What exactly are individual top colleges looking for?

Parents Forum
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I can tell you what Harvard wanted last year at least, because a kid who was class pres two years running got in ED. Here is what made him stand out, AFAIA. (Known this kid since he was in third grade.) He was always a leader. In middle school, he was the kid who got things done. He was was very involved in ECs that were focussed on community and state government. So he attended ALL board of Ed meetings and spoke at them. He went to the state Capitol in the summer and did internships and the like. He actually DID stuff as student body pres in high school. He got people to do stuff with him. Everyone liked him. He probably had outstanding recs from his teachers. He was a very good student. No idea what his grades and tests scores were. He had several AP classes, maybe four or five. The high achievers in our school take six to eight. He certainly was not a hyper-academic kid in the school. My kid knew who all the brainiacs were. He was not one of the brainiacs.

Going back to what someone said earlier, and to what I have also understood, colleges want to admit people they like. I am guessing he wrote a very good essay that made people see why he was likable. And I am sure that he had great recs. This is definitely a student who had good grades and tests scores, but it was his ECs and his personal qualitites that got him in. I am certain of that.

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Introverts get in too. And plenty of student leaders don’t. It’s just hard to generalize.

I also don’t think essays are that important in an application. Rarely, an essay might be so good that it helps, and more often, a bad one might harm. Generally I think the most basic goal of an essay should be to do no harm :slight_smile:

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@roethlisburger and others. Nothing new here. Did you see the first line of the paragraph, “first one in her family to go to college.” This isn’t about pizza. Yale and other elites have 17 - 20% of the class reserved for first gen. She could have written about virtually anything.

Now if she had written about anything other than cheese and used it as a backdrop to exhibit her many interests or talents…then I’d say she had something about her essay that was notable. Do you remember last year’s kid who wrote about her many interests and insatiable curiosity using a backdrop of (something common that all can relate to) Costco?

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My older son’s essay. Was basically, “I’m a computer nerd. Take me or leave me.” But I’m sure he had stellar recommendations both from teachers, his GC (who loved him because he helped her manage her computers), and the people he worked for. Even though he was an extreme introvert, he didn’t actually look like one on paper.

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I don’t know whether her Yale AO was aware, but liking Papa John’s and the later comment in the article about Chick-Fil-A puts her solidly in the conservative demographic (at least from a West Coast liberal viewpoint). I’d guess Yale and some other Ivys have a bucket for accepting some non-lefty students along with geographic diversity and 1st gen.

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@roethlisburger The article about Carolina Williams is a Southern culture feel-good piece published to promote Alabama & Auburn and stick it to the ivy league (and all it represents). It is absolutely not designed to answer the question of this thread. From the perspective of the article, the more it looks like Yale falls for pizza essays and stupid pet tricks, the better – those New England elitists are so easily fooled! Carolina and other savvy southerners see right through 'em!

The “Bo Jackson” on the the ACT presumably means a 34.

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@LadyMeowMeow

I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Are you disputing whether Carolina Williams got admitted to Yale?

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@Lindagaf The head of admissions at Harvey Mudd came to talk to parents of rising seniors at my kids’ school last spring (as far as I know, the Claremont-McKennas all fall into that “top” category). She was going through what sort of things have caught her staff’s eyes in recent years and they were all pretty leadership/take-change-y. I asked her, point blank, what about the introvert? She said, and this is a direct quote, “Oh, we looooove the introvert!” And went on to describe the bulk of their acceptances not being team leaders in high school.

Anyway, my daughter didn’t apply there after all, but, just a thought. There’s only so many class presidents with great grades and scores to go around. :slight_smile:

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Unfortunately, there are more class presidents and valedictorians with great grades and scores to go around, so much so that many despite lots of introverted thinking and leadership, don’t get into top schools–not enough slots at them.

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I think the OP would have better luck asking what it took to get Prince William to fall in love with Ms. Middleton.

Fact- there is more commonality among the top schools than not. Fact- every year the rumor mill is awash with “Cornell wants kids who have done internships in Nanotechnology” or “Penn needs kids who are fluent in multiple languages”. These are usually based on a datapoint of one, i.e. a kid your cousin knew from summer camp, and not always entirely accurate. Fact- Even a college like Brown which is reputed to only want artsy/boho/free spirits, also has a renowned applied math department, and a computer science department, and a large econ department, all of which attract kids who would likely be perfectly at home at Dartmouth or U Chicago or U Michigan aka not boho/free spirit colleges.

The “word on the street” is often a bad idea for an individual kid. One year Stanford wants kids who are entrepreneurial, so two years later, every kid at a particular HS has started a business or is hawking an App. One year Harvard seems to be accepting a lot of actors and musicians- so next year the likelihood that your thespian/musician is going to actually standout from the huge pool of wannabees is close to zero.

Stick to what you know. Have your kid apply thoughtfully to places he/she would actually want to attend with a good range of reach/match/safety where you can realistically afford to pay… and sleep at night. If you think you can make your 8th grader successfully jump through the “this is what Yale wants” hoop-- boy, I have a bridge to sell you.

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@roethlisburger Of course she got admitted. The piece is trying to show how attractive Auburn / Alabama is at the expense of Yale (and what it represents to readers of Al.com, which has an anti-Kathi Gifford piece just below). It’s a difficult balance, however, because the author has to trade on the prestige of Yale: Carolina is wearing the Yale shirt, bragging about getting accepted to Yale, tweeting Yale selfies… but, ha! she’s going to Auburn! The south wins.

The author tries to suggest that Yale (foolishly) accepted her for liking pizza, but Auburn (brilliantly) accepted her for her passion, great academics, & high scores. Both places accepted the same kid.

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or they both accepted her for being first gen along with being smart.

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@LadyMeowMeow

Different schools can accept the same student for different reasons and you seem to have a hatred of Auburn for some reason. None of that negates my point: what Yale claims to look for doesn’t match how they score essays.

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Following up on the previous comment that opacity in admissions criteria allows the colleges to change their minds whenever they want… If it somehow becomes known what a college really is looking for (or something becomes widely believed to be that), then the college may get a surplus of applicants with whatever that is. In that case, the college could very well change its mind and decide to admit fewer such applicants, even when such applicants were attractive in past years when there was a shortage of such applicants.

For example, if Yale gets huge numbers of applications with pizza essays this year, it may not admit very many of them.

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@roethlisburger No, I love Auburn! Carolina made a great choice. I was calling out the author of that puff piece for distorting the college admissions process in the interest of fist pumping.

@preppedparent is right: it’s nothing to do with pizza. It’s about the whole application and building a class. The Yale adcom wrote: “I really loved your essay on reading 100 books in a year and I laughed so hard on your pizza essay,”

Doesn’t this suggest that reading 100 books a year was the serious qualification, while the pizza essay was a sidelight that showed Carolina had a sense of humor?

Q: Why is it so attractive to turn her into "pizza girl"instead of “reading girl”?

A: Because a lot of people love the idea that ivy adcoms are whimsical and unprincipled. But that’s because they like to believe it, not because it’s true.

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@JenJenJenJen , well, it’s a shame my introverted daughter, whose essay conveyed a story about her introvertedness, didn’t apply to Harvey Mudd.:slight_smile: (I wrote about Harvard on this thread.) But there are a bunch of great colleges out there that accepted her, so clearly it’s not too detrimental to be an introvert.

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I don’t think we can assume this. A student who spends all their time reading for school and fun might come across as one dimensional.

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It seems serendipitous or a fluke that “reading girl’s” app was read deeper (pun intended) by the Yale ADCOM who him/herself had a goal of reading 100 books in a year. Again, the main reason for admission is clear. It’s not the pizza or the reading, but rather she is first gen. That is a huge hook for elite college admissions. Don’t need to go any further than that. But I think those without a hook and stellar stats are looking for a formula that doesn’t exisit…it isn’t a hundred books or pizza.

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@QuantMech, others have mostly addressed what I was talking about, but I’ll throw just a couple out there.

Get to know the school to which you’re applying. You’ll then know a bit more about what they might be looking for in essays and in a student in general.

  1. You can do this through mission statements/history: http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/stanfordsmission/

https://www.college.upenn.edu/college-mission

  1. You can do this through blogs/admissions info: http://admission.stanford.edu/basics/selection/index.html

http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/apply/what-penn-looks-for

  1. You can talk with admitted students and get their perspective (and stats). This takes more time and digging unless you are privy to such information.

Stanford vs. Penn in my example above. Yep, top schools have quite a few cross admits, and perhaps they’re not so different from each other, but there are a few distinctions.

Stanford has key words: Academic Excellence, Intellectual Vitality and Personal Context. Of the students I either worked with or know personally who were admitted:
-all were, of course, academic standouts (as in ACT/SAT either perfect or very close to it)
-all had national/international level accomplishments including recruited athlete
-One was double legacy, which I know Stanford considers (and historically, they have 3X more chance of being admitted than non-legacy)
-Several had extreme intellectual vitality, and one looked like it on paper (Straight As, etc) at least

Penn has key words: holistic, scholars, scientists, athletes, entrepreneurs, artists, and more-who hail from all corners of the world and a wide range of backgrounds. More on holistic review from Penn: http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/apply/whatpennlooksfor/holistic

Of the students I know who were admitted to Penn:
-All were very strong students, but there was some variance in GPA/SAT (as in still in the top 1-5%)
-Diverse backgrounds, and a sense that Penn was willing to take a chance on student who want to develop their talents and abilities rather than on those who already have reached a pinnacle, so to speak
-All the students had an appreciation for Penn’s interdisciplinary/integrative focus

(And I didn’t use MIT as an example because, as you are, I, too, am very familiar with MIT students and admissions, having had a son graduate from there, and having met many students who have attended/attend; I think MIT is somewhat unique in their approach to admissions, even for a STEM school, and I think MIT does a really good job despite the litany of complaints every year about their admissions process)

That’s what I mean-subtle differences among top schools, and yes, some kids do get into all of them, but it’s pretty easy to see why that happens. (Every year, those stories make the news)

So, get to know what a school wants. It’s no admissions guarantee, but it could make a difference. I’ve seen it happen with the students I work with.

60

Y’all need to stop it with the disparaging comments about the Yale/Auburn/Papa John’s girl. She’s a real person with a name who can find this discussion. Comments about her essay or why you, in your infinite wisdom, think that she really got into Yale (when, perhaps, your own precious snowflake did not) are completely unnecessary. I wish I had never posted the original article, which I thought made Carolina sound exactly like the Yale adcom did–like she was someone who would be fun to hang out with. Not one of us on this board is privy to this girl’s entire application or essay, for that matter, so none of us has anywhere near enough information to judge whether she should have been admitted to Yale or Auburn or any other school. Also, it was just a fun story; sometimes, a cute story is just a cute story.