How Do Colleges Make Their Decisions? Tentative Decisions

Clear-Cut?

Sometimes, though, the decision is clear-cut. Some applicants are so outstanding in dimensions important to the college that the decision is obvious to both reviewers of a file: admit. Sometimes a file may be so outstanding that it is sent right to the dean with a recommendation to admit after being read by only one experienced admissions officer. Colleges that compute a rating total may automatically admit students who score at or above a very high threshold without further review.

Similarly, at the other end of the continuum, files are prescreened to identify applicants who fall far short of a college’s standards. Identifying these before they are thoroughly read can help readers save their time for the stronger files that require careful consideration. These decisions can be made on the basis of grades, test scores, or some other easily detected major weakness, relative to the rest of the pool, that cannot be offset by other factors. It may sound harsh to learn that some files get a decision after only five minutes of evaluation, but that can be the case. The number of applications is usually too large for every file to receive the same level of analysis. 

The New York Times ran an article yesterday about a Web site that provides kids with the probability of being accepted at eighty elite colleges for a $79.95 fee. I want the admissions staffsat those eighty elite colleges to be aware that there are computer programs out there that know just how and what you think. Before you start your discussions, you may want to make sure the room is not buggedin a clandestine effort to further enhance the prediction software. - Skeptical high school counselor

Sometimes a file is forwarded for review, and after careful consideration both readers independently recommend denial. At highly competitive colleges with many more applicants than spots in the freshman class, this is often the fate of applicants who do not distinguish themselves in some way, even if their grades and scores are competitive. Here, too, this can be the end of the decision process or, depending on the college, the dean may review the file briefly to confirm the decision made by others. Colleges using ratings totals may also establish a threshold at the low end—students who score below the threshold will be denied without further review.

The Gray Zone

The most difficult decisions, of course, have to be made for those in the middle of the pack—the deny-plus or admit-minus applicants, those whose ratings total falls between the deny and admit thresholds, or the ones referred for additional review. A good number of applicants fall into this gray zone. These applicants have a lot that makes them attractive to the two reviewers, but so do many other applicants. Here the decisions get tougher—more personal and more human—and as a consequence, more unpredictable and, to some extent, arbitrary, at least as seen from the outside.

Making the Final Decision

The final round is often reviewed by committee. Consisting of all or a subset of the senior admissions officers (or subcommittee chairs), and occasionally including a small number of faculty and students, the committee typically hears an oral overview of each applicant who is referred to it. That overview is usually provided by the admissions officer from the applicant’s geographic region, who serves as the applicant’s advocate in arguing for admission. One young admissions officer, when asked by a high school counselor what he had learned in his first year that he could apply in his second, replied, “I learned who it was worth bringing to committee. You can’t bring them all.” Questions go back and forth, thoughts are exchanged and debated, and then a final, usually decisive, vote is taken: admit, deny, or wait-list (or defer, in the case of early action or early decision). At some colleges, the committee may review and act on all decisions, even the easiest ones, while other colleges do not use committees at all, even in difficult cases.

Years ago, Dartmouth College let me sit in on its process. I was struck by some of the vagaries. For example, the time—if your application came up at nine-thirty in the morning when everybody was full of energy, that made a difference, as opposed to coming up at five in the afternoon when people are thinking, “I’d rather be somewhere else.”  - John Merrow, The Merrow Report

Regardless of how the process unfolds, clearly many of the final decisions are difficult—decisions that, on another day and with another set of reviewers, might have turned out differently. The qualitative nature of admissions reviews, along with all the dimensions that a college may consider in crafting its class, creates a lot of uncertainty. Two equally wonderful students apply to a college, and one is admitted, but one is not. Why? Unfortunately, there may not be a clear answer, or the answer may be one that makes you uncomfortable. As Shawn Abbott, now director of undergraduate admissions at Stanford University, has stated, “Most of the highly selective institutions in the country could easily fill their classes twice over with candidates possessing similar academic credentials.” The decisions are not always easy to explain or defend, and colleges almost never explain their decisions to applicants, and only rarely even to guidance counselors. It is easier for them to talk about the “tremendous quality and size of the applicant pool” and “what a tough year it was.”

I don’t know what colleges want. My daughter has the GPA and the curriculum (full International Baccalaureate with two extra certificates), extracurriculars (two state championships), high class rank and SATs, and still got deferred from [Elite U]. She is one of those amazing kids who parents and teachers think is so uniquethat of course they would want her. I guess we should have had her practice walking on water at birth. -  Frustrated parent who didn’t understand how competitive the applicant pool actually was