FORMER YALE ADMISSIONS OFFICER REVEALS SECRETS OF WHO GETS IN:
The applicants were an impressive lot. A girl wrote a brilliant feminist essay — worthy of Harper’s, really — about gender and socialization, revealing that she was a phantom serial farter in public and yet no one ever suspected because of her gender.
An aspiring art major sent in a dazzling, poster-size pen-and-ink drawing of himself suspended high over the campus on a pair of gymnastic rings, his body forming a perfect Y for Yale. A Vietnamese refugee wrote about finding solace in a school in Nebraska after a near-death experience as a “boat person” when she was 6 years old. They all waltzed into the freshman class.
Being too clever could backfire.
A self-saboteur from Chicago wrote her essay about her fear of going to the dentist — in backward letters, colored pen, and a spiral “Yellow Brick Road” pattern; not the kind of thing you want to tackle in a mirror at midnight.
* * * * * * *
It was the kiss of death when the daughter of a prominent alum from Columbus, Ohio, “discovered” she was one-sixteenth American Indian and checked the box for Native American.
Yeah, that’s strictly a Harvard stunt.