At a previous school I worked at, we held a yearly admissions case studies program. Admission officers from over 15 colleges and universities across the US were invited to come to our school and conduct their own mock admissions committee meetings for small groups of students and parents. To prepare for this event, students and parents were asked to review a group of five applicants using demographic info, a student essay, one teacher recommendation, and an activity list. They were to come prepared to discuss these mock candidates in an admissions committee format and then offer admission to two students, deny two students, and waitlist one student.
We instructed the admission representatives to run these meetings like they were in a traditional committee, with one exception. They were not to disclose any priorities the school was looking for until halfway through the discussion. We did this for two main reasons: 1) we wanted students and parents to see just how much an institutions priorities could change the discussion and outcomes of the admissions committee, and 2) we wanted to show how the 15 different admission groups could arrive at 15 different results for the same group of applicants. College admissions is incredibly subjective! This program was one of the most successful we ran each year, as it gave the community a better idea of just how difficult college admission decisions are.
Institutional priorities vary by college and by year, however, there are some needs that nearly every school is trying to fill. The most common examples include: recruited athletes, musicians, legacy students, women in STEM, men in Humanities, and first-generation students. I’ve heard these priorities compared to buckets that need filling. If a student fills more than one bucket, they are meeting priorities for a school without taking up more than one space, and they become more admissible. If there were a first-generation male athlete with an interest in humanities, for example, that one student would fill three buckets for a school. Now, instead of using three valuable spaces to admit three students, each with one of those qualities, admissions officers can admit one student who fills multiple buckets and thereby admit more students later on.
Not all hooks are weighed the same, however. A students financial situation is a hook that can be weighted differently in various schools. For some colleges, an otherwise admissible student may be denied if they are unable to contribute financially to a school. Just as often, however, a student that requires a large amount of financial assistance is given an extra look as colleges want to admit students from a wide socioeconomic range. One way to determine a school’s financial policy is by looking if they are need aware or need blind. The middle class students, as is often the case, are most likely to suffer financially – not making enough to pay the steep tuition, but making too much to qualify for aid. Even students who fill an institutional priority need an academic profile in the admissible range. As the admission pools become more competitive, having a hook is simply another way of standing out amidst the crowd, but it isn’t a guarantee of admission. Even still, every time I talk about institutional priorities with parents, I can almost hear them thinking, “if only my kid had learned to play the bassoon.”
Random instruments aside, there are many ways a student can be hooked at a school. I will continue discussing institutional priorities in part two – stay tuned!
