<p>Raised in a small town, few resources, had to create my own
Value the wealth of intellectual and extracurricular resources at H
Here are some of the talents I think I could contribute, both in and beyond the classroom
Want to continue my Arabic studies; limited my college apps to universities with extensive Arabic offerings
Had an opportunity to meet with Prof. X on my campus visit; enjoyed our long talk about a field in which I'm interested, he was encouraging, I came away with the strong feeling that this was a setting that would provide an ideal fit, etc.</p>
<p>I don't think anyone ever made the following point about the original post here:</p>
<p>It's hardly surprising that a junior admissions staffer would complain about the attitude that luck played a part in admissions decisions, because that would denigrate his hard work. And no one who wasn't completely naive would suggest that Harvard admissions is ever being deliberately arbitrary. But that still doesn't mean that there isn't an arbitrary element in hyperselective college admissions.</p>
<p>This is what I heard from a senior Yale admissions person some years ago, and while to some extent it reflects an "official position", it has the feel of also reflecting reality: "At least 3/4ths of our applicants are qualified, in the sense that they clearly have the capacity to take advantage of what Yale offers. We have a lot of confidence in our ability to take that group and identify 5,000 or so super-qualified applicants, whose capacity to benefit from Yale and to contribute to Yale is superior to the others'. Unfortunately, we can only accept about 1,900 of them. We have no confidence whatsoever in our ability to make meaningful distinctions among that group, but we have to anyway, so we devote a great deal of time and effort to it and try to do the best job we can. I have no firm basis for believing that the students we accept from that group will outperform the ones we reject or waitlist in any meaningful way."</p>
<p>In other words, they have reasons for every decision they make, logical, defensible reasons. But which logical, defensible reasons they use at any particular juncture is essentially arbitrary.</p>
<p>Concurring with JHS - My D whose short answers outline I provided above visited H, Y, and P, and sent some variation of the statement above to each, with appropriate references to that university. It got her accepted at H and Y, turned down at P. Was P more selective last year than H or Y? The admissions data would suggest not. Maybe P already had lots of whatever talents or assets she had to offer. But I'd imagine that it's the inherent degree of arbitrariness that JHS describes. With tens of thousands of very qualified applicants, there can be no way to remove some arbitrary aspect from the process.</p>
<p>"In other words, they have reasons for every decision they make, logical, defensible reasons. But which logical, defensible reasons they use at any particular juncture is essentially arbitrary."</p>
<p>This is key, yes. I have tried to make this point in threads like this before, but yeah very important thing to note in my opinion as well. </p>
<p>My belief is that the reason no one factor really guarantees admission to a good school is that the student is applying <em>to the school</em> and not to a particular subsection of the school. Having a talent helps, but the school probably wants many talents...and so you're not really judged ONLY based on that talent.</p>