It’s Not As Easy As It Looks

Admit It! You want to know what is said behind closed doors in admission committee meetings.  Believe it or not, it’s a lot more nuanced and detailed than a standard review of admission criteria might lead you to believe.  As admission officers, we are not actively looking for reasons to deny anyone; we are instead looking for reasons to admit people (the parameters on how many students we can admit and the competitiveness of our pools is what leads us to make the less positive decisions).  Today, I attended a college kick-off program for University Liggett School’s junior class.  These students not only learned what is talked about in committee, they got to be the committee.  And these students deserve a shout-out; they really got it.  They were having conversations that the most experienced admission officers have with one another every cycle.  They discovered many of the nuances themselves through an exercise with four mock applications.

Sure, as a group we talked about the obvious components of each applicant — GPAs, SATs/ACTs, number of advanced classes taken, extracurricular involvements — but we also discussed the following not-so-obvious components:

1. competitiveness of the applicants’ high schools
2. the high schools’ class sizes
3. how to distinguish between leadership and achievement (for example is it more impressive to captain your sports team or is it more important to be recognized as all-conference or all-state)
4. how a student’s cultural background may impact their involvement in extracurricular activities
5. legacy status and to what degree it should influence a committee’s decision making (if at all)
6. essay content and style
7. how individual applicants might diversify a campus (whether by geography, race/ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, interests, talents)
8. whether dual enrollment is less impressive if a student’s parents work at the college/university at which a student dual enrolls
9. upward and downward grade trends and what precipitated either one
10. how extenuating circumstances should be viewed when evaluating an applicant’s candidacy (health issues, family turmoil, financial difficulties, just to name a few)

We talked for over an hour about all of these nuances of application review and more.  At the end they were inspired, reassured, and a bit intimidated.  Inspired in that they had a better idea of how many great students are in college applicant pools and they were incredibly impressed by their peers, reassured in that they now know that admission committees consider all of these contextual elements, and intimidated in that they didn’t really grasp previously just how much work and what tough decisions admission officers must make.

So I encourage you, prospective students and parents, to take part in mock committee exercises offered by your high school, offered by colleges and universities at workshops and open houses, offered by the alumni societies of your parents’ alma maters, etc.  And check back with us in March when we will be offering you a series of “Overheard in W&M Admission Committee” blogs that highlight specific questions we ask ourselves about applicants and how they help us to arrive at a decision.

Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed. ’09
Senior Assistant Dean of Admission