> What can "strong extracurriculars" mean if not the things you described?
In my experience, a typical parent thinks that a student with 4-year varsity sport participation (more than one doesn’t help if it’s just participation), president of a school club, and member of some group or two (one probably being a local community service group) as being “strong”.
I would call this nice, but similar to 10k-20k other applicants, mainly because it’s fairly easy to manufacture this.
Some sports teams take anyone who is willing to play. It’s often trivially easy to start a club with your friends and declare yourself president (and essentially do nothing). It’s trivially easy to join a group or two and tag along. I have heard of and seen all of these examples that were done precisely to game elite school admissions.
Is this what happened with OP’s kid? Who knows?
What strong in one or more of these same categories might look like:
- all-state first team in a sport, and/or talented enough to be recruited in a sport. If it’s not a school sport, then winner of a regional or larger competition (depends on sport).
- started a club/group that went on to do something meaningful, with “meaningful” roughly being that it was probably worthy of being written up in a local or regional newspaper.
- participated in a group (like a music group or academic group/team) that was highly competitive to join and won regional, national, and/or international competitions.
- participated in a group (like an existing service group) that did something incredibly unique, most likely led by the applicant (e.g., some sort of decent-sized development project, local or international).
One or more of the above, substantiated in recommendations and/or supporting materials (e.g., newspaper articles, bulletins, etc.) will make an applicant much more unique.
> Though I do agree the odds are quite insane lately, with the top schools receiving applications from the top students of the entire planet. Basically everyone has to shift their sights down the rankings as a result.
This is largely not true.
Outside of covid years (those years are outliers), the main reason the acceptance rates are lower is because more people are applying. In general, the overall quality of those additional applications is relatively low — it’s just much easier to apply now (especially with a mediocre application) than it was in the past, and it’s getting easier every year.
Harvard had 60k applicants last year, and about 13k 30 years ago. The strong applicant pool has not increased 4x-5x over the past 30 years.
Is it tougher? Yes, but only slightly, imho. I think the internet has allowed some students who are not in elite university feeder schools to get info on how to be a strong candidate. This info was much tougher to access 30 years ago.
As a simple example, Cal Newport has written some good blog posts and books on how to be an outstanding applicant.
That said, many people don’t avail themselves of this information and still stubbornly think that grades and SATs are the main criteria for elite school admissions.
In my experience, a typical parent thinks that a student with 4-year varsity sport participation (more than one doesn’t help if it’s just participation), president of a school club, and member of some group or two (one probably being a local community service group) as being “strong”.
I would call this nice, but similar to 10k-20k other applicants, mainly because it’s fairly easy to manufacture this.
Some sports teams take anyone who is willing to play. It’s often trivially easy to start a club with your friends and declare yourself president (and essentially do nothing). It’s trivially easy to join a group or two and tag along. I have heard of and seen all of these examples that were done precisely to game elite school admissions.
Is this what happened with OP’s kid? Who knows?
What strong in one or more of these same categories might look like:
- all-state first team in a sport, and/or talented enough to be recruited in a sport. If it’s not a school sport, then winner of a regional or larger competition (depends on sport).
- started a club/group that went on to do something meaningful, with “meaningful” roughly being that it was probably worthy of being written up in a local or regional newspaper.
- participated in a group (like a music group or academic group/team) that was highly competitive to join and won regional, national, and/or international competitions.
- participated in a group (like an existing service group) that did something incredibly unique, most likely led by the applicant (e.g., some sort of decent-sized development project, local or international).
One or more of the above, substantiated in recommendations and/or supporting materials (e.g., newspaper articles, bulletins, etc.) will make an applicant much more unique.
> Though I do agree the odds are quite insane lately, with the top schools receiving applications from the top students of the entire planet. Basically everyone has to shift their sights down the rankings as a result.
This is largely not true.
Outside of covid years (those years are outliers), the main reason the acceptance rates are lower is because more people are applying. In general, the overall quality of those additional applications is relatively low — it’s just much easier to apply now (especially with a mediocre application) than it was in the past, and it’s getting easier every year.
Harvard had 60k applicants last year, and about 13k 30 years ago. The strong applicant pool has not increased 4x-5x over the past 30 years.
Is it tougher? Yes, but only slightly, imho. I think the internet has allowed some students who are not in elite university feeder schools to get info on how to be a strong candidate. This info was much tougher to access 30 years ago.
As a simple example, Cal Newport has written some good blog posts and books on how to be an outstanding applicant.
That said, many people don’t avail themselves of this information and still stubbornly think that grades and SATs are the main criteria for elite school admissions.