um...will killer essays to the trick?

[hmom5]

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I think he, unlike you, is assuming that the admission processes at the schools he’s applying to are concerned with more than simply test scores, class rank, and GPA.

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<p>And therein lies the mistake. Unless of course he’s hooked. When you look at stats for these schools you have to account for the minimum 40% of every class that are recruited athletes, URMs, legacies and development. And 40% is the official party line, a recent book based on Pulitzer Prize winning work, The Price Of Admission, by Golden, puts the hooked at 60% of every elite college class: </p>

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Harvard may say it accepts 1 in 10 applicants, but, Golden writes, as many as 60 percent of the places in a top school are already spoken for by higher bidders, hence reducing, in the parlance, the “unhooked” applicant’s chances to . . . well, you do the math.

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<p>Here’s the whole article:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/books/review/Wolff2.t.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/books/review/Wolff2.t.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You will hopefully now understand that the majority of the unhooked have to be at or above the 75th percentile.</p>

<p>Essays can not make up for stats. Period. Essays begin to matter after you have the stats. Every year adcom have to reject many of their favorite essay writers. I’ve been there, in fact, at Penn, one of the schools the OP asks about. Penn and the other top colleges are hell bent on great stats for the unhooked. Someone needs to bring up the overall stats.</p>

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Stay on topic

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<p>Is that on topic enough for you? A lot of myths float around these boards. Now you have some facts to work with.</p>