You are so right about this! During an open house at U Chicago,(not Harvard , but very competitive), the admissions officer said frequently students were admitted because they were looking for someone who played a specific instrument.
Admissions officers tend to use that as an example, but I have heard nothing about students being admitted with binding commitments to play their instrument in a particular band or orchestra.
@epiphany, OK, here is my “wisdom”. It’s not speculation, it’s facts. My daughter’s success rate at tippy-top “lottery” schools was about 5x what you would have expected if it were a random lottery. And yet, she didn’t even list any community service on her application because it wasn’t a significant activity for her. I don’t think it’s helpful to the kids and parents reading this site to go on about how you need hundreds or thousands of hours of community service to get into these schools. You don’t. She didn’t even have time to go to all the admitted student events from the lottery schools she did get into.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t have helped her to have that. I expect it would have. Where it really would have helped is in scholarship applications which really do require it.
It’s a good thing I didn’t listen to this cc mantra and insist that my daughter save our application fees and not bother with all those top schools for lack of those required volunteer hours.
It’s also awfully condescending to assume that young people who don’t rack up hundreds or thousands of volunteer hours have a “disinterest in the wider world” and do “nothing for anyone but himself”.
Read the threads of the kids who didn’t get in somewhere and are bemoaning all that “wasted” time. You’ll find them there.
It’s not at all condescending. It’s usually based on quite a bit of life experience.
So, several of you seem to be saying that there are more hooks than race, athletics, and legacy. Goegraphy, artistic talent, major and maybe even community service can be hooks as well. Elite colleges are looking for students who check all kinds of specific boxes, and sometimes students who otherwise seem lacking in one or another supposedly “essential” criteria get in because they check one of those boxes. Interesting.
Applications are not all “box-checking”. There are essays and recommendations to name a few other components.
Yes, but a “hooked” applicants with threshold-meeting gpa and SAT scores is probably going to get in, right? Especially when they check an unusual box like Pacific Islander, or Bassoonist, or Shot Putter, or Montanan (?).
My daughter’s success rate at tippy-top “lottery” schools was about 5x what you would have expected if it were a random lottery"
For the twelfth time no one is saying it is a random lottery from the school’s point of view, only that it behooves the applicant to think so once he’s submitted his app, because that’s all he can do at that point, and if he has any common sense whatsoever he should look at it that way and state admit rates in the face vs being “convinced” he will sweep the Ivy table.
'So, several of you seem to be saying that there are more hooks than race, athletics, and legacy. Goegraphy, artistic talent, major and maybe even community service can be hooks as well. Elite colleges are looking for students who check all kinds of specific boxes, and sometimes students who otherwise seem lacking in one or another supposedly “essential” criteria get in because they check one of those boxes. Interesting."
Those aren’t hooks. Those are factors.
I think you would have to be living under a rock not to be able to figure out that these decisions are made on the basis of many factors, not these one-off “he’s not qualified but oh, I see he’s from Wyoming / plays the oboe, so poof, he’s in.” I seriously wonder how some of the adults on here function in the work world where you take all kinds of things into consideration when hiring people, some quantifiable and some not.
I don’t think that’s an assumption you can safely make. At some schools, “hooked” applicants need to be acceptable in nearly all other ways and many posters here seem unable to move beyond the most simple metrics.
How much does it mean when it’s clearly being done for the purpose of college admissions as is seen all too often on this site? Is that not simply “doing nothing for anyone but himself?” if the only motivation is because colleges “require” it?
Do you think adcoms can’t see that? What did you think was really happening when you see the posts that say “I can’t believe this applicant didn’t get accepted…”?
“, but a “hooked” applicants with threshold-meeting gpa and SAT scores is probably going to get in, right? Especially when they check an unusual box like Pacific Islander, or Bassoonist, or Shot Putter, or Montanan (?).”
Maybe, maybe not. The admissions rate is not 100% among legacies! or URMs, or people from Mpntana, or shot putters. I don’t know what part of “there are far more qualified students than slots” is so difficult to comprehend, nor “there is no magic combo of grades, ECs and scores that guarantees anything.”
Duke has said several times that if they only looked at the valedictorians in the applicant pool and threw out the rest, they’d STILL have more than enough to fill their class over multiple times.
Why would you think a hooked applicant is some kind of shoo-in? What about the number of qualified applicants vs the number of spots is so difficult to grasp and why do people keep insisting there’s some “formula” or set of kids who will always be admitted?
Yes, but if there’s a box to check, there is also a “quantity desired/allowed” and once that number is reached, they move on, right?
@Zekesima Not everything needs to be simplified to numbers.
Who said there is a box to check?
I’m sure there are boxes to check. These people aren’t gods, they are people trying to manage a large project and I would expect they use modern tools to do this, such as spreadsheets listing all kinds of things which they want represented in their class, so that they can make sure they have enough harpists, the kids from all 50 states they like to put on their information sheets, and yes, the kids who are going to participate in their campus community service organizations.
I think you’re under some odd impression that there is a master excel spreadsheet with spots for bassoonists, newspaper editors, classics majors, and people from Montana and adcoms go down the list and dutifully tick off boxes. Adcoms admit PEOPLE. People who seem lively, full of spirit, who have something to add, who have something in their app that suggests that they will be an asset to campus life, not just a bookish drone. The ways in which they demonstrate those characteristics will differ person to person. One person might demonstrate leadership in a different way from another. That’s fine.
It’s like asking if you choose your friends or romantic partners by spreadsheet.
This is all common sense. I really don’t know why this is so baffling.
The quote below from post #16 on this thread is by far the best post on this topic. So true!! Totally nailed it, @scholarme!
“I think of Ivy adcoms as shoe shoppers with unlimited budget but limited shoe closet space.
If your app is the shoe that gets picked, yay, but there are thousands of other shoes just as nice that did not get picked.”
Similarly, picking a college is like picking an outfit you will wear every single day for the next 40 years. Make sure it is one that fits and that you feel comfortable in and love!!
Be the shopper, not the shoe!!