Anonymous wrote:My hobby is building high power rockets. I emphasized this passion in my essays and I have no doubt that it helped me get into my engineering programs.

I'm also from Rhode Island, so I ticked that box too.

If you were transgender too (or openly Republican), you'd be golden.

My hobby is building high power rockets. I emphasized this passion in my essays and I have no doubt that it helped me get into my engineering programs.

I'm also from Rhode Island, so I ticked that box too.

You notice wrong, dear. It was not a treatise on hooks and this anonymous poster's feelings about them. Sharp repartee sadly wasted.

Anonymous wrote:Did I? Disadvantaged background/1st gen college is a bona fide hook, but it is more convenient to admit wealthy or middle-class minorities, because they already have the background and support needed for graduating in 4 years.

No dear, it is more convenient to admit rich, wealthy, white legacies who donate millions in alumni funds. They are the ones that have the background and support needed for graduating in four years, but I notice by your admission, you don't have an issue with that hook. Carry on!

Did I? Disadvantaged background/1st gen college is a bona fide hook, but it is more convenient to admit wealthy or middle-class minorities, because they already have the background and support needed for graduating in 4 years.

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I will tell that to my AA friend going to Harvard with 2380 SATs, the highest GPA in her high school class, 7 AP 5's, straight 800s on SSATs, amath team captain and two sport team captain. She will get a kick out of your ignorant opinion.

Assuming this is real, your friend would probably have a pretty good chance of getting in, but let's be honest; there are probably a handful of AA kids each year with stats like that.

Real as can be, and I know several other kids in DC alone who are pretty comparable. You all need to dust off your Jim Crow era understanding of the world.

I'll bet these kids come from middle-class or affluent background and have educated parents. In no universe should such a person of any skin color be considered disadvantaged.

Ah, you just changed the topic and moved thee goal post.

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Anonymous wrote:
I will tell that to my AA friend going to Harvard with 2380 SATs, the highest GPA in her high school class, 7 AP 5's, straight 800s on SSATs, amath team captain and two sport team captain. She will get a kick out of your ignorant opinion.

Assuming this is real, your friend would probably have a pretty good chance of getting in, but let's be honest; there are probably a handful of AA kids each year with stats like that.

Real as can be, and I know several other kids in DC alone who are pretty comparable. You all need to dust off your Jim Crow era understanding of the world.

I'll bet these kids come from middle-class or affluent background and have educated parents. In no universe should such a person of any skin color be considered disadvantaged.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, can someone please enlighten me?

"Having a "hook," meaning something that offers strong positionality for an applicant, dramatically improves the odds of college admission. Typically 40 percent of the students attending top-tier universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have a hook. The major hooks are:

• Legacy, meaning a family history of college attendance at a specific school (usually mother or father, but sometimes a grandparent -- and graduate school attendance does not always count)
• Recruited athlete
• Underrepresented student (African American, Latino/a, Native American, Alaskan Native, Pacific Islander, bi-racial, or multiracial)
• Development (donation) case
• VIP or high-profile applicant"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michele-hernandez/10-secrets-for-top-colleg_b_1921183.html

It seems to me that almost anyone (even some fairly Nordic looking types) can claim multi-racial. If you do a DNA analysis, many people have a mixed race background even if it is not readily apparent. And who decides? I mean, should dark skinned African-Americans get more of a hook than light skinned ones?

Anonymous wrote:Fluid quotas do exist as you have just pointed because applicants seem to be roughly competing against similar applicants of background. A quota is nothing but an artificial cap separate from a standardized equal threshold.

Harvard seems to devise its quota based on applicant demographics. No Harvard adcom would ever explicitly tell a kid 'yes, you are roughly competing with others in your race'....which is why the 25-75% stat ranges are useless unless they are split apart by race and/or hooks so applicants have a better sense of their competitiveness.

This is affirmative action at work.

Harvard and its peers would never admit it however nor do they want transparency.

Mind you, I do think AA is being chipped away and in 30-50 years even HYPS and its ilk will slowly drop it.

The days of all-white HYPS are over, whether it is today or 30-50 years from now. Doesn't matter whether you define it as a quota, competition, AA, or whatever.

As for OP's original question:

From Peterson's -

A hook, in admission parlance, is any advantage that makes you attractive to a particular college. This varies from school to school and from year to year.

Wondering what hooks are most revered among admission officers? It varies, but some are pretty universal:

Alumni connections
Don't assume that you're a shoo-in just because your mom or dad went to your dream school, but you can expect that your folder will be reviewed very carefully. If you're denied for any reason, the decision will be painful for the college.

Athletics
Playing a sport can give you an excellent boost come admissions decision time. If you're a superstar you can earn a full scholarship, but even a less exceptional track record can up the odds for your college acceptance. However, some students (and parents) overestimate the weight that athletic ability carries in the admission process and expect an athletic scholarship to be their financial saving grace. Don't assume you're getting an award until you get one.

Ethnicity
Colleges normally give you the option of describing yourself as a member of one or more of these groups: American Indian or Alaskan Native; Black or African-American; Mexican-American or Chicano; Puerto Rican; Other Hispanic-American or Latin American; Asian American or Pacific Islander; or multiracial.

Many colleges aggressively recruit students from underrepresented minority populations, and financial aid opportunities are great. Most admission offices have a counselor who is in charge of this effort, and this person can serve as good source of information as well as an advocate in the admission decision process.

Talent in the arts
If you're a painter, poet, musician, or perhaps a dancer, you can really make your application stand out — unless you're applying to a specialty school in the arts. In that case, your talent must compete against the talent of all the other applicants. However if you're applying to a more generalized institution, being an artist may balance any weaknesses in your application and may improve your chances of receiving a college admission letter.

Geography
At a public college or university, being an in-state resident is obviously a hook. At many institutions, coming from an underrepresented region can also be an advantage. Southeastern colleges love to see North Dakota and Montana zip codes on applications, while Southwestern schools welcome candidates from Vermont and Maine.

Some high schools are known as "feeder schools," meaning that many students from that school typically apply and many may receive college admission letters. In such cases, your guidance counselor will be familiar with the college in question and can help predict how you may stack up.

Fluid quotas do exist as you have just pointed because applicants seem to be roughly competing against similar applicants of background. A quota is nothing but an artificial cap separate from a standardized equal threshold.

Harvard seems to devise its quota based on applicant demographics. No Harvard adcom would ever explicitly tell a kid 'yes, you are roughly competing with others in your race'....which is why the 25-75% stat ranges are useless unless they are split apart by race and/or hooks so applicants have a better sense of their competitiveness.

This is affirmative action at work.

Harvard and its peers would never admit it however nor do they want transparency.

Mind you, I do think AA is being chipped away and in 30-50 years even HYPS and its ilk will slowly drop it.

To clarify: if X% of the applicants are <some race> and the same percent of the accepted students are <some race>, that does not mean that the class is ONLY allowed to be made up of X% <some race> (which would be a quota).

It does suggest that Harvard is accounting for race in admissions and trying to balance their class based off of the applicants profile. They are only accepting who they determine to be the best applicants of each race and every applicant is competing with similar applicants for each spot.

If next year, half the applicants were Asian and only 20% of the admitted students were Asian, it would suggest that there is a quote of 20%.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Under represented minorities have to compete with other under represented minorities. Their average SATs are lower because they tend to have lower average SATs as a group. The Harvard Crimson released their application statistics and the racial breakdown closely mirrored the racial breakdown of each class (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/2/6/admissions-applications-2019-record-high/ compare with https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics). They might be a few percentage points off but the difference is negligible.

The bottom line is: that black girl who got in didn't take your white son's spot, some other white guy did.

Umm....you just proved that racial quotas exist.

I'm not sure if that was your intent.

What HYPS will NEVER do unless supreme court or feds withhold research/grant money is release ADMISSIONS statistics along with application stats (race plus gpa, scores, athletic/musical hook data, legacy, etc) in a crosstab sheet.

Caltech, Cal, UCLA do not have races compete only against each other. they compete in a blind pool.

No, it doesn't prove that quotas exist. Quotas imply that there are limits on the amount of specific races they admit, which no one who doesn't work in admissions will be able to prove. Selecting about the same % of applicants of each race is not a quota.

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Anonymous wrote:I think it's more than simply academics, location, legacy and sports.

Your child can create his/her own "hook" by being interested in something, such as robotics or environmental education or late 17th century Flemish painting. Get an internship in his/her area of interest, do something related in school, go to summer programs in that area, get a part-time job, create a research project, etc. Build a resume.

I know this works. A friend's daughter got into every college she applied to because she created her own hook. She had an A- average at a good private school, and decent but not fabulous SATs. White, upper middle class female from large East Coast urban area. Nothing special about her. But she had a very specialized interest, got a great internship, did research projects in her area of interest. On her application, she told colleges that particular area was what she wanted to study and why she wanted to go to that college. She got into every college she applied to, including Harvard, where she went.

This kid had no legacy, and she even got FA from Harvard. In the end, she didn't even study her area of interest becuase at Harvard, she found a subject area that interested her more.

I imagine this approach can help pretty much every run of the mill average kid who, like many, doesn't have a clue what he/she wants to do in college or life, has ho-hum grades and stats. It will make your kid stand out from the crowd of average Joe's and Julias.

But see you don’t have to do all this stuff if you have a “hook.”

Conversely, if you don’t have a hook, you will have to do stuff like this to stand out from the crowd,

So, by your logic all 3,700 AA kids applying to Harvard this year are a "lock" for admissions. The 200 that are actually granted acceptance are simply chosen from a hat, because none of them were class valedictorians, Presidential Scholars, award winning poets, or world class jazz musicians (all of whom were in my class while there). Catch up with the time.

No by my logic very few of them (far less than 200 even) would have gotten in without their URM hook. in they weren’t AA.

Keep spewing racist nonsense.

It's been shown if hyps practiced race netural admissions like under a prop 209 system, urm enrollment would be decimated.

I will tell that to my AA friend going to Harvard with 2380 SATs, the highest GPA in her high school class, 7 AP 5's, straight 800s on SSATs, amath team captain and two sport team captain. She will get a kick out of your ignorant opinion.

Assuming this is real, your friend would probably have a pretty good chance of getting in, but let's be honest; there are probably a handful of AA kids each year with stats like that.

Real as can be, and I know several other kids in DC alone who are pretty comparable. You all need to dust off your Jim Crow era understanding of the world.

+1

Anonymous wrote:Under represented minorities have to compete with other under represented minorities. Their average SATs are lower because they tend to have lower average SATs as a group. The Harvard Crimson released their application statistics and the racial breakdown closely mirrored the racial breakdown of each class (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/2/6/admissions-applications-2019-record-high/ compare with https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics). They might be a few percentage points off but the difference is negligible.

The bottom line is: that black girl who got in didn't take your white son's spot, some other white guy did.

Umm....you just proved that racial quotas exist.

I'm not sure if that was your intent.

What HYPS will NEVER do unless supreme court or feds withhold research/grant money is release ADMISSIONS statistics along with application stats (race plus gpa, scores, athletic/musical hook data, legacy, etc) in a crosstab sheet.

Caltech, Cal, UCLA do not have races compete only against each other. they compete in a blind pool.