<p>What you have to understand is how admissions has evolved.</p>
<p>It has, or at least, will, get to the point where significantly MORE applicants than spots have a ‘great personality’, unique passions, excellence in their own niche, as well as a solid backing of SAT/GPA. Everyone on CC looks to what got the PREVIOUS class into HPYS and models after that - that is setting you up for a game of luck because the fact then becomes you have two candidates with their own different quirky personalities for every one spot. There was a point where just being the really interesting person was enough - but that time is going. Now just being really interesting, having all of the qualities Dbate talked about, is not enough to reduce the game of admissions to a science. </p>
<p>What you must do is learn from the past, but prophesize, figure out what the future of admissions will be and model your application in a way that will communicate the things that were communicated yesterday, but more importantly, will be communicated tomorrow. I know it sounds nebulous, but that’s the best way to describe it. You don’t win in the stock market by understanding the current situation and past - you do decently well with a slight chance of excellence by doing that. You do consistently well in stocks by having a sense of how things are evolving, how certain companies are going to interact with a constantly changing world. </p>
<p>So in my parents day, it was GPA and SATs. That’s all you needed to get into HYPS - or knowing the right people. In the past few years it is that + ECs + 1 constant passion throughout your life + writing skills + really interesting and standout personality. But it’s changing; too many people catch on to what needs to be done to get in, and the criteria shifts. </p>
<p>I made a hypothesis about what it was shifting to and I supplied it. I don’t know if I was right. I urge all future applicants to formulate their own guess - a researched guess, drawing on what you have learned about the world. You gotta build upon what you have observed this year. Everything is fluid.</p>
<p>Accept that no one is ever going to tell you how to get in. They will only tell you the 9786907869078 ways to not get in; You have to come up with your own strategy for maximizing your life in the admissions lens. And then accept that you are, however, going to have to form that strategy by intense introspection and by doing a lot of investigating and researching with both curiosity and skepticism.</p>