<p>Mmaah, speaking of LACs, I'd love to see a breakdown of the admits at a small LAC with a decent athletic program like Bowdoin or Williams. Of a typical freshmen class of, what, 450 -- how many legacies, recruited athletes, URMs, targeted "poverty" candidates, and special consideration (umm, you know, potential major donor) students? And don't forget to throw in an extra oboe or a bassoon for the orchestra and a couple of special tenors for the choir every year or two.</p>
<p>Once you're finished with all of those, just how many slots are really available for the kids who "only" demonstrate intellectual curiosity or will contribute to campus life in other ways. I've got to believe the number is somewhere between 150 and 200, no? And how many applicants for those, maybe 3,500?</p>
<p>" how many legacies, recruited athletes, URMs, targeted "poverty" candidates......Once you're finished with all of those, just how many slots are really available for the kids who "only" demonstrate intellectual curiosity or will contribute to campus life in other ways. "</p>
<p>These categories are not mutually exclusive. A student is not being "targeted" for poverty. Among the intellectually curious and/or intellectually Extreme, extremities of economics may improve chances for admission against others in that group with better SES status, unless those others are also members of the aforementioned hooked categories. And as someone else mentioned elsewhere on CC, legacies mean more for some colleges than others. (More for LAC's than some large U's, etc.) Donor status could be more important.</p>
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<p>If you meant to say that fame, fortune, athletic ability, or stat-raising academic prowess are hooks -- I would agree.<<</p>
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<p>Calmom has it right. As I read the list in the post #1, I thought this is just a list of the standard hooks. Add URM status and you've got a pretty much complete list of all the major hooks. And sure, colleges are always on the lookout for applicants with hooks.</p>
<p>Guess I'm naive, but I also thought when a college says it is "need-blind" that they made their admissions decisions without knowledge of an applicant's financial situation. If it doesn't mean that, it's kind of meaningless, isn't it? Are they saying they know your financial status but will somehow disregard it when making decisions? Freud would have a field day with that kind of claim. On the other hand, how could they work on economic diversity if they don't know an applicant's $$ situation?</p>
<p>
[quote]
how many legacies, recruited athletes, URMs, targeted "poverty" candidates, and special consideration (umm, you know, potential major donor) students? And don't forget to throw in an extra oboe or a bassoon for the orchestra and a couple of special tenors for the choir every year or two .. . . I've got to believe the number is somewhere between 150 and 200, no?
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<p>It don't think it's quite that bleak: athletic tips have been capped in the NESCACs below 80/class; ALANA students hover around 20-25% or another 90 students, many of whom would have been admitted purely on their own merit; the number of development admits is vanishingly small; legacies are typically a small group and again, many of them could make it on their own merits. And these schools are admitting around 2-4 kids for every seat in the class, depending on their yield rate.</p>
<p>I don't mean to minimize how competitive it is for unhooked, bright kids--it's awful. But it's good to keep things in perspective.</p>
<p>"then I'm wondering how you resolve the mystery of my financially challenged and test-flubbing daughter's admission to all those reach colleges last year."</p>
<p>What percentage of students at your d.'s school are recruited athletes, or play varsity sports? What percentage of students at your d's school are "developmental admits"? What percentage of students at your d's schools are the daughters of senators, congresspeople, or ambassadors? What percentage of students at your d's school pay full freight? Sorry, but I don't see any mystery at all. </p>
<p>"Are they saying they know your financial status but will somehow disregard it when making decisions?"</p>
<p>Neither. In fact, by definition, every school that admits Questbridge applicants knows the financial status of the applicant, and what it will cost the school to admit them. Every school that attempts to increase the number of low-income admits knows their financial status. Similarly with developmental admits. In these cases, we know with 100% certainty that not only are the schools NOT need-blind, but that they make use of the information in admissions.</p>
<p>As for the rest, it is absolutely amazing how schools end up with a percentage of students needing financial aid being virtually the same year upon year upon year. It would take a statistical miracle for this to happen in a need-blind situation.</p>
<p>And, if I were a school Pres, I wouldn't want it any other way.</p>
<p>Recruited athletics is NOT just another hook. A school can do without another mezzo with a lovely voice; it cannot do without a quarterback. And the same holds true for major donors.</p>
<p>There was was an article circulating recently about coaches agreeing to reduce their 'tips' for athletic candidates, and Williams was one of the schools mentioned.</p>
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<p>Recruited athletics is NOT just another hook. A school can do without another mezzo with a lovely voice; it cannot do without a quarterback. And the same holds true for major donors.<<</p>
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<p>Being a recruited athlete is another hook; it just happens to be among the very best hooks one can have. And I agree that it's not the same as being a talented mezzo soprano. Unless you are so good that you are actually publicly famous for it, being a good singer is a nice EC but not a hook.</p>
<p>A hook, by definition, is something about the applicant <em>that is of benefit to the school,</em>and nearly all hooks fall into one or more of these simple categories:</p>
<ol>
<li> Rich</li>
<li> Famous</li>
<li> Politically-connected</li>
<li> Son or daughter of #1, 2, or 3.</li>
<li> Recruited athlete</li>
<li> URM</li>
<li> Legacy</li>
</ol>
<p>And clearly, not all hooks are of equal value.</p>
<p>Most colleges define "need blind" as a policy of not denying admission to students because of their inability to pay the cost of attending. "Need-blind" is probably an unfortunate prhase, becuase of the common-sense meanings that attach to it. I don't think that any school maintains that they can't <em>admit</em> a student because of their finances (at either end of the spectrum) or that there's a firewall between the FA and admissions officers.</p>
<p>coureur's 1-7 are true enough but they also want a kid who feels like a good fit for the school--especially at the LACs --they want good retention rates and they want to build an attractive community to please the people who have qualities 1-7 above-- so they want an exciting assortment with plenty of extroverted, witty, intellectually curious, talented kids as well as some obsessed with some of the more obscure academic areas their famous professors like to explore. They look for evidence of drive, ambition, perseverance in the face of setbacks--good predictors of success later.</p>
<p>^^of course they want those students too. In fact, they will make up the majority of the students enrolled. There are only so many star quarterbacks or rich and famous kids to go around. The trouble is for the rest of us is that there is a large surplus of unhooked but "extroverted, witty, intellectually curious, talented kids as well as some obsessed with some of the more obscure academic areas their famous professors like to explore." So for the rest of us, admissions is much less of a sure thing than it is for kid with a major hook.</p>
<p>You're absolutely right there. But there are enough great colleges around for the bright and ambitious unhooked to end up somewhere challenging, worthwhile, and exciting--even if it's not their first choice or Ivy. So if you are part of "the rest of us", now is the time to start getting used to the facts of life in the real world-but no need to despair--there's really a tremendous range of places to get an outstanding education in the USA.</p>
Mini, my daughter hasn't met a single kid whose parent is a senator or congressperson. I would have no clue as to how many are developmental admits -- probably not many --the whole reason that they are valued is that they are few and far between. There are a LOT of athletes, but when we went to the local advising session for entering freshmen, there was not a single <em>recruited</em> athlete. There are also a LOT of dancers -- probably more of them than athletes. Based on common data set info, it look like about 60% of students are full pay -- a significant number of them are international students, as the school does not provide much aid to internationals but does have a significant number of internationals enrolled (Just trying to bust a stereotype here -- the rich kids are not all WASP-y northeasterners). </p>
<p>But the point is that my financially-needy kid with the mediocre test score didn't seem to have much of a problem getting admitted. The average need based grant at d's school is more than $25K ... daughter is getting something above average there. The ONLY thing my daughter "offered" the college fell into the "interesting person" or possibly, "filling a needed slot in an underenrolled department" slot. The fact that hooked applicants have an advantage getting in doesn't mean that unhooked applicants face a barrier to admission. So what I am replying to is the implication that those hooks are ALL that the colleges want, and that kids who don't have them are out of luck. And while I wish that the college could admit a higher percentage of financially needy kids, I am also aware that she is at a college that academically is one of the top schools in the nation, but which falls way down the list in US News rankings because their endowment is relatively small -- I am sure they admit the numbers that they can afford to subsidize.
Actually, the process of admission to highly selective colleges was far less competitive -- in terms of odds of admission - for my daughter than the typical auditions she attended as a dancer. I mean, maybe we are looking at one-in-ten or one-in-twenty odds..... but my kid has regularly been through experiences where the odds were much more like one-in-sixty (and if you want to see long odds, try taking your kid to an open-call movie audition.). </p>
<p>I'm not denying that the process is competitive, but last summer my daughter got a job at with a retailer affiliated with national chain. Later she told me that she realized she was lucky to be hired, because she found out that they had something like 300 applications for a couple of openings -- and she had pretty much been hired right off the bat after she went in for an interview. I shrugged that off because that is not an unusual situation in the real world hunt for employment. And my d. was well aware of that, because the previous year she had beat the pavement all summer long and applied to at least 45 different jobs, with no luck whatsoever. </p>
<p>So yes, elite college admissions is competitive..... but real life can be lot tougher. </p>
<p>I don't think its easy, but I think that the odds for a well-qualified unhooked applicant still make admission chances pretty reasonable. My own experience with 2 kids & 2 freshman admission cycles, no hooks - at least none falling under Coureur's list -- plus a need for hefty financial aid is: 21 applications; 1 rejection letter; 3 waitlists; 17 offers of admission. That's better than an 80% rate of success -- admittedly including a few safety schools -- but my d. was admitted to 4 colleges last year where her test scores fell at the lower end or below range, and my son had good grades and test scores but really terrible EC's (the kid sat on his butt in front of the t.v. playing videogames for the first 3 years of high school). It just doesn't look like the odds are stacked all that badly against us unhooked folks. </p>
<p>It's just that for some reason many people seem to view the competitive process as an entitlement, agonizing over the reasons for rejection, or wondering why some other kid who somehow is seen as less qualified got that kid's "spot." It's easy to rationalize that the unhooked kid's "spot" went to a legacy or a URM or a recruited athlete.... but there probably are a significant number of hooked applicants who would have gotten in anyway.</p>
<p>Remember, too, that it the application (and possibly an interview report) that is beign evaluation. Many of the kids on CC post that there essays are 'great' ... and when you see the results, you wonder a bit. My guess is that calmom's d is a good writer, and that that trumped the test scores.</p>
<p>Sometimes they know becuase very rich people often donate HUGE sums to schools they are targeting for their children--and those schools might not only be their alma mater. </p>
<p>But they also know by asking for Mum and Dad's alma maters--and degree level. </p>
<p>Grad school for Mum and Dad? Ah ha!</p>
<p>Two Ivies? Ah ha! </p>
<p>Two private universities? Ah ha! </p>
<p>Mum and Dad paid for private high school education? Ah ha! </p>