An Inside Look at Amherst Admissions

Anyone doubting the randomness of the admissions process should check out this March 28, 2011 NPR story
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/28/134916924/Amherst-Admissions-Process, in which journalist Tovia Smith reports on her observations of the admissions committee at Amherst College.

The piece reveals that the admissions process is getting worse, especially for highly qualified students.  During the story, admissions officers at Amherst wrestle over student applications that largely look the same, even though these mirror images reflect industrious and intelligent students clearly capable of success at any college.  The officers search for ways to distinguish the students, sometimes even resorting to one line in a student essay.  One officer admits that for qualified students, the final round of decisions is really just a lottery.

This confirmation that admission decisions are highly subjective and random is discouraging and encouraging at the same time.  Discouraging because admissions officers are still on the wrong path, but encouraging because at least students rejected from Amherst can see that the decision was not about them.  

Rejection Advice from Yale

Some colleges recognize the limits and randomness of the admissions process.  Yale is one of them.

On the Yale Admissions website you can find a thoughtful, honest essay by the Dean of Admissions, Jeffrey Brenzel.  The essay is titled “Epilogue:  After Colleges Accept You,” but “Accept” could just as easily be replaced with “Reject.” 

Brenzel is writing to Yale applicants, whom he admits most likely applied to other “strong colleges.”  He understands that these students “may feel as if everything depends on which colleges admit you, or whether a certain one does.”  His response to this concern:

“After years of experience, however, here is what I know, virtually to the point of certainty: almost nothing depends on exactly which strong college admits you. Everything depends on what you decide to do once you get to a strong college, and how well prepared you are to take advantage of the infinite opportunities you will find there.

As responses come back to you from colleges, you will tend to dwell on the rejections, should you get some. It’s only natural – what you didn’t get and can’t have feels suddenly infinitely more valuable than what you did get and can have. You will be tempted to waste valuable time pondering what you could have done differently to be accepted by this or that school. You may be tempted to appeal the decision, if you had a “dream” school that didn’t come through. But there is only one good answer to make to any thin envelope you may receive: ‘Your loss, baby.’”

There’s not much I can add except to thank Yale for getting it.  Even though we may have disagreed in the past (they rejected my application), we do agree on this.  To view the full essay, visit: http://admissions.yale.edu/after-colleges-accept-you.  

J.K. Rowling on the Benefits of Failure

     Who needs four years at Harvard when you can get the commencement address for free? (Thank you, Youtube!)  In the case of JK Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech, her advice on failure is apt for high school seniors denied the opportunity to sit in the seats she was addressing.

Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, had notoriously “failed” by society’s standards.  Before introducing us to the boy wizard, she was a poor, divorced single mother with no job prospects but a very active imagination. 

Rowling’s message is this: “…personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.” [Check out the speech at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkREt4ZB-ck]

Not all Harvard students got Rowling’s message.  One student complained, “You know, we're Harvard. We're like the most prominent national institution. And I think we should be entitled to ... we should be able to get anyone. And in my opinion, we're settling here.” 

Who knows what I would have thought if I had heard Rowling’s words on graduation day.  I certainly had confused my CV with my life, and sought shelter from my insecurities in my academic achievements.  After being rejected from Princeton (my dream school) the shelter was in ruins, as was my self esteem.  I didn’t have the confidence to take risks in college or believe in my ability despite the rejection.  I was bitter and jaded just when I should have been viewing the world with fresh eyes.

Rowling is grateful for her failures.  As she said, “Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.”  That inner security is priceless.  If college rejection is the cost for inner security, I’d say you got a bargain.

Don't Stalk the Admissions Officer!

“The ‘Admit’ or ‘Reject’ decision is usually based on the idiosyncrasies of the admissions officers handling your application.”

So writes Risa Lewak in her funny, clever and much needed book Don’t Stalk the Admissions Officer.   Risa and I were friends in high school, and we are both recovering overachievers, although you might question our “recovery” if you heard us gush over our beloved AP European history textbook (which Risa recently purchased from Amazon!).  If we had read Risa’s book years ago, we certainly would have left high school with happier memories, rather than a sick textbook obsession! 

While the book is intended for all students, I think overachievers would especially benefit from Risa’s humorous spin on the college admissions process.  Section headings like “Enjoy High School Now, Avoid Therapy Later,” and “Don’t Take It Personally Unless the Letter Says ‘We Hate You’” will force a smile on the most tightly wound applicant.    Even my husband enjoyed the book, and that’s saying a lot given that he applied to one school, was accepted early, and generally has no interest in the college admissions process.  Maybe he wanted to know what the rest of us endured…

I asked Risa to expand on the all-powerful “idiosyncrasies” of admissions officers that creep into the decision process.  Admissions officers have told her (under the condition of anonymity) that they “might simply be in a bad mood and reject an application or hate the applicant's essay subject or be more inclined to accept someone from a certain geographic area.”  She drew from these conversations that the process “is so random and so not based on a meritocracy.”  One admissions officer told Risa that his colleague pushed for an applicant who played the clarinet because he used to play the clarinet.  Even though Risa and I both believe the clarinet is a superior instrument (we played clarinet in our high school band), we cannot support such musical favoritism.  The “juicy tidbits and anecdotes” Risa gathered while researching her book led her to conclude that “rejection or acceptance is sometimes and often times more about the admissions officer than the applicant.”

Don’t Stalk the Admissions Officer also includes practical tips on selecting a school (for the right reasons), completing the application, dealing with pushy parents, financial aid and other topics that would otherwise be dry if not handled with Risa’s light and witty touch.  Risa also advises students act as their own information gatherers and advocates, rather than relying on guidance counselors.  In all, this book is a refreshing break from the stacks of college books known to induce panic attacks in students.

The Epilogue title captures the message of this blog – “Whether It’s Fat or Thin, an Envelope Will Not Change Your Life.”  It took Risa and I years after high school to learn this, but we’re offering you a short cut to sanity, so take it!     

Amazon Link to Don’t Stalk the Admissions Officer: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_34?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=don%27t+stalk+the+admissions+officer&sprefix=don%27t+stalk+the+admissions+officer

Don’t be a College Hater

They are on every campus - students who act like they are too good for their own school.  I call them college haters.  Don’t be one.

College haters arrive on campus with unhealed wounds of rejection.  Most were stunned to receive rejection letters, and take out their bitterness on the colleges that actually accept them.  Deeply insecure, haters look upon their fellow classmates as intellectual lightweights, even though most of these students are as qualified, if not more so, than the haters themselves.  Haters can never admit this because their identity is so wrapped up in being “the smart ones” that they will do anything, even sabotage their college experience, to defend it. 

I should know.  I came across many haters in college, and might have sipped from the keg of condescension once or twice myself.  Fortunately, I saw the light sophomore year when I met my future husband.  His crowd taught me that intelligence and having fun are not mutually exclusive.  Most students don’t wear their resumes on their sleeve.  The smartest student might be the one with the painted face streaking the football field.  You just never know. 

So even if you are angry, don’t become a hater.  It is a losing battle.  Your dream school isn’t going to change its mind, and hating your school will really piss off the people who want to be there. 

My advice for non-haters:  Don’t hate back.  The college haters are really self-haters who haven’t forgiven themselves for being rejected.  Take pity on them. Not only are they ruining their college experience, but the humbling waiting for them in the post-college world will not be gentle.    

My advice for haters:  I understand it’s hard.  Your self image has been shattered.  Maybe it is time just to be you, or at least try to figure out who that is.  

The Scoop on the U.S. News Rankings

    What makes a school a “top” college?  For many, this simply means placement at the “top” of the U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings.  After years of criticism, the U.S. News rankings are still looked to as the final word on how colleges stack up against each other. 

U.S. News & World Report stumbled onto a goldmine when it first published the college rankings issue in 1983.  It sold so well that the U.S. News staff referred to it as their “swimsuit issue.”  The rankings issue has even outlived the hard copy version of the magazine.  In November 2010, U.S. News ceased printing and shifted to an online format.  What was the only issue to remain on newsstands?  The U.S. News annual rankings.      

Why are the U.S. News rankings still so popular, especially among students fixated on the top of the list?  Academics and university administrators have long questioned the legitimacy of the rankings, but this criticism does not seem to have reached those who need to hear it the most – students and parents.  Did you know that Stanford President Gerhard Casper wrote a protest letter to U.S. News in 1996, and in 1997 Stanford refused to submit “reputational ranking” data to the magazine?  Or that in 2007 Yale hosted a conference titled “Beyond Ranking” as part of the movement to find an alternative to the broken and misleading commercial rankings?  If not, read on.

Below are the reasons critics give more weight to David Letterman’s Top Ten list than the U.S. News list.

Colleges game the system.  Thanks to one Dean of Admissions, we have a window into what he calls the “blatant falsification of data” pulled off by deans and admissions staff at “excellent U.S. colleges with selective admissions policies.”  As he writes in the essay “Faked Figures Make Fools of Us,” James M. Sumner, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Grinnell College, colleges improve their rank by not including data for “development cases” (students accepted because of family’s gifts), student athletes, legacies and waitlist students.  These students are often the weaker students offered admission.  Sumner writes his sources also admitted to calculating in-house, adjusted SAT/ACT scores before reporting them to U.S. News, and using tactics to drive up the number of applications. 

Reputation is everything.  Every year, U.S. News sends “reputational surveys” to college administrators asking them to rank their peer institutions.  Critics complain that these surveys are merely popularity contests and reinforce preconceived notions, since administrators rarely know in detail what is happening on other college campuses.  The survey results comprise 22.5% of the final U.S. News rank, more than any other factor (for a full list of the U.S. News ranking factors see: http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2010/08/17/how-us-news-calculates-the-college-rankings?PageNr=4).  To address this criticism, U.S. News now sends the surveys to high school guidance counselors.  Regardless of who fills out the survey, we should question why reputation plays such a dominant role in the rankings at all.  Doesn’t this just lead students to make decisions for the wrong reasons?

The list is biased, at least according to the writings of statistician Amy Graham and journalist Nicholas Thompson (who founded Forget U.S. News Coalition (FUNC) as a Stanford student).  Graham and Thompson claim that the ranking favors the alma maters of the U.S. News editors - Harvard, Princeton and Yale.  “Upsetting that equilibrium,” they wrote in 2001, “upsets the equilibrium in the U.S. News publishing offices.”

It’s all in how you crunch the numbers.  In 1999, the same Amy Graham from above was asked by U.S. News to lend her statistician’s eye to the ranking effort.  Graham’s formula placed greater weight on the money colleges actually spend on students, and in a shocking turn, Caltech ended up in the #1 spot (up from #9 in 1998).  The next year, the formula was reworked again and Harvard, Princeton and Yale were restored to the top three spots.  The truth is that the rankings, like the college admissions process, are not scientific but human endeavors.  Most students probably do not know that U.S. News takes into account faculty salaries and alumni giving.  Nicholas Thompson described the U.S. News methodology as: “Good students plus good faculty equals good school…That’s like measuring the quality of a restaurant by calculating how much it paid for silverware and food: not completely useless, but pretty far from ideal.” 

The ranking does not measure how much students learn in college.  To be fair to U.S. News, it must be said that the quality of an education is very difficult to define, and even harder to measure.  Yet critics point to the hoops colleges jump through to rise in the rankings and argue that if U.S. News asked for the right data, colleges would find a way to supply it.  Currently, schools that offer rigorous curriculums, like Caltech and University of Chicago, are punished by the rankings.   In his 1996 letter to U.S. News, the President of Stanford wrote:  “Caltech is crucified for having a predicted graduation rate of 99 percent and an actual graduation rate of 85 percent. Did it ever occur to the people who created this ‘measure’ that many students do not graduate from Caltech precisely because they find [the institution] too rigorous and demanding that is, adding too much value ­ for them?”

U.S. News has made an effort to respond to these challenges, and the Wizard of Oz behind the rankings, Bob Morse, even writes a blog to lend transparency to the system (http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog).  Colleges are also working together to find a better method of providing students the information they need for comparison shopping. 

So if you were rejected by a “top” college, chances are it was only considered “top” because U.S. News said so.  Recalculate the list based on your own priorities, and the schools that accepted you just might rise to the top!

College Admissions Around the World

What is the admissions process like in other countries?  Would you have a better shot at Oxford or Cambridge than Harvard or Yale?  Well, consider this – Cambridge applicants are interviewed by two professors and face questions like “What do you most like about the brain?” or “Was Romeo impulsive?”  A student applying to Oxford might be asked, “If I could fold this piece of paper an infinite number of times how many times must I fold it to reach the moon?”  

Clearly, the interview is just one way the US system differs from those abroad.  From my experience, US college interviews are nothing more than chat fests with nostalgic alums.  I remember one interviewer told me he had recently interviewed the daughter of a prominent local doctor, and then asked me what my father did for a living.  Another complained how his college had gone downhill since his days on campus.  It was all a waste of time; a bone thrown to alumni to make them feel important.  I prefer the quirky “Oxbridge” questions because at least they show these institutions value student intellectual curiosity and ingenuity, not the ability to make small talk.

The differences between admissions in the US and overseas do not end with the interview questions.  You might be surprised to learn that the US and Sweden are the only countries that require an “aptitude” test (SAT).  Almost all other countries base admissions decisions on subject-oriented “achievement” tests.  In other words, you are judged by what you actually learned in high school, not whether you took a prep course to decipher the secret code of the SAT.

How would you like a computer to make admissions decisions, rather than an admissions officer?  This is the case in Australia.  Students are ranked based on their performance on a national exam, then select their top choices and the computer does the rest.  Just think how much money universities could save if they replaced their admissions offices with a computer.  Maybe then they could afford to accept more applicants. 

Japanese students take a national entrance exam that determines where they can apply.   If adopted in the US, this would save students from applying to schools where they really don’t have strong chances of admission, and reduce the workload for admissions officers.  However, this system doesn’t suit students with their heart set on one school, because poor performance on the national entrance exam can block them from even applying to their dream school.  Japanese students in this situation often wait another year to retake the entrance exam. 

Not surprisingly, in China the state controls the admissions process, right down to setting the number of available spots to meet the projected needs of society.  If the US government could do this, we’d see a lot more engineers and fewer lawyers!

If I had to be an applicant in a non-US system, I would pick Ireland.  Irish applicants rank their choices and are then “matched” based on their rank and their test scores.  What I like is the idea that students pick the college, not the other way around.  The transparency of student preferences also helps admissions officers, who waste too much time guessing whether they are a student’s first choice.

Now back to those “Oxbridge” interview questions.  As one Brit comparing the two systems wrote, American universities place greater value on “personality characteristics” such as extra-curricular activities, athletics and legacy status.  American universities are held in high regard, their admissions process is viewed as a popularity contest.  While American students rush from activity to activity to fill up their applications, what are students abroad doing?  Acquiring skills.  Gaining a deeper level of knowledge, rather than spreading themselves too thin.  Preparing themselves for the global economy.      

So, if you want to ditch the SAT, field some unusual interview questions and create your own rankings, stick an international stamp on your application and get your passport ready!