Maximizing College Acceptance Using the Pareto Principle (Part I)
By Path Mentor J.L., a graduate of MIT majored in Computer Science (Originally Posted on May 17, 2019)
What few things most often lead to an elite college acceptance?
College admissions officers have a limited amount of time to decide which applications warrant an acceptance. There are a couple of necessary requirements to maximize your chances.
Firstly, the admissions officers will check to see if the basics are covered:
Above average grades
Above average test scores
Participated in some extracurriculars
Held some leadership position
If your child is severely lacking in any of these, that greatly hurts their chance of admission.
Secondly, the admissions officers will contextualize your child’s application. How does this particular student compare to students of their:
Race/Ethnicity
Nationality
Socio-economic status
The admissions officer likely did not attend your child’s high school, nor has a similar background. This means they will try to contextualize how well your child has done relative to other students of a similar demographic. Your child doesn’t need to be the best applicant; your child simply needs to stand out in his or her demographic.
Lastly, different colleges give varying weight to different aspects of each application. For example, if your child wishes to attend MIT, the admissions officers will give a lot of weight to their ability to excel in Math and Sciences, as every undergraduate is required to take several semesters of Calculus, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. If your child did well in all their Math and Science courses in school, and on the SAT Subject Tests, this is a great indicator to the admissions officers that your child would do well at MIT for the required courses.
The admissions officers at each college have a story to tell; what character in that story do you expect your child will play? Is your child the aloof thinker who daydreams about new inventions and goes off to build them? Or is your child the prodigy chess player known to many? Maybe your child enjoys writing short stories in their free time? Perhaps your child likes to tutor younger students. Is your child a star on the tennis team?
Whatever it may be, think about what your child enjoys doing the most. How can you nurture your child to excel in that particular activity? What story can you start writing now such that admissions officers will read it and think “wow, this is an amazing story! I want this student at my institution”?
THIS is the pareto, or 80/20, principle of college admissions. Out of all the things that are necessary for a great college application, what are the 20% of things that are likely to generate 80% of the results? That is, what one or two qualities does your child possess that will account for 80% of their application standing out?
If your child:
Has great grades in school
Plays a varsity sport
Plays a musical instrument well
Is the president of a school club
Taught themself five different languages and provides translation services to a local shelter for immigrants,
Which of these five things do you think would amaze 80% of admissions officers? If your child dedicates 20% of their time to each of those five things, you can be sure that #5 will be the 20% that achieves 80% of the success in their college application.
Excellent grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities account for 80% of the effort that generates 20% of the results.
Excellent essays, unique skills, rare interests crafted into a well-told story account for the 20% of effort that achieves 80% of the results.
Do you want to learn how to apply the pareto principle to your child’s application to greatly increase their odds of admissions to an elite institution?
In a later blog post, I will explain in further depth how I used the pareto principle to greatly increase my chances of being admitted to MIT, and doing it in only three years of effort.
