This dialogue recently appeared in The New York Times
Question: I realize there is no set formula for admissions at the Ivies. However, what consolation can you offer a student and his parents with the following profile and results?
Our son was a graduate of a highly regarded parochial school in Texas with 260 seniors. Graduated in the top 3 percent of class. Took twice the number of AP/honors classes required for an honors degree. Voted top male senior by faculty based on personal and academic traits. Scored 1995 on SAT and 30 on ACT.
Active member of numerous school honors and service organizations. Two-year varsity athlete who received district honors both years. Named male scholar athlete for having highest G.P.A. of any varsity athlete. Active in church and community groups. Eagle Scout. Stellar recommendations.
Applied to and denied admission at Columbia, Princeton, Boston College and Rice. Oh, and lest I forget, he’s a white middle-class male from a two-parent household. A female Hispanic classmate who did not take honors classes, who was not in the top 10 percent, who was not nationally merit recognized, and who was not in any extracurricular school activities WAS accepted to Columbia.
What’s a family to do? Tell junior that life’s not fair and that decisions affecting him are often not merit-based? Can these colleges be so intent on creating their own Utopia that they can afford to overlook highly qualified candidates who would be an obvious asset to the school simply because their acceptance would throw off the ethnic and economic percentages they so like to report?
Will the “great unwashed” ever understand the mystery that is Ivy League admissions?
Answer: I am obviously not privy to the particulars of your son’s application and that of the young woman you describe. And as Ralph Figueroa, a former admissions officer at Wesleyan and Occidental, said in response to an earlier question this week on “Talk to The Times,” it’s unlikely that the colleges you mention would — or even could — explain their decisions even if we asked.
I am confident that nothing I write here can give you the sort of consolation you’re seeking, because highly selective colleges’ definitions of “merit” — the word you invoke above — are far too complicated (and hedged) for us as outsiders to ever apply them on a case-by-case basis.
On the one hand, for all of the obviously stellar accomplishments of your son, I can tell you that each of the colleges you mention had many other candidates who presented similarly strong or even better credentials. And considering that Harvard (a school that you don’t mention) turns away many applicants who have perfect SAT scores or who are valedictorians of their classes, I am confident that your son is hardly the only excellent candidate to be rejected by the schools to which he applied.
But you also suggest that an applicant from the same high school got into Columbia, when your son did not, with grades and standardized test scores that you say were inferior to your son’s, and with no extracurricular activities. I’ll assume for the sake of this answer that the information you are providing is accurate. You also believe you have found a reason: that she is Hispanic. You might well be right.
The colleges you mention all practice affirmative action. That means they subscribe to the notion that building a freshman class that is broadly diverse — including racially and ethnically diverse — serves to give some minority applicants an opportunity to receive a world-class education that might not have been available to their parents or grandparents, and, in the bargain, to enhance the overall educational experience of their classmates.
Considering that some of these schools have 10 or more applicants for each seat in the freshman class, something has to give. And yes, an honest admissions officer would tell you that, as you suspect, they often have to “overlook highly qualified candidates that would be an obvious asset to the school” to satisfy the various other goals of the admissions process. And that sometimes means casting aside an applicant or applicants who might appear “better” by every other statistical measure than some of the applicants admitted.
As I have said in response to an earlier question on “Talk to The Times,” this process is not fair. You ask if you should “tell junior that?” I suspect he knows already, but this is probably a good time to reinforce that message.
You also ask if you should tell him that “decisions affecting him are often not merit-based?” I would respectfully argue that you’re asking the wrong question. Why not use this as an opportunity to tell him that in life, not everyone will subscribe to the same definitions of merit that might guide him (or his father), but that it’s at least worth examining their reasons. I appreciate the opportunity you have given us to do so here.
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