So I know the basic hooks (underrepresented minority, lower class, etc.) and basic deterrents (over-represented race, etc.), however I know very little about other background aspects that can either help or hurt a person’s admission chances. Would you guys mind making a list?
Legacy, first generation, athlete, under represented minority,home state or country, artistic talent, gender, major donor. These will be of varying importance depending on where you are applying. For state public research universities they will be less significant, for colleges with endowments of $1m/student hooks like legacy will be more significant. For an Ivy League school or very top LAC, you essentially fall into a category based on things like gender and hooked or not and you are competing for admissions spots with similar students. After admitting legacies, athletes, major donor offspring there may be 50 percent of admission spots left. That’s why overall admissions stats like GPA and SAT score can be deceptive
Hooks: Legacy, Recruitable for that Division of school, major donor or related to one (donation might as well be in the 7 figures and with a lot of zeros), URM, Gender (especially for boy heavy schools), Immigration statuses/stories, underrepresented geographical region, last name is Obama, Kennedy, or Rockefeller, income bracket (especially for not need-blind schools), family is a faculty member.
Deterrents: Gender (if you are a boy applying to MIT for example), Sexuality (in conservative schools), ORM (Asians), overrepresented geographical regions, serious academic violations, high income brackets (>300k), competitive majors.
The female hook is usually only useful when you’re applying for engineering, pre-law, etc. Being a male can actually also be a hook in female-heavy schools.
What level of school are we talking? Most schools are not that selective.
@bopper I’m mostly asking about schools with acceptance rates of about 25% and lower