In my previous post, I spoke about institutional priorities. While parents may immediately think about signing their child up to play the bassoon, there are many ways a student can be hooked at a school. For example, tenured professors need students to teach, new departments must be filled, coed schools strive for gender balance, under-subscribed programs seek students to fill spaces, and there is a desire for representation from all states. It can be as simple as being a resident of Arizona, a hook our students have when applying to our in-state schools!
The president of the school and the board of trustees set their own institutional priorities for Admissions each year, outlining the direction they see their school heading. We don’t know what the priorities of the school are when a student applies. Every year a school receives more student applications than they can possibly admit, and of those, a good percentage are admissible students. Institutional priorities help shape a class when a students academic metrics are not able to refine it further.
So why discuss this topic if it isn’t something you have any control over? The point is not to make you feel hopeless or wonder if your student is ever going to be admitted. Every year students apply and are admitted to colleges without having a hook. What I hope you take away from this is three main ideas:
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There are going to be admission decisions rendered that will not make sense, or that seem unfair.
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Having a balanced list of colleges helps temper the unpredictability of admissions.
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Tell your son or daughter now that you are proud of them, regardless of any admissions decision.
This process feels very personal. You see your student working so hard on their applications, you know the late nights they have endured completing homework and group projects, the sacrifices they have made, and it all just seems so unfair that college admissions might come down to “we have too many girls, we have to admit more boys”. This is why we work so hard on finding a fit. If a student is real about their chances at a school, and has a balanced list full of schools that are a good fit for them, they will have options. There are no “hooked” kids, there are students that have matched with a school in which they have a hook. Your student could be hooked at many schools, what we want to do is develop a smart list so that they want to attend the school that wants to admit them. A common problem is that parents and students want to be hooked at the school they want. You can’t fabricate a hook, it’s either there or it isn’t.
One final note…did I forget to add race/ethnic background to the list of institutional priorities? No. Racial diversity isn’t a hook, it’s context. Every college I can think of is tasked with trying to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of their student body. But it isn’t a bucket to be filled. The expectation on students of color is that they bring other things to a college campus besides their race; no one is admitted based on racial diversity alone. The college process is still overwhelmingly skewed towards white, upper-class students, a frustrating part of an imperfect system.
