Stanford SCEA? Good stats, but not sure about ECs.

mathboy98
Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:53:25 +0000

Mathboy, I really do not follow your comments in the first paragraph. Are you saying the OP should highlight that he enjoys gardening in his essays to MIT, Caltech, and Stanford? That may work, but common sense tells me there are other subjects (i.e his research) that would make a bigger impact for an applicant who is going to present himself as wanting to major in the sciences. I am not clear how gardening is going to “contribute to the school’s community”.



Oh, I can clarify. My point was slightly more abstract than to say gardening could necessarily contribute to the school community. It is to say that while on first glance, if one’s activities aren’t anything one has won awards in, I wanted to emphasize that schools like HYPS (especially according to some knowledgeable posters I learned from) will foremost admit one not based on what their community will do for the one, but rather the other way around (only logical, of course, but a point many applicants do not appreciate enough). Which is why talented applicants can be rejected easily, and I want to say that awards do not mean everything. I believe an essay about an out of school involvement that may at first sound overused and completely the opposite of unique can be powerful if showing signs of some unique contribution the applicant can make to the school community.

To give an example: say the applicant is into a certain special form of community service. Say there is no award behind it (safe to say – heck, it’s community service, and every other applicant has done some probably). But that doesn’t mean the applicant can’t say something unique about this community service, something so unique and mature that it really stands out. After all, tons of applicants have tons of awards, and they needn’t exactly be super unique. Sure, a small percentage of the population in the US may have attained these awards, but then again, a small percentage of the US has attained 2300+ SATs, and we all know from the boring complaint threads on CC that these mean only a little. The conclusion is that it isn’t quite how accomplished the applicant is, but what the applicant is going to bring to the school. I have the impression that essays are taken very seriously.

So I think either one must be accomplished in very unique ECs, or present something unique in the essays that the AOs read and think would make a fine addition to the school community. While community service, vocal music, such activities, will not get applicants accepted, neither will any specific award, and I think it’s what one says about what one has done that gives the potential to make many apparently less than unique or impressive involvements into winners.