“The one commonality of the accepted non hooked students that I see repeated yearly is that they were clearly able to articulate why they would be an asset to the university. They understand what makes the school unique, and how they will not only fit in, but enhance the student body. There is usually a good fit between the school’s mission and that of the student.”
A critically important point that so many applicants to the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, etc. overlook in their zeal to get into their “dream” school. In my 5 years of interviewing the applicants to one of the Ivy’s, none of them was able to articulate in response to my question, “why THIS university?” Their stumbling answers all pretty much boiled down to: “well, because it’s one of the best universities in the world.” None of them had a successful admission result. There are way too many dreamers but their dreams die soon because they don’t know why they dream what they dream about. Too many “just because it’s Harvard,” “just because it’s Stanford…”
When my son was establishing a list of colleges to apply to, we paid a lot of attention to those schools that we felt were best fit for him after months of research. We ended up with the list that consisted of about half ideal and half back up. When the admissions results all came in, we quickly noticed a very interesting pattern: he was accepted to the majority of schools that were on his ideal list while he was either waitlisted or rejected by the majority of those schools that were on his back up list. It was as if the schools that were on his back up list knew that my son wasn’t an ideal fit to their schools – and vice versa. So, I can vouch for momofsenior1’s statement that, “There is usually a good fit between the school’s mission and that of the student.” But good fit goes both ways. When my son was crafting his essays, he not only discussed how he can contribute to the university but how he could benefit from the university’s programs and resources in specific details.