A Blessing and a Curse

The good news is, William & Mary practices selective admission.  The bad news is, William & Mary practices selective admission.  We have the good fortune of being very popular among prospective college students.  We have far more qualified applicants than we have available spaces in our incoming class.  My colleagues and I are blessed to be able to review the credentials of some of the most intelligent, talented, and creative young minds in the country.  My colleagues and I are cursed in that we cannot admit everyone who is qualified to be admitted nor everyone who has something to add to this campus.  My boss is famous for labeling what we do a “zero sum game”.  Basically, even though our decisions are more about who to admit rather than who to deny, the choice to admit one applicant inherently comes with the consequence that someone else must be waitlisted or denied.

Each year, at this time, as I prepare my regions for committee and begin to make the really tough calls, I continue to be amazed by the accomplishments of high school seniors and I continue to question how in the world I got admitted to my alma mater.  There are applicants taking 7 APs as a senior and knocking out all As.  There are other applicants who are three-sport captains while being editors-in-chief of their high school newspaper, still other applicants are actually running million-dollar corporations….I am serious.  Other applicants are already, at the age of 17, doing world-class research with college professors while others have overcome incredible personal hardship to be successful in spite of every force in the universe driving them to fail.  My colleagues and I sit in awe of our applicants.  We are amazed, we are impressed, we are inspired.  To make the tough calls we have to make this time of year does not come easy to us.  We have feelings, we have sympathy, we are human.  We are trying to build a class; we are not trying to break hearts.  Oftentimes the hearts we break are our own knowing that all the advocacy in the world is sometimes simply not enough.

I am not blogging for sympathy or for pity.  I am simply blogging for catharsis and for understanding.  I hope that you the reader understand that the decisions we make are not without great thought, consternation, contemplation, and emotion.  We care about what we do and we hope it shows.

– Wendy Livingston