5 Little Known Tips for Getting In

<p>QM, here’s the question I have: do you have ANY evidence, other than a couple of really good math students who didn’t get into MIT, that elite colleges don’t value extraordinary academic achievement? Because it seems to me that would be the equivalent of saying “I know a really qualified Jewish kid who didn’t get into Brandeis, and Brandeis has said that they are trying to increase diversity. So I guess Brandeis doesn’t like smart Jewish kids from Long Island who were active in their synagogue youth group.”</p>

<p>Obviously, that would be silly: yes, on most metrics it might be harder to get into Brandeis as a Jewish girl from Long Island than as a Lutheran from Minnesota. But that isn’t, obviously, because Brandeis has a bias against Jewish girls from Long Island, it is because they already have a lot of them - i.e, they DO value them, but don’t want a whole class of them. I also suspect that if they had a list like the Wellsley list, they probably wouldn’t highlight a student who had been on the national board of the United Synagogue Youth, not because that kid isn’t worthy and fascinating, but because in the context of that school, there are other achievements that are more unusual and therefore more noteworthy for the purposes of a promotional statement. </p>

<p>Now, as you know I theoretically agree with you that the bar for getting in based primarily on extraordinary academic achievements may be too high. It does seem to suggest misplaced priorities to me that a school might say “He did USAMO? Nice, but we’ve already got a bunch of those kids. Now let’s make room for the lacrosse player with a 1350 - that’s a high enough score to succeed here.” Because yeah, I do think that an academic institution should be valuing academic achievement of a certain level more than whether or not they have kids from all fifty states or just thirty-five of them - or, yes, training fox hunting dogs.</p>

<p>But the point is, saying “school x reserves, say, 100 spots for academic superstars. I think it should maybe be 200” is a really far cry from saying “I think someone with a major math award is at a disadvantage in admissions.” I just see no evidence of that. </p>

<p>In fact, it is possible that the Wellsley list indicates the reverse - W is a fantastic school, but it isn’t necessarily the obvious first choice for the tippy- top students, who are more likely to dream of Yale or Amherst. So, if there’s a fox-hunter at W but not a USAMO competitor, maybe it is because Harvard snapped up the mathematician and passed on the fox-hunter.</p>

<p>As for the dollhouse thing - are you serious, or was that a joke? Do you honestly think anyone in admissions has either the expertise or the inclination to parse the intricacies of dollhouse design, if an applicant happened to have that particular interest? Sure, if the applicant were also doing something nice with the dollhouses, that would be a bonus, but why is this a problem? If two kids both build intricate dollhouses, why wouldn’t one prefer the kid who was donating some of them to low-income children to the kid for whom it was purely a hobby? </p>

<p>C"mon folks, wouldn’t you rather see the list that admissions didn’t want you to see?
In our class, we have:

  1. The daughter of a dictator from a developing country who’s been accused of some really egregious human rights violations, but we’re sure she’s nothing like that . . … And besides she’s paying sticker price!
  2. A child whose dad went to jail for embezzling from his clients. Hang out with her, but try not to “lend” her any money!
  3. A kid who was kicked out of three schools for cheating but whose parents paid a college counselor an awesome amount of money to make sure that never showed up in his file
  4. Chip the date rapist – Try not to end up in a dark room alone with him
  5. a guy who made a lot of money selling marijuana at his school – can you say entrepreneur?
    etc.</p>

<p>And would the dollhouse essay show anything of relevance to a college admissions review? Or get a “nice but so what?” reaction. Maybe we skipped that part about what you do want to communicate to a highly competitive college. -Or maybe it got short shrift in with the distractions.
Now we’re going to cycle back to, “But I thought you said-.” Oh, well.</p>

<p>@cobrat and @ Momzie thanks for the comic relief! </p>

<p>And to be fair, the Wellesley list did include a scientist, translator, historian and CPA. Their point, as I see it, was to highlight the diversity of interests represented in the freshman class. </p>

<h1>1502 again seems somewhat hostile to me.</h1>

<p>I was actually serious about the dollhouse activity–though not necessarily as an essay. Someone raised a hypothetical case of a dollhouse collector, and observed that collecting dollhouses would be no advantage in admissions. I agree.</p>

<p>So suppose that someone has a real interest in dollhouses. Personally, I think that is legitimate. It’s not far-fetched to think that quite a few young children would enjoy playing with dollhouses. Many of the schools around here do not have a wide range of “toys” for the students to use during recess or after lunch, or on rainy days when they can’t go out for physical education. So building dollhouses for students in those schools + children in homeless shelters + children with their mothers in shelters for battered women seems to me like a genuinely good choice of activity, for someone who really likes dollhouses to begin with.</p>

<p>Then suppose that the student approaches dollhouse construction in an “intentional” fashion. The question of putting in a pool or not strikes me as something that a thoughtful person might consider, for example. I had a childhood dollhouse that had a pool, though we only had a small plastic wading pool. I enjoyed playing with that dollhouse. But maybe it would be better to design dollhouses that are more authentic to the home circumstances that are being experienced at present, by the children who will receive the dollhouses. On the other hand, maybe they would have more fun with a dollhouse with a Hollywood-style pool. To me, this issue gets at the heart of how one tries to put oneself in another’s shoes, and what conclusions one reaches about it.</p>

<p>Or maybe dollhouses are too girl-like, and the high school student should instead be building model apartment complexes, restaurants, hospitals, and model city parks, to give away to children. That activity would be further out of the box.</p>

<p>I don’t think this activity is hopeless as an EC, because one of the “top” schools publicized admitting a model train enthusiast. Some of my posts have been a bit sarcastic (from time to time), but this one is completely sincere. </p>

<p>We get it QM, I seem hostile. (You seem focused on that now, perhaps baiting?) Not the folks who mention perseveration or suggest something else propels you to “stream of consciousness”. Well, I think this sort of thing is coy; can you be serious?: So suppose that someone has a real interest in dollhouses. Personally, I think that is legitimate. It’s not far-fetched to think that quite a few young children would enjoy playing with dollhouses…" * What does that have to do with college admissions? How is it relevant? Or this? * I had a childhood dollhouse that had a pool, though we only had a small plastic wading pool.</p>

<p>I suppose some find it amusing and others find it on point. I just don’t. I find it coy.
Of course these little children should evolve. But please make it relevant to the college essay and how the essay is important in the admit review. Or what can be learned by looking at the sorts of current students the colleges value enough to highlight on their web pages.<br>
Or not. Your choice. And QMC’s and George Genius and all the other applicants.</p>

<p>

</p>

<ol>
<li>A bona-fide former dictator who managed to stage a coup making him head-of-state. And here’s a real life example:</li>
</ol>

<p><a href=“Valentine Strasser - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine_Strasser&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>regarding the dollhouse musings:</p>

<p>I find it an interesting example of attempting to put oneself in the shoes of others and see the world through their eyes. If an applicant can incorporate this type of thinking (using the dollhouse as an example) into a college essay, it tells something about the student. imho It tells me something about QM she wrote that post. If the essay describes the “over-thinking” dollhouse builder, is it a useful essay? Is that an attractive applicant or not?</p>

<p>Maybe we should suggest posts here model essays-- 650 words or less. Helps the writer to focus on the salient points and the ultimate message. </p>

<p>@apprenticeprof: There would be a very long answer to your question, longer than the lengthy post below. </p>

<p>However, I will ask you and others this question: What do you think is the difference, if any, between admissions philosophy at U. of Chicago and Harvard?</p>

<p>The reason I use U. of Chicago is that its a broad liberal arts school and it does value ECs. </p>

<p>I will give my own answer, but feel free to give your own take. The main difference I see is that U. of Chicago adcoms feel that future performance in any (non-athletic) field is a function of intelligence, whereas Harvard feels that there is some cut-off at, say, NMF level, beyond which everybody can “do the work” and only for the future academics does intelligence continue to help you. </p>

<p>One of Harvard’s recent presidents (Derek Bok?) said something derogatory about U. of Chicago did things, shuddering that they would fill their campus with only academics. I think he did actually use that word ‘shudder’.
I guess the difference is that U. of Chicago doesn’t see them as academics; they see them as people who are intelligence and creativity will allow them to enter a wide variety of fields and not only be successful, but transform those fields since they will have the intellect not only to understand how things are done but also to challenge long-held tenets. A good example is Nate Silver, who is everywhere these days–politics, sports, etc. I feel like Harvard would look at a guy like that at 18 and ask whether he was the top 200 smartest people in the world, and if not, they put them in a bin with everybody else who is ‘qualified’ and judge how interesting their ECs are.</p>

<p>The other difference is that Harvard seems to believe in the theory of multiple intelligences where each of the intelligences is in a different silo with no overlap. I guess this is appropriate since Gardner, who thought of it, is a Harvard professor. (I think admissions has vastly oversimplified it, though. There is a very fine line between math and philosophy, for instance, and the same verbal talent that makes you good at one is vital for the other; it’s not just calculational ability or the ability to visualize things that is involved in math.) U. of Chicago thinks that you can mine all the different core intellectual abilities (math, verbal, musical) to be better at whatever you are doing later. And I think there also may be a difference in the expectation of how differentiated a person is into what they are going to be at 18 and what they expect a future “leader” to be doing to develop. Harvard expects you to be out there leading NOW; while some leadership activities undoubtedly help, I think U. of C places more emphasis on the development of your mind. U. of C alum and Nobel Laureate James Watson said it best, “U. of Chicago almost has too much confidence in what intelligence can do.” He said it half-jokingly.</p>

<p>These are my own takes on how U. of C and Harvard do things based on what they say and what I’ve seen from admissions results and their alumni. Obviously, Harvard is still a lot more selective, so they get more high-quality academic people. But that is not the point. Harvard’s model is a the model used by many selective schools.</p>

<p>I will add a bit of a coda with some USAMO discussion, which apprenticprof brought up and @Hunt also mentioned. Hunt posed the question of why it matters whether they take the #11 math person. Part of the answer to this is that people don’t stay in the field they distinguish themselves in as high school students, and the trend is usually from more theoretical to more applied field. The #51 math person ended up a world class theoretical physics professor at a top 5 institution. Of the couple of other people that were about #100 in math, one ended up in a top 40 under 40 listing in the tech world; another was an extremely strong electrical engineer who won an NSF fellowship in that field and attended a top 2 grad school. Even the ~#300 math person ended up arguably the #1 faculty candidate in biology (this person also showed interest and ability in science as a high schooler but didn’t make the Westinghouse finals.) Incidentally, none of these people were strong enough in any one field that a faculty member in their future field would be aware of them already. However, people like this stick out like a sore thumb and are way way above the typical ‘qualified’ NMF who fills most of the student body at these top places. Even without the specific math distinctions, these people stick out like a sore thumb and its obvious that they will be stars. And yeah, most of those people had very mixed success in admissions. So even if you confine yourself to the tech majors, there are people out there that are so strong that its hard to find people that “bring more to the table” as the phrase goes, unless that excess academic talent isn’t that much of an advantage, or, put in other terms, is valued beyond the NMF level. </p>

<p>oh my god. I mentioned dollhouses to be illustrative of a hobby which is both unusual for a 17 year old AND because I figured I wouldn’t get a flood of posts from all of you citing all the dollhouse builders you know who were rejected from Columbia and had to “slum it” at Georgetown instead.</p>

<p>Quite a literal crowd here. So I will reframe my post.</p>

<p>The point was NOT the dollhouse. The point was the student, the application, and the Adcom- a nice triad if you will. Donating to homeless shelters is quite irrelevant, as is the layout, the pool, the dining room. So focus on the triad.</p>

<p>The student needs to use the application in two ways: </p>

<p>1- demonstrate that he or she is academically qualified to succeed at the college in question. The kid presents scores, grades, lists of classes taken outside of HS, etc. The bar changes over time- back in the early 1970’s I did not know a single kid who had ever taken a class on a college campus, or had ever taken an AP class before 12th grade. (And my HS sent dozens of kids to the top, elite, how ever you want to characterize these colleges). Now, it is much more commonplace.</p>

<p>Nonetheless- there is a bar and students need to be over it or at it. (Some wiggle room on your grades in AP Chem if you are a musical prodigy; some wiggle room on your Verbal SAT score if you are a recent immigrant to the US who got an 800 in math but have only been speaking English for four years, etc.) And below the median on the academics also reside kids with unusual athletic skills, etc. But still at the bar.</p>

<p>2- The student also needs to demonstrate that apart from being able to pass his/her courses and get a degree in four years (or a little more at some institutions), he or she will “contribute” to life at this college. Sometimes this will be academic in nature- thoughtful and meaningful contributions in a seminar class with 7 other students. Sometimes this will be research oriented- a kid whose profile suggests that he or she wants to live in the lab or dig deep for new frontiers of knowledge. Sometimes this will be non-academic- leadership roles in volunteer organizations in the community, concertmaster of the university’s orchestra, directing student performances of new theatrical works, showing up to distribute blankets and sandwiches to the homeless downtown on a snowy night.</p>

<p>The third part of the triad- the Adcom- is the person who culls the applications into three piles. 1- obvious rejects, and most of these are students who do not demonstrate that they can do the work. Sometimes that’s an obvious call (bad scores and grades) and sometimes it’s subtle- teacher’s recommendations that suggest the kid is “lucky and lazy”, guidance counselor notes which comment on a kid consistently dropping challenging courses for the easier version, or a kid with fine scores and grades whose essay suggests a poor command of basic syntax and spelling. The second pile- obvious admits. Kids whose academic chops and/or non-academics are so compelling that the college wants them. A visceral reaction to “Our Chaucer/Beowulf scholar will want to meet this kid”, or “wait until the Political Union meets this kid”.</p>

<p>And the third pile- the one which is causing endless perseverating (yes, y’all seem obsessed here) is the judgment call. Some adcom’s will find the essay hilarious and will want to admit the kid. Some will find it pompous and obnoxious. Some adcom’s will view the list of EC’s as superficial and trite (too many and no evidence of a substantive focus anywhere) and some will see that same list as evidence of enormous energy and “joie de vivre”. Some adcom’s love a hard luck story and others think it should be dealt with by the GC and not made the focus of an entire essay. And some Adcom’s have a shopping list- they want a poet, a cellist, a diving champion, and someone who taught themselves Middle English, and they are prepared to waive lots of other things (assuming the kid is at or over the bar) to get it.</p>

<p>This is why a kid gets into Y and not H, or Georgetown and not Northwestern, or Cornell and not Penn and often vice versa. Not because a kid who thinks he is a perfect fit at Georgetown gets to decide where he goes, but because the Adcom at G may have a different shopping list than the Adcom at N. Or because the kids essay reads like an elitist “I want to change the world as long as I can keep taking selfies with my friends” to the folks at N, but the folks at Georgetown think it sounds like a nice, down to earth, very real portrayal of what an idealistic smart 17 year old sounds like.</p>

<p>After a certain point there is no question that the kids in that third pile can cut it intellectually at the college. The question on the table is, “What does this kid do for us?” And the dollhouse builder can bring an interesting, if off-beat set of skills. And for a college which gets bombarded by the kids who play tennis and volunteer in animal shelters in their spare time, finding a kid with a different sensibility (introvert? artistically inclined? not a joiner but still doing something he or she is passionate about vs. sitting on the couch playing video games…) that kid may stand out. NOT BECAUSE OF THE DOLLHOUSE.</p>

<p>Got it? </p>

<p>Well, so much for the 650 word limit idea… :(</p>

<p>JYM, mea culpa.</p>

<p>The point was NOT the dollhouse. The point was the student, the application, and the Adcom- a nice triad if you will. Donating to homeless shelters is quite irrelevant, as is the layout, the pool, the dining room. So focus on the triad.</p>

<p>I thought the dollhouse became a sort of metaphor when used by QM in followup posts.</p>

<p>There is a very fine line between math and philosophy, for instance, and the same verbal talent that makes you good at one is vital for the other; it’s not just calculational ability or the ability to visualize things that is involved in math.)</p>

<p>Yes.<br>
…</p>

<p>As usual I’m on a thread all by my lonesome.</p>

<p>Many read…few post. You are not alone, alh.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Maybe the prospective elite college applicant can ingratiate him/herself in with the adcoms by serenading them with music. And not common for such colleges genres like “Classical” and “Refined Jazz”, either. </p>

<p>Specifically an electric twanger plugged directly into a Marshall quad-stack with volumes turned up to 21 and pointed at the admissions office. </p>

<p>If schools with Princeton’s old stereotypes/history are serious about admitting more “Green haired folks”, this applicant is a shoo-in. </p>

<p>:D</p>

<p>Also, some colleges have actually admitted folks who put on art/music shows like the following:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.youtube.com/v/jZ1uYUZiZew”>https://www.youtube.com/v/jZ1uYUZiZew&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, now the average of my last two posts is about 400. Consider yourself gamed.</p>

<p>I’m not being coy about the dollhouses. I actually thought that most people would think it was a good idea to build dollhouses for children in under-served schools, homeless shelters, and shelters for battered women. Nor did I mean to focus narrowly on dollhouses. It’s just an example.</p>

<p>I did intend the dollhouse example to raise several questions. In a broad sense, the questions include “How can one offer volunteer services in the form that is most meaningful for the recipients?” and “How does anyone know if what she/he perceives as ‘good works’ are perceived in the same way by the recipients?” For instance, helping to serve people in soup kitchens is generally viewed as good work. But from what I have read and heard, there is some discomfort among people who need to obtain some of their food from soup kitchens, because they feel that the volunteers are often separated from them, and often the volunteers do not eat with them.</p>

<p>In the context of college applications and CC, this gets at the question, “How does any applicant know if what she/he perceives as ‘good works’ will be perceived in the same way by the application readers?” [This is less important than how the works are perceived by the beneficiaries–by a long way–but it is relevant in the context of CC.]</p>

<p>blossom makes a good point that essays will probably be viewed differently at different “top” schools. I get that. It might make the question in the third paragraph irrelevant.</p>

<p>Also, thanks collegealum314, for your post about the differences between admissions at U of Chicago vs. Harvard. I agree with that view–of course, I know just a little about either place.</p>

<p>@ collegealum314 - To the extent that you’re right about those priorities, I’m in the U of C camp. But while I think you may be in general correct, I have a feeling that a lot of the people Chicago identifies as the “best minds” might also be very attractive to Harvard, and that a lot of the people that Harvard identifies as the likeliest leaders would be valued by Chicago. The difference might come in at that middle pile that blossom was talking about - I suspect U of C and Harvard are going to have pretty similar “obvious admit” and “obvious deny” piles, but would prioritize different things when it comes to the vast middle. This is significant, but isn’t the same as suggesting that Harvard doesn’t care that much about academic achievement once you’ve reached a baseline threshold (which I’m not sure that you are suggesting, but QM has).</p>

<p>QM - For goodness sake. How about we just stop trying to tailor our hobbies to college admissions in the first place? I’m not talking about extremes: knowing that elite schools like EC involvement, it is important, if you want to go to one, to have some significant involvement in a couple even if you’d actually prefer to be spending every minute you weren’t solving complicated theorems playing video games with friends. Similarly, even if you really hate math, you might study to make sure your math SAT is high enough to be competitive. But to think it is productive to spend an iota of your time wondering if your eccentric sideline could be tweaked to make you more marketable to an elite school, that’s time wasted. Once we’re at that level, the responses of admissions is too unpredictable to game.</p>

<p>Let’s use the analogy of preparing for a first date. Reasonable things to do would include taking care to present a nice appearance and, maybe, thinking about what in your life would or would not be interesting to talk about with the average person. If you know a little something about your date, you can tailor it a little more: if we share a religious background, I might talk about that; if we’re in the same literature program, I might talk more about novels we enjoy. </p>

<p>What I’m not going to do is sit around saying “Hm. If we talk about favorite TV shows, should I mention that I like Breaking Bad, or mention that I like Parks and Recreation? Breaking Bad probably gives us more to talk about, but it is a little intense; Parks and Recreation is lighter, which is good and bad. But wait - I bet more guys watch Breaking Bad than P&R. So he’s more likely to have seen BB, but also might be subconsciously more likely to judge me as less feminine for my enjoyment of it. Whatever shall I do?” And I certainly wouldn’t start watching The Big Bang Theory - a very popular show I don’t watch – on the theory that it might help me connect with a potential soulmate. You do the best you can and prepare for predictable contingencies, rather than obsessing over the most subjective, unlikely, and burdensome concerns that could possible make a difference. </p>