The admission interview is not a decisive factor in determining the outcome, but in a hyper-competitive environment, it can put an applicant over the top when handled exceptionally well. This is where an applicant can enhance his/her profile by sharing information beyond submitted materials.
In order for an applicant’s extracurricular activities to impress admissions committees, he/she should show spike(s), activities where the achievement level is undoubtedly excellent. Such level shows not only passion but also discipline. A spike that carries national/international recognition or in some cases regional/state recognition (e.g. ranked in national competitions or state champion) would boost the applicant. In the absence of very distinctive spikes, the next best thing would be to combine spikes of lesser significance. For admissions purposes, activities are not created equal. The following are our observations:
There is a LOT of online chatter about ‘finding the right college’ and what factors to consider. One factor that we do not hear a lot about: core curriculum requirements.
(Nothing to do with April Fool’s.)
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising of eight colleges in the northeast with seven of them founded before the United States. Their long history and well-placed alumni have turned the name of an athletic conference into a popular cultural term for elite colleges. These eight schools are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania & Yale. In recent years, the emergence of elite colleges outside the group of eight gave rise to a new group: Ivy Plus, which is the Ivy League plus Duke, MIT, Stanford and University of Chicago.
Our daughter was able to view her admissions file and share the information with us. Her file summary focused on the following areas:
