<p>Congratulations! Your kid made to a top school, or you did just that 25 or 30 years ago. What set you apart from the rest? We know that your kid, someone you know or yourself are smart and a bit lucky, but there must be something else in you that made the difference. Could it be something beyond grades, test scores, and ECs?</p>
<p>Photos of the adcoms in compromising situations.</p>
<p>O.M.G. the Bend & Snap! Works every time!</p>
<p>… OK, what I think made the difference for my kid (aside from having a solid application package) is that his first-choice college was truly an excellent “fit” for him. He’s the kind of person they brag about sending out into the world – collaborative, hard-working, fun-loving, interdisciplinary – and I think he made that clear in his essays and his enthusiasm for the college. Applying early also helped.</p>
<p>Beyond grades/scores/ECs, it’s the effort you put into researching a school you know would be a fit (for your stats and personality/interests) and then the effort you put into your app. It’s applying to a range of schools, not your safety and Harvard, and then being surprised you have no “top choices” to pick from.</p>
<p>What do you mean by “top colleges”? If you have great grades and scores, chances are if you apply to University of Chicago, Wellesley, Brown, Duke, Amherst, Cornell, UVa, UMich etc. that one of them will want you ;). If you apply to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, maybe not. Ahah.</p>
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<p>Are your implying that some kids got into their colleges thanks to parents making huge donations? I wish I had the kind of money that would make a difference to admissions results. But never mind. My kids got into their top 10 colleges thanks to “grades, test scores, and ECs.” Next question?</p>
<p>Feeling a bit paranoid today, are we? It’s kind of weird that you got the suggestion of bribery out of the original question.</p>
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<p>I think President Summers told the Harvard class of 2008 that they were there because they were intelligent, passionate and LUCKY. The luck comes into play because, after a certain threshold has been met, colleges will pick students that fulfill their own institutional needs. If you fit an institutional need, you’re in. If not, you won’t be picked.</p>
<p>So I think that my kids must have fit an institutional need at their respective schools during the year that they applied. What that need was, I can only speculate.</p>
<p>Hey, I didn’t read bribery into Marite’s suggestion…I read “developmental candidate” and I am sure that some parents have donated a lot of the money over the years to one of my alma maters and think that the substantial support they have given the school may have had a good effect on the chances that their kid had in getting into the school. ;)</p>
<p>We have no idea how our D got into her school. She has no idea how she got in. Yes, she has great test scores, ECs, grades etc but still… As we sat at the convocation on move in day, the dean of admission assured the students that they had each been selected for a reason. They were not there by mistake. Some students, he said knew how they got there, others would take longer to discover the reasons. My D leaned over to me and whispered “I think they were drunk when they admitted me.” Drunk or not, I think they made the right decision, but I’m her mother…</p>
<p>We will never know why they admitted her but she is a perfect fit for them and they for her.</p>
<p>Well, the OP is suggesting that students get in because of something other than test scores, GPAs, ECs. I’d like the OP to explain what s/he has in mind as being the deciding factor.</p>
<p>By the way, I’d put being an recruited athlete or a star musician under ECs. Legacy? hmm… See the thread about legacy not being enough to get into dream college (well, Y, to be precise). URM? Not everybody at HYPSM is a URM. Geographic diversity? For some. Just trying to get down the line of factors other than being terrifically qualified that get students to be admitted.</p>
<p>I’m just giving my experience. Two students, admitted on the basis of stats and ECs–such as they were. Oh, I assume that adcoms liked their essays. I was not bowled over by either, but I’m neither an applicant nor an adcom.</p>
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<p>We are not talking about the million dollars you donated to her school in the past, your race or whatever, we are trying to figure out why your daughter got in, while someones daughter, with the same/similar grades, test scores and ECs, got rejected. Maybe something IN your daughter (not the water you drink) that separates her from the other girl. Thats too bad that you dont know it, the other girls parents dont know it, but their HS classmates might and the dean of admission does.</p>
<p>In that case, the better person to ask is not the applicant or parents, but the dean of admission.</p>
<p>But let me speculate: S1 was a very good fit for his college. He must have had strong recs (I did not read them) from a school that was well known to the college. S2 had a stellar record.</p>
<p>I agree with President Summers that besides, good scores and ECs, luck has a lot to do with it. One student with similar stats and ECs can be admitted in the morning but the next one who is reviewed in the afternoon could be rejected because they had already admitted that lucky student in the morning, thus fulfilling the school’s “need” for that day.</p>
<p>I remember at my D’s graduation, the commencement speaker was a very well known alumnus of the school whose basic message was the students who were about to graduate had been very lucky in life and that they should go out and give someone else some luck when they are in the position to do so in the future.</p>
<p>I have no real evidence that what I am about to say is true, but I just have a feeling that it is important. It is something I would look for if I was an adcom or interviewer.</p>
<p>I think that in addition to all these normal GPA, test score, luck, geography, EC things, that if you have a passion and focus for your ECs you should be able to clearly explain how that relates to your college choice and even your potential future career.</p>
<p>My own example I can tell you why I think not doing this helped me NOT get in. When I was a kid applying many, many years ago, most of my real ECs were outside of school. Yes, I played football rather poorly and was on a couple academic teams, but mainly I was interested in wilderness adventure and conservation – I taught Sierra Club basic mountaineering, led wilderness and river running trips, took young kids and taught them rock climbing, taught wilderness first aid and survival at the Red Cross, was an Eagle Scout and Air Explorer and worked at the airport to pay for a pilot’s license, scuba diving, was a lifeguard, ski patrol, a few other things, you get the idea. Now maybe these were not particularly impressive, especially in today’s terms, but it’s what I was working with and I should have been able to at least come up with some explanation why they were relevant.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for a career other than a vague notion (later completely abandoned) that I wanted to be a doctor because my parents told me doctors made a lot of money. And I certainly couldn’t tie any of my activities or passions to my reasons for applying to any particular university. Frankly, the only reason I applied to my number 1 choice (which I didn’t get into) was because it was a famous school I had heard about. I had never even visited, and didn’t really even know much about the school. Therefore, when my interviews came around I’m sure I sounded like an idiot because I couldn’t articulate why my ECs were relevant to anything, and why it mattered which school I went to.</p>
<p>Not every kid will really have a singular focus and passion for something. But if you do have a focus and passion make sure you picked the right place, and then make sure you can explain why it’s the right place. Even if it doesn’t help you get admitted you should still be able to answer these questions.</p>
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My kid is smart and lucky, and yes, there is something else in him that made a difference. He has always striven for excellence in everything he does. "A"s weren’t enough; he wanted the high score in every class. Three weeks after we bought a pingpong table he was unbeatable. It wasn’t enough for him to learn to solve a Rubik’s Cube; once he learned that there are people who can solve them blindfolded he resolved that he would learn to do so too. So he did, and it is very entertaining to watch him study the cube for for 5-7 minutes, map out a plan in his head, put on a blindfold and go to work on it. It’s not a particularly valuable skill, but it is an accurate indicator of his focus and determination to achieve excellence in everything he does. I have no idea where this trait comes from; it isn’t hereditary and we didn’t consciously do anything to instill this in him.</p>
<p>My kid was perfectly qualified for his school, but he also could run very, very fast. That helped a lot. Similarly, my daughter was very well-qualified for her school, but was a vocal performance major and had to audition. She sings very, very well (which she does NOT get from either of her parents).<br>
My kids wrote good and quirky essays, had strong grades and test scores and, obviously, showed passion for their ECs and school. (there were negatives, too, but you didn’t ask about those!)</p>
<p>I’ve often wondered if some schools don’t do this:</p>
<ol>
<li> Establish minimum stats.</li>
<li> Discard the applications of anyone who doesn’t meet them.</li>
<li> Among those that remain, select some and random and admit them.</li>
<li> Tell the world about our “holistic” admissions policy.</li>
</ol>
<p>Wouldn’t you think at least one school keeps the whole process painless (for themselves) by doing this, more or less?</p>
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Forget the Bend and Snap. She had the best admissions video of all time!</p>
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<p>Or maybe it was a rainy day for one person, and the adcom was in less of a good moon than when they looked at someone else on another day…</p>
<p>While it might be true in lake42ks’s case that there is a REASON reason one girl got in and the other didn’t, just as often I honestly belive it could come down to the kind of luck described above. The adcoms basically say as much in The Gatekeepers.</p>
<p>Another thing that happens in The Gatekeeper’s, and is especially helpful for borderline applicants, is that if you happen to arouse the sympathy of one adcom, they may go to the bat for you. But what will raise the sympathy? Again, that is luck. You get an adcom with a similar background, or interest, or whatever. Another adcom might not have cared about your stamp collection, but this one subconsciously finds you a kindred spirit and fights for you over someone else. </p>
<p>I always wonder if the fact that one of the adcoms at Wes when I applied went to my high school helped. She’d come to pimp Wes at my school, and I really liekd her (part of the reason I chose Wes). Did she really like and remember me, too? Maybe, maybe not.</p>
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<p>I think this should be stressed alot more on these boards. I know I only got into Yale because I was applying for engineering, and so did alot of the other freshman here when you ask around. Each school is looking for something different at a particular time, Dean Brenzel (the admission dean) explictly stated that Yale is seeking to attract more science and engineering kids and if you look at the Class of 2013 there are a lot of science and engineering students, moreso than in previous years.</p>
<p>A good strategy that students should look into is seeing what each school is prioritizing and optimize their opportunities. When I applied to Yale it was right after Yale made engineering a full fledged new school so I knew my chances at Yale were significantly higher than at say Princeton (where I was rejected).</p>
<p>If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…</p>
<p>Even tho my S had almost perfect Verbal scores on SATs, perfect PSATS and writing, a winner 2x in national writing contest, he looked like a computer nerd. Outcome? Accepted at 3 top schools in CS, mostly denials at the more holistic colleges.</p>
<p>I think he could have fit into any of those 3 schools.</p>
<p>It also helped that those CS schools more lenient about applying 12/31, as a junior</p>