(Admission Process) How Admission Officers in US Ivy Leagues Admit Students

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(Admission process) How admission officers in US Ivy leagues admit students.

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An Admission Officers Response to Willas World

JULY 14, 20122 COMMENTS

Lately, this infographic/cartoon drawn by an Ivy-League grad has been trending on my facebook

feed. I think its supposed to be a response to popular belief that many Ivy-League grads are

pretentious and out of touch with reality. I think there is some truth to both sides.

The blog link is here: Willas Worldand its a cute, entertaining, quick read.

I agree with Willa that so much of our own perspective on education comes from our parents. Did we

grow up with more than 50 books in our house? Did our parents read to us when we were growing

up? Did they love learning and go to school? Did you grow up thinking that going to college was the

obvious thing to do? All of these things would influence your attitude toward education.

I DO HAVE TO STRONGLY DISAGREE with the graphic of the fruit pile. Willa asserts that

admissions often comes down to which one they randomly grab. Uh. No. At the highly selective

schools like Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanfordand probably Princeton toothere is no RANDOM

GRABBING of applicants. We do not just pick into the pile of 34,000+ applicants and just randomly

pick a student and say YOURE IN. If that is the way things worked, I would have been on holiday

for most of my job.

The reality is more like this: I spent four months painstakingly reading every single word of 1,200+

essays my last year at the job. I read through every essay WORD FOR WORD, delved into thewords of teachers to see how the student would be like in the classroom, and scanned resumes to

imagine the impact they would have on the sports field, science lab, and choir group. I did not spend

12 hours a day reading application to pick students RANDOMLY.

I understand what Willa is trying to saythat shes fortunate that she grew up in an education-

centered household, and that she feels like it was a miracle that she got accepted to a place like

Princeton. I appreciate her humble character. A LOT. The Ivy-League could probably use A LOT

more people like Willa.

On the other hand, admission officers take pride in their work and take their work SERIOUSLY. We

do not RANDOMLY make decisions. Sure, that year the Latin Department may need a couple morestudents, or the orchestra really needs a cellist, but at the end of the day, students get in on their
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own merit: what they have to offer the school from an intellectual AND non-academic

perspective.

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FILED UNDERADMISSIONS: APPLICATIONADVICE,ESSAYS,ETIQUETTE,EVALUATION,RECOMMENDATION LETTERS,TEACHER

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About "Asian American Admission Officer"

I'm a education professional with many years of highly selective admissions experience at a small

East Coast liberal arts Ivy as well as a med-sized research institution. After reading many personal

statements from Asian American high school students with the phrase "I'm not just another Asian

American...(fill in the blank with stereotype)," I decided to write about Asian Americans in higher

education. My goals are to 1) educate readers about issues related to Asian Americans in higher

education, 2) offer college admission advice to high school students and parents, and 3) serve as a

resource for students with questions about applications, college life, and related issues.
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2 Responses toAn Admission Officers Response to Willas World

1. Willasays:

July 14, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Hi! Thanks for bringing this up. I dont at all believe that the process of college admissions is a

haphazard lottery. However, I do think that given a pool of over 34,000 applicants, there are

inherently many valid ways to form a basket of ~1500 students. There is no doubt that admissions

officers are extremely meticulous in their job of putting together a group of diverse, competent

studentsbut this is a puzzle with many possible solutions, and the particular solution you choose ISpartially up to random chance.

People seem to think that there is some natural ordering to applicants, such that they could be

ranked from 1 to 34,000, and that it is your job to identify the top 1500. In my fruit analogy, I was

trying to communicate the fact that it is more a matter of putting together a group to fit the schools

needs, rather than form some value judgment on each student individually. I do admit that I may

have exaggerated the random aspect in order to make a point, and I apologize if I undermined the

work that you do.

P.S. Also, as implied in the analogy of picking a dud, some applicants may look good on paper but

end up struggling to fit in at the school. How often do you see this and are there ways in which you

try to avoid it?

Reply

2. "Asian American Admission Officer"says:

July 14, 2012 at 9:31 pm

Hi Willa
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So glad to hear from you! Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my post. I am really

impressed with your blog and enjoy your info-graphics! Did you do graphic arts @ Princeton? No

apologies needed at all sorry if I sounded harsh. You can read the rest of my posts to see that Im

quite funny/sarcastic.

All of your points are well taken! I can only speak for the institutions that Ive worked for (you can

email me directly if you want to know which schools), but the 1500 applicant baskets in my

workplace were divided up by geographical territory. So, for example, I read for a couple of counties

in the East Bay of California as well as China and Japan.

The geographical portfolio model is one that many universities use. It helps admission officers really

get to know the high schools within their territory. We form relationships with the teachers and

guidance counselors of the high schools in the territory, and I would do deep dive research using

wikipedia, city websites, housing and industrial information, demographics, etc to understand theneighborhoods where students were living.

Why did we do this much research? In order to understand the CONTEXT of the students. For most

of my high schools, I could tell you the average household income, house price, industry in the area

(is there an Air Force Base near by? Are most parents working at the Jelly Belly factory? or are the

parents mostly professionals working as consultants, lawyers, doctors?) as well as racial

demographics. Even more importantly, I could tell you what percentage of the high schools

graduating senior class are going to a 4 year college.

So, even within my 1200 or so applicants, I understand the family, community, local context. It mayseem random but it actually isnt. The geographic portfolios make sense based on different

communities as well. My colleagues who was the recruiter for Native American students would have

AZ (1/3 of the state is reservation), NM, Alaska, the Dakotas, and Hawaii, for example. If someone

is doing African American student outreach, they would have DC and states in the South. There is

A LOT of thought that goes into the way these baskets are divided up.

At the end of the day, I suppose only the Dean knows exactly what the complete fruit basket looks

like, because he has to listen to the Board of Trustees, President, Faculty, Arts, Ethnic

Communities, International Communities, and Athletics (etc, etc) wishes for what they want the

class to look like. Oh, yeah. I forgot about the Alumni/Development office as well.

So, the Dean will tell us what our priorities are for the year at the beginning of every application

cycle (which sounds pretty much like the institutions mission) and we start looking for the most

academically well qualified and diverse class that we can find out of the 34,000 applicants.


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I think were actually in agreement and I would send this message to parents and students of

wait-listed and rejected students all the timethat you werent rejected because there is something

deficient or WRONG WITH YOU. First off, it wasnt YOU that was rejected. It was your

APPLICATION. There is a difference. Second, youre right, its putting together a class, so it means

that there are different needs that our Dean is trying to fulfill. The university needs sports teams that

win. Orchestras that can play. Art communities that add to the universitys artistic world. The list can

go on and onto trying to guess what the school is looking for a certain year is nearly impossible

Ill address your PS in my next post. I hope you dont mind that Im rambling on and onhaha

Reply
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