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I see many cases of grand slam scores (800s on all sections of SAT and the SAT II subject exams), perfect GPAs loaded with APs in the transcripts. CMU is somewhat techy so instead of getting the kids doing community service in 3rd World countries, we get the kids who are holding patents in their names for some piece of hardware/software they developed. The student who is applying to CFA is many times already a professional performer with the appropriate licensure. Because CMU's individual schools are so different, the applicants are very different. The commonality is that many have already achieved something in their intended field of study. I have to keep that in the forefront of my mind. The applicant has to apply to a college within the university. They can't choose all the colleges, but they can choose more than one. You see a lot of crossover with our engineering school and CS school.

Do you interview mostly Westchester kids? How do Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science do as opposed to kids from non-magnet publics vs. the kids from Dalton et. al.? My Manhattan cousins went to boarding school in New England. I think I would do the same for my kids if I lived in NYC and had the financial means to do so.

Although I thought Robbins was way off the mark with her sorority book, she did seem to hit the nail on the head with The Overachievers. I recognized a lot of students and their parents in that book. Acceptance by Susan Coll is a fictional account of a couple of students from a Montgomery County high school. It's somewhat amusing and fairly accurate despite it being fiction.