Just a nit, but I wouldn’t call someone who came down with mental illness that did not exist at app time “a loser.”
Gfg, apologies for mixing in a response to WQ in a confusing way.
But how do we get to the professional acumen of the elite adcoms? As is often pointed out, including here, they do their job to the colleges’ satisfaction. My earlier comment was that a kid can “show” various traits. An adcom can see how a kid has made various choices. Etc. It isn’t rocket science to look for patterns.
The kids who write one off sentence aren’t some cream that gets denied for that one slip. The exciting kids have enough great that a slip can be ignored or discounted.
No I didn’t want to call them a loser either. I’m sure there’s a better way to phrase it. I was thinking about putting together a team and how you don’t want to lose members of the team. Obviously many students can succeed at college despite mental illness, but for others it really is debilitating and they have to scale back. I was think that the colleges lose out on someone who had been a great candidate in high school, but through no fault of their own had an illness that manifested itself after admission to the college. Didn’t mean to offend! No college graduates 100% of their class. Presumably if the admissions committees were perfect they would. 