And so did an admissions officer hand-write a note on my daughter’s acceptance essay to Yale (although daughter didn’t go there). But she didn’t get into Yale based on the essay that they enjoyed. She got into Yale because of her qualifications, which exceeded that of the Yale double-legacy in her high school class, who herself was also accomplished, not to mention a lovely human being, but apparently not as accomplished. I never saw the essay of the other girl. Maybe the committee also enjoyed, and “found helpful” her essay, too.
As @lookingforward said, Sarah Lawrence is not in the same category of the elites being referred to on this thread. A fine LAC, but not the subject here.
I’m not disputing or discounting the advice here, as I said, it is just the messenger. But I would say that this extreme focus on 750 words telling you who a kid is Not realistic. I actually have read many “essays that worked” on the school sites and I found the vast majority of them to be boring and insipid…“I have always been fascinated with the brain…” So I see what you mean that the essay itself is not the AND or the IT.
I think writing about any “bad” topic is fine, even your best friend the cat, if you come off looking introspective, bright and like a cool kid…I truly don’t mean to offend anyone, but I do think some of these schools are drinking their own kool-aide these days with some of the stuff they say to kids…
PS, my kid would love to “just get into Vandy” with is sad little set of near perfect scores and ECs:). He could care less about HYP…he even dropped Penn from his list after seeing it. I think he may actually be making real efforts to research and find a fit finally!!
Of course he had the goods, more or less, but he wasn’t a shoe-in. There were lots of things you had to overlooks statswise. (And this kid did not have the goods for HYP - he got into Chicago, Tufts, and Vassar, which were just a notch down in popularity.) Not like the older kid, who clearly had the goods, but was not as accomplished a writer.
I think you have to have good enough grades and scores to stay in the running, I think though it’s clear the softer parts of the application are going to end up deciding who makes the cut. The essay is part of that.
I;m still catching up but Hernandez hasn’t worked in admissions since something like 2003. Nothing says she has some keen insider tips and last time I looked (recently,) she had scrubbed the web of details other than her fabulousness. I am no fan.
Agree, mathmom’s sons sound like great young men. I think it’s clear that came through on their apps.
Don’t write about how your cat is your best friend. Ok, not if you are applying to an elite. It’s both irrelevant and inane, in the range of head smackers. Why take such such a chance on a college app to tippy tops when you’ve worked hard through 4 years?
No, you do not need to be deadly serious.
I don’t know where this confusion comes from, ha. Your essay isn’t meant to show ev-ery-thing about you. It can be a representative slice. The idea about the delay at Newark airport was intriguing for all it could show.
And this thing about unusual EC’s, at least understand it’s not the “unusual” that pushes a kid forward. An obsession with counting kibble isn’t going to make some adcom woozy. Not in a good way.
My kids wrote on what I thought were iffy topics. D1 got both a comment about hers on her admit letter and they praised it to the GC. IMO, it was the insight she offered, not the topic. I can guess the adjectives the readers shared. What the freak adjectives do you expect about how much you love your cat? haha.
On the other hand, not so long ago a Stanford admissions representative wrote about having to take a young woman who wrote a funny essay about hating her dog. I don’t doubt that she had the statistical qualifications, but this appeared to push her over the top (based on what the Stanford rep wrote). I think that particular essay was actually an AND.
The idea that the kid is going to go to Emory or Vanderbilt or Brandeis...
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Man, you guys are killing me. But I guess this is CC after all. :o)
You just trade in an super-uber-reach (Princeton) for 3 high reaches (Emory, Vandy, Brandeis).
Ha ha, I will suggest to my HYP-neurotic Asian neighbors to put down CMU’s CS program (for the STEM nerds) and NU’s theater program (for the artiste) as safeties for their so-special kids. :o)
After reading this thread, I guess my kids should just pick up their marbles and go home. :o)
Furry- my comment was facetious. The kids whose parents have hired the private counselors and are doing all the SAT tutoring and what- not are perfectly wonderful kids and strong students. But the counseling services are named “Ivy-Edge” and “Ivy-bound” and “Heading for Ivy” for a reason. Nobody in my neck of the woods is shelling out 15K for someone to get their kid into Baruch (a wonderful college by the way) and none of the SAT tutors advertise their ability to improve your kids scores enough to get them into Binghamton (another fine college). And no kid has ever spent his or her summer being drilled and edited on a college essay to make it into Rutgers (yet another fine college).
However, I must admit that occasionally I do have reservations about recommending this wonderful site to my relatives/friends who are not very familiar with the college admission thingy (and many of these people are somewhat neurotic about the college prestige). Just reading this thread, they will notice that many parents here have kids who are attending Yale, Stanford, CMU (CS) department), etc. I am just afraid that they may not understand how special/uncommon this is. What is that chinese saying - cross five passes and slay six generals - these kids did that. :o)
One of these blogs includes the following from the Tufts Dean of Admissions regarding the class of 2016:
“To highlight a few of the personalities heading our way next September, the ED class features a nationally-ranked Scrabble player from suburban Boston, a professional guitarist from New Haven, New Mexico’s ‘We the People’ state champ, the founder and president of the lumberjack club at a high school in Northern Virginia, a participant in Occupy Louisville, an equestrian from LA who competes in extreme cowboy racing and a blogger for Huffington Post. That’s quite a bunch!”
As ■■■■■■■■ goes on to say, “Are you starting to get a sense of what it means to be a ‘talented’ college applicant?”
Like it or not, the unusual “AND” helps an applicant, if it is authentic and sustained.
WIYQ, so the colleges mention those things. That’s not to say those are decision factors. Or tips or edges. They are extras that happen to be found.
And I personally don’t think they’re the sort of ANDs that get you in. I don’t know anyone who says, “We haven’t had a lumberjack in a while, let’s take him.” (Or her.) Or any variant of that.
Maybe some are missing the mega, and its simplicity. The colleges want to build a community. Depending on their academic standards an other values, they look for those kids who will fit and thrive. Make yourself fit. Know what that means, to those colleges. Don’t assume.
Make yourself fit doesn’t mean bend, fold and mutilate. It means recognize and show. It’spart of matching yourself. I don’t pity the kid who gets some writing advice nearly as much as the one who really thinks he needs to go take up heaven-knows-what.
And one teeny problem: not all top performers are top applicants. They make a lot of assumptions, from stats/rank shooing them in to how their LoRs will read to curing cancer to this mess about standing out in unusual ways. And then they can’t answer the app and supp questions in a reasonable way…
As mentioned in my earlier post, the point was different colleges emphasize essays to different degrees in their admissions process, and essays are more than just a minor component to admissions decisions at some colleges, including elite ones. Among HYPSMC… SWA… “elite colleges”, most mark essays in the “very important” criteria for admissions decisions in their CDS. A few mark them as more important than GPA or more important than test scores. Similarly at some “elite colleges”, comments on their website and comments from admissions officers are consistent with essays being a “very important” aspect of admissions decisions… not as extreme as Sarah Lawarence, but still not just a minor component.
I also agree with the earlier comments about the “and” including far more than essays. In one year, I analyzed the admissions decisions in the Stanford thread on this website. I found the GPA, test scores, class rank, course rigor and similar academic qualities had little correlation with admissions decisions among CC posters. There was actually a slight negative correlation between acceptance and most academic criteria, and a significant negative correlation with class rank. I expect this trend related to CC Stanford thread posters being a unique group that tends to have excellent academic qualifications, but more varied strength of non-academic criteria… Instead of academic criteria, the “and” by far had the strongest correlations with admissions decisions. By only considering ECs, awards, and other out of classroom activities / life experiences as ranked on a 1 to 5 scale (5=impressive at national level, 4= impressive at state level, 3=regional level, …,), I was able to correctly predict the majority of admissions decisions correctly. If I also filtered out the few posters who did not appear academically qualified and added weighting for hooks (particularly URMs), I was able to correctly predict the vast majority of admissions decisions correctly.
This of course does not mean all “elite colleges” have similar admission criteria to Stanford. Some emphasize very different criteria. For example, it’s my understanding that relevant work experience or otherwise displaying a passion for the hospitality industry is critical for Cornell Hotel School applicants; as can be seen by 90+% of the entering class having relevant work experience. Vanderbilt’s admissions decisions suggest that they place much more influence on test scores than both Stanford and Cornell, and less emphasis on the “and”. MIT claims the most important criteria is personality/character “match”, which they define at http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match . I could go on.
Of course no one ever says “We haven’t had a lumberjack in a while, let’s take him.” It’s not about filling a perceived niche. There are no special admission slots for lumberjacks.
Rather, the point is that you are more interesting as an applicant (and hence more likely to help build an exciting, diverse class) if you stand out somehow in your cohort.
For example, if you are asian, good at math and science, have fantastic grades and test scores, and are applying to HYPSM like thousands of others, do you think that you have a better shot if you a) play the violin (the stereotype) or b) authentically love and compete at extreme cowboy racing, do shark conservation work in Belize, or some such other atypical activity?
Personally, I’d get excited/amused/curious about and pick “b.” It’s human nature. Apparently, lots of people that work in admissions feel the same way.
PS Please note, in all of my posts, the emphasis on authenticity. Nowhere is it advocated that a kid should think that “he needs to go take up heaven-knows-what.” Play the bagpipes only if you love the bagpipes.
A wee bit sorry for hs kids who may be reading this thread.
I wouldn’t pick B if he had a lousy essay. Ha. Nor if that “activity” seemed less than he presented it to be. Ya know, that expensive parent paid-for week in a nice hotel in Belize…
I have no idea why post 294 wasted so many keystrokes trying to “inform” me about a business I have worked in professionally for many years but in any case I disagree that what applies to SL applies to a very different categoty , culture, & rank of college. I also fundamentally agree with LF that committee reflections about remembered essays are not necessarily a road map to admission but a confirmation of qualities apparent elsewhere in the app or an illumination of those qualities. There’s a lot of very misleading "information " on this thread.
