<p>"^Whereas my opinion is that if one is truly a zero-chancer, the money is better spent on dinner for the parents or donated to the local women’s shelter."</p>
<p>Who the hell are you to say he wont get accepted? Unless your an Admissions Officer don’t judge him based only on his stats and ECs. Jeez the people on this site telling you if you will get in or not just don’t listen to them. Everyone on here is either trolling about their stats or here to make other students feel bad. I doubt people on here have 4.0 with 5 AP classes and 10+ Extra Curriculars. SWIM got into Yale with like 3 clubs and a 3.8 GPA and that was only a few years ago. </p>
<p>"Brown is my daughter’s “throw away” application. Her stats are in range but she’s hardly the top candidate in a pool like that. Still, she’s enjoying the application and learning a lot about what she wants based on learning about the school itself. It’s helped her define the rest of her list which is filled with much more likely options. "</p>
<p>Again how do you know this. Do you work for the Brown admissions office? </p>
<p>"I am a strong discourager of “just if” applications by students several standard deviations from the admitted student norm. And if the OP and his/her family were to ask me that face to face (like some do at my college fair info sessions), I’d be just as frank. "</p>
<p>Thats not your choice its the OPs choice. It sounds like you just want less people applying. </p>
<p>“C’mon. That is a video of 3 freshmen sharing what they wrote about and some tips. It is peer to peer advice. Living in another country is not a hook. Nor is an interesting essay about that. Hooks are generally URM, legacy, athlete; sometimes a long record of fat donations or being from an under-represented state. The kid who lived in Belgium made his experience interesting and relevant. None described gpa or stats, just approach.”</p>
<p>I said he made it interesting which made it a hook. He basically said it pushed his admission. You can’t have a single definition for a hook unless your the admissions officer. A hook is what you make of it. If being disabled is interesting and makes you stand out by fighting against it use it. Stop having single definitions for hooks you sound very close minded (like most Junior/Seniors with fake stats are).</p>
<p>“By that definition, being a grifter, a stripper or a cannibal could be a hook. But none of them should be grounds for admission to a selective university or college.”</p>
<p>Are you serious? You obviously know what I meant and you are just twisting words.</p>
<p>" Colleges need linebackers and they need weathy donors, so being a recruited athlete or coming from a family that can (and would) make an eight-digit donation is a real hook. "</p>
<p>“But I don’t for one instant believe that having lived abroad confers anything like that kind of a leg up in admissions–especially not at highly selective institutions.”
^^Again how the hell do you know unless your an admissions officer. It changes every year and sometimes they want a kid who lived abroad. Unless you work for Yale/Brown do not tell me I am wrong because you have the same amount of knowledge of the Admissions Office as everyone else on this board, so stop saying my opinion is wrong. You sound closed minded (Another reason most people leave College Confidential).</p>
<p>Please look on Urban Dictionary, its almost as if your sentences were copied and pasted to the examples of the definitions. Oh and don’t try to correct my grammar, my keyboard sucks (Judging someone on typing on a keyboard, another reason CC has bad rep).</p>