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By Julie Rasicot
As dean of admissions at the College of William and Mary, Henry Broaddus
has seen it all from overzealous applicants, including “sending your shoe
to say that you’ve got your foot in the door or sending a coconut to say you’re
nuts about William and Mary.”
Applicants take note, says Broaddus: “There’s a fine line between being distinctive
and being gimmicky.”
But in an age when high SAT scores and top grades no longer seem enough to
make an application stand out, some students and parents are in the market
for anything that will give them an edge.
Driven by what some admission officials term “middle-class anxiety,” parents
and students seeking admission to the country’s most selective colleges are
turning to professionals—including SAT preparation tutors and private admissions
consultants—to help make their college dreams come true.
“Any advantage a family feels like it can get is one they’re putting a high
premium on,” Broaddus says.
But given all of the help that college applicants are getting these days,
how do college admissions officials know where the real applicant ends and
the coaching begins? And what are admissions officials really looking for?
To get the answers to these and other questions, Bethesda Magazine
spoke with admissions officials at leading colleges and universities. Here’s
what they had to say.
Too good to be true
Elite colleges have long dealt with applications that show a heavy parental
influence, but the use of private admissions consultants has added a new dimension
to the admissions process. Admissions officials are seeing more applications
that are just a little too slick and professional to be the work of high school
kids. Those that read like a job résumé, with essays written with a voice
that’s too mature, signal that a student has had some help, whether from a
consultant or a parent.
In fact, while the use of a consultant can be helpful in guiding students
toward certain schools and providing direction in what types of activities
to pursue, it is unlikely to make the difference between acceptance and rejection,
officials say. “It’s just the impression given that they’re making a difference,”
says Charles Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown. “Almost never do they
make a difference.”
The problem with trying to present the perfect package of grades, classes,
activities and recommendations is that the real student may get lost in the
process, admissions officials say. Attempts by students to inflate or oversell
themselves can lead officials to view their applications with skepticism.
“If [the application] is elevated in our minds by artificial means, it will
hurt them,” says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.
But officials agree that an inflated application won’t necessarily ruin a
student’s chances of admission. If officials are interested in an applicant,
but have questions about the authenticity of an application, they may cross-reference
it with a student’s record of achievement and speak with a school guidance
counselor. At Penn, for example, officials may ask a student to “meet a stiffer
challenge,” such as writing another essay, or they may try to verify from other sources how strong
the candidate really is, Stetson says.
The inclination to over-package a student is seen as a result of parents’
mistaken view that the admissions process is a meritocracy—that whoever has
the best grades and the best SAT scores will get in—when the crafting of a
class is much more subjective.
“In a selective world, there isn’t any way to predict which student will
be admitted,” says Stetson, noting that Penn officials reviewed 21,000 applications
to fill the 2,400 seats in next year’s freshmen class. “Since this is a subjective
process, there is no ‘what should you do’ that can be answered by anyone.
There is no such thing and there never will be.”
It is important to understand, officials say, that highly selective colleges
don’t rely on a specific set of criteria—such as a score of 1500 on the SATs—to
determine admission. They are more interested in an applicant’s record of
achievement, including the rigorousness of the student’s high school academic
program and commitment to extracurricular activities. Attempting difficult
courses is more important than achieving perfect grades in less rigorous classes,
according to admissions officials.
“The record of achievement over time is the best guide that we have as to
whether a student will achieve,” says Harvard Admissions Director Marlyn McGrath
Lewis.
In their zeal to crack the code to college acceptance, parents and students
may forget that admissions officials are an experienced group, spending hundreds
of hours each year reading thousands of applications.
McGrath Lewis notes that the review of applications at Harvard is an “extremely
labor-intensive process.” Every application folder—23,000 were submitted this
year—is carefully read by admissions staff. The process is “very individualized”
and no application is eliminated based on a set of objectives, such as SAT
scores.
“We think we’re quite sophisticated about getting to the heart of an application,”
McGrath Lewis says. “We’re pretty good at figuring out what is real.”
If a student’s record of achievement doesn’t have what it takes to get accepted,
then no effort by a hired consultant will make it so, admissions officials
say. In order to produce a viable application, “you have to have material
to work with,” says Deacon of Georgetown. “A person doesn’t get to be president
of the student body by starting out saying, ‘OK, this will look good on an
application,’” he says. “You have to have the leadership skills.”
While admissions officials say it can be difficult to see through a professionally
packaged application, they also note that they’re not in the business of searching
for specific red flags. Rather, they’re looking at the overall picture presented
by the student—and noting exaggeration or smoothness that doesn’t ring true.
“If you’re reading 1,000 applications, you see differences in the way applications
are presented,” Deacon says. “There is no specific thing we look for. We don’t
spend much of our time looking for it.”
Admissions officials note there may be more to lose in trying to game the
process with misrepresentation. After all, “the college search process really
should begin the transition that should go on throughout college to real adulthood,”
says Broaddus. “Ultimately, you’re squandering your personal integrity, which
is far worse for those who engage in it than those duped by it.”
Increased skepticism about essays
Officials acknowledge their increasing skepticism in recent years over the
originality of an applicant’s personal essay—the one part of the application
where the student has total control over the impression he makes—because of
the ease with which it can be manipulated. The possibility that an essay is
the work of someone other than the student has reduced its importance “because
we sometimes just don’t know who’s written it,” says Robert Clagett, dean
of admissions at Middlebury College in Vermont.
“If an essay sounds like it was written by a 45-year-old attorney, it probably
was,” says Stetson.
Such manipulation is “all based on the premise that the student is making
it or breaking it in the essay,” says Clagett. But officials say that’s not
the case. “We’d be crazy to make a decision just based on an essay,” says
McGrath Lewis.
“The point of the essay process is to give us some sense of what the person
behind the essay is like,” Clagett says. A “highly vetted” essay is “too often
an attempt by the applicant to second-guess the process and say what we want
to hear. The more opportunities there are to put the brakes on trying to second-guess
us, the better,” he says.
A top-notch essay should explain how a particular experience affected the
applicant, illustrating the “true essence” of a student, Clagett says. An
essay that reads like a list of accomplishments tells officials nothing about
an applicant’s character or whether the student might be a good fit for the
college to which he’s applying.
“It’s not to show how good they are, but to explain what a life experience
meant for them,” Stetson says. “It’s something that brings them alive so that
we can understand their priorities, their interests, their passions.”
When faced with doubts about an essay’s originality, some schools turn to
other sources to get a better picture of an applicant. Admissions officials
at William and Mary may take a look at a student’s SAT writing statement if
they think the applicant has “squandered” the opportunity or “even under-packaged”
himself, Broaddus says.
At Middlebury College, officials require students to include a graded essay
from high school along with the one submitted with an application, Clagett
says. Harvard officials with doubts over the authenticity of an application
may ask for additional material, such as a CD of a music student’s work.
Recommendations count more than ever
With the value of an essay on the wane, the importance of recommendations
has grown, officials say. Recommendations help complete the snapshot of a
student being developed by the application, which means students should carefully
consider who they ask to submit one.
Recommendations from guidance counselors and teachers who best know the student
can be used to cross-reference and bolster an application, officials say.
Even recommendations from others who know the student personally, such as
a scout leader or an employer, “can add dimension to what makes a candidate
tick,” McGrath Lewis says.
Letters from people who don’t know the applicant, such as alumni or well-known
names, carry no weight. Nor do those submitted by hired consultants, who naturally
are assumed to be biased about their clients, officials say.
“I’m not sure that people appreciate how important it is to choose teachers
carefully” for recommendations, says Clagett.
Writer Julie Rasicot lives in Silver Spring.
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