What exactly is "the slate"?

jamimom
Tue, 01 Feb 2005 17:40:33 +0000

Most adcoms from private colleges that take a lot of time and care in evaluating applicants, will do a quick look at who else is applying from the same school just to make sure that there is some internal equity. They may do nothing about it if even there is some issue that arises, but they do want to be aware that exists. It can cause all kinds of trouble to accept an athlete, URM or legacy that is not as highly ranked as an unhooked student with a superior academic profile. The reason is usually that there are too many kids in the same category as the unhooked student–he is nothing special whereas the hook literally fishes the other kids out of the applicant pool. That is probably why they call them hooks! The schools I know do this at the very end of the admissions process, they do not line up the candidates from each school and do a side by side comparison. I do not know specifically how Yale does this. I do know that 2 of the 4 kids accepted from our school thus far are both performing arts types. Sometimes there is a benefit to having some hooks in the pool as you just might be accepted because of how unfair it would look to deny you and take the hooks. Though no school will admit this, I can see how it could happen.