Who Gets In and Why :: A Review of a Popular Book about College Admission
My daughter is entering her junior year of high school. This, I’m told, is a critical time to begin thinking about college. Based on the emails and snail mail she’s been getting for six months, the marketing blitz gets in gear even earlier than junior year. Ugh.
As a faculty member, some folks think I must know a lot about college admissions. However, I only see students once they’re already admitted. I don’t know squat about how to get into college in the 21st century. Ugh.
To combat my “ugh” feelings, I recently read Who Gets In and Why, written by higher education journalist Jeffrey Selingo, in which he goes behind the scenes at three colleges and with several high school seniors to follow their admissions processes for an entire year. To say it was eye-opening is an understatement. For this post, I’ll share my biggest takeaways.
It’s (Almost) All a Game!
It’s important to understand college admissions from the college side. Universities exist in a competitive marketplace. Rankings, especially those from U.S. News & World Reports, are really important to top-tier colleges. Universities not only want to increase the number of students who apply and decrease the percentage who are admitted (to improve their “selectivity”), but they want to offer placements to students who are likely to accept, so as to improve their “yield.”
To raise their scores in these areas, colleges increasingly rely on big data to inform their decision-making. For example, to improve their yield, colleges keep data on how many of their emails a student opens, whether they register for and attend campus visits, how often they click on a link in an email, how long they stay on the site, and where they go on the site. Colleges assume that the more engagement one has with a university in these ways, the more likely the student will say “yes” to an offer of admission. One memorable story from the book is about a mother whose son was a camp counselor the summer before his senior year and had no internet all summer. She monitored his email and opened all those from universities to boost his “interest” scores.
Another game-like mechanism is the early decision and early action game. When a student applies early decision, they make a binding commitment to that university, often by October 1 of their senior year and without full information about financial aid. If they get in, they must go there or face steep penalties. From a college’s perspective, filling an entering class with a high percentage of early decision students is an easy way to improve their yield. It’s much riskier to rely on regular decision students, who are waiting for a dozen schools to offer admission and financial aid. Early action generally has a later deadline (but before regular decision) and is non-binding, but does indicate a substantial degree of interest on the part of the student.
Basically, if your child knows they want to attend a specific elite school, they can increase their odds of admission by applying early decision. They will learn the university’s decision much earlier – usually by Christmas – but if they are not accepted, they must be ready to apply to other institutions through regular decision. If they are not sure about their choice, they should not apply early decision.
It’s Just Not Fair!
Kids with straight A’s and excellent test scores will get denied admission at many good schools. They will often know folks with worse grades or scores who get into these schools. This seems unjust because Americans like to believe in the myth of meritocracy.
Think about it, though: thousands of students from across the country apply for college each year. Many have the same transcript of good grades, excellent test scores, a list of accomplishments, good recommendations, difficult coursework, etc. Is it impossible (and perhaps unethical, inequitable, and inefficient) for universities to rank order all these students based on these criteria and offer admission accordingly.
This can make applying to college feel like a crapshoot. However, Selingo’s book highlights that every university has its own set of priorities. If they admitted too many students in Business last year, they’ll be less likely to admit as many this year. If they just got a major donation for a new center to study Neuroscience, they’ll admit more of these students this year. Maybe they want to enroll more students from their region because of a new state program. Or they are hoping to build on a new program in cornhole (seriously). While one can game the system in some ways, it’s nearly impossible as an applicant to know about these priorities and alter one’s application to appeal to them. “If only we’d known about cornhole, we could’ve practiced in the back yard.”
This information made me feel better about this process. I’m not a gamer. The prospect of trying to sleuth a university’s website or join 15 different parent Facebook groups to ferret out crumbs of potentially useless info was not my idea of fun. Even less fun would be hassling my kid for 1.5 years to do this work. For good students, rejections from good schools have less to do with a student’s “quality” and more to do with how she fits with their priorities at that particular time. And much like dating advice, if a university isn’t that into you, then it’s better to find one that appreciates and values what you bring to the table.
So, what should kids do when applying to college?
- Be themselves. They shouldn’t fake an interest because they heard the college prioritizes it or is known for it. They also shouldn’t join clubs or do activities in high school just to “look good” on a college application. In other words, they should do things they are really interested in and then try their best to convey this to the university in their application.
- Apply broadly to universities at various levels of selectivity and avoid falling in love with a particular university (especially if it is highly selective). Help them to imagine themselves at many different colleges, not just their “dream” school.
- Select where to apply based on its fit for their interests, aspirations, and personalities. To be successful, do they need a smaller environment where faculty and staff know them by name? Are they certain about their major or do they need to be someplace that encourages and facilitates exploration? Do they have a talent or interest that they’d like to continue pursuing? Would they do better closer to home? Or farther away? Don’t apply to places just because of the brand name or because they like the football team or because their boyfriend applies there or because there is a Taco Bell on campus or because Dad went there (this is for my Notre Dame-alum spouse).
Selingo’s book also has a lot of information on financial aid and athletics, but that’ll be for another post. For now, as we embark on this process, I hope to keep in mind that there are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States. Most kids will get in somewhere. And, while being a faculty member doesn’t give me any additional insight into admissions processes, having faculty friends at universities across the country does confirm that young people will get a good education at nearly every institution of higher education (even the University of Michigan, Dad).
