Overheard in Committee — The High School Profile Edition
We Admit It! It’s time for Early Decision Committee. Each morning, all dean staff gather in our windowless conference room armed with application files, caffeine, sugar (our Early Decision Committee snack cart consists of Sam’s Club-size Cheeze-Its, Fig Newtons, Lays snack-size bags of chips, candy bars, trail mix, dried fruit, animal crackers (both regular and frosted), chewy granola bars and fruit snacks) and enthusiasm to begin shaping William & Mary’s Class of 2018. As we engage in our committee deliberations throughout the year (Early Decision, Regular Decision, Spring Transfer, Fall Transfer), our “Overheard in Committee” blog series will continue. In this blog we take our readers inside our discussions to help you understand how and why we make the decisions we make.
Overheard in Committee today: What does the profile say? (PS: we’d like to thank a loyal Admit It! follower for proposing this topic…it’s overheard in Committee almost every day, but we had never thought to blog about it until he suggested it.)
Almost every high school produces what’s called a profile: a detailed description of that school’s curriculum, grading policies, community and often times much more. It helps admission officers to understand CONTEXT. Context is crucial to how we review applications and to how we make decisions at W&M. Whether it’s cultural, educational, geographic, socioeconomic, or any one of numerous other varieties, context is important. It helps us to understand the environment in which you’ve achieved the results demonstrated in your application.
School context helps provide guidance for evaluating your transcript. What classes were available to you and which ones did you take? Does your school use a traditional 10-point grading scale or something different? Does your school weight your GPA and class rank (if provided), and if so, to what extent? If your high school doesn’t rank students, does it provide context clues related to rank (decile parameters, a high GPA, a median GPA, etc.). How many students from your high school go on to two and/or four-year colleges after graduating?
Each of us at W&M has specific regions for which we read. As a regional dean, it’s our job to know the schools in our regions (along with their curricula, relative competitiveness, grading scales, specialty magnet programs, etc.) and provide that context along with general geographic context to the second read each file receives (each application we receive is read at least twice – generally the second read is conducted by the regional dean). While we are familiar with A LOT of high schools, we cannot possibly keep up with every individual high school in our region. In those cases, and even in those cases where we are familiar with the high school, the profile can help us provide great insight into how competitive academically your school might be, what if any limits are placed on your scheduling process (are APs limited for example or are students required to take specific classes each year or is there block scheduling) and the kind of academic environment of which you’ve been a part. Armed with this information, we can make more informed evaluations of your academic achievements relative to your individual high school environment.
We hope that this particular blog helps our readers to understand that individual context is one very important component of our evaluation process. We know that each high school and each individual applicant has been shaped by various outside forces. Part of our process is to understand those forces and evaluate each applicant in the appropriate context. That context will then help to inform the bold, dynamic, engaging class we bring together.
Stay tuned next week for more insights from our Early Decision deliberations!
Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed. ‘09
Associate Dean of Admission
PS: We recognize that commencing committee will lead our eager ED applicants to ask us to forecast a decision release date. Unfortunately, as we’ve mentioned several times, that’s simply not possible. There’s no way to put a time on our Committee deliberations and the steps taken once that concludes to actually releasing decisions. As soon as we know when we’re releasing decisions (which we usually don’t know until we push the metaphorical button and release the emails) we will be sure to let everyone know. In the meantime, we thank you for your continued patience…especially this year with our extended application deadline and working with the new Common App.
Comments are closed on posts older than one year, but we still want to hear from you. If you have a comment or question for us, please email admission@wm.edu.
I love reading these blog posts, they are so informative! By the way, does the start of committee mean that you are done downloading and filing ED applications, or are both processes happening simultaneously? Thanks for your help!
@Emily, we are still processing applications. We do believe we have for the most part downloaded Early Decision applications but not necessarily completed all of them. Students with missing components will be notified shortly via email.
Thank you so much for the quick response!
My son submitted the ED application on November 6th and received the first confirmation email on November 12th; he is still awaiting the second (application completion) email. So far, I have not received any emails from W&M. Should we be worried? Also, his high school faxed in his first quarter grades yesterday, will those be in time for the selection process? Thank you for your time.
@Richard, as we’ve mentioned in response to other similar questions there’s no need to worry as we are still processing many applications and as long as your son got acknowledgement that his application was received he’s fine. As long as we know a student has applied we will work with them to ensure applications get completed. As we mentioned in our comment last night, those whose applications are incomplete should get an email from us today letting them know what’s missing and how to submit it. As for the email we sent you (assuming your email was included in your son’s application), check your spam and junk folders. If it’s not there it may just be a cyber glitch but as long as your son is getting the emails that’s most important.
We will be sure to include your son’s updates grades with his other materials.
Can you blog about how you judge essays? What do you look for?
@Alex, we’ve written numerous blogs about essays (this page links to a series of them: http://www.wm.edu/admission/undergraduateadmission/applicationprocess/freshmanapplicants/index.php) and we blogged about one particular essay during Early Decision Committee last year around this time. Check those out…they should be great sources of info for you.
Thank you so much for this blog and all your hard work to try and get decisions out! I’m sure everyone appreciates your work a lot. I was just wondering if you had to have all decisions made before you emailed out letters. If people are missing components will they be given decisions later or do you have to release them all together? Thank you!
I have a question on high school course selection I hope you can answer. My daughter is only in the 7th grade, but she’s already aiming for W&M. We live in rural Middlesex County, which offers some AP and honors classes in high school, along with dual enrollment classes at Rappahannock Community College. Middlesex High School also offers three positions per class at the Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School, which revolves around marine science. My daughter is not interested in marine science — her interests lie in foreign languages, literature, social studies and history. If she does not attend the governor’s school, but instead takes the most rigorous class load possible outside of the governor’s school, such as AP courses, will that adversely affect her chances of admission to W&M? Thank you.
@Jane, we simply ask students to take the most challenging courses that are available to them at their high school. Not attending a specific magnet program will not necessarily impact her chances for admission. However, she should plan to challenge herself in courses across the curriculum, even those that are not her top interests. We like to see math/sci students take advanced courses in the humanities and we like to see humanities students take advanced math/sci courses.
@Admit It! — Thank you very much for the swift reply. That’s helpful information to have.