What Is a Spike or a Hook, and Do I Need One?

A spike or hook is your life's mission statement, and yes, you need one if you want to be competitive for a T20 college.

To expand, a spike is a clearly identifiable passion that an admission officer can see you possess after reviewing your application. For them to recognize it as a spike, it needs to saturate your personal essay, your supplemental essays, your extracurriculars, and even your recommendation letters.

This passion can be a burning question you want to answer, such as "What is dark matter?", or a tangible impact you want to make in the world, such as increasing the nitrogen content of soil, or a longstanding project you completed in high school, such as getting a law in your local community passed or repealed.

To demonstrate that you indeed have a spike, you want to have strategically taken classes in high school, community college, and even in some cases, 4-year colleges, which are aligned with realizing your life's mission statement. You should also participate in extracurriculars in which you actively work towards realizing this mission statement, write about the lived experiences that motivate your life's mission statement, and have your recommendation letters corroborate that this is indeed your life's goal. These letters should talk about the good you have done in your classrooms and broader school community in pursuit of this goal.

The manifestation of the spike we outlined above is an ideal case. For most applicants who get into top schools, their spike won't be as evident as it could be if it matched the exact criteria outlined above, but it would still be discernible to an admission officer. The spike will be what they remember you by when they are deciding which of the 10,000s of applicants made the final cut. More or less, whatever an admission officer's last impression is of your application will be your spike, and not all spikes are created equal. The stronger your spike, the stronger your application.

Why do you need a spike? As we've said many times, colleges aren't looking for "well-rounded" students; they are assembling a class of exceptionally sharp individuals, each with a specialized skill or talent honed over years of dedication. In order to capture an admission officer's attention who has to read 10,000s of other applications, you need a strong defining feature that will stick in their mind, as they are in the mindset of determining which students will contribute to the intellectual and social atmosphere of their incoming classes and campus.

No matter where you are in your admissions journey, you can take steps to help admission officers identify a spike in your application. Schedule a free consultation with an admission expert to learn how we can help you develop that spike.