<p>Digmedia - thank you for your post. I know I have been thinking about “packaging” my daughter’s applications in that way – focusing on a particular area of strength in her academics & EC’s, which I think is somewhat unusual. We’ll call that X. She also has an area of strength that is not so unusual – her dance training – and I had felt the difference between the two is that with an emphasis on X. the ad com might tend to refer to her as the X-girl - it is rare enough that they are unlikely to others, and certainly not on the same day. As opposed to dance – my daughter would never be “the dancer” in the ad com’s eyes, but rather “another dancer” – or “the eighth dancer we’ve seen this week” – and I felt that being “THE __<strong><em>" as opposed to "a </em></strong>” was part of the key to getting attention.</p>
<p>It is encouraging to read that your friend feels that the acquiring of such a nickname is almost a guaranteed ticket of admission – though I have to note that other comments seem to indicate that your friend’s observations would not apply to colleges deemed “most selective” - for example, schools that accept less than 25% of applicants. I do think that the nickname would help – but I don’t think that by itself would be enough to put things in an arena where there are probably a lot of kids with better and more impressive nicknames. That is, I think curmudgeon’s “goat-girl” will get the attention of a lot of ad coms… but maybe not be such a big help before an adcom that is looking at “the intel science winner” and “the olympic gold medalist” during the same week. </p>
<p>I also think that it’s very possible that ad coms sometime assign bad nicknames --related to negative things that become apparent in the application process – that probably could sink an application very quickly. I can see how that could happen unintentionally if the student fashions an essay about overcoming a challenge or an event that changed his life that unduly emphasizes some negative problem. For example, my son once wrote an essay about how he had learned from a situation in which he had not lived up to a promise to do his share of the work for a group project – in the essay he sees the error of his ways and comes through in the end, choosing to prioritize the group work over an individual assignment due in another class. But if some ad com saw it differenty and labeled him “the slacker”… it would not have been such a good thing.</p>