College Counseling

Bob Brock, Director of College Counseling
bbrock@communityschool.org

Looking beyond grades and scores

Students' stories move admissions panels
At Amherst, Ahmmad Brown, Dale Hendricks, Eli Bromberg, Tom Parker, and Kathy Mayberry viewed applicants. At Amherst, Ahmmad Brown, Dale Hendricks, Eli Bromberg, Tom Parker, and Kathy Mayberry viewed applicants. (Nancy Palmieri for The Boston Globe)
By Peter Schworm
Globe Staff / March 22, 2009

    
Amherst College eagerly admitted the son of a New York City cab driver, a Bangladeshi immigrant who had flunked gym class but founded a newspaper dedicated to economics. The school's admissions committee also delighted at the math wiz from Queens who loses sleep when he's stumped by a problem and lives for bowling nights in his mother's league.

All the successful applicants to Tufts and Amherst, two highly selective liberal arts colleges, boast impressive academic credentials, but so do most of their competitors. What they share is a spark that makes them stand out from the crowd, whether through singular talents and values, fierce determination in the face of hard circumstance, or force of personality.

For high school seniors aspiring to the nation's top colleges and universities, the inner workings of admissions offices seem shrouded in mystery, a murky process that fuels endless angst and speculation. As students nervously await their decision letters, the two highly selective colleges invited a Globe reporter to observe admissions deliberations firsthand. The sessions reveal a complex, nuanced system that is at once analytical and intuitive, rigorous and forgiving, impartial and deeply personal.

They also underscore how fierce competition makes instinctive judgments all but inevitable, and provide rare insight into how intangible qualities can sway decisions.

'Long march begins'
"This is the sobering part," Tufts admissions dean Lee Coffin tells the seven-member committee gathered around a long conference table on a recent Thursday morning at the school's campus in Medford. "The long march begins."

It is the season's first meeting of the review committee at Tufts, and Coffin surveys the lay of the land. By this point, all the applicants are strong, and often there is little that separates them academically. So the committee often goes beyond the numbers and takes an in-depth look at personal qualities and talents.

The panels are groups of admissions officers, led by the dean of admissions, who gather for all-day review sessions in March. Many of the committee members are young, 20-somethings responsible for recruiting in specific parts of the country.

From the 15,000 applicants vying for a slot in next fall's freshman class, the college has admitted 2,200 whose top-notch qualifications made them shoo-ins, leaving about 10,000 students competing for just 1,100 offers. Tough odds for the students, and a daunting, at times emotionally draining, task for the panel.

To Coffin's right sits Emily Roper-Doten, an animated 29-year-old who headed up Tufts recruitment in Illinois, the morning's topic of discussion. So far, each application has been read twice, and Roper-Doten rattles off a brief summary of students' academic credentials, personal essays, and recommendations from teachers and reviewers. Around the table, admissions officers call up student files on their laptops, scanning a four-year transcript in a few seconds.

The first student, from a public high school in suburban Chicago, ranked behind about one-quarter of her senior class. Reviewers had given her the lowest overall academic rating, and panel members wonder why she hadn't already been denied. Discussion is brief. "Do you want to hear any more?" Roper-Doten asks. No one did.

"It's a deny," Coffin says.

Later, the group wastes little time in rejecting a straight-A student - a Girl Scout, dancer, and peer tutor, to boot. There were plenty of others just like her, says Daniel Grayson, a 25-year-old Tufts alumni on the panel.

Using a "holistic" approach, Tufts and other selective colleges look beyond test scores and grades to an array of personal qualities, including intellectual talent and curiosity, leadership, ambition, and work ethic. They also judge students on their educational and family background, and give preference to low-income and minority students who overcome obstacles to excel.

After rejecting a number of candidates with stronger academic records, for example, Tufts admits a student from a blue-collar Italian family who wrote movingly about his love of "food and family" and his relationship with his developmentally disabled brother. The student, who attends a Catholic school and works summers as a golf caddy, is judged a "smidge weak academically" by one reviewer.

But the group clearly takes a shine to him, and admits him unanimously.

"He's really sweet about his bro," Roper-Doten says.

In the most intense debate of the morning, the panel splits over a hearing-impaired student from a rough neighborhood who travels more than an hour to a magnet high school. Her test scores and grades were mediocre, with a B average and C's in English. But she grew up speaking Spanish, reviewers note, and she helped care for her siblings from a young age.

"We've taken kids like this who wind up being president of their class," said Isabel Casariego Bober, 26.

In the context of her background, her scores on the ACT were strong, Bober adds. If she had gone to the high school in her own neighborhood, they agree, she probably would have gotten all A's.

Some committee members think she might struggle at first at Tufts, but would eventually find her way. Others fear the workload would be too much.

"I think she's overcome a lot," Grayson says, "but I don't like setting these kids up to fail."

"There's so much strength in her," Roper-Doten says.

Back and forth they go for 20 minutes, without reaching a consensus. They put her in the "bullpen" with other knotty cases they will tackle another day.

A look behind the stats
The Colorado student's ACT score is mediocre, and his grades have a good share of B's. On statistics alone, he is a clear-cut no.

But as details emerge, the six Amherst College admissions officers, a youngish group arrayed around a cluttered conference table on a recent Monday morning, take a closer look.

Reading his file from large three-ring binders, the panel learns that his mother is unemployed and his father left years ago. He lives in a crime-ridden neighborhood but has "worked hard not to fall into that trap," a reviewer notes. He takes film courses at the local community college.

By that point, his board scores fade in the distance, and the vote is a unanimous yes.

Next is a New Mexico student who earned all A's while working 20 hours a week and volunteering at the Ronald McDonald House. She is "mature beyond her years," her teacher wrote. Her essay, a reviewer writes, told "more about her than any test score." The panel agrees, and their hands shoot upward in unison.

"Good, good, good," reviewer Kathy Mayberry says quietly in a voice of satisfaction.

During the morning, the panel evaluates more than 30 students from low-income families, most from New York City, as part of the larger task of winnowing 7,700 applicants to 1,100 admitted students, a rate that ranks among the country's lowest. Most are minorities and children of immigrants who did not grow up speaking English at home. Their parents had, for the most part, not gone to college, and neither will most of their high school classmates.

In keeping with the college's aggressive campaign to admit more students from poor and working-class neighborhoods, the panel accepts the majority of them.

Reviewers note what students' parents did for a living, what level of education they completed, and what percentage of their high school goes to college. Students who were deemed "SP30," meaning neither of their parents went to college, or "SP31," meaning the family has a low income, were given a decided boost.

Yet students from such backgrounds had to persuade the committee they were prepared for a top-tier school, primarily by their performance on advanced placement exams.

Members are impressed by a student from Queens who scored high on the US history and statistics AP exams, and Dale Hendricks notes that the applicant's father, a Jamaican immigrant, had been imprisoned and deported.

"It's real hardship here, guys," Hendricks says.

But her SAT scores were 1,180, and other students who had overcome just as much had done better.

"It's a tough story," Hendricks says. "But in New York, there are many cases like this." She's wait-listed.

The litany of broken homes and failing schools puts the gulf between the have and have-nots in stark relief.

Yet many of the sagas are inspiring, and the panel clearly savors the opportunity to give talented students a chance at a better life.

At one point, the discussion turns to a student who grew up in a poor immigrant household and did not learn to read proficiently until she was 11. With what her teachers described as an "unrivaled work ethic," she became a standout student, earning A's in AP English and history and scoring 770 on the SAT critical reading section.

Coming from a student at a top prep school, the score would be impressive, the panel agreed. From a student whose parents didn't go to college, who grew up in a neighborhood ravaged by gangs, it was near-miraculous.

"Incredible, given her background," St. John says. "Just incredible."

All the drive in the world, added Tom Parker, the dean of admission. This time, there was no need for a show of hands. The decision was understood.

Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com

 

from the New York Times, March 8, 2009

Colleges Sweat Out Admissions This Year
By KATE ZERNIKE

As colleges weigh this year’s round of applications, high school seniors are not the only anxious ones.

Just as nervously, colleges — facing a financial landscape they have never seen before — are trying to figure out how many students to accept, and how many students will accept them.

Typically, they rely on statistical models to predict which students will take them up on their offers to attend. But this year, with the economy turning parents and students into bargain hunters, demographics changing and unexpected jolts in the price of gas and the number of applications, they have little faith on those models.

“Trying to hit those numbers is like trying to hit a hot tub when you’re skydiving from 30,000 feet,” said Jennifer Delahunty, dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College in Ohio. “I’m going to go to church every day in April.”

In response, colleges are trying new methods to gauge which applicants are serious about attending: Wake Forest, in North Carolina, is using Webcam interviews, while other colleges say they are scrutinizing essays more closely. And they are making more vigorous appeals to try to convince parents and students who will be offered admission in April that theirs is the campus to choose. But mostly, they are guessing: Will pinched finances keep students closer to home? Will those who applied in December be feeling too poor to accept in May — or show up in August?

Colleges have been in the catbird seat for the past decade or so. As the number of high school students swelled, applications rose, allowing colleges to be more selective. And families benefiting from a flush stock market seemed willing to pay whatever tuition colleges charged.

But all that has changed. For students, the uncertainty could be good news: colleges will admit more students, offer more generous financial aid,and, in some cases, send acceptance letters a few weeks earlier. Then again, it could prolong the agony: some institutions say they will rely more on their waiting lists. But there is no question, admissions officers say, that this year is more of a students’ market.

“It’s like the dot-com bubble burst for higher ed,” said Barbara Fritze, vice president of enrollment at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. “We’ve been in this growth mode for a period of time. Now there’s a real leveling going on.”

Colleges consider an amalgam of factors, comparing them to past trends, to predict whether a student will attend, including, for example, what high school he went to; the strength of his grades, scores and recommendations; how much financial aid he has been offered; and whether he plays the cello or wants to study ethnobotany or economics. (If he is a she, the equation looks different still.)

They consider how many phone calls, Web hits, campus visits and applications they have received. They look at how many students put down a deposit in May, then assume a bit of “summer melt.”

If it sounds complicated, it also works. Kenyon, for example, has hit the magic hot tub each of the last five years.

But with high gasoline prices last summer, many campuses reported fewer visits, throwing off one of the better indicators of which applicants are serious.

Applications, too, have been unpredictable. Some public institutions have seen increases of 30 percent. But with almost every state cutting budgets, it is unclear how many applicants those institutions will accept — California and Arizona, for example, are capping enrollment. And private colleges are waiting to see how much public institutions raise tuition; most do not set rates until state budgets are firm.

Meanwhile, applications are down at many private institutions. Colleges and high school guidance counselors say more students are applying to so-called financial safety schools, where they are confident of getting scholarships, even if it means attending a less selective institution.

Officials say parents are reluctant to commit to four years of an expensive private school, worried that their companies might be restructuring. At Kenyon, one mother, after e-mailing to say that the family could not afford the college’s early decision offer, e-mailed two hours later to say they were reconsidering, then e-mailed again two hours after that to say that her son would attend, after all.

“It’s a consumer confidence issue,” said Steven Syverson, vice president for enrollment at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. “Families are feeling like they can’t afford it even if they’re in the same financial position they were three months ago.”

The Internet has thrown off another marker: applicants used to have to call or write for a catalog, giving the college an early signal of their interest. Now, many campuses say 25 percent to 30 percent are “stealth applicants” — the first the college hears of them is when they apply.

Some enrollment officials theorize that applications are down because cost-conscious applicants have made their choices more carefully. Then there is the glass-is-half-empty view, more common at private institutions where applications are up: students set their hearts on where to apply last summer, before the big crash, but will be choosing less expensive schools this spring, as economic indicators plummet.

Institutions had been trying to cut back on the number of students they accept early, believing they would end up with a more economically diverse freshman class; those who are admitted early forfeit the right to shop around for financial aid offers, so are frequently wealthier. But this year, many said they had accepted more early decision applicants, trying to lock in as many students as they could in December.

Still, that may not be a guarantee. Colleges say more and more early decision applicants are circling back to bargain for better financial aid packages, or asking to be released from their agreements so they can consider more generous offers.

So as public institutions say they will accept fewer students, many private schools say they will accept more. The 13 members of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, which includes Carleton, Macalester, Grinnell and Colorado Colleges, plan to accept 10 percent or 11 percent more applicants, said the group’s president, Christopher Welna, to make up for about a 10 percent decline in applications. Hamilton and Gettysburg, among other campuses, also plan to accept a slightly bigger proportion of applicants. And Marquette University, in Milwaukee, said it would accept up to 600 more students to its class of 1,900, even though applications are up 17 percent.

Campuses, meanwhile, are trying to determine — and encourage — applicants’ intentions. Kenyon will write to the parents of accepted students, to reassure them that financial aid will not dry up over the coming years.

And at Gettysburg, Ms. Fritze plans to send out acceptance offers a bit earlier, hoping to generate loyalty.

Barmak Nassirian, the associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, says the first real indication of who is coming could be in May, when students put down their deposits.

“But even that,” Mr. Nassirian said, “may be an overestimation.”