How Colleges Evaluate Your Applications
Have you noticed it's called the Office of Admissions,
not the Office of Rejections?
by Charlotte Thomas, Career and Education Editor, Peterson's
Few students feel warm and fuzzy about applying to college -- piles of paperwork to fill out, essays to write, deadlines to meet. Add to that the feeling that your future is being mulled over by unknown people who will give you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Doesn't sound like the most fun thing to do, does it?
But to those agonizing about whether they'll be accepted or rejected, William Conley, Dean of Undergraduate Admission, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, poses the question: "Are you mailing your application to the Office of Rejection?"
Of course not. Get the point?
Don't assume that admissions is looking for reasons to say no.
To which Conley counters, "Our tendency is to first identify why we should admit a student. We don't start with a reader at the Office of Rejections who looks for the first sign that this kid doesn't measure up, let's dump this one," he stresses.
Conley acknowledges that applying to college can be incredibly anxiety-ridden and emotionally exhausting. But to reassure students who feel this way, he tells them to think of what happened when Dorothy pulled back the curtain and discovered that the Wizard of Oz wasn't so frightening after all. Once students and parents understand how admissions staff make their decisions, they realize there's no "doom and gloom committee," says Conley.
Instead, admissions staff carefully read each application to look for the potential that student has to succeed -- not fail -- at their institution. Conley says people would be surprised at how much individual attention each application receives and how a student's unique circumstances are taken into consideration. "That's been my experience underlying the premise behind every college admissions office, whether it's very selective or open-door," agrees George Dixon, from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Though each admissions office creates its own yardstick to measure applicants, two factors control all admissions policies:
What each institution wants its incoming freshman class to be like
The size and quality of the applicant pool
On a very basic level, supply and demand has a lot to do with who gets into what college. The more applicants, the finer filters admissions will use to decide if you fit or not. "The more popular and competitive," says Dixon, "the more factors admissions will consider in making their decisions."
Competition is heating up because you're part of the baby boom echo going through high school.
In the next seven to eight years, competition will increase, notes Dixon. Conley, too, sees surges in applications at Case Western, as has Nancy Donehower, Dean of Admission at Reed College in Portland, OR. In addition, institutions themselves are aggressively recruiting applicants nationally and internationally. And adding to those numbers, more qualified students are graduating from high school and applying to more colleges. Increased ways to finance a degree give them greater incentives to do so.
With applicant pools getting bigger, how does an admissions office make decisions about the great numbers of applicants? The more popular institutions can receive upwards of 15,000 applications a year, although the number of applications each college has to process varies significantly. For instance:
Harvard University receives 16,000+ applications every year
Boston University gets 26,000+
Swarthmore College: 4,000
Case Western Reserve University: 4,500
College of St. Elizabeth: 450.
At the University of Virginia alone, 9 readers evaluate 35 applications per day.
How the admissions jigsaw puzzle fits together.
Think of admission staff as skilled detectives who carefully construct who you are from your application. It's as though the bits of information you provide are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Application readers assemble the pieces to determine if you fit the puzzle outline of their college.
Though each admissions office works differently, most incoming applications are given to a first reader, then passed to a second, and possibly a third. Sometimes the applications are distributed at random. Often they are read first by someone who is thoroughly familiar with a region and the high schools from which those applicants come.
What are the pieces of the puzzle you have to supply?
YOUR GRADES AND TEST SCORES
Two of the pieces most readers look at first are grades and test scores. Generally, if students don't have strong academic records, they are not in the running right off the bat. However, top grades don't automatically admit applicants to an institution. Admissions counselors spend a lot of time looking at the context in which GPAs were achieved. Observes Donehower, "You can't boil a student down to just grades."
For instance, grades can peak in the freshman and sophomore years and then flatten out when more demanding courses are taken in the junior and senior years. On the other hand, Conley notes, "Some students finally smell the coffee in their junior year and their grades shoot up."
Some students have a burning intellectual passion for physics but flub history. Then there are those students who make high grades but care less about the subjects, observes John A. Blackburn, Dean of Admissions at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. At Case Western, Conley says their litmus test is to determine if students took full advantage of the curriculum offered, regardless of whether students were in the best high schools in the nation or in poorer areas. "We know that academically, socially, and economically, we don't have a level playing field," says Conley. Dartmouth College, too, wants students who have challenged themselves and taken the toughest courses they can handle, adds Karl M. Furstenberg, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid.
YOUR ESSAY
While a top academic record is a big portion of the decision to admit, many admissions office systems don't start with grades. Instead the essays are read first, which is the case at Dartmouth College and at Reed College.
Generally, the more selective the institution, the more details beyond grades are considered first. At highly competitive institutions, it's taken for granted that GPA and test scores are stellar, so what else does a student offer? Explains Donehower, "Test scores tell us nothing about a student's character or intellectual passion."
Applicants to Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA, are judged by their ability to write well. "Even math students here do an incredible amount of writing," says Robin Mamlet, Dean of Admissions. Essays are not as much about writing talent as they are vehicles to tell admissions who students are and what they value. Readers want to see how well students can analyze themselves. The reason is because once in college, students routinely are asked to come up with opinions and defend them, not just to accept a body of facts. The essay is the first indication that they can do so. Mamlet says to consider the application essay as your first college assignment.
Though essays weigh heavily in admissions, they are not the place to be cautious about expressing opinions. Application readers at the University of Virginia are not impressed with students who try to figure out what they think admissions wants to hear. The essay is the only place on the application where the reader can get a true sense of the student's individuality. Thus Donehower warns, "Don't homogenize yourself."
What makes your essay stand out is a strong point of view and a sense of authenticity. Readers would prefer hearing from the student writing from the heart about working at Burger King than a dry travelogue of a Himalayan trip or a treatise on stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Blackburn cites one outstanding essay in which an applicant described the contents of her purse. (For more in-depth advice about essays read Peterson's Writing a Winning College Application Essay.)
LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION
Another way admissions peeks into a student's mind is through recommendation letters. Dartmouth considers them so important that they ask for four -- two from teachers, one from a high school counselor, and one from a peer. "This gives us a sense of the person and how they approach academics," Furstenberg says. Again, individual circumstances are weighed, because, says Conley, "Some high school counselors have 800 students, while others work with only 10 highly motivated seniors."
THAT "SOMETHING SPECIAL" ABOUT YOU
Application readers can pick apart transcripts and scrutinize essays and recommendations, but there is another piece of the puzzle that is needed and it's one you can't fill in on an application. Objective academic information counts heavily, but, says Furstenberg, "We look for bright, curious, engaged students, and whatever we can use to figure that out, that's what we'll use." In other words, are you an outstanding person in your current environment, whatever that might be? Students from sophisticated prep schools and students in poorer public schools are compared on the basis of their commitment to learning, not the status of their high schools.
Readers find clues to this kind of thinking in numerous ways. "The essay is definitely a factor. "When we read those we get a sense of what students care about and what they've worked hard at. We get a sense of the depth and quality of their thoughts, not just what they do," explains Furstenberg. Mamlet at Swarthmore wants to know how students have spent their time because that tells her what they really care about. To Dixon it's a thirst for learning that puts a student over the top. While Conley observes, "The issue is not brain matter, but passion."
The application doesn't judge if you're an okay person -- it's about whether that college is right for you.
Admission deans are quick to point out to applicants that there is never just one college that's the only one for them. "Students need to give it their best shot and apply where they feel they are a good match. If you don't get into your personal Harvard there's another school that is right for you," counsels Donehower.
"You are pulling together who you are in 10 pages," advises Conley. Whether the college admits or rejects you is not a reflection of your worth. It's about how you fit in with the other students competing for the same slots in a freshman class. "Admittance to a college is not an exercise in self-worth," Conley continues. Each college has a different mission that it wants to accomplish within its student body and students are admitted on the basis of how closely they fit the criteria embodied in it.
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