This winter, the admissions committee will review approximately 21,000 applications applications from prize-winning researchers from California, track stars from New York and first-generation valedictorians from Massachusetts in search of the "best class ever."
Every year it's the same, and 2011 offers no exception the stakes of admissions rise, the competition among applicants intensifies and the differences between those rejected and those accepted dissolves. "Applications submitted by students of color are already 17 percent higher," we hear, and "the average composite SAT score of the regular decision applicants is the highest to date" and "this year boasts the largest percentage of applicants who can wiggle their ears." New applications reinforce our old belief in ever-expanding horizons of progress.
It's no secret, however, that college admissions is a severely flawed process. Admissions officers are overloaded, the SAT is biased and easily gamed, interviews are short and questions vary by alum, application essays (if not greatly exaggerated) are sometimes entirely fabricated and even high-school GPAs incorrectly conflate achievement with intelligence. Colleges get around this by saying they make their decisions "holistically," meaning they consider the candidate's entire application (race, activities, gender, etc.) and focus less on grades and test scores. This is an excellent idea in theory. But in practice it is a slogan and not a true value, a mantra that can be handily employed when defending controversial decisions (e.g. legacy candidates).
Two weeks ago, among the usual platitudes about our brilliant pool of new applicants, Maria Laskaris, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, said something interesting: "We are grappling with what it means to only be admitting one in 10...That means for us we are much more nuanced in terms of some of the distinctions we must make." Laskaris is tantalizingly vague about the kinds of distinctions she's referring to. Does she mean we should split hairs over a difference of 50 points on the SAT? Or 20 points? Does she mean we should value a 0.05 difference in GPA more than we already do? What about 0.01?
I hope none of this is the case. That's not because I think the SAT and high school transcripts are useless they're still the best tools to weed out both exceptionally bad and exceptionally good students from average students. However, the current admissions process, "holistic" or not, is oriented too much around quantifiable credentials and too little around character. Admissions officers at elite schools admit that the majority of candidates can handle college-level work. As such, an applicant's "statistics" should be used as a threshold, not a determining factor, in the decision to grant or deny him admission.
If I were Laskaris, I'd approach admissions the way a smart boss approaches hiring. The first thing I'd look for in a candidate would be evidence that he shares our institution's key values: community, intellectual challenge and service. The second thing I'd look for in a candidate would be self-discipline and internal motivation to produce great things the candidate who studied or performed or played because he wanted to, not because he was expected to. The third and last thing I'd look for would be a willingness to both share success and accept blame for failure.
These are simple, "holistic" criteria. But they are difficult to meet and even more difficult for admissions officers to gauge. How then, in the next two months, can admissions begin to use them?
The most important thing admissions can do is to read admissions essays with these ideas in mind. The actual content of the essay doesn't matter. That stuff is fungible, by which I really mean B.S.-able.' More important is the message and whether it feels sincere. The same goes for the peer recommendation. Is it genuine? Maybe not there are Dartmouth students who have written their own "peer" recs.
If we accept that admissions is as much about character as it is credentials, we can build the student body that most belongs here. We can engineer a more precise set of interview questions (both for the applicants and the people who write their peer recs) and essays that test applicants beyond their ability to regurgitate half-baked manifestos on "diversity" or "meaningful life experiences." Perhaps we will never accomplish this, but if we do, maybe one day there really will be a "best class ever."
