A Brief Trip to the Committee
A great many files will not make it to the committee process at all because they are either very strong or very weak. In order to select folders that will go to the committee, any “one-reader A's” (typically 8s and 9s) or “one-reader R's” (typically academic 1s, 2s, and 3s) are omitted. In those cases, the decisions are final already. Then, the director would look at all folders (he does this continually during the process as the officers complete their reading of a folder) and if the readers’ votes were still undecided, he would either make the decision himself or decide that the folder should go to the committee. In many offices, Dartmouth's included, the regional officer would review all the folders from his region and add any further comments or recommendations.
The director would decide by himself only if he read the comments of all the readers and they seemed to push in a particular direction. For example, if the first reader rated an applicant a “P+” and the second reader rated a “P++” and both their comments were extremely positive, he might look over the folder (remember, he sees applicants from the entire pool, so he is better able to compare the overall quality and to enforce a constant standard) and decide to put the “green A” on the folder and accept that student. On the other side of the coin, he could read negative write-ups with “R” and “P-” ratings and decide that student just was not up to par. Unlike the officers who sometimes hesitate to reject a student, the director usually feels no such compunction about doing so.
The only folders that would not be included in the committee process besides “the one-reader R's and A's” are recruited athletes (after going through the regular process, the athletic liaison and the director would decide on those applicants), VIP cases (these also go through the regular reading process, but the ultimate decision lies with the director), and high-need (in terms of financial aid) international applicants, since even totally need-blind offices are not need-blind with regard to international students.
In the case of international students, applications go through the regular reading process and the no-need ones can go to the committee, but the high-need ones go to a special small committee with the international officer and the director, who have to select the “A's” while taking financial need into account.
Minority-student applications, after going through the regular reading process, are usually voted on by those officers assigned to these cases, subject to approval by the director. Even so, many borderline minority cases will go to the committee, as well. These special cases are discussed in the following chapters, so I won't go into more detail now other than to say that every other special case except the ones I just mentioned would go to the committee.*
Once the majority of folders made it through the whole reading process (around mid-March), the director would calculate how many admits there were so far, how many rejects, and then how many “possibles.” From these numbers, he would be able to tell the committee, for example, that there would be six hundred cases for consideration but that out of those six hundred, the college would be able to admit only one hundred applicants, one out of every six. At Dartmouth, this is usually the ratio officers are allowed to accept during committee sessions. Then the director breaks up the staff of from thirteen to fifteen officers into three or four committees of four people and divides up the folders evenly among them.
The responsibility for methodology lies within the individual committee. Some committees will decide to rotate readers and have one person read the master card and the ready sheet out loud, discuss the candidate, and then vote to accept, reject, or put the applicant on the wait list. Other committees will decide that rather than reading the master card out loud, they will all huddle together, look at the master card silently, and then read the ready sheet out loud, discuss the case, and vote.
The surprising fact is that committees will rarely read beyond the master card, which contains a summary of all the basics, and the ready sheet, which contains the comments of all the individual readers, unless new information has arrived, such as an interview summary, which would be right at the front of the folder. Only in cases of severe disagreement would the committee members decide to refer back to an actual document in the folder. I think this is a tribute to the thorough write-ups done by officers while reading and voting on a student's file. Officers depend upon one another's write-ups, especially considering the fact that it is possible that none of the committee members was one of the original readers of that applicant's folder, although sometimes one or more of the readers might be present.
The committee process tends to be fair, if strict (in that the committee has to eliminate five out of every six applicants), since there is very little pressure from regional officers (they are not necessarily present).* If an officer felt very strongly one way or another when he was reading an applicant's folder, that fact should be reflected in the rating and the write-up. In this way, the reader's opinions and insights are represented through his own writing, whether he is present or not in the actual committee deliberation.
Now that you know the basic committee process, let me take you inside of some imaginary, though typical, conversations that might take place during committee review. I will take a representative four committee members and reconstruct some typical dialogues. You should assume that one person already read the master card and ready sheet out loud, so now you are becoming a fly on the wall right after the basic information has been read.
CASE NUMBER ONE
MIKE: You know, those activities are so typical. How many yearbook editors have we read about already today? Josh is a member of three varsity teams, but notice that he has no leadership anywhere.
JANINE: Yeah, neither teacher rec makes any mention of Josh's leadership role in the school. I get the feeling from the four B that Josh gets good grades and is dependable but that he rarely contributes in class. In fact, the four B rates only a three in “participation in class.”
TERRY: I liked the fact that he spent part of his summer working on an Indian reservation in Arizona.
JOHN: That's true, but he did no community service at all for three years of high school, and then suddenly he decided the summer before applying to college that it would look good to do a program. Besides, it was only a one-week program, so I'm not overly impressed that his represents a deep commitment.
TERRY: He is ranked three out of two hundred in his high school. I wonder why he's only taking three courses his senior year. I know for this high school, that is a light course load.
JANINE: His rank is excellent, but he comes across as a plugger who gets the job done. He went to a strong public high school and has two very educated parents, yet his standardized test scores are only mid-six hundreds and he only got a three on the AP bio exam and a two on the AP English.
JOHN: Okay, are we ready to vote? All in favor? [All four vote to reject.]
Analysis: In many ways, Josh represents the typical academic 5 or 6 who is pretty strong on paper but ultimately does not get accepted. What hurt him the most was the perception that he was just not serious about learning, despite a high rank. For example, why such a light senior course load? Why didn't teachers rave about him? How come his AP tests were so unimpressive? The fact is, those scores made him seem slightly below average in the applicant pool, even though his rank was high and he had some decent extracurricular involvement.
CASE NUMBER TWO
TERRY: A young African-American woman with scores in the mid-five hundreds and a high school rank of twenty-five out of a hundred. She grew up in Brooklyn, went to a magnet high school. Single-parent household—mom went to college and works in an insurance company.
JOHN: I don't mean to be cynical, but I don't see the disadvantage factor.
JANINE: Her scores are pretty strong in our overall African-American pool. My problem is that her teacher checks off only a “track two” course load and she's taking only three classes this year—that's kind of light, don't you think?
MIKE: Now that you mention it, her rank is unweighted, so with the easier classes she is taking, her real rank might even be lower than twenty-five. She's taken only two AP classes in four years. In this magnet high school, there are over twenty AP classes offered. Plus, she has no work experience and very few extracurricular activities. I can't see what she would add to this campus.
JOHN: Vote? [Three vote to reject; one votes to accept because minority numbers are not great this year. The final vote is to reject.]
Analysis: One reader voted to accept because he was concerned that if they held up such a high standard, they would come up short in terms of minority numbers. But, as one reader pointed out, this student had no real economic disadvantage, although she did come from a single-parent home (not that uncommon these days). What really finished her off was not her mediocre rank but the fact that she had made such a weak effort to take challenging courses. This college might have been too challenging academically for her based on her average grades in fairly easy courses. Finally, she had nothing interesting by the way of extras—how would she add to the life of the college? This committee could not think of any reason at all—hence the “R” vote.
CASE NUMBER THREE
MIKE: Jesse strikes me as somewhat unusual. I know his rank is only so-so—forty-five out of four hundred—but all his teachers stress that he is so interested in class that he does extra projects on his own and then shares them with the class. The four A said that he spent three weeks programming the graphing calculator to compute every concept in the first half of the textbook so other students could use the calculator to review for the final.
JANINE: That's right, and even the four C says that Jesse once stayed up all night doing background reading on the philosophers they were studying in European history so he could give a presentation the next day that tied together all the existentialist philosophers with the unit they were studying. His friend said that the teacher still talks about Jesse's incredible enthusiasm.
JOHN: You know, he's not a leader in the traditional sense, but he has followed his interest in computer programming by working ten hours a week for the last two academic years for a local programming company. One of his games turned into a big seller for the company. The last two summers, he has taken classes at Cornell summer school.
TERRY: He just seems like a cool kid, the kind I'd like to room with. I can envision him jumping up in class and adding his two cents.
JANINE: Vote? [Three vote to accept; one votes wait list. He is an admit.]
Analysis: Jesse is your typical neat kid who doesn't have the highest rank or numbers (probably an academic 4 or 5), but he comes across as extremely interesting to be around. He had pursued his love of math and science in two consecutive summer programs (continuity), as well as holding down a part-time job in his field of interest for two solid years. He obviously is stimulated by learning and often follows a project well beyond the obvious conclusion. Teachers loved having Jesse around in high school and there's no reason to think that his college teachers would not feel the same. Even the peer rec showed Jesse's intellectual side. A student with a rank as low as Jesse's (below the top 10 percent) would need exceptional recommendations and extras to get in, given the fact that over 90 percent of all the students at this college are ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. Jesse would be one of a handful of exceptions, especially since most exceptions fall into one of the special categories to be discussed in subsequent chapters.
CASE NUMBER FOUR
TERRY: He's number one—shared by only two others—in his class of two hundred students. You'd never know it from the teachers’ comments. They don't seem very impressed by him. In fact, four B says that he's a hard worker, but it shows lower check ratings for “written expression.” Four A shows only threes, even though the write-up seems fairly positive.
JANINE: It's hard to say no when his math SAT One is eight hundred and his SAT Two chemistry score is seven fifty.
MIKE: Not really. Look at his verbal score—only six hundred; that's a hundred and ten points below our average. And his writing SAT Two of five ninety—that's just not impressive.
JOHN: This is the tenth or so applicant we've seen today with strong math/science skills but low verbal/writing ability.
JANINE: His senior course load is very strong—five AP classes.
TERRY: I'm not excited by him, but he's captain of two varsity sports teams, vice president of the senior class, and editor of the literary magazine. And an Eagle Scout to boot!
MIKE: Come on, though, what is he going to add to life here? He's not a strong enough athlete to play sports, we have zillions of editors, and he just doesn't come across as anything but a dutiful student. His essay was just the typical “Outward Bound” adventure story. I guess he survived or he wouldn't be applying.
TERRY: Okay, let's vote. [One votes to reject; three vote wait list. This student will be added to the wait list.]
Analysis: This is a typical wait-list candidate—high rank, high scores (at least in math/science), lots of leadership, but in many ways, the typical applicant. Remember, the Ivies receive countless applications from strong math/science students with high ranks but lower scores in the verbal/writing area. He would have had a much better chance had his essay been more compelling or his teacher recs stronger, or even if he'd held down a major part-time job, but he just came across as dutiful, not intellectual. This particular kind of wait-list candidate really has very little chance for admission. In this case, he was put on the wait list so that the high school would not be upset. After all, his numbers were impressive and he had significant high school leadership and high visibility in the high school, but there was not much substance on the intellectual side.
ASE NUMBER FIVE
JOHN: Korean-American girl from a strong public school. Parents are both college-educated professionals. She's ranked top ten percent in her high school in a class of three hundred and fifty, has scores all in high six hundreds, low seven hundreds, two solid AP tests—four on AP bio, three on art history—and good recommendations. She's a cellist in the school's orchestra and the county's symphony orchestra—over twenty hours a week of music.
TERRY: The recs all talk about her musical prowess—apparently, she's one of the strongest musicians in the school. Notice that she also does a lot of activities with the Korean church group on weekends. She's president of the French Honor Society and the Multicultural Club. These last two leadership roles don't take up much time, though—only one or two hours a week.
MIKE: I wish the guidance counselor's letter was more helpful. It's impossible to tell from her transcript if she's closer to number one or to number thirty-five in the top ten percent. Her recs are positive but not really glowing. Her essays and the recs together paint a picture of a dutiful girl who spends hours doing her work but doesn't seem that excited by any of it.
JANINE: I'd be more excited if she had a stronger interview, but the student who interviewed her described her as quiet, smart, but not that accomplished except for music. The interviewer did not make any special notes about her academics except to say she was very devoted to her work.
JOHN: Ready to vote? [Three vote to reject; one votes wait list. This student was rejected.]
Analysis: This applicant was certainly strong all around, probably an academic 6 or 7 (notice that she would have been an 8 or 9 if the school had given an exact rank and if that exact rank had been in the very top part of the class—the top 10 percent ranking hurt her, since the readers could not tell if she was nearer to the top or to the bottom of the top 10 percent) with some leadership capability and tremendous music ability. The problem is, she didn't stand out from the pack, especially in terms of intellectual power.
Unfortunately, neither her recs nor her own part of the application gave any indication of a true love of learning More than anything, she came across as a typically strong Asian-American applicant, good student, excellent musician, but with nothing to set her apart. As we will see in chapter 16, Asian-Americans are not one of the targeted affirmative-action minority groups, so this candidate did not get any extra consideration because of her minority status.
If this applicant had come from a more disadvantaged background (recent immigrants, poor neighborhood, noncollege-educated background) she would have stood a much better chance, since her accomplishments would have been seen against a different background. Even though she wouldn't have been given an advantage because of her status as an Asian-American, she would have been given the general benefit of a lower income, more modest background, with some degree of disadvantage. However, as is, she fell short because she came across as a student like many others, with nothing to set her apart from the hundreds of other very qualified applicants. The committee members saw her as someone who would do well at the school but who would be the kind of student who gave all the right answers, not the kind who asked all the best questions. The latter is the type of student the Ivies and highly selective schools are looking for—students who will shake things up on campus, not just blindly follow the lead of others.
This represents a day in the life of committee deliberations, except for the fact that I have shown only five cases out of some seventy to one hundred covered in a day. It is a very difficult and time-consuming process. The most interesting students tend to stand out, while the more average (in the overall pool, that is) candidates tend to fade away. Every college has its own version of committee. Some colleges meet as one large committee; some have the regional officers represent their top cases to a committee that decides the cases by region. This general description of the process is fairly typical. All committee processes share the task of choosing the most highly qualified students out of a much larger pool of applicants.