Maybe play the oboe
Colleges fill talent gaps
If you take my online class on extracurriculars, you’ll learn about how colleges try to plug extracurricular gaps in the student body by admitting students with certain talents.
Here’s what one anonymous dean of admission said about filling those talent gaps:
“In one year, we may hire three new, outstanding chemists, who are in need of chemistry students to work in their lab. Thus, we sort out all the students who show a propensity toward chemistry, and choose to admit a higher number of those applicants than applicants who are interested in humanities or economics. But then, the next year, we hire a new orchestra director who claims that we don’t have a suitable flautist, so we do the same for potential flute players. It never stops. And it’s not necessarily ‘fair’ but it is what we, as an institution, need to do.”
Some talents boost admission odds more
What does that mean for your kid?
If he or she has an in-demand and scarce talent, the path in will be broader. It matters that the talent be both in-demand and scarce.
We can’t predict very precisely what talents will be most in-demand at a given college in a given year. We don’t know when the star flautist, soprano, quarterback, point guard, actress, etc. will graduate and leave a hole in that college’s extracurricular lineup. This is frustrating!
We can make some guesses, though. Many colleges have orchestras. Not that many have speedskating teams.
An aside: I interviewed an accomplished speedskating applicant for Princeton once, as an alumna interviewer. I wince to think about it now. That extracurricular activity didn’t help that kid much, because Princeton doesn’t have a speedskating team.
The oboe myth…
Let’s return to orchestras and the other characteristic mentioned above: scarcity. Many, many high schoolers play the piano and violin. If your kid plays the piano, and there happens to be a pianist-shaped gap in Yale’s extracurricular lineup the year she applies, she would still be competing with thousands of other pianists. There’s no real admission benefit from playing the piano.
Consequently, there is an idea in admission lore that applicants who play less-common instruments, like the oboe, have a leg up in admission.
The oboe came up when the Students for Fair Admissions case about affirmative action went before the Supreme Court last year.
Harvard’s lawyer: “Race […] can be the determinative factor, just as being an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.”
Roberts: “We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players.”
The oboe advantage makes sense, logically, but I have been trying to find data to substantiate it. A lot of industry data is broken out in ways that are more useful to instrument manufacturers, though. For example, industry reports include information about sales of woodwinds vs. strings.
…maybe proves true!
Finally, I’ve found some useful numbers! This ecommerce consultancy collected data about instrument sales during the pandemic.
We have to make some assumptions here to apply this to our extracurricular optimization question, but I think they’re fair ones. For example, that people just bought more of the popular and portable instruments during lockdown, rather than suddenly loving guitars and pianos, and that Amazon purchases reflect purchasing habits generally.
The answer that emerges is that the oboe, trombone, and viola are almost certainly the admission-optimizing instruments. There’s usually only one harp in an orchestra, so there’s probably less demand for harpists in college orchestras.
Of course, if your kid is 16, it’s probably too late for him or her to become an oboe virtuoso before the early decision deadlines. But there’s plenty we can do to improve the admission odds, though. If my empirical style appeals to you, I could be a good match for your family. You can sign up for on-demand seminars here and one-on-one consultations here. I look forward to working with your family!
