If the posters can reveal any hooks or lack of, it would be more helpful.
OK scores, top GPA, and top class rank. EC’s aren’t national or “hard” imo, but they were specific, unique, and very focused. Was not involved the generic ECs. Letters of rec I assume were quite good. I’m a good writer (and from what I’ve seen of admitted students to my school, certainly above average) so my essays should have been top notch. Hooks: URM, first-gen immigrant (not first-gen college though and from a heavily represented region of the state).
EDIT: re-reading my essays: FIT was very important! I didn’t think too much about it when I was applying, but after attending my school for two years, seeing the type of people it admits, and interacting with alumni from my school, it is very clear that my school likes a certain type of person and I very effectively embodied that person in my essays.
Luck
I think it depends on the school for me, but I think it was my essays for most schools!! I’ll go down the list a bit, though–
Cornell: my essay here wasn’t /that/ good and was, in my opinion, pretty standard (although my Common App essay was good), but I think what got me in here was research experience–they named me a research scholar with my admission.
Harvey Mudd: essay!!! they wrote a little note on my acceptance letter about it and ahh :’) for this school in particular, my Common App essay showed how great of a fit I’d be, and my supplements only added to that!
Johns Hopkins: /definitely/ the essay–it was unique, connected with my Common App (each showed a different side of me–one STEM, one humanities), and showed how I was a great fit.
Rice: again, definitely my essay! I applied here with a different, slightly more generic (but still good, in a way) Common App essay, but my supplement really allowed my strengths to shine and showed how “quirky” I was.
UC Berkeley (Regents): what got me in the door here was, I think, my high GPA at a feeder school and my extracurriculars, but what sealed the deal for the scholarship was definitely my interview. the professor and I spent a lot of time talking about things like whether life exists in space, which allowed me to showcase my personality and my curiosity and stuff.
Vanderbilt: not sure, but I think it was my Common App essay and the research thing.
Something I noticed was that the schools that I was rejected from were the ones for which I had the worst essays. I had a slight hook for MIT (a summer program), but I blew it with /very/ mediocre essays (well-written, but no personality). All the essays for these schools were somewhat generic (yikes). (well, except for Stanford, but Stanford is Stanford and I didn’t expect to get in anyways.)
(also, the closest thing to a hook I have is “woman in engineering” lmao I have nothing else at all) (one of my rec letters was probably amazing, and the other one was probably good, but not spectacular) (+ decent gpa, high test scores?)
committed to berkeley.
Additional info:
The thing is I don’t even think his teachers recommendations were that awesome, even though my kid or I never read them. I mean, my kid was not a number 1 student in any course; in fact, I would have laughed out loud if a teacher wrote in her letter that my kid was the best student in her course during last several years – I am just being honest here – even though overall he was a pretty good student (top 5%) and a very responsible team-oriented kid. Therefore, my personal opinion is that his essays resonated with the particular adcom. That’s the only reason I can think of because honestly we were somewhat concerned that he had no hooks of any kind. Only thing I can think of helping his application slightly was that he was an ORM male student who did not intend to major in STEM area, and I think this was clear from his course grades and ECs and essays, even though Stanford says it does not care whatever you decide to major at Stanford. My wife, who is more religious than I, says it is a miracle, whereas I tell her he was extremely fortunate. My kid even jokes that he probably has the lowest GPA and test scores among the ORM students who got accepted at Stanford. And I would not be surprised if his GPA and test scores were among the lowest in the ORM students group who were admitted to Stanford because almost every one of them seemed to have straight As, if not A+s and 2350 SAT or 35 ACT scores, according to the parents whom I met during the Admit Weekend.
Getting into Stanford REA really helped my kid though because he didn’t have to spend any more time on college applications and used his time and energy to do many of other great outside school activities he enjoyed – he probably went to more than 10 volunteer activities lending a helping hand to and learning from various academic and non-academic organizations.
lot of it is luck, no doubt. There’s a lot of research these days on the role of randomness and a lot of evidence that life is a lot more random than we thought, including college admissions. So kudos to the people that recognize they were fortunate or lucky to get in.