THIS:
In addition, this discussion forum seriously needs a violin emoticon.
Indeed.
LOL. Power to the people!
But it’s even more than that, @lookingforward . They want to be able to impose a subjective self-understanding of a student’s own “qualification” into an institution and process for which they have no qualified perspective.
Over and over, I’ve heard the protest over the years on CC, by CC’s own private, self-named Anti-Discrimination League that, even beyond stats, Asians are still “more qualified,” “because,” (they go on) "they have “just as many” e.c.'s, “just as many” [self-perceived] accomplishments, etc.
1 - "Just as many" is a quantitative measure.
2 - The import, reach, value of any student's accomplishment **are not the student's to decide**, or the student's parents, or the student's friends, or the student's self-appointed anonymous advocates or CC champions. And for anyone else to assign equal authority or superior authority to those outside the college reveals -- speaking of transparency -- a lack of character, an inability to understand the difference between the subjective and the objective, and/or an intellectual deficiency.
I wish more people were less ignorant, @lookingforward
Tips are not hooks. And many accomplishments aren’t even tips.
Hooks are one of four designated categories, and obviously lots of people railing away about the college admissions process and how they know so much more than admissions officers have a lot to learn about the basics.
THIS:
In the first place, accomplishments are not hooks. A Hook is membership in one of 4 categories of population (big donors, URMs, recruited athletes, and celebrities) which the college explicitly looks for, especially in its Early Round.
In the second place,
Stop listening to urban legends and start learning facts. That will help your understanding.
And as for big donors, the other things to understand are:
-
Big-time donors trump ordinary “vanilla” legacy. If your parents are real contenders to be donating the new $50 million science building, the development office doesn’t GAS whether they actually attended the school or not.
-
Big-time donors are not necessarily associated with elite schools. The science building costs millions to build whether you’re at East Directional State U or Harvard. Do not underestimate how many grads of East Directional State U are donating science buildings to their alma maters. For some stupid reason, people on CC have no clue that yes, graduates of East Directional State can make lots of money.
-
If you are at this big-time donor level, you really don’t need an elite school (unless you want one). You HAVE all the connections you need already.
Not addressed to me but I will answer:
^none of which have anything to do with the mission of American Higher Education. Education. Not bank accounts. And not funding families overseas. Nor is a perceived “need” a right, let alone an entitlement.
“The trouble with holistic admission, whatever the rationale, is that it is all fuzzy logic, too much subjectivity. It puts too much power and control in the hands of a few admissions officers and leaves most applicants feeling completely powerless.”
Hmmm. If elite schools felt that they were getting the “wrong” kids - they’d change their practices in the blink of an eye. Yet 1) they are satisfied with the classes they get and 2) these classes are compelling enough that some of you would sell your mothers to be able to join them. So what are they doing wrong?
And for all the blathering about how elite schools admit the “wrong” kids (undeserving athletes / minorities / legacies / development kids) while the true “deserving” ones have to settle for the schools a rung down – if you all TRULY believed that, you wouldn’t want to go to elite schools - you’d WANT to go to the schools a rung down where all your true intellectual peers who were rejected from HYPSM are hanging out. But somehow none of you ever want to seem to go there - I mean, after all, it’s slumming to go to Vanderbilt. @@ Which tells me that you don’t REALLY believe that on the whole, the elite schools are admitting underserving slackers.
"They want to be able to impose a subjective self-understanding of a student’s own “qualification” into an institution and process for which they have no qualified perspective.
See, that’s one of the big pitfalls. You enter hs with hopes and expectations. Over 3 years, you can develop some mastery and confidence, based on that hs and the people in and around it. By the end of jr year, many have (and I mean this positively) learned to work their hs. And in that high school’s context, they earned their confidence.
But with the most competitive colleges, this isn’t necessarily (or completely) about what worked in your one high school. The Great Leap colleges want to know your prep and your non-academic choices, your thinking and the challenges you took on reflect your potential at their level, their opportunities, their expectations. And that includes some resilience (after all, they will throw bigger challenges your way.)
But more than that, if you are really the sort of thinker (and listener) they like, you will have opened your mind to this difference. And, before fall of senior year. You will have reviewed your activities, tweaked, added some that push you forward in your academics as well as your hs and larger communities. And, yup, you will have an open mind to the many great colleges out there.
“none of which have anything to do with the mission of American Higher Education. Education. Not bank accounts. And not funding families overseas. Nor is a perceived “need” a right, let alone an entitlement.”
Brava. The fact that you may want to make a lot of money and that you wrongly perceive that only a HYPSM degree will get you there doesn’t then obligate HYPSM to value the things that YOU personally value and discount the things you don’t value. HYPSM’s mission is not to reward you for hard work, or make your dreams come true. It is to craft the class that meets their institutional needs. It so happens they’ve defined that as including a mix of all different talents other than those in the classroom, and they’ve defined that as at least ensuring there is a minimum floor of diverse students. If you don’t like that, feel free to apply to the many, many colleges which rack and stack SAT scores and GPA and for which there is a clear defined formula for admissions. Nothing stops you.
Just wait until the first Ivy goes test optional and watch the hysteria that unfolds. Just imagine for some students and parents.
It is likely to happen within the next few years at one.
Put another way, HYPSM want what they need, in order to be HYPSM, not what you need. If you want to hop their train, you don’t tell them to let you on because you really, really want it. (And for reasons unrelated to what they are.) Nor, to change their expectations to suit you.
The test optional schools are not ignoring academic achievement and non-academic engagement. They are looking harder at the other indicators. It won;t make a tippy top any easier to get into.
No need to wait “a few years,” i.m.o. If the sample questions on the redesigned SAT (the SAT that resembles high school preparation much more than college preparation) prove accurate next spring, hysteria will ensue with the class applying in fall of 2016 because there will be easily twice as many “stat-qualified” students from every ethnicity and national origin than there are now. (Thank you, Mr. Coleman)
Isn’t being good enough at a sport to be a recruited athlete an accomplishment?
@epiphany excellent point
@lookingforward I think a large group of students and parents think test optional schools are unfair. An Ivy going test optional or several would be viewed as discriminatory.
The question is whether it’s just an accomplishment or also a hook that will help substantially with admissions. It’s the fact of being recruited that turns it from a simple accomplishment to a hook. For instance, being one of the best lightweight rowers in the country could be a big hook at Princeton or Cornell because they row lightweights, but at Brown would simply be a cool accomplishment that shows grit and a willingness to work hard because Brown doesn’t send out lightweight boats. At all three places it would be an accomplishment, but it it would not be a hook at Brown because it would not fulfill an institutional need to win races.
Regardless of how people feel about AA, recruitment and outreach efforts (non-athletic) over the recent years are already bringing in more and more qualified URM and/or low SES applicants. It’s not just about finaid. The aspects of AA and mentoring that encourage kids to stretch are working. Some of it is an acumulation over time and some is the fact there are more role models and those mentors.
BP, both of us have/had kids at a TO and the bar for the other indicators is high. And, as studies have now shown (including the 20-year,) TO works quite well. 
But yes, those stats-nutty kids and parents don’t get it.
You are either recruitable and therefore recruited, or not. If you are actually recruited, you are automatically in a Hooked category, and different standards apply to your admission than are true for the non-hooked. If you are close to recruitable but are not recruited, than you are merely accomplished, and depending on the level of that accomplishment, that could not only be a significant tip, but also a means, in some cases, to get into some colleges as a “walk-on” recruit. Not going to get an athletic scholarship freshman year, but still a way to get special consideration.