@say “But at the true elite schools such as HPYS,MIT,Cal Tech and a few others being a white male is simply not a hook.”
Brown University and Amherst College are elite and favor male applicants. The truth is that there are top 50 schools who favor anyones demographic.
The entire post before that part shows the higher acceptance rate for males in general, where being male functions as a hook in and of itself. In that pool described so colorfully by the admissions rep at Kenyon in the NYT link, are mostly white and Asian males with good stats and accomplishments but not as good as the women being rejected. They are getting a bump because they are male. If they were black or Hispanic or native they’d be hooked similar to athletes or legacies.
In terms of “hooks”, the demographic and legacy ones are typically much weaker ones than recruited athlete and development ones. It would not be correct to say that the demographic and legacy “hooks” have as much effect as the recruited athlete and development “hooks”, but it would also not be correct to say that they do not matter at all at colleges that consider them in admissions.
Tech schools are the exception here, as I said. MIT/Caltech are elite however you define that, probably RIT/WPI/RPI are up there too. All of them have far more male applicants than female and the less selective ones can’t be 50/50 as a result. MIT and Caltech can, or close to it, because their applicant pool is so deep. But I would tell my daughter that applying to MIT as a female is a hook (she’s twice as likely to get in, in terms of admit rates), as I’d tell my son applying to Brown as a male is a hook (men are a third more likely to get in, in terms of admit rates).
However a random CC poster defines “hook” is irrelevant. When I’m talking about these big differences in accept rate, this is how I am using the term:
https://www.petersons.com/college-search/hooks-influence-college-acceptance.aspx#/sweeps-modal
@ohmomof2 I think the most important point here is that, it can be very beneficial for any applicant to be aware of the schools that are looking for applicants like you.
That is true even for Asian students. There are top 50 schools that have fewer asian students than they would like. For example, Lehigh University has about 8 or 9% Asian, and has been slowly improving that number. In Lehigh’s case they are about 55% male and 45% female, so I suspect that an Asian female applicant is likely to have a much better chance of admission there than at some other schools. I think that an Asian male probably also has a better chance of admission than at most schools.
@Much2learn Again, I agree completely. The “trick” is to make a college app list that includes schools of various kinds where for one reason or another the attributes of your child - mutable or not - may offer an advantage.
My D applied to Brown in her cycle. She was one of the 18,000 women who didn’t get in that year, but she knew that was going to be a tough nut going in and it certainly wasn’t the only place she applied. Part of figuring reach, match safety for her were things like her gender, ECs, geographic location, etc.
My brother, who is Chinese, may have benefited from his race “hook” to get into a selective midwestern LAC where his stats were below average, but there weren’t many Asian students, especially boys. No one ever knows that “it” was that got him in, of course (or had he not, if it would have been because of his race), but I think my mom knew he had a better shot there because of that.
“Brown University is a top school whose applicants are mostly women, so they admit men at a much higher rate to balance it out.”
Men were admitted at 11%, women at 8%, in 2016/17 not a much higher rate. A hook would be double or triple the admit rate. You would have to prove that the men that got in were less qualified than the women to show that Brown gives a hook to men. From my experience, only top notch applicants (women and men) apply there. When I was in HS, the valedictorian (male) went to Brown and the others that were admitted (not just my year) were excellent. Out here in bay area, there’s little difference between the men and women that apply to Brown, on paper of course they’re superb. Since Brown has mandatory interviews, that sometimes eliminates applicants and then the ultimate question of how someone can fit in with Brown’s culture. I’m open but skeptical that in a class of 1800 or so, with an SAT average of 2250 that there are males that are there with 2100 and females with 2300, because that’s what a hook does, lowers the standards of admission. Conversely, I doubt the women that get into MIT have 2100 while the men have 2300 in their class of 1000.
Nearly a full third more men than women.
The posters here would do well to learn a bit more about statistics. To claim that being male is a hook for admission at Brown is just factually untrue. An admission hook has a very clear meaning as described in many books such as the Price of Admission. It means the student has something desirable to the school and receive special consideration for admission different from regular standard applicants. The standard hooks are the following:
Now to claim being male is a hook at Brown is just silly. It’s much closer to buying a few extra lotto tickets because 90% of the males are still rejected. Athletes with a likely letter have better than a 95% chance of admission. URM’s also have a much higher chance of admission. The best data is from UCLA.
Just because an applicant has a very small statistical difference in admissions does not qualify as a hook. 80.1 degrees is hotter than 80 degrees but meaningless in reality. The same is true for any male sex advantage to any of the truly elite schools. There is however a small advantage at the top engineering schools to be female since for whatever reason top scoring(math 780-800) girls prefer the culture at the non-engineering schools.
…Petersons. Who knows a thing or two about college admissions for 50+ years. But go ahead and use the term however you like.
OHMomof2 is just schooling people in this thread.
Like any discussion on a sensitive topic, some posters want to carefully define the parameters of the issue so that it reaches the result that they initially asserted. It’s not working very well here.
“…Petersons. Who knows a thing or two about college admissions for 50+ years. But go ahead and use the term however you like.”
Peterson’s does not list gender as a specific hook, it would be considered an institutional need hook, which they list after all the others and the least helpful in admissions.
Or showing a lack of understanding of basic probability. Acceptance rates by themselves are meaningless. What you want is an odds ratio in a statistical test, which controls for all the other important admissions factors.
Yes that was exactly my point.
https://www.benzinga.com/44265/800-sat-math-scores-male-female-ratio-is-2-22-1
This is why Professor Sanders UCLA Data is so useful because most of that information is included. This data clearly shows that being a URM is a massive hook even in a school that is legally prevented from considering race in admissions. But as stated above the athletic hook is the best along the child of a major donor.
Read much?
Obviously not an exhaustive list of hooks, they say so right there.
If you are a male applicant to Vassar, you have a hook.
Jumping in here because I like to split hairs as much as the next person.
Defining terms is interesting and promotes clarity. I always thought that a “tip” made one “attractive” but a “hook” made one “irresistible.”
Vassar is for men what MIT/Cal Tech is for girls because of the special culture(positive or negative) of these schools. The original statement that being male is a hook for the very elite schools or Brown is false and has been thoroughly and completely debunked. No HS counselor believes this, no paid consultant advices this, Peterson doesn’t say this, The Price of Admission doesn’t say this, and there is no objective data that shows this. It just seems like a personal feeling of a few parents whose highly qualified daughters were rejected at Brown.
By this definition (assuming you mean attributes other than things like achievement or merit indicators considered in the usual weightings), only relation to huge donor and top-priority recruited athlete are “hooks”, while everything else that is commonly said to be a “hook” (including legacy and any demographic aspect, and probably a large percentage of recruited athletes who are not the key ones) is at best a “tip” if it is considered.
ucba this is not how athletic recruiting works. Stanford,Northwestern, and Duke offer full scholarships and the Ivies offer likely letters to most recruited athletes. At these schools all the recruited players get a massive advantage in admissions. Even in the NESCAC getting on the coaches list is a massive advantage and this includes almost all the seriously recruited players. Moreover being a URM is also a large advantage so I guess it comes down your specific definition of the difference between a hook and a tip. It’s probably just easier to say that being an athletic recruit or donor’s child is a stronger hook than being an URM.
What a fun and dangerous topic! Lots of laughs and sad old controversies. Some directly political current events apply to this topic, but I understand the forum does not encourage that. So I bite my tongue (again), grateful for the OP’s opening.
I was first alerted to the objective standard for “Hispanic” (or Latina/Latino, or better, Latinx,) when my son was flagged in the top 2% of our state’s PSAT URM performers. College Board’s standard of eligibility is 25% of that heritage–a minimum of one grandparent–which you must prove with birth certificates. Those are witnessed and copied by the school’s counselor firsthand, who signs off on the CB’s form.
For graduate school, The University of Chicago also asked to see my birth certificate, and awarded me 4 years of funding, though ultimately I chose to go elsewhere. (Ironically a place without AA, at the time.)
So contrary to post #14, there is a “basis” to make the “Hispanic” claim in some quarters. (My son qualified, though he doesn’t look “dark.”)
My own feeling is that ethnicity and race are categories similar to gender: Some people experience or think about those as fluid categories. I don’t see why a person shouldn’t be able to make any personal identity claim. Whether others accept the claim (or you) is the tricky, potentially ugly part of the social contract.
Growing up housing and food insecure, and being dark in contrast to my milieu, I felt every inch of hostility directed at me. There were constant questions about my family origin, race, ethnicity–and whether or not we were on welfare. Incredible the casual cruelty people direct at those who have less power, even or especially children!
In fact, my mother went after no aid, we were often hungry. Much later, a nosey racist congratulated me on my mother’s choice of independence.
But as the hungry child, I certainly would have asked for aid. (Instead I tried to eat road salt and food I saw on the sidewalk.)
A society should protect and care for its weakest members, understanding that talented people cannot make lifetime career contributions to their country if they are shut down by hunger at age 7. (That was in America, where I was born of an American mother.)
When people are in peril for being who they are (women, African Americans, Latinx, transgenders, non-normative sexualities, etc.) the question isn’t, Who qualifies for URM status on what basis? But rather, When are we targeted peoples going to be treated as valuable and as equals?