How would other students know whether or not a student had a “hook”?
Unless that’s code word somehow for perceived racial (or gender I suppose) affirmative action.
After 30k posts, I would think you would know by now there are four large hooks: urm, athlete, legacy/dev, and first gen.
Re: #20
Recruited athlete and URM are the most visible perceived “hooks”, but relation to big donor, celebrity, politician, etc. sometimes becomes known (“ordinary” legacy tends to be the least visible). This thread was inspired by a side discussion about Jared Kushner and similar in another thread.
These “hooks” are not necessarily the same at every college, and their effect is likely to be greatly different.
It is likely, on average, that the size of these “hooks” at colleges that consider them are:
Huge: big donor / development, relation to celebrity / politician / business leader / etc. that the college sees as important
Large: recruited athlete (may vary by sport)
Small: legacy, URM
Least likely to actually be a “hook”: first generation to college
@ucbalumnus I agree with your assessment. But I bet if you asked the average parent (non-CC), they would have that order flipped. The vast majority of people believe being a URM and/or athlete are the biggest hooks one can have.
This thread risks becoming terribly unfair. And laden with, ya know, the anecdotes.
You may think that because you can identify some possible hook, that the kid got in without fully qualifying
…but that’s on you. Think about it.
As far as resentment goes, I was told by a friend that when her daughter got into a top Ivy school with double legacy, her best friend of several decades resented this so much that their friendship became permanently scarred. The experience left my friend, and her daughter, deeply hurt. People can be very strange. What’s such a big deal about Ivy League that’d end the best friendship that had been built over several decades? One thing that I myself have experienced is that the college admissions time is a great time to discover who your true friends are and what’s up in their psyche.
@lookingforward ‘Think about it’ indeed.
As evidenced by my low number, I read/learn more than I post. I want to thank you for being a consistent, fair poster around the hook discussion.
No resentment and no stigma.
I suppose it depends on how you define big donor. Even at elite colleges, the number of students whose parents make Kushner level donations, 3 million+ in today’s dollars, is almost too small to be worth discussing.
While a hook can get someone in the door, IMO each person should ultimately be judged based on his/her work and contributions. If there is a stigma I think it would disappear if an individual proved to be a hard-working, involved, contributing student at the school. The stigma would remain if the student tried to slide by with minimum effort and interest.
These things happen all the time and not just for college – well placed parents will use contacts to get their kids the best jobs etc. It is a part of life. In the end each person will be judged on his/her own merits.
Actually, I think the mentality that invented hooks and advantages for various types of diversity is exactly the type of thinking that prevents society from judging people on their own performance-related merits. The calculus now is always the individual plus some X factor related to hereditary physical traits or perceived social circumstances.
My younger D was once told by a coach that he wasn’t putting her in several races even though she was the fastest girl on the team. The problem was not so much that he didn’t race her (although she was the only one on the whole team he didn’t race because this was not a matter of putting different talent level runners in different types of meets. He was just holding her out "to give other kids a chance to win.) The problem was that he gave this as his reasoning: he said it wasn’t FAIR to the other kids that she wins all the time because she was “lucky” that she came from a “running family.” To which she replied, “What do you mean? My parents don’t run! They don’t exercise at all!” But alas, her sister was a runner. D did not understand how some runner related to her but living clear across the country (and therefore someone who was not training with her, coaching her or giving her any assistance) gave her an unfair advantage that needed to be compensated for. And this was the most interesting part: D did not inherit a distance runner’s body. At all. She is short, wide and a bit chubby like her parents. In addition, she not only had some physical disabilities but also significant cognitive delays She was faster than the others ONLY because she trained harder, both in the summer and after hours. In addition, it should be noted that the typical kids without her supposed unfair advantages to whom the coach was trying to give a self-esteem boost, never continued in the sport after that season anyway.
This coach thought he understood D’s background based on one detail, but got it completely wrong.
The issue to me is that, like this coach, adcoms are not God. Therefore, they can make assumptions about a child’s background which may or may not be accurate. They may conclude that one kid with affluent parents had access to academic advantages like tutoring or test prep, but in reality mom and dad might have spent all their money on themselves for fancy cars, exotic vacations, and the latest home decor. I have seen this. I have also seen kids whose lower income parents scrimped every penny to send them to good schools, test prep and tutors. In our school district there are URMs whose parents are doctors and who live in the best neighborhoods, and Caucasians who live in trailer parks with one parent earning minimum wage who cares nothing about education. There are kids with Chinese birth parents who were adopted by folks of another background and thus were never raised in the stereotypical tiger Chinese way, though many people who see their A’s like to assume they were.
I think all these extraneous factors are tough to determine accurately just by looking at a zip code or a box checked on the Common App. And many times the resentment people feel comes from wrong assumptions, like that the athlete has lower academic credentials, etc.
In college? Not really. I think everyone is much more concerned about their own accomplishments that they can do in college, rather than why they were accepted at all. The only kids that would probably stigmatize hooked kids are the same ones that still bring up their standardized test scores and class ranks in college.
In high school? Yes. A lot of people are bitter about not getting into their desired school so they may take it out on people that were. I’ve heard people with stats nowhere near mine tell me I got accepted to schools because I was black. I’ve heard kids comment over whether another student “deserved” to get in somewhere, without really knowing the full story. They’re just comments. You can cut the haters out of you’re life or let the comments slide, but the judgement is still there.
The parents seem mostly happy for everyone all the same. I’ve never had an adult say anything negative about me or my school.
My DD goes to a competitive high school and one if the teachers (instrument) assumed she wasn’t bright because she is an athlete. There are lots of assumptions that seem to run rampant in competitive environments.
You can point to some high school unfairness, but now the challenge is to show your match for your target colleges. A whole different game.
Don’t assume adcoms are so broadly dismissive. You have a chance to learn more of what matters, in your app, than “best at.” It’s not just your resume.
And I’m going to speak out on behalf of athletes at the elite schools.
I’d like to remind every person who sniffs that the athlete got into Ivy X “just because they’re jocks” of the enormous time commitment, discipline, physical/emotional toughness and talent it takes to get to the level of being recruited by a top school.
Fact is, these young people have A SKILL they can sell. They can contribute to the school’s vibe, tradition and history. They’ve accomplished something. And yes, they had to have the grades and the SATs. Maybe not as high as the “average” Ivy admit, but still high enough to make them qualified for the vast majority of highly-ranked schools.
And their reward isn’t to just spend four years in a posh setting… their reward is to do it all again for hopefully four more years, while studying, writing papers, going to classes, making friends, discovering their academic passion – on top of hours of daily practice/training and weekend competitions.
Yea. It’s so “easy” to get into an Ivy when you’re an athlete. Nothing to it.
According to our D, there was a lot of nasty chatter at her private HS about two low income URMs getting into Top 20s. I guess the undercurrent of the gossip was these kids were good, but not high stat, students, therefore somehow making them undeserving. I think one had the nerve to be an art major too, further “evidence” she was not worthy.
Just hearing this all second hand left a very bad taste in my mouth about the culture at her HS re: college admissions and the pecking order.
I’m going to say athletics is one of oddest parts of the admissions process. Yes, some teams, such as Alabama’s football team and Duke’s basketball team, could be described as semi-professional teams, which can turn a direct profit and are significant for alumni fundraising. For the most part, collegiate sports are a giant waste of a university’s budget. Who goes to cross-country or swim meets except for the family and friends of the competitors?
Look, there ARE schools with no (or almost no) sports. If you disapprove of money spent on athletics send your child there.
If you want your child to go to a university with a culture of school spirit and a tradition of sport, don’t criticize the very people who help create it. You can’t have it both ways.
Title IX has created a lot of opportunities for women to play in those sports that ‘no one but their parents watch.’ I think its a good thing. Schools can’t have just one big sport like Duke basketball or Alabama football. Div 1 schools have to sponsor at least 14 teams and those have to be proportional to the male/female student population. If a school has a football team, it needs (proportionally) 85 women athletes to be in compliance. Women’s crew, hockey, swimming, gymnastics get support. A good thing.
Yes, it is mostly parents who watch my daughter’s sport, but boyfriends, sorority sisters, dorm neighbors also come (free for students). I was at one game where a high school team came to watch one of their former teammates. That exposed 20 female high school students to a STEM school that is only about 1.5 hours away from their high school but that they probably never would have considered for college. Probably a better sales pitch than sending 20 brochures to the team. And cheaper.
Do robotics competitions attract a big crowd that is more than parents? Should the schools financially support those if a profit can’t be made off it as an alumni fundraiser? Marching band? Poetry contests?