[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by jspatz1

"...known criteria"? There is no such thing.

No matter how stellar one's portfolio is, you will never get to know what impression was left by such things as your essays or interviews.

They are very large factors. Much bigger factors than a Dean's List Award, or even grades or test scores.

Jeff... there ABSOLUTELY is a known base-line in the objective measurements, both M.I.T. and Yale publish their data. ALL I'm talking about is the middle 50-percentile range. If you hit the numbers it's NOT a factor that has to be outweighed with other strengths or explained with a story.

For my son, on the interviews, all we have are the very positive/complimentary feedback from the TWO interviewers given right at the end of the interviews.

On the essays, maybe they thought they were crap... but, they were written by a multi-award winning writer in both middle-school and high school.

ALSO, I think you're so intent to prove me wrong on this, I think you've lost what I originally wrote in the OP. I just think the whole Dean's List Finalist value is overstated and over-sold as it relates to "desirability" with M.I.T. and Yale.

I wish I could share the info I've received via PM's on CD and FB; emails and one phone call. There's a bunch of people thinking exactly the same as me on this.