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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Unvarnished and perhaps unwelcome truth from someone who's been in University administration and knows EXACTLY how things work:

[b]The essays and the letters of recommendation. That's what distinguishes your kid.[/b]

Yes, just like with job applications you need to personalize the essays to each specific college. Personalization makes the school think you're actually interested in them, and that there's a good chance you'd go if you're accepted. So yield probability is higher than with students just spraying applications out there. Dumb to blow this off, and worth grounding your kid if they try to be lazy. Alternative is to employ your kid from the start of summer to write the essays and then personalize each one so they're done by the end of summer.

A corollary to the personalization--be sure to distinguish why you personally would be thrilled to bring your gifts to that college or university. In fact this is probably more important, regardless of whatever pablum the college/university spews about being "need-blind". Admissions officers know how to count and add. Make sure those gifts correlate positively with the ability to pay full tuition. Best if those gifts also indicate a higher likelihood that you and your family will donate beyond tuition paid over your lifetimes.

BTW that's where the aforementioned HS Service Award winner who got rejected all over the place went wrong. A kid who gets a Service Award sees the world beyond her family's front door, and is less likely to value donations to the alma mater above whatever "food for the poor" or "save Third World babies" nonprofit catches her fancy. The kid needs to become a superstar in saving the world to generate enough positive PR for the university to outweigh the frat kid whose family routinely donates a few K to the alma mater each year as an alum.

Finally, the letters of recommendation. Note that none of you people know what your recommender actually submits to the college. Sure, they may "show" you the "Letter". But are you sitting with them as they pull up the "Letter", show it to you with the filepath and filename, post it to the University website and sign off that indeed you parent and student have followed your promise to waive your right to see the letter? Or for the Luddites out there, are you sitting with the recommender as they take the printed letter directly from your hands, place it into the envelope, seal it in front of you (of course you already stamped it), sign it in front of you, and walk with you to the mailbox to drop it off?

No, you're not. You're placing your faith in the recommender to write a superlative letter for your kid. You're trusting further that the recommender has credibility and an excellent track record with institutions of higher education (who talk with each other and have employees previously working in admissions at other schools).  You're praying further that your recommender does not just sing hosannas to your child, but that the recommender explicitly ranks your child above current peer applicants from the school as well as past applicants for whom they submitted a letter of recommendation.

Uncomfortable truth: not all letters of recommendation have these qualities. You're supposed to be choosing the person who will write you the best recommendation. So it's supposed to be a showstopper. Some letters then are positive but not positive enough, letting down the Admissions Officer and making them wonder about your judgment. Some are poorly written and indicate that your high school (and thus your student) is a joke. Some praise the wrong things such that the University wonders what exactly is going on between the recommender and the student (i.e. the Civics teacher/Head Football Coach writes that the student "[i]returns from cheerleader workouts at lunch ready to go, strutting into his room looking like a million bucks exuding grace confidence and loveliness as she gets ready to discuss civics in America[/i]").

Schools want kids who will accept their offers, and who will be a net positive. That's the needle you need to thread.[/quote]
Back in the 80’s, my best friend and I asked the same English teacher for a college recommendation. He handed us the sealed envelopes at the same time. After school, we steamed them open and discovered he wrote the exact same letter for both of us. He wrote that we both shone while acting out the part of Hester Prynne of the Scarlet Letter in class. Never happened. Anyway I got into Stanford and she got into UVM. [/quote]

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