The Hook

Here’s the thing. Lots of kids are “Ivy Material”.

I know kids who weren’t legacies, athletes or big donors who got in. If you looked at the list of stuff they did I don’t know how many would predict they’d get in. Even legacies mostly get rejected. The kids I knew did one thing really well and in a variety of ways. So for example the musician, played in both the jazz band and orchestra at school, and had his own band that put out an EP and performed locally. He was a counselor/teacher at a local music camp in the summer. He also taught Hebrew School. And he was in at least two musicals in high school. Another kid did Science Research and got an Intel award. A CS kid (who was also a legacy) took AP Comp Sci as a freshman, had an award winning mod for an online game, did some CS work for a med school prof that got acknowledge in a paper and his program still gets used to analyze proteins. He worked in CS and got a recommendation from the president of the company. He also volunteered at the senior center. They were all genuinely nice kids that the teachers loved. They were also all fairly well rounded along with being pointy at one thing. But with tiny admissions rates, there is just no way of predicting who will get the nod.

There are definitely lots of great schools out there. One of the guides used to have a “If you liked Yale, look at…”

I think her ASL achievements are very nice. She should continue working on building what she has done. Starting a club isn’t enough, but if she’s the kind of leader that has that club doing significant work, that is note-worthy.

Anyway, good luck, I’m sure your daughter will have great choices, she sounds like a really nice kid.