<p>I'm just dying of curiosity as to exactly why they chose my kid over other qualified applicants. Besides grades & scores, why do you think your child got in?</p>
<p>In D's case it might have been:
* I.B.
*Geographic diversity (Californian going to a Midwest school)
*An extremely strong performing arts extracurricular at a school that doesn't particulary focus on performing arts (so she brings diversity)
*Demonstrated spiritual development and leadership (school was founded by a religious order, albeit not ours)
*Founded a reading club at her high school
*Unusual (I assume) community service: she sponsors a child through WorldVision</p>
<p>LasMa, I’m assuming that in your situation, you think your kid was relatively weak in one or more of the fundamentals (grades, test scores) so that a “hook” was necessary. If not that, then we are talking about schools where admission is a crap shoot even for kids with near-perfect grades and SATs, plus strong ec’s (the Ivies, some New England LACs, Stanford).</p>
<p>There are not too many of those schools in the midwest. Maybe Northwestern, WUSTL, or Carleton in a busy year. My impression is that, to get admitted to Chicago or most of the top midwestern LACs (Grinnell, Oberlin, etc), desire plus strong fundamentals alone are usually enough to get you admitted. </p>
<p>My conclusion is that one or more “hooks” are not enough to compensate for weak fundamentals in admission to Ivies or top NESCAC colleges, unless they are the hooks your college wants in that particular applicant pool. The top schools are unlikely to take a chance on a seemingly brilliant applicant who does not have both the grades and the scores to back it up. I’m thinking of the kind of kids who blow off busy-work assignments, or refuse to take SAT prep courses, so they can spend time perfecting their chess games or reading all the works of Dostoevsky. I read about one kid like that on CC this year who did get into Wesleyan. Maybe there are more, but they are not the kind of kids who write “chance me” messages to CC. Reed College used to be famous for taking a chance on that kind of kid. The Ivies don’t need to. There, the closest thing to a reliable hook probably is URM status or national ranking in a sport, but the grades if not the scores still have to be pretty good.</p>
<p>My two older kids had “hooks” of sorts. My last one did not. But he got the most merit awards by far, because we looked for schools that would want him and had what he wanted, rather than going the lottery ticket route. We did not have the reach/match/ safety mentality in putting together his list though we made sure that there was at least one school that would take him and we would be able to afford even if our finances blew up. Few kids have true hooks, and it’s really not a good thing that this focus on hooks has become such a big thing that kids are trying to make hooks where they do not exist. A true hook is rare by definition and is usually a natural thing. The level of proficiency and recognition that an interest, talent or skill has to have to be a hook is very high at the top schools. It saddens me to see parents of 8th graders looking for “hooks” because the word has now become a catch phrase for elite college admissions.</p>
<p>Are you kidding? Midwestern colleges may be a slightly better “admissions value” than their counterparts on the East coast, but you need far more than “desire and strong fundamentals” to get into the likes of U of C, WUSTL, Northwestern, and Carleton, among others. The fundamentals (grades, curriculum, scores) just get you over the first threshold. After that, it’s the intangibles – essays, recommendations, and ECs --that determine admissibility.</p>
<p>I agree with Wjb. I know some strong candidates who did not get into those colleges. Having lived in the midwest, I can tell you that sometimes it is more difficult to get into those schools than some more selective ones back east if you are within the geographic area of those schools geographic diversity is a tip factor in admissions there and the competition for a spots is fierce.</p>
<p>There are some really great midwestern admission deals, however. I consider Butler U, DePauw, Marquette, UDenver in that category. If you are out of the geographics for those schools, you can do better admissions wise than in school in your area with similar admissions stats.</p>
<p>ok, i don’t actually have any hooks but i think i was a pretty unique candidate to the schools i applied to (notice i said unique, not best, the only one in history, etc. i assume there has to be other people out there like me)</p>
<p>i am a girl from a small family fruit farm that wants to go to college for a degree in ag.
i am a (Product) Queen for my state (no, not the dairy princess) and have done a lot of work in the industry i want to go in to</p>
<p>i think those are different from the general ec’s and leadership positions (though i have those too)</p>
<p>Farmgirl - I just read your post in the Cornell forum. I think Cornell is REALLY looking for a fit. My D applied to a very specific program there and was accepted with dismal scores but good grades - certainly not the top 10%. In her case, I think portfolio and college-specific essays with the experience to back them up did it.</p>
<p>tk21769: I may have given the wrong impression. I meant this question in a light-hearted manner, more as a parlor game than an after-the-fact chance-me. </p>
<p>But my curiosity is real. Mr D’s fundamentals are certainly not strong enough for Harvard, but they are across-the-board strong for the school she’ll be attending – at least, based on stats for past freshman classes. But I asume that’s true of alot of applicants who got wait-listed there (or should I assume that every qualified applicant got admitted?) </p>
<p>I’m just wondering which of her ECs or other attributes made her stand out to the adcom. I do understand that I’ll never know. It’s just something to think about while we wait for housing information. :-)</p>
<p>^^ “sponsor a child through worldvision” does not sound like a hook. Isn’t that just where you send some money every month? I wouldn’t call IB a ‘hook’ either.</p>
<p>Well, right. You still have to submit decent essays, recommendations and ECs to those schools. I’m not saying it’s enough to have great grades and SATs, as long as you don’t have a criminal record. But I bet most kids with high GPAs and SATs can write a decent essay, get good recommendations, and are involved in a couple of ECs. All this is much more likely (not just slightly more likely) to get you into Chicago, Reed or Macalester than to get you into Brown or Middlebury.</p>
<p>If you look at the profiles of students at Reed, Macalester, or Chicago, you’ll see that the 75th percentile composite SAT scores are as high, or nearly as high, as comparable rates for east coast schools that are much more selective.</p>
<p>For example, at my kid’s competitive private school, 34 students have applied to the University of Chicago in the last several years. 11 were accepted, 10 waitlisted, with the averages for accepted students at 3.49 (GPA) and 1400 (SAT MV). Of the 10 students at or above the intersection of those two averages, only 1 was rejected outright. So grades and SATs alone seem to be a pretty good predictor for this population.</p>
<p>In contrast, for the 52 applications to Brown from our school, only 3 students out of 54 were accepted. The averages for accepted students were 3.54 GPA and 1473 SAT MV. 6 out of 10 applicants at or above the intersection of averages were rejected outright. Grades and SATs alone are not such a good predictor.</p>
<p>For enrolled students, Chicago and Brown have exactly the same composite 75th percentile SAT scores (1530). Chicago’s admit rate is 38%, Brown’s is 14%. </p>
<p>I didn’t look at either of their applications or essays- however since they were both admitted to all the colleges that they applied this is my guesstimation.</p>
<p>Balanced selection of colleges, didn’t apply to schools that were ( really) long shots.
Honors & or AP courses in school- showed interest in more advanced learning.
Very strong recommendations.
Strong interest in ECs ( more than several years in same EC)
Strong participation in community service over many years.
First generation college and learning disabilities but were able to illustrate that these disadvantages have not deterred them from working hard.</p>
<p>Overall, I expect they showed their readiness for college and ability to make the most of the opportunity to attend.</p>
<p>On this board, LasMa’s daughter looks like almost 90% of the kids here (of course I use that figure very loosely).
I believe that nowadays there are hardly any hooks. Admissions officers have it very hard I think, that’s why it often looks like a crap shoot when it comes to the admissions game.</p>
<p>O.K., LasMa, I think I know what college we’re talking about now. (Don’t worry though, your secret is safe with me.)</p>
<p>In this particular case, I’m thinking your daughter’s stats were just about enough. Of the factors you list, the one that might have given her an edge, in my opinion, was the “Demonstrated spiritual development and leadership”. </p>
<p>My kid’s HS sends many kids there. 37 applications show up on the Naviance scattergram. Zero outright rejections. 5 waitlists. Our HS has the same religious affiliation as that college (no, not Catholic), so it could be considered a well-understood “feeder”. We do have an IB program but I cannot tell who is in it and who is not among the Naviance plot points.</p>
<p>That college attracts high average grades and scores relative to the admit rate, so it is relatively self-selecting. It would show up on a top-10 list for having the absolute best teaching or for the per capita rate of PhDs among certain graduates. Their admissions people are not making yea/nay decisions based on slots they need to fill in the women’s field hockey team.</p>
<p>If by “hook” we mean not merely good or unusual ECs but the traditional hooks that are of benefit <em>to the school</em> (recruited athlete, developmental admit, URM, legacy, politically connected or famous parents), then the only hook my D had was legacy at Stanford - which didn’t get her admitted despite strong stats. </p>
<p>If by hook we mean what about the app that may have caught the eye of the adcoms and helped lead to admission, I have to say the peer recommendation at Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Unique to Dartmouth among schools I’m familiar with, they not only get the usual GC and teacher recs, but they also ask for one from a peer - a classmate, friend, or sibling. My D had hers submitted by her big sister, and it was great. It never fails to bring tears to my eyes when I read it. In addition to the usual praise, D1 describes her sister in terms that are in turn funny, poignant, and inspiring. I don’t know how much weight the school gives to these peer recs; I figure it can’t be a lot. And of course I’m not an unbiased observer here, but I still can’t help but think that this piece may have stuck in the minds of the adcoms and helped lead to her acceptance.</p>
<p>DS got into his colleges based on a music audition…so I don’t think the “hook thing” matters for him.</p>
<p>DD was a nice kid with decent stats, commitment to one particular EC but not totally “absorbed” by that either. To be honest, she had NO hook…but she got accepted to 4/5 schools to which she applied. Her “hook” was that she chose schools where she had a good chance of acceptance except for one reach. Smart kid.</p>
<p>Some schools just know what student body they want to build and take advantage of the search capabilities of the SAT website. My dtr’s school did a search on females that have excelled in math and science and sent a letter to my daughter to consider their school for application. They found her name in the results of AP science and math, women with scores of 4+. Scores of “recruiting” letters were sent to these women. They eventually accepted her and offered her a generous grant. It is hard to generalize as to what sets students apart in the last draft.</p>
<p>Nope, I do not think our son had a hook. He was well qualified (grades and scores) and wrote an interesting essay. His ECs were good but not exceptional, and he did need FA to go to his school. I think he just came across as a guy one would like to have on campus. Or maybe they just wanted tall, skinny, music/soccer/engineering geeks that year.</p>
<p>An observation on TK21769’s comment about “the kind of kids who blow off busy-work assignments, or refuse to take SAT prep courses, so they can spend time perfecting their chess games or reading all the works of Dostoevsky.” Completing assignments, which the teacher at least regards as contributing to students’ education, is a responsibility, one I expect my children to fulfill. SAT prep courses are designed only to give one a competitive advantage over others. Inasmuch as these courses are more likely to be taken by students already blessed with socioeconomic advantages, they contribute to the widening of the gap between well-to-do and disadvantaged students. Not taking an SAT prep course strikes me as praiseworthy, not a sign of irresponsibility. As a college professor, I’d much rather have in my class a young person who has read all of Dostoevsky than one who has raised his or her scores by means of SAT prep. I understand the pressures that lead parents to want their children to take SAT prep courses, but I think that we should resist these pressures.</p>
