What did I do wrong?

Applying to College Admission Stories
61

@sattut My thinking was (and again I realize that it was very erroneous in retrospect) that the colleges were already buried in a deluge of things to read, and adding something that didn’t have a fancy credential attached to it like an award-winning research paper would only annoy them. I’d read too many stories about applicants going over the top with supplementary material, and I thought that my Common App essay alone, on the whole process of writing, would be sufficient. I realize that I overestimated the proof I thought I had. As for short stories and such–this book was the first work I’d ever done on my own; it was the only one until very recently; after applications were done.

As for shooting–I gave the colleges too much credit for being accepting of this kind of thing. They tell you to write about your passions; I wrote about a sport that’s no more dangerous than archery, and a damn sight less injurious than many mainstream sports. I wrote about something that brought me into orbit with the ROTC people I’d hardly ever interacted with before. For Amherst I might have gotten lucky with a reader who practiced skeet or target shooting in his spare time or was simply open-minded; for the UCs and Cooper Union, the readers might have been willing to overlook that perceived liability. As the evidence suggests, the others were probably much less forgiving.

Overall–with so many applicants competing for these spots, I believe that schools look for any weakness they can in your application to sieve you out ASAP and make their job easier. I unwittingly provided them with every one they needed: (perceived) lack of sociability, (perceived) danger with marksmanship, and so forth. The remaining stuff wasn’t strong enough (race, gender, geography, and income bracket all worked against me; high stats aren’t so unique with a legion of high-priced SAT and ACT tutors; I lacked national awards) to compensate for the weaknesses that I thought would be my selling points.

At any rate I hope that I have better results with grad school, if I decide to go there.

62

I found this article about Harvard’s holistic admissions process interesting:

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/harvarddean-part1/?_r=0

I found this part particularly intriguing:

As an Asian male STEM applicant from California, the OP’s file would likely be reviewed by the same subcommittee as many other ridiculously qualified Asian male STEM applicants from California (or sub-area, depending on how California is divided). Realistically, they are only going to vigorously advocate for a small subset, so many extremely qualified applicants are going to be at a disadvantage. Applicants can’t change their gender, race, or geography, but they can change how they present themselves in order to stand out.

I personally think that the OP’s novel and ROTC interests were things that could have possibly distinguished him, so I don’t think it was a bad idea to emphasize those at all. How that was done, or whether it was enough to overcome the high level of competition from that sub-area.

63

@sansculottes, this page from Harvard’s admission site on their holistic process is useful as far as understanding how “packaging” and presentation can make a difference.

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-process/what-we-look

They ask some of the following questions:

  • What choices have you made for yourself? Why?
  • How have you used your time?
  • Do you have initiative? Are you a self-starter? What motivates you?
  • Do you have a direction yet? What is it? If not, are you exploring many things?
  • Do you care deeply about anything—intellectual? Extracurricular? Personal?
  • Have you reached your maximum academic and personal potential?
  • Have you been stretching yourself?
  • Have you been working to capacity in your academic pursuits, your full-time or part-time employment, or other areas?
  • Do you have reserve power to do more?

This piece from Yale Dean of Admissions Kristin Dean highlights many of the same considerations:

http://yalenusadmissionsblog.com/2013/09/28/top-five-tips-from-dean-greene/

These are useful things to think about addressing in your application. An application that shows initiative and direction, that explains underlying motivation and the choices you made, and that shows the potential for more, is likely going to present the applicant in a positive way.

64

Thank you! I think these are definitely useful questions to bear in mind when describing ECs in the Common App and also answering those short answer questions. Really appreciate it :slight_smile: xx

65

The Yale blog from Kristen Greene also mentions the importance of being “personal” in essays and answers to questions:

I don’t know how @Firebolt1176 wrote about his novel and ROTC/sports shooting activities, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with those topics; however, there may have been something wrong about how he approached them. I think it’s perfectly fine to write about these experiences - including something which may go against the personal values of some people of the admissions committee - as long as you do so in a way that reveals something about yourself. What kind of struggles did you go through? Did you have to overcome resistance or bias? Did you grow as a person through these experiences, and what did you learn about yourself? I think these could have been great topics to distinguish an Asian male STEM applicant from California. Whether the OP was actually able to do so effectively seems questionable given the number of schools were he wasn’t accepted given his outstanding grades and scores, but I don’t think the basic approach was necessarily wrong.

66

The number one mistake I see students make is that they don’t take the HS classes that will best prepare them for college. Most often, it’s because they just don’t want to do the work in classes that have a lot of reading or writing required and the surprising thing is that parents often support their reluctance. A number of them think their kids are going to college on athletic scholarship so the academics don’t matter much. Other parents think that the easier classes will assure a higher GPA. Some see themselves as STEM students, so the liberal arts “don’t matter”.

The end result is that kids are poorly prepared, both for admissions and for success in college, primarily because they haven’t developed their writing skills. Of course, this impacts everything, including SAT and ACT tests, admissions essays, the strength of their transcripts and writing confidence.

67

@JustOneDad, I find your post curious. I understand the general “dearth of writing skills” complaint about HS education today; but the vast majority of posters that I see - at least on CC - aren’t athletic recruits, and have strong AP english language and literature courses and scores. Whether they can write well is another matter entirely, and it’s quite possible that high schools aren’t doing a great job of preparing kids to write well at the college level, but I don’t see that many people ignoring taking language arts courses. I’m curious to learn more about your observation.

68

I’m talking about students existing in “real life”, i.e., outside of CC. My local schools are public, and not too highly ranked at that, so the existing goal is most often passing state standards and not so much matriculating at a selective school.

69

@sattut said:

@sattut, are you saying that the OP is in the top 100 applicants in the Harvard/Stanford, etc., applicant pool? I think you are vastly overestimating his record. OP is clearly exceptionally bright and has great test scores (and has an amazing future in front of him), but I cannot imagine that there are only 100 applicants with similar testing records.

OP, thank you for sharing your story. I wish you the best of luck in the future. Berkeley is lucky to have you.

70

It would be interesting to know how many people have 4 800s on SAT IIs and 15 5s on AP exams, but it has to be at least in the top 500.

71

I can’t help wondering how the interview(s) went. We’ve rejected job applicants who were dynamite on paper, but were basically staring at their shoes during the interview. Sounds harsh, but I gotta think that once a certain boundary has been met, they’re looking for more than what the papers show. Outgoing, good conversationalist, not easily wound up yet high energy, etc.

Maybe not, but that seems logical.

72

@Firebolt1176: The fact that you weren’t accepted at several schools who are known for focusing on the numbers (ie Caltech, Mudd) makes me wonder if there wasn’t something written in your recommendation letters that could’ve screwed you.

I hate to say it but you didn’t really do a good job with creating a story about yourself. You are obviously a great writer, but the logical flow that I see when quickly perusing your application is as follows:

Great test taker (high SATs)
/ CHECK
Does well in school (takes lots of APs, gets As)
/ CHECK
Interested in engineering
/ lots of competition - lets look closely here
How much passion for engineering? What has he done?
/ keep digging
Lots of very typical Asian things (symphony, science olympiad, etc)
/ What else? Nothing of national or international caliber??
WAIT! He did some stuff related to WRITING?? WTF?? What does this have to do with being a future engineer.
/ Move to Waitlist

73

I remember reading an interview with Steve Jobs. Smart engineers are a dime a dozen in the Bay Area. However what caught my attention was that Jobs also said that his biggest need was to find an engineer who could write.

Your writing style is very advanced for a high schooler. Keep working on both writing and engineering and you’ll do fine in the long run. Don’t let this bump in the road hold you back.

74

By BEING INTERESTED IN OTHER THINGS TOO?? God forbid…lol.

75

I’m responding to an old post so maybe the OP doesn’t care anymore – in fact, I hope that he has moved on and is thoroughly enjoying his new life at UCB! Go, Bears!!!

But for anyone else still interested…I found reading the Gatekeepers to be key in helping me to understand that at the HYPMSs of the world, high stats just gets you TO the gate. But to get you THROUGH the gate, you need something more that makes you stand out. An international, national, or several state awards can get you THROUGH the gate. Overcoming extreme hardship as a URM or first gen going to college can also make you stand out. Clearly the OP’s high stats got him TO the gate, as evidenced by the high number of deferrals and waitlists that he got on to…thus showing that each of those schools had no doubt that he could fit in and do the work.

But what did he add to the school class that was so much more compelling than all of the other thousands of apps? In the end, he didn’t have enough sparkliness to make him stand out above all of the others to make it THROUGH the gate.

Also, when I read his “app” in post #1, I don’t get a sense of “oh, he’s a (this)”. When the AdComs are casting their play, say the wizard of oz, they will be delighted when they recognize a witch, a scarecrow, a tin man, a wizard, or a perfect Dorothy. When I read the OP’s app, I saw a lot of stuff, but not a sure sense of direction (as also evidenced by his college list).

OP, were you more interested in “sweeping” a list of highly prestigious colleges – or did you show a lot of love to one, or a few, colleges that you really knew and loved? My impression is that you may not have shown much love to any of them.

TL;DR – All of this is to say, I don’t think that you did anything wrong. It’s just a highly competitive arena that you threw your ring into. And at that elite level, high stats just gets you to the gate. Lots of ECs won’t get you through the gate. Hooks will. A high level of verifiable accomplishment (preferably national level) in a particular EC probably would (assuming there are no flaws in the rest of your app). Or extreme hardship. Or an accomplishment that is difficult to picture – the kind that makes you stop and say, huh, how did a high school student manage to do that? (Someone wrote a book about this). After that, to fill up the few remaining seats from a vast pool of applicants that look nearly identical, maybe a sparkly, memorable AND (something extremely unusual, but not necessarily important, about you) might get you lucky and tip you in. Or raving LORs, scintillating essays, or a glowing interview. Plus ED or SCEA’ing to show that they’re your one true love (out of the 19 other colleges that you were also wooing).

76

@CalBearsMom, I also think this is a great thread and will read the book you mentioned. You may get better luck with the OP seeing this thread by pinging him ( @Firebolt1176 ). @Firebolt1176 - this is a great postmortem thread, thank you so much for writing it and I hope you are enjoying your time at Berkley.

77

Hello all.

Returned home a few weeks ago after wrapping up my first year at Berkeley as an EECS major: an experience that was at once humbling, reflecting, and enlightening. I wrapped up the year with a GPA that met my adjusted expectations (still waiting on a final grade), joined IEEE-HKN (the honor society for the world’s largest association of technical professionals), attended a hackathon for the first time (although I didn’t build much, to be honest), and worked an IT job for one of the school’s research centers. After this week, I’ll start working a summer internship at a company in my home town.

If I’m honest with myself, though, it wasn’t so much the engineering and extracurricular stuff that really defined my experience at Berkeley. Nor was it the (too much, to be honest) time I whittled away in my dorm drinking tea, catching up with my peers on American TV (blew through Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and House of Cards within a few months), or simply browsing the web.

Rather, it was the little things: the kind of stories that I’d tell my roommate, my father, or my friends from back home:

The time I greeted someone using my Duolingo-tier Russian at the hackathon and was mistaken for Kazazh,

When I helped a classmate with the CS text editor and barebones Google Maps projects and had a chat in Spanish,

Having lunch at an El Salvadoran restaurant with my boss for the first and last time to see him off,

Making quite a few Benjamins helping a Chinese international student write her application essays (pretty sure I’m one of the only engineering majors here who’s made any coin in that line of work),

Getting into debates (some of which turned very hot) over being one of the only Donald Trump supporters on campus,

Celebrating my first birthday away from home over at the apartment of a friend whom I’ve known for half a decade,

And a thousand other little anecdotal vignettes that colored my freshman year more than any club or organization did, to be honest.

A year ago my family and I were struggling very hard on making the decision between Amherst and Berkeley, even with the significant financial burden of the former. After that year, I believe I made the right choice in coming here: the Bay Area suits me a thousand times more than the People’s Republic of Amherst.

But, after having that same year to mull over the whole applications rat race (particularly those agonizingly futile thoughts of “Where would I be instead right now if I’d just…” right before midterms and project deadlines), I believe that I could’ve changed my fate (or at least improved my chances thereof) with the following three steps.

I hope that they will help anyone else who finds themselves at the same crossroads that I was.

  1. Focused my Common App and UC essay around a completely different topic.

Though I still think my novel was one of my most valuable experiences both as a student and a writer, I believe that the admissions officers considered the entire thing a well-drafted last-minute outline and dismissed it as a fraud: especially considering how I did not (and, admittedly, do not) have it published. It was a major miscalculation on my part.

Instead, I would have focused it around my experience in NJROTC: not just my time behind the air rifle, but in dealing with the rest of the team as the only Marksmanship member not in the full class. Coming from a little bubble of AP class-spamming students, playing a smaller sport, travelling to high schools and parts of San Diego I’d never been to before, and getting a taste of the military rather than the academic mindset would have made an excellent essay.

  1. Slashed my extracurricular list to just 3-4 activities.

In hindsight, stuff like Science Olympiad, Orchestra, or Chinese club were things that I’d only dabbled in, abhorred doing, or both. Putting them there probably hurt my overall portrait as a whole. Focusing it on just cybersecurity/IT, Academic League, and Marksmanship would’ve made me a much more focused and (though I abhor this word too) “pointy” candidate.

  1. Explicitly stating that I'm not a "cookie-cutter Asian male"

I did so in my Amherst supplementary essay and believe that that was what got me in. Had I done so (and provided evidence such as Marksmanship and debate, perhaps writing it in context of my cultural background), I probably would’ve turned a couple heads and moved my application to the acceptance rather than the waitlist or rejection pile.

78

OP thanks for coming back with an update. I am so glad that you are happy at Berkeley. You certainly sound like you are growing and learning in so many ways. It must also be gratifying to realize that you made the right choice for your final decision. Every crossroads will eventually lead to the next one, and knowing yourself realistically is the best way to approach them.