Admission officers rejected claims of a recent Wall Street Journal article that Ivy League colleges favor certain extracurricular activities over others when admitting students.
Having compiled statistics from the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College and Georgetown University -- two of which are not even part of the Ivy League -- the Wall Street Journal article argued that being a student leader, a publication editor or a team captain is a huge advantage when applying for admission to an Ivy League school.
Karl Furstenberg, Dartmouth's dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, said the article was "foolish."
He said the Journal reporter contacted him too, but she only quoted people whose remarks agreed with the assertion of the story.
Robin Mamlet, dean of Admissions at Swarthmore, reiterated similar comments about the article. "It was irresponsible journalism," she said.
Attacking the premise of the article that certain activities are favored in the Ivy League admissions process, Furstenberg said, "We don't even keep such statistics," adding, "I was very surprised that other schools tracked those things," he added.
The University of Pennsylvania was the only Ivy League school whose admissions statistics were used by the Wall Street Journal
Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, Willis Stetson told the Yale Daily News, "We weren't making the decisions based on that data."
Mamlet said that the Swarthmore admissions data might suggest a correlation between extracurriculars and admission decisions but "it was a coincidence."
She said that Swarthmore is not looking for extracurriculars but "academic eagerness and intellectual hunger" in students.
The article overstated the importance of such activities in gaining admission, Mamlet said. "They play a role but we want students fuelled by their love for learning," she added.
Furstenberg agreed with Mamlet that extracurriculars are not a major factor. "Our evaluation is more holistic," Furstenberg said referring to Dartmouth. "We look for excellence wherever we can find it."
Furstenberg explained the Dartmouth admissions process. He said two admission officers individually look at an application, make their comments independent of one another and then Furstenberg himself studies each application.
Extracurriculars are a bi-product of what Dartmouth is looking for, Furstenberg said. The admissions office is interested in what an applicant has done with his activity.
"Just being on a newspaper is not enough. We want to know what a student has done with it," Furstenberg said.
Furstenberg raised concerns about the negative effect the Wall Street Journal article. It will create wrong impressions in the minds of parents and children, he said.