Another view Five myths about college admissions

Most high school seniors have now heard back about their college applications, a process often cast as a kind of “Hunger Games,” with young Americans battling it out for a chance to attend one of more than 3,000 four-year degreegranting colleges, seeking help wherever it may come, believing that the result will determine the course of their lives. But despite the crush of advisers proffering their supposed expertise for money, the endeavor is shrouded in misconceptions: that colleges don’t check applicants’ social-media pages, that world-famous people like the Obama daughters can get into school with little more than a good recommendation, that most students aren’t admitted to their first choice. (They are, but many can’t attend because of the cost.) Here are five of the most stubborn. essays can be decisive when it comes to students whom admissions counselors are on the fence about. A student with borderline grades and test scores could secure a spot in the freshman class with an insightful, wellcrafted essay, or be rejected because of a lousy one - or when it’s clear to counselors that an adult, not a student, has written it. And a poorly constructed essay, or one marred by punctuation and grammatical errors, can sour even a great application. clubs, debate and, of course, community service that sounded more meaningful than it really was. But about a decade ago, schools changed their focus from well-rounded students to those with hyper-developed interest in one or two subjects, which became apparent to me in the way admissions counselors answered my questions about extracurricular activities.

Nowadays, schools look for both kinds of students as they attempt, each year, to create an interesting, diverse, high-performing freshman class. That may include an applicant extremely passionate about the viola and another who plays every sport and is a member of a dozen clubs. The best way to impress admissions counselors, as always, is to authentically pursue what interests you. most choosy, Harvard, took just 5.4 percent.

But these aren’t the most selective schools around. Stanford University often takes less than 5 percent, the smallest share of applicants, and it isn’t in the Ivy League. MIT, Caltech and the University of Chicago, all with acceptance rates of about 8 percent for the Class of 2020, are more selective than some of the Ivies, too. Plus, many schools may take a higher proportion of applicants but are equally picky about their credentials: A liberal arts school like St. John’s would look dubiously at a savant engineer from a technical high school who hadn’t taken humanities classes in his final years. classes, which award more points than the typical 4.0 A, colleges can tell when a GPA is bloated, admissions officers say. As Peterson’s, an admissions and test-prep agency, explains, high schools use distinct grading systems and offer courses that have the same name but varying degrees of difficulty. And, as Peterson’s notes, many colleges have their own systems for recalculating GPAs.