I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pretty good across the board. I was proud of the work I did at my employer, but who knows, maybe they pick names out of a h

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pretty good across the board. I was proud of the work I did at my employer, but who knows, maybe they pick names out of a hat at Yale! Evidence suggests as much :) Die Yalies. I read a good number of Indian applicants during my short stint in admissions. They were, for the most part, completely indistinguishable from one another. Perfect scores. Perfect grades. They all faxed in 20 pages of certificates, honors and awards. They all had the same list of leadership positions in school clubs. We had a few folks on the team who had traveled over there and were able to parse through these applicants to find the really good ones, but it was crazy how similar all the applicants from India were. I figured the schools had imperfect data about what we were looking for, so they had all constructed some sort of a rubric and were sending kids of type X to Princeton, Y to Harvard, Z to Williams, etc. If I were to meet a 16-year-old promising student in India, my advice to him would be the same advice I'd give to the asian students in the U.S. Go to clown school. Join a circus. Build a rocket. Do SOMETHING that could not have come from your parents or teachers.