If there are preferences, they’re nonobvious, and it’s not clear how you would go about discovering them. (I haven’t found anything more than students’ speculation by Googling around.)
And some of the hits in http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=college+admissions+odds+extracurricular look promising. (‘odds’ is there to help weight towards quantitative studies which would be using odds ratios as their effect size, since you’re either admitted to a particular college or not, and a binary effect size like odds ratio is what most statistical approaches would use.)
Here’s one: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html
And some of the hits in http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=college+admissions+odds+extracurricular look promising. (‘odds’ is there to help weight towards quantitative studies which would be using odds ratios as their effect size, since you’re either admitted to a particular college or not, and a binary effect size like odds ratio is what most statistical approaches would use.)
Very interesting, thanks.