[elliot42]

Summary and examples for public will be much more helpful than individual consulting. Then make a webpage/book for yourself--pretty much everyone wants to understand this information.

If you want to get wonky, read "Homo Academicus" by Bourdieu. Educators (or other gatekeepers, e.g. job interviewers) apply implicit categories of judgment to applicants. If the applicant matches the class/cultural background of the gatekeeper, there's a higher probability that the applicant has naturally acquired and presented the things the gatekeeper is looking for. (Else, the applicant will come in without having anything to offer that the gatekeeper cares about.)

[brandnewlow]

I respect the intention of this idea, but I'm not in the business of giving general advice about the admissions process to people. I don't think there's much in the way of general advice to give, for one. Also, there's a whole industry based around that, and it's full of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. A few years back, I started a site where families can post user reviews of consultants they hired, http://collegeconsultantreviews.com

Right now I run a social news site for Chicago and received seed funding to launch a new advertising startup that will help save newspapers. I'm happy with my life and excited about these challenges.

One day, if I do decide to come back into admissions, it will be to disrupt the system and hopefully destroy all these awful know-nothing consultants and quacks, rather than to add my voice to their chorus.

So I'm happy to look at applications. Pulling general advice from them is really less useful than you'd imagine. Everyone's different. Everyone's red flags are different.

If you want one piece of general advice though: don't mention video games, gaming, Magic Cards, Dungeons and Dragons, Pokeman, Anime, poker, Comic books, or anything like that on your application. You will automatically be cast into the "misapplied intelligence" pile. I've played my share of video games in life (My Civ III skills are pretty impressive), but at the end of the day, that's time that could have been better spent. My experience in admissions showed that POV to be pretty widespread. No, you won't impress them with your poker winnings or TF2 pro tour success. They think that you are not creating real value with these pursuits for the world, or yourself.

[pinko]

I wouldn't challenge your general advice, as I am just one data point... but just to underscore what a crapshoot this all is, I actually got into to college on the basis of an interview in which my primary schtick concerned why Dungeons and Dragons made me smart.

(How do I know? The head of admissions, who interviewed me, told me so a year later. It was a small school, I was applying for January admission, and she basically made the decision herself. I had nothing on paper to recommend me above anyone else -- she just loved the interview.)