Just to clarify, I meant that you generally need to be good at everything (grades, scores, ECs, etc.) as a baseline for top 20 admission, not necessarily that everyone needs an “AND” as well. However, I do think that top 20 applicants also need to make their application come across as their own voice as well as come up with an interesting essay, even if it’s not about your “AND”.
“The problem is that now students will start to look for a unique “and,” instead of just pursuing something they’re interested in. Remember the good old days, when students played a sport because they enjoyed it and not because they were supposed to? Or played a musical instrument, or did volunteer work, and so forth and so on.”
I disagree. The “and” can absolutely be a hobby or interest. My kids’ were. They weren’t pursued at high levels, they didn’t make groundbreaking insights, they didn’t win any awards. They just had things that made them interesting and different. They weren’t odd/quickly juggle-cats-while-on-the-unicycle either.
Exactly, PG. My son’s passion is music. However, very different from the typical CC musician - he quit school band after 8th grade. His pursuits revolve around writing, producing and performing progressive metal and heavy metal music. He has been in at least 7 bands since middle school. He has had the same guitar teacher since 6th grade, and continues to work with him this summer up until he leaves for college. He has also dabbled in DJing as a side job. He quit all ECs senior year (including soccer, which he played year round at a high level since Kindergarten) to focus solely on music, and also had his worst academic year due to too much time spent on music (some of it was also heavy AP course load, but music played a part…). He has never won a single award or was offered a recording contract. He hasn’t even sold a single song on Soundcloud, or won a battle of the bands!!
However, he happens to be a very good writer and was able to convey his schtick through his essays. He got into 7 of 8 music industry related programs to which he applied, all with merit awards. I guess there aren’t too many clean cut metal heads with pretty good grades out there… 
It’s all a matter of packaging, ultimately. The elite colleges are looking for the product that jumps off the shelf, in one way or another. A good student who loves skateboarding and snowboarding won’t impress them automatically. A good student who has won various “X-Game” competitions and has Olympic prospects will impress them, of course, but so might the more quotidian boarder who submits a knockout essay about the physics involved and relating the hobby to academic interests.
I don’t like the term “packaging,” because it suggests (to me, anyway) that the student has been “packaged” by somebody else, and that the presentation is largely fake. I agree, though, that an applicant is selling himself through his application, and that it pays to understand what the “customer” (the college) is looking for.
I am not disagreeing with the consensus here, but I am disagreeing with the potential outcome of this alleged perspective by the admissions counselors. I do feel for the naive kid who may enjoy the same pastime as another student but doesn’t comprehend that the college might care about what he considers to be a silly hobby. I mean, we CCer’s understand that the adcoms like quirky, different and interesting, but even we may not know what will give our kids that nickname. Years after the fact, we realized S got into the top schools for which there was a space on their supplement for him to note a particular fact about himself, and was rejected by the others. We did not consider that little tidbit very relevant, but now think it may have been. I guess I am saying I am still bothered by the advantage of insider know-how.
What you call insider know-how just seems like basic common sense to me. It’s common sense that in a sea of 3.9s and 2300s and student council officers and tennis team leaders and newspaper editors that you need to stand out in some way.
Becoming an “insider” really means coming to web sites like this, reading books about college admissions, etc…no?
It always strikes me as odd how the CC community refers to the vast hordes of kids with 2300+ scores and 3.9s. The most recent data I can find shows that less than 10,000 kids get over a 2300 on the SAT and another couple thousand get 35-36 on the ACT. It’s probably safe to assume that some proportion of those kids have less than a 3.5-3.6 gpa, maybe 10-20%. So in reality there are probably less than 10,000 kids in the whole US (and internationally) that meet those standards. That’s a pretty good AND right there if you’ve got a 3.9 and a 2300 with at least a slightly rigorous transcript.
Woo gamma,
Sorry for the auto correct of your UN. I have 2 cousins who were both In last Olympics, and one won the X games. They were homeschooled in HS. I doubt they care about HYP admissions. I suspect they have another standard. Athletes at their level are not going to derail their careers for a college degree.
Sure, they know that they need to stand out, but might not comprehend that mentioning a card game they play would be a way to do it.
S2 plays banjo. His GC mentioned that in her recommendation letter. I don’t think it hurt at all.
Yeah, but they all post on CC and all want to go to the same 30 or so schools 
Lol! So true.
10,000 kids spread across top 20 schools, each school only has 500. Given each school’s enrollment is between 1,500 and 2,000, these kids are virtually guaranteed to get into a top school. Probably, you don’t need that AND.
Let me just add that I think many, many kids have something that would make an excellent AND. I’m just trying to promote an “insider” tip that applicants should think about what that might be when they are crafting applications to sell themselves as well as they can.
The sad part is that all of this competition is about undergrad college. Grad and professional school is what matters more, a talented and hard working kid can stress less in HS, go to an excellent slightly lower tier state or private school, then go to a really good grad school and come out far ahead for a far smaller expenditure and have time to find out what they really want to do.
I think the private HS issue (higher admittance rates) is more a reflection of the abysmal state of the public schools. There just are not that many good public schools, and most of them follow the multi-track, shopping mall model instead of the focused model of most private schools. Many private schools get a GPA ‘bump’ at the most selective college admittance offices because they know that all of the courses - and the faculty- are of higher quality. They cannot give a ‘bump’ to a school which tries to serve all students with 30+ kids in an average HS class.
I do think the AND factor can make a difference. D was accepted into NYU as a studio art major. Her admissions was based 50% on her portfolio and 50% on everything else (a combo of gpa, SAT’s/ ACT’s, EC’s, essays, recommendations.)
Her portfolio must have been strong enough because otherwise she wouldn’t have been accepted. I did sweat the other 50% because her gpa was a weighted 90.1. Her scores were lopsided–610 math, 720 verbal. 26 math, 35 English. Strong EC’s, essays and recommendations. So to me it was a relief when she was accepted ED.
A few weeks later came an email accepting D into NYU’s scholars program. We were thrilled, but it did take me by surprise. We did ED to give her a boost and here they made her a scholar!
The following year, D asked ore of the deans in charge of scholars to write a letter of recommendation for her. That’s when the AND factor became clear, and to me it was the reason she was placed in scholars (and got that acceptance.)
D presented herself as strong in art with both her portfolio and EC’s. But her AND was that she had tons of music and theatre EC’s as well-- leader of an acapella group, leads in schools musicals, choir leadership, thespian board, etc. Lots of fund raising and community service through music and theatre. She also had experience working with children and talked about how she wanted to teach someday.
The Deans letter of rec went into how they loved that she was the embodiment of all that NYU Steinhardt offered. It is the school of art, music and education-- and D was strong in all three areas. So she was an artist AND a vocalist AND an actor AND an educator. The dean wrote that they expected that she could contribute to their community in so many ways with her background. And now as a senior, it turns out she did–with art shows that combine performance and sound, acting roles in student films, vocal lessons and performances and currently she’s even teaching ceramics to a pre college group at NYU.
So it was the AND factor that made her a stronger candidate–stronger than if she were an artist alone.
@uskoolfish good example that there may actually be a rhyme or reason to admissions - some actually know what they are doing!! Clearly they recognized your daughter’s strengths and it set her up to succeed.
I think part of the point is to do the “AND” without regard for admissions: it is a genuine, offbeat interest.