<ol>
<li><p>Intellectual Vitality: The top 20 national universities distinguish between good students and great students when rating students academically not necessarily by their grades and test scores, but by their level of “intellectual vitality” or interest/love for learning outside the classroom as evidenced by their recommendation letters, activities and essays.</p></li>
<li><p>Well-rounded Trap: Elite colleges are looking for well-rounded incoming classes, not for well-rounded students. Part of building an interesting class is putting together a few specialists: a few future Nobel Prize winners in Physics, a few future soloists at Carnegie Hall, a few future NY Times bestselling authors, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Supplemental Essays: The “Why Cornell?” type of supplemental essays are not too keen on hearing what 20,000 applicants have to say about what Cornell can offer them - Cornell already knows this and doesn’t need to be told 20,000 times. Instead, the supplemental essays are an opportunity to address what your child has to offer the elite college that no other applicant can.</p></li>
<li><p>Choosing a Major when Applying: Your entire application should have an overarching theme to it, and the choice of major should align with one’s extra-curricular and academic pursuits outside the classroom. </p></li>
<li><p>Engineering vs. Arts & Sciences: When applying directly to the College of Engineering (eg, at Cornell, Duke, Columbia, Penn, CMU, etc.), engineering faculty are often involved with incoming class selection, which means that being engineers, numbers (grades/test scores) and academic research are given greater weight while soft factors and intangibles such as a great essay are valued less (Duke Pratt for instance weights the SAT triple relative to Trinity Arts & Sciences).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Okay… there is a reason this has 97 views with no comments. Most of it is self evident. 2, 3, and 4 have been hashed to death out here. But I will bite and comment on #1 because I agree with it, and I think tons of posters out here miss the boat on this. My D2 had great admissions results (got in everyplace she applied, including some top reaches given her only okay GPA), and I think that this “intellectual vitality” component was her #1 selling point to schools. Schools are aching to find genuinely intellectually curious students within the mountain of applications from strivers and grinders. </p>
<h1>5 - No idea if this is true or not. What is your source?</h1>
<p>Agree with intparent. My D had similar great results and I believe it was mostly due to #1 - her love of learning was apparent from her essays and recommendations, plus she had an independent study her senior year that went in depth to another area of interest. She went in with no major specified as she has so many interests. (However in addition to her intellectual capabilities she was also a 2 sport athlete with 7 varsity letters so who knows?)</p>
<p>@strad199, she got in everyplace she applied – U of Chicago, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, Carleton, Kenyon, Macalester, Mount Holyoke, and Lawrence. She is a very happy Mudder.</p>
<p>@intparent, very impressive, Swat and Chicago are amazing and glad to hear she found home at HMC. Judging by her list of acceptances, she probably hit the intellectual vitality ball out of the ballpark since half the schools on that list are considered places for highly intellectual students.</p>
<p>All it is that required is to do your homework every day and pursue every single interest, slightest passion or curiosity for your own sake of satisfying them and not for the sake of being accepted at Ivy (which many very top kids at the most rigorous HSs simply disregard since they are smart enough to understand that they will do just fine everywhere).
This was my D’s path (no single B from the most rigorous k - 12 available for us all thru graduation from college). She graduated #1 in her HS class, graduated as top pre-med in her UG class with all kind of recognitions and medals. The girl was into everything in HS (including daily 3 hrs sport practices) and college, her pre-med committe commented that they have no idea how in a world she was into so many things. Not a single summer class either. All I know from her is that she did her homework and pursue absolutely everything that she wanted. Never planned on sorority but then decided why not. Ended up one of the best UG experience, including representing her chapter at National convention. When she choose her UG, she did not care to attend Ivy or any Elite college at all. She said: “I will do just fine anywhere”. However, she choose her place very carefully not studying ranking but researching if the uG is matching her personality and wide (very very wide!!) range of interests. The end result - acceptance to several Med. Schools including top 20s (they just happen to be close to home where she was applying).<br>
My GrandKids (13 y o and 15 y o) are doing exactly the same. Doing their homework and purusuing tons of personal interests. GrandD is in one of the most selective and rigorous HS in NYC (33 applicants to one spot of freshman class). So far this strategy works for them also. My D. working on making sure that the younger ones understand that they do not need to go to Ivy’s, they do not need to attend any Elite college they can go to any place that fit them and be successful.<br>
D. is a 4th year Med. Student. Most in her class graduated from Ivy / Elite with Berkeley being the most common. Her class also has PhD from Harvard, several lawyers and several Masters of Schience. And while my D. is one of the youngest in her Med. School class (and graduated from public in-state), she is doing very well (according to a feedback that she receives, no grades, only Board score which was great). I feel very sorry for those who limit their choices and focus on ranking instead of letting kids go where they feel they belong.</p>
<h1>1Just doing all the homework is not a sign of intellectual vitality. In fact I might argue that not everything is worth doing well.</h1>
<p>My older son showed intellectual vitality by teaching himself computer skill well beyond anything you could learn at school. He had letters of recommendation from a med school professor singing his praises about a project he’d done for him that none of his grad students could manage to take care of.</p>
<p>My younger son showed in intellectual vitality in a different way, first by talking about an EC in a way that showed himself thinking like a historian, and also at one college through an optional essay that was an alternative history of the United States. In order to put it together he researched Benjamin Franklin’s diaries, typical headlines and articles from various European newspapers, and things like that. His APUSH teacher also wrote about the research paper he did on the beginnings of the Cold War. He had lopsided scores and a not at all perfect GPA yet did much better than one might expect from his stats - I have to think it was because he was able to show that he really is a deep thinker.</p>
<h1>2 Old news</h1>
<p>As to #3 - I don’t know. My younger son wrote that he liked Tufts because of all the chalk on the sidewalks. And he wrote an essay about all the reasons he didn’t think he wanted to go to Chicago and then funny answers to why he was wrong. (Chicago might not be on a coast, but it was on Lake Michigan for example.) I think this essay should probably not just be a regurgitation of their website. Everyone says they want to go to Tufts to study IR, or that they like Brown’s open curriculum. so is there something different you can say? I do agree with the premise that you want them to want you. So think about how you are coming across. Younger son was pretty good at the I’m fun, and a little bit quirky voice. </p>
<h1>4, my older son’s application was all I’m a computer nerd take me or leave me. Quite a few schools didn’t want him, but he did fine. Younger son, though pretty sure about IR, still applied undecided everywhere he could. His admissions results were better than expected, and he was the quintessential well rounded kid. Better at history than math or science, but his two big ECs were Science Olympiad and orchestra.</h1>
<h1>5 I know the different schools at Carnegie Mellon make their own decisions, and I know at Cornell and Caltech professors have been involved in admissions in the past, but other than that haven’t the foggiest if this is really true or not.</h1>
<p>With #3, certain schools are definitely proud of certain aspects that set them apart from their peers. If you can show why those aspects are important to you as well and emotionally connect with adcom members about them (especially if few other applicants touch on them) that will certainly give you a leg up.</p>
<p>I wonder about #4. My D’s most standout EC was her 10-year commitment to the Girl Scouts, which included a lot of administrative and leadership roles. (Most girls drop out when they hit high school.) This had zero connection to her intended major, but it would shock me to find out her adcoms simply discounted it.</p>
<p>^ Agree that a long-term commitment to an EC could help.</p>
<p>We only have one data point (one child only) so we do not know how valid this is.</p>
<p>Go to a competitive high school which routinely sends, say, 5-8 students to, say, HYPS, every year. Get as much information about the credentials of as many of these top students as possible, excluding those students with hooks, for the past 5 years. (say, top 5 ranks, SAT 2300+, about 8-10 APs with 5, 3 subject SATs with 800s, and most importantly, winning at least one MAJOR state-level competition, etc.)</p>
<p>Even though your child does not have to have the same credential, but having a comparable level of credential could boost your child’s chance to get into one of the top schools (it is totally a different question whether these schools are a fit for your child though.)</p>
<p>I think even at the grad/prof school admission, DS also used the similar strategy (making sure that the objective measures are relatively good - top grades (say, top 5%) from a top college, and top standard test scores - say 2 to 3 standard deviation from the average.) I think this strategy is generally good for a kid who is not particularly good at “blowing his hone to advertise himself.” That is, try to shine in a “bigger pond” as people will more likely know how competitive that school is as such a kid may not always know how to demonstrate the less tractable, say, “intellectual vitality” in a smaller pond.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be a genius or all that smart to be a physician. Being PhD capable is much more impressive. Something H and I have noticed as physicians- many physicians are not intellectuals. It means hard work and going for A’s, not intellectual greatness. Medical school is learning a lot in a relatively short time, not being intellectually creative. There is no such thing as being the top premed student- that is an intention, not a major. If that was the case at a school that is unheard of anywhere else. btw- you call the last person in the bottom ranked medical school doctor upon graduation. This person will deserve the title just as much as the top person at the top medical school.</p>
<p>A fellow undergrad chemistry major and I (both women) had a conversation about our career paths several years ago. I sometimes wondered if I should have chosen grad school and research, she likewise wondered if she should have chosen medicine over research. Too late for us to change things and am pretty sure we may have had the same conversation, opposite views. Son never had perfect grades in HS or college- he did get a perfect 2400 on a retake of the SAT when he was supposed to retake the math one. I don’t think he is less smart than many who got a 4.0 in HS or college, or who attended higher ranked colleges. He has zero interest in medicine.</p>
<p>Miami- be proud of your child but she is not that special. There are many out there who will be excellent physicians without her credentials. There are many out there who are much smarter and can handle material she isn’t as adept at. Hopefully she realizes this. There are also many who manage to enjoy medical school by doing all sorts of nonacademic things. I appreciated their talents and creativity - will always remember the wine bottles placed at the no question station of the lab practicals- a sense of humor helps, as does not indulging in the wine. Many other things I didn’t dare but enjoyed.</p>
<p>Finally- son did not follow these tips. He never was, nor never will be the type who does the work to get the grades in boring to him classes et al. He is being intellectually satisfied with his current work- we’ll see where he’s at in a few years. He doesn’t “do all that it takes” but what he likes. Can’t change his personality and I can see where he got it from (nature and/or nurture).</p>
<p>I actually think intellectual vitality is missed a lot in undergrad admissions. The admissions committee is not made up of professors, a lot of them are young recent college grads. It seems like a lot of the time, they miss out on very intelligent students because they are more introverted and don’t do as many ECs. However, a lot of the people who are out building a huge resume in high school are not that great once they get to college and often burn out.</p>
<p>A lot of my friends at Penn were like this as well as myself. We were very into our intellectual pursuits and were not the type to go out and lead every club to put it on their resume. I applied ED to Penn, but most of my friends were shafted by HYPSM for undergrad. They ended up being the top math and science students at Penn and chose between several of the grad schools that had rejected them as undergrads.</p>
<p>Being a rather old buzzword from Stanford’s admission officers, intellectual vitality is hardly a little known term. It is, however, not defined uniformly at every school, and it is NOT necessarily consistent with the notion of the deep intellectualism required to describe a giant jar of mustard. </p>
<p>Poeme, highly selective schools rarely miss very intelligent students. They might not think all very intelligent students are attractive to a particularly school. Have you ever read essays from highly intelligent students that were total disasters filled with incomprehensible drivel? </p>
<p>Your “highly intelligent friends” are not all that intelligent if they thought they were entitled to HYPSM, or that there were anything other than minute differences between HYPSM and Penn. People who are truly intelligent don’t fetishize 5 (or 8 or 10 or 20) schools as if they are the ne plus ultra and everyplace else is full of idiots. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl, they didn’t think they were entitled to those schools and no they didn’t think Penn was full of idiots, they just happened to do very well there. They would have had the same success at the other schools I mentioned.</p>
<p>That’s actually the point. People often think the kids who get into HYPSM are superior when really there is no difference other than luck. There are intelligent students everywhere. Just read the editorials from Harvard undergrads defending their massive grade inflation.</p>
<p>I also know some people who are very intelligent who were completely shut out by the Ivies.</p>
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