SAT II scores, but exonerate the student from having to report those scores if the ACT with writing is sent in addition to the SAT. Many schools require both of the tests, and then you have students wanting to take both in order to attain the various awards available. I think that any intelligent, well-informed person would be a tad better at rationalizing rather than jumping to conclusions. Also, you’re fallacious in thinking that getting high standardized test scores entails being an intelligent student.</p>
<p>Further, it’s relatively commonplace for students with perfect scores to get interviews depending on the area. Many counselors enjoy bragging about their students, which is understandable. </p>
<p>mtodd1 - having just gone through this process with my daughter (senior in high school, admitted to an Ivy for 2018), my thought is this: there are a ton of kids who have top grades and top test scores. Once you get above let’s say 2100-2150 in SAT or 33 for ACT, you are talking about the top 1% to .5% of the country. So having a 2350 versus a 2250 could be one or two questions. I don’t think a student who gets a 2350 is any more valuable to a school than a student who gets a 2200, for example. Same with grades – you simply can not look at a single weighted GPA. The colleges are going to look at unweighted GPAs so they can compare them to other schools; they are going to look at course rigor within THAT high school, did the applicant take the toughest course rigor for that student. Lastly, is there a 'story" to this applicant? So let’s say you have your top kid as you described - Quiz Bowl, chief editor of the paper, community service. So what do his activities say about him? How is he being described by his guidance counselor? By his teachers? Now take student B (I’m making this kid up mind you). Plays lacrosse, captain his senior year of high school; also plays club which eats up a lot of time. Is involved in only 3 outside activities – each related to kids with special needs. Student B thinks he may want to be a teacher so he starts volunteering at a local elementary school during the school year during free period, then summer before senior year he works at a school for kids with autism 4 days a week 6 hours a day. Teachers describe him as the “student who is nice to everyone”, describe stories of how other students at school seek out tutoring help from him. Straight As, 34 ACT. Do you see how Student B has a “story” that can shine through an application? It isn’t necessarily about how many activities a kid is involved in, it is about the authentic-ness of the chosen activities - and how the class choices, the activity choices and the recommendations all tie up into one package.</p>
<p>Definitely feasible! I got into every Ivy League I applied to!
There’s no secret formula. There just has to be something in your application that makes you shine through. The 5.0 GPA, the 2400 SAT, the 20 million extracurriculars are not a golden ticket to an Ivy admission. Personally, my GPA and my SATs were not near perfect. I was not captain of any sports team, nor was I class president. There were probably hundreds of other applicants with better numbers than me.
At the end of the day, according to my admissions officer (and now master of my residential college), what it comes down to is how genuine and how passionate/determined you sound through your application. They don’t want perfect students. They want kids who take advantages of the resources they have available and who use them to follow their passions. They don’t want kids who are immune to failure. They want kids who have failed, who have learned from their mistakes, and have used these learnings to change their lives.
Good luck!</p>
<p>I think students (including myself) get to caught up in the numbers aspect of admissions. Schools obviously want great GPAs and test scores, but they seek students (that are qualified) who express passion and direction in their essays.</p>
@mtodd1: Why would a high school require such a thing?
@CandyPants16: Yes, I’m aware that half of the Ivy League schools do not require Subject tests if the ACT plus writing is submitted. It’s a rather silly policy since the ACT is a reasoning test, just like the SAT. Such a policy implies that the ACT tests fund of knowledge…which it clearly does not.
Yes, I’m also aware that there are legitimate reasons for taking both standardized tests, e.g., competition for certain scholarships – although I find it curious that a scholarship-granting entity would not view a perfect score on the SAT as equivalent to a perfect score on the ACT. [BS detector still on.]
Many schools require both the ACT and SAT? Are you talking about high schools or colleges? I don’t know one college that specifies such a requirement. I have no idea why a high school would require that students take both tests…but I guess mtodd1’s school does. Rather unusual.
Not sure what you’re trying to say here. In certain locales, interviews are assigned to perfect-score applicants but not applicants with slightly lower test scores? Even the most selective of colleges does not assign interviews in such a way.</p>
<p>Getting into an Ivy isn’t easy but it is certainly feasible. A kid who has no hooks but has straight-A or near straight-A grades in a rigorous course of study combined with very high test scores, a decent ability to write an essay, and a good level of commitment and effort in a couple of ECs, who applies to a bunch of high-end schools still has a decent shot at getting accepted into at least one of them. </p>
<p>S/he won’t get into all of them, but with an excellent record like that one or two of the Ivies or other similar top schools will be glad to welcome this kid into their freshman class. </p>
<p>We are a middle-class family with no hooks. Not rich. Not poor. Not famous. Not URMs. Kids not recruited athletes. No one has won a Nobel Prize, founded a successful company, or discovered the cure for cancer. But our two daughters both worked hard and ended up fitting the description I wrote above. And both of them got accepted and attended Ivy League schools. Both got rejections too. Hence the importance on not focusing all your effort on one dream school.</p>
<p>It IS feasible. It can be done. There is no secret sauce. We went 2 for 2, and if we had had a third kid who also produced record showing a similar level of commitment and achievement, I bet we could have gone 3 for 3. </p>
<p>High stats (“most rigorous schedule within the context of the school”, close to a 4.0 unweighted, 2300+ SAT or ACT) gets a kid TO the gate. </p>
<p>Getting THROUGH the gate requires either a HOOK (recruited athlete, URM with a compellingly-told hardship story, development $$ donation, or double legacy) or a WOW factor (nationally-ranked EC or several state-ranked ECs) PLUS passion/voice in a well-crafted essay and awesome LORs (either “best kid in my 30 years of teaching” or “great overcoming hardship” letter). If you have ALL or MOST of these things, you have a good chance of getting into one of the elites but NOT necessarily any specific one. So if you hedge your bets by applying to MANY of the elite schools, you have a good chance of getting into a few of them.</p>
<p>But please don’t cite high stats alone (without most of the rest). It takes MORE than just high stats and locally-ranked ECs. Every one of the elite schools can fill their freshman class three times over with highly qualified students who have “best in school/city” ECs.</p>
@mtodd1: I’m surprised that your school doesn’t just administer two full-length practice tests: one SAT and one ACT. At least one of the good private schools in my area does this. It makes a lot of sense, in my opinion. Kids can use the scores to determine which test is a better fit for their natural abilities and which areas need improvement. Students can refer back to their test booklets to figure out why they missed specific questions. Moreover, the practice test scores don’t go on their official College Board/ACT “records.”</p>
<p>@CalBearsMom It takes more than stats, but usually the kids who have literally perfect grades and test scores do have more, at least at my school. </p>
<p>Yes, probably all of the high stats kids at our school has “more”, but does that “more” either include one of the hooks or one of the wow factors that I mentioned? Many of them do not.</p>
<p>WOW factor: for STEM-types, I forgot to include inventing something amazing. Every school wants to be able to say they admitted the next Bill Gates. And also somebody wrote a good article or book about if your EC is something surprising – like there’s no real obvious path for how a teenager would get there.</p>
<p>From everything I’ve heard and read from CC and other sources (including a friend that was accepted early to Stanford with no major awards or hooks) the key to a selective school is the essay. Regardless of your amazing stats or ECs or whatever, your essay can literally make or break your admission. There are some essays where the passion is so clear and visible you could see it from a mile away. Colleges want kids that really want to learn, that are so passionate about what they do that they will take every opportunity in their way and give it their all. A good essay will allow the boring no-hook typical Asian to get in; a bad essay will make a URM Siemens-finalist Valedictorian basketball player get rejected. It all comes down to showing colleges who you really are, behind the numbers.</p>
<p>Silverturtle, the face of CC SAT/ACT prep for a couple of years was famous for having two perfect scores while infamous for being rejected from HYPS (waitlisted initially at P). Did get into Columbia and Brown but chose to attend Brown.</p>
<p>I personally know another kid who is currently in med school who got into pretty much every school he applied to and waitlisted at Y with the same distinction. He was deferred from an HPS school and people were wondering what does it take if he did not get in with two perfect scores. However, he did get into all except Y during RD.</p>
<p>It is true that there are many who never take one or the other who had gotten a perfect score. The odds are not that high for too many achieving it since there are less than 1000 usually who have single sitting perfect scores in either area and then we have to go looking for who had both.</p>
<p>Common app does require people to calculate their unweighted GPA whether the school issues one or not.</p>