Would Yale take a flier on a kid?

lookingforward
Sat, 03 Nov 2018 05:47:46 +0000

When they say some large percent is capable, that’s all it means. A former MIT rep here once said, for the Old SAT, that any score with a 7 in front shows a kid is “able to do the work.” (For some colleges, the bar is now higher, with the New SAT.)

But in building a community, they look for more than essays, recs and stats. And the personal qualities need to match what the college wants to find, be relevant to that. In the past, gibby and I agreed far fewer than 23k get past Harvard’s first cut. That can be for a host of reasons. Tippy top adcoms know what sorts they want, what makes a kid able to thrive there, engage, make friends, have some impact, and have seen hundreds of thousands in a decade.

If Ms Spiegel, eg, had shown some lack of something, some dubious qualities, poor real life interpersonal skills, whatever, her shot would have gone down. Imo. The more you learn, the more one can fine tune.

Holistic doesn;t just mean the other strengths a kid has. It means the whole. Keep learning. The competition is nuts.