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[quote=Anonymous]Here’s interesting info (from college confidential)

If you then listen to the Yale Admissions Podcast (or read the transcripts), they make similar points. Like, here is a critical passage on activities and recommendations:

MARK: –when it comes to things like your extracurricular activities and your letters of recommendation, we use a 9-point scale. So 9 is the strongest. 1 is the weakest. In practice, we primarily use the middle of a scale. You’re almost never going to see something that isn’t a 4, 5, 6, or 7–

HANNAH: Right.

MARK: –on a printed slate, even across hundreds of applications in a typical day.

HANNAH: Yeah. So for example, when we’re rating your extracurricular accomplishments, we occasionally see some super, super extraordinary extracurricular accomplishments, like an Olympic medal.

MARK: Yeah.

HANNAH: So we reserve those top, top ratings for something like that. Most people are going to fall in that middle range.

MARK: Right. We also read some really extraordinary letters of recommendation that give some amazing details about how a student transformed a learning environment and was absolutely singular in an educator’s career, and so we’ll reserve that 8 or that 9 for that kind of letter.

They also discussed the popular “spike” theory:

Yeah, and this relates to something that we actually got a listener email about, which is– it’s a good question, is about, do you need to have a spike in your application? And this is– what’s interesting is this is not a term that I had heard before. But it sounds like it’s pretty common out there among students who are talking to each other. So, Hannah, can you like– what’s the concept of a spike?
Yeah, so the idea is that you could either be well-rounded, or you could be pointy in your activities. So if you’re well-rounded, you do a lot of different varied things. And if you’re pointy or you have a spike, then you have one thing that you’re really, really, really good at.
Yeah, and I, over the years, have gotten tons of questions from students, saying, do you prefer well-rounded students, or pointy students?
Right. Yeah.
And my answer is, yes. All kinds.
Yes.
And it’s interesting, because I know that this actually is a line that admissions officers have used over the years, where they explain that what they’re looking for is a well-rounded student body, not necessarily well-rounded students and I can understand where that’s coming from, but I think it’s much too dismissive of the well-rounded student, who maybe isn’t particularly spiky in one area. So I think people hear that and say, oh I’ve got to be spiky so that my spike is going to join all the other spikes and then together–
[Reed] Right.
We’ll be this big spiky wheel or something, I don’t know.
Yeah, like whatever you do, that’s what you should do. I mean, if you happen to be the kind of person who wants to pursue a lot of varied things, if you’re a little bit of a jack of all trades, that’s great. Do that. And if you have this one clear passion, or spike, that you’re exceptionally good at, then do that. But one is not better than the other.
And we see students go in the wrong direction both ways, right? We see students who are passionate with a capital P about something, but they think that they need to have a bunch of other stuff in their applications.
Right, yeah.
So they’re just participants and involved, but it doesn’t mean much for us. And we also see students who really would love to be pursuing really disparate interests and contributing a lot different ways. They say, oh, I’ve got to have a spike. And so I need to abandon these things that I care about to double or triple down on this one thing. And no, you don’t need to do that at all.
Don’t– just don’t make these decisions based on how it’s going to look on your resume or on your college application. Make them based on how you actually want to be spending your time.
[Reed] Yes, there is a whole spectrum of activity, from the student who does it, all the student who does one thing. And when you get to college, we are not going to expect the student who does one thing to suddenly become a jack of all trades. And we’re not going to expect the student who loves doing it all to suddenly focus in on their extracurricular activities in college. You’re eventually going to have to select a major or majors. You’re not going to have to focus down your activities to one.
Yeah.

This is all consistent with the Harvard information, and is consistent with a model where only rarely does someone get in because of an 8 or 9 scores on something.

But a combination of, say, all 6s and 7s might be rare enough to make those Yale applicants relatively strong for admission[/quote]

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