The Confessions of a Gatekeeper

Dennis A. Williams

Newsweek, May 1, 1989. pages 62 - 63

What a business, one of my colleagues says with a sigh. We spend all fall drumming up interest, whipping students into a hysteria about coming to our college. And then we spend the spring telling most of them they didn’t get in. It’s a trick and they fall for it every year. All our blandishments are not cynical; we do mean them, of course. We want lots of students to apply so we can choose the ones we want. And they’re willing, even eager, to cooperate; the more we turn down, the more selective we become. The “prestige” students so crave, then, becomes largely a matter of supply and demand.

Really, the process isn’t easy for us, either. Even the student who applies to 10 or 20 colleges does not have the pressure of an admissions officer who must read and evaluate hundreds or thousands of files in a three-month period. What makes the pressure more bearable, though, is the understanding that the decision isn’t as big a deal as the applicants think. That may sound like a cruel joke to those who received a thin envelope last week, but remember, rarely does anyone apply to an Ivy League school without being qualified for admission someplace. Rejection from the Ivy of his choice — or even from all of them — is not the end of the world. It may, or may not, alter the direction of a student’s life, but it need not prevent him from becoming whatever he wants to be. We want students to believe that they need us, although we know they will survive without us.

Let’s pause for a moment to review, as they say in the test-prep courses. Thus far I’ve admitted to playing the hype game and acknowledged that there is life outside the Ivy League. Here’s disclosure number three: we make mistakes. Every year. We’re always aware some students we take won’t make it, just as we know that others we didn’t have room for would have done well. This is not a science, nor is it our fault. People change, especially 17-year-olds transported to a new, challenging environment. Only by comparing students and weighing several different factors can we begin to make intelligent choices.

Then we cross our fingers.

What are those factors and how do we weigh them? Everything everyone thinks is important is, though maybe not in the precise way that people suspect. Often the first question an applicant asks is what SAT score do we require. Obviously a combined score of 1400 is more appealing than a 700. Less obvious, perhaps, is that we may well refuse a student with scores 400 points higher than those of a student we accept.

Alarms go off: SAT’s matter, as a general frame of reference. But when we see multiple scores that show steady improvement, alarms go off. Is Johnny showing his true talent or merely the results of brainwashing by the deans of remediation who coach kids for the college boards? We tell prospective students all the time that high-school transcripts are far more significant, precisely because they are more comprehensive and less affected by “good days” and test-taking savvy. That’s probably the very reason students put such store in standardized tests: they think they have more control and can in a single day refute — or confirm — the evidence of four years’ work.

Grades can deceive too; that’s why the SAT was invented in the first place. One school’s A is another school’s C. Some schools even grade on a scale up to 110 so that a 90 looks more impressive than it is. That’s why we also look at class rank, the difficulty of the curriculum and the percentage of students who go on to four-year colleges. A student at the top of his class in an ordinary school may be just as impressive as one in the middle of the pack at a prestigious private or magnet school — especially if 50 other kids ranked ahead of him have applied, too.

There are some undeniable advantages to attending an elite high school. Admissions officers tend to be familiar with the place and therefore have a better idea of how to judge a student’s accomplishments. That familiarity may also extend to the guidance counselors. Every year counselors from prominent schools pay a call at our offices. We sup, we swap stories, we slap backs. And when they return to their schools, our friends will be more effective advocates for their students than counselors at other schools who barely know their own kids, let alone our dean of admissions.

Lest I raise too many democratic hackles there is a downside to this hale-fellow business: familiarity can be a curse if relations are strained. A counselor still smarting over last year’s rejections may steer kids away from a college to which they should apply. And an admissions officer miffed over a counselor’s past behavior — why is he only sending us losers? — may view an applicant less objectively than he should.

Extracurricular activities count, but overkill can be counterproductive. Yuppies-in-training have been known to engage in teenage resumé-packing. That’s why we ask applicants to explain which of their activities mean the most to them and why. Community service looks good, even though we know that many schools require it — in part because it looks good. And because so many high school students hold down part-time jobs, the ability to excel academically while working becomes a fair measure of concentration and time management, skills that will be essential in college and life. A bit of advice: no matter how many terms a student finds for “landscape architecture,” and no matter how he tries to disguises his father’s identity, mowing the lawn is still just cutting the grass.

Does it help if you’re the child of an alum? It will be noted on your folder and if you’re rejected, we’ll send a special letter. If your family has given a great deal of money, we’ll also have to explain our decision to the development office. That happens, but no one likes unpleasant conversations. Absent huge gifts, and all other things being equal (which they occasionally are), being a legacy can be a help. But it’s never a guarantee.

In the age of MTV some students send personal videotapes as a supplement to requiredessays. They’re usually fun but a waste of time; many are never looked at. We don’t mean to be rude, but given the workload there’s no time to turn on the VCR. Last year one of our admissions offices held a party and finally screened some of the video submissions. The fellow whose animation was worthy of Disney didn’t get in. The “winner,” in fact, had the least impressive video, probably because she spent more of her time on schoolwork.

By late March it begins to seem as though every kid has straight A’s and 1500 SAT’s, edited the school paper, played the lead in the class musical, spent a summer in China and the fall as a volunteer at the local soup kitchen. The decision on these estimable characters comes down to factors over which the student has no control, things that the college seeks not in any given individual but in the group it selects.

Colleges don’t want homogeneous student bodies. It’s boring: kids can learn as much outside the classroom as in it, especially if they are exposed to different people from different places. It’s not a student’s fault if both her parents are professionals, but was also want students from working-class, single-parent homes. (There’s an element of merit in this: a student from a “less advantaged” background demonstrates more drive if her accomplishments are roughly comparable to those of a privileged student.) Geographic distribution falls into the same category. It’s good for us and for the freshman class if we

have students from every state and dozens of foreign countries.

By far the most problematic question of diversity involves affirmative action — recruiting African-, Asian-, Hispanic- and Native-American students. It is a problematic effort partly because the results are so visible. A white-high-school student may see that a black classmate ranked lower was admitted while she was refused and conclude that reverse discrimination is at work. Such suspicions might have substance if college admissions were a pure, objective meritocracy. It is not now and never has been.

A black student, at the same time, may wonder why there aren’t more blacks on campus if the college, as Cornell and many others do, says that minority recruitment is a priority. But no college wants to be seen as “lowering its standards,” and virtually every selective university in the country is chasing after the same group of high-achieving black students. The best way to enlarge the applicant pool is still the hardest: find sustained ways to intervene early in students’ educational careers.

In the end, I am telling you just this: the admissions process resembles real life. It’s difficult and arbitrary, even playing the angles is no guarantee of success. So there’s little point in becoming obsessed with the process, it’s what you bring to it that counts. A friend of mine who used to read applications always said that he was relentless in his quest for passion, some evidence in the folder that here was a real, vital person with experiences and ideas and a commitment to learning. That’s a good way to get accepted by a college and, may I add, not a bad way to live either.

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A former Newsweek education editor, Dennis A Williams teaches writing at Cornell and serves as an admissions officer.