<p>Not really first-generation or legacy. At least at Harvard, those just don’t carry the same kind of weight as some other things do. But certainly “development admit” and “recruited athlete” are hooks.</p>
<p>Hook isn’t exactly an official criterion like, say, grade point average, but it does seem to exist at many selective colleges, including Harvard. I like to say a hook is an attribute of an applicant that fulfills an institutional want or need. Colleges have football teams, so they want players; being the top-rated high-school linebacker in Texas, then, would certainly be a hook. Colleges need money, so being from a family of big donors is a hook. Colleges want socioeconomic diversity, so coming from relatively impoverished circumstances or being part of an underrepresented minority group is a hook.</p>
<p>So then the question is, does Harvard particularly want or need ROTC participants enough to favor them in admissions over other applicants? Despite the fact that they’ve just welcomed ROTC back, I don’t think so. (But I’ll admit, I did not read that NYT article; the link didn’t work for me.)</p>
<p>Presumably, it will emerge in your application as a defining trait of yours. It will perhaps be something that makes you memorable to the admissions officers who review your file. That’s good. Students who are easily forgotten don’t get admitted.</p>
<p>But hook? As in, give you an advantage over others? Probably not.</p>