A Is for Admission

Summary of All Tip Factors and Geographic Diversity

If you look at the acceptance rates for specific groups, you will find that “tip factors” (that is, information in the application that may tip the admissions decision to the positive side) play a part across the entire spectrum of applicants, not just in minority cases.

At Dartmouth, legacies (sons and daughters of a Dartmouth-educated parent) are admitted at about a 40 percent rate (from the class of 1997 to the class of 2000, the acceptance rate has ranged from 40.8 percent to 46.1 percent) and their test scores and high school class rank are lower than the Dartmouth class average. Recruited athletes are admitted at about a 60 percent rate, while black students are admitted at about a 50 percent rate (from the class of 1997 to the class of 2000, the acceptance rate has ranged from 40.2 percent to 56.4 percent), Hispanics at about a 25 percent rate (from the class of 1997 to the class of 2000, the acceptance rate has ranged from 23.6 percent to 33.5 percent), and Native American students at a rate of about 30 percent (from the class of 1997 to the class of 2000, the acceptance rate has ranged from 27.8 percent to 39.3 percent). These numbers show that minority students are not the only students given preferential treatment in the admissions process in terms of tip factors.

It is true that a different selection process (not different in a procedural way, but, rather, in the way information is interpreted) is used to appraise the information provided by minority applicants, but it is wrong to suggest that nonminority applicants are placed at a competitive disadvantage. Minority applicants do not make up a large percentage of either the total number of applicants or of the freshman class. At Dartmouth, roughly 6 percent of all students enrolled are black, about 5 percent are Hispanic, and about 1 to 2 percent are Native American. (By comparison, at Princeton, roughly 8 percent are black, 6 percent Hispanic, and .5 percent are Native American) Nearly 17 percent of the admitted freshmen are recruited athletes, and although some are minority students, these athletes are predominately white. Only 1 percent of the admitted freshmen are development cases and 7 to 8 percent are legacies.

Some of these categories overlap, but even if they didn't, that leaves at least 61 percent of the space in the freshman class that is used for nontagged applicants with no tip factors at all. If you are in one of these categories, I've tried to show accurately the implications your status has for the admissions decision. If you are not, my best advice is to focus on the factors that are under your control and aim to become one of the 60 percent of each year's freshman class that gets in entirely on their academic merit, without the benefit of tip factors.^*

Before concluding this chapter, I want to address another area of major concern, one that I heard constantly while I was recruiting around the country for Dartmouth—that of geographic diversity. Isn't it true, parents wonder, that it would be easier for my child to get accepted to an Ivy League school if I lived in a state like Maine or Vermont or, say, South Dakota, rather than a highly competitive state like New York or Connecticut?

To address this issue of geographic diversity, I would say that yes, selective colleges are interested in having students from all around the United States and all around the world, but believe it or not, those numbers (that is, the geographic distribution) work themselves out year after year without any tinkering or additional tip factors. Remember that regions are divided up in such a way that different states are mixed together, so at no time would an officer read one hundred applicants in a row from New York and then another seventy from California. In reality, an officer reads from all the states in his overall region, recommends a decision, and then that student is read by several other officers at random.

In other words, it is not possible until the end of the process even to figure out the acceptance rates from different states. After carefully analyzing Dartmouth's statistics and considering how regions are divided up, I can assert that the state the student applies from is not a factor in the admissions decision at all. Let's look at the examples I used above. The acceptance rate for Vermont applicants for the class of 2000 was 20 percent; from Maine, 23 percent; and from South Dakota, 0 percent. One would expect that any applicant from South Dakota would get accepted, since usually Dartmouth receives only from ten to fifteen applicants from there, but in reality, not one student was accepted, because the ones who did apply were not on an academic par with the rest of the applicant pool. The admission rates for Vermont and Maine were just about at the average for that year, 20 percent. If you want to see more examples, study the following list of the top ten states by number of applicants, followed by the acceptance rate for each of these states.*

1. New York	22%
2. California	18%
3. Massachusetts	18%
4. New Jersey	20%
5. Connecticut	19%
6. Pennsylvania	17%
7. Illinois	22%
8. Florida	25%
9. Texas	24%
10. Virginia	23%

You will notice that statistically there is not a very noticeable variance from the average of 20 percent in any of these states. If you want to convince yourself further, let's compare two very competitive areas, Washington, D.C. (32 percent) and Maryland (20 percent), with two states that are less competitive, such as New Hampshire (20 percent) and North Carolina (20 percent). Interestingly, in an area such as Washington, D.C., from which Dartmouth gets many very qualified applicants, it tends to admit more of them, although undoubtedly the high number in this class reflects the overall strength of the applicants from this area rather than the preferential treatment some people think they receive. Curiously, the rate of acceptance is exactly equal for New Hampshire, Maryland, and North Carolina, even though these states are not usually considered equal in terms of the number of highly qualified applicants.*

I hope you can see for yourself that where you apply from is not nearly as important as how strong an applicant you are. A top-notch student will stand out whether he is from New York City or North Dakota. The statistics show that where you apply from is not a significant consideration in the admissions process.

Keep in mind that even if the college does not read all applicants from one high school at the same time, admissions officers generally keep a record of relative rank by GPA within popular high schools. Some colleges are more meticulous about this record keeping than others. Georgetown, for example, has each officer enter every student's rank or GPA into the computer before files are even read. Then, when the officer has input all the applicants from his region, the students within each high school are placed in GPA or rank order so that at a glance (or a keystroke, since while reading any folder, they can access that student's rank among the current year's applicants) the officer can tell if the student is near the top of the year's pool or the bottom. Of course if several students were strong, they might accept as many as four out of five applicants, but at least they have an exact idea of where the student stands relative to his classmates who are applying.

Not all colleges are quite this rigorous, but from experience spanning the years, most officers have a good mental idea of what a good GPA is at most of the major high schools in their regions. A student with an 85 average at Stuyvesant High School will probably not be accepted to the most selective colleges because officers are aware that this student is really not near the top of the class, since the GPA distribution is fairly similar each year.

Here's a look at the top ten high schools that matriculate the highest number of students at Dartmouth in a given year and the acceptance rates from those high schools:

	Accepted Percentage	Applicants Total
Stuyvesant High School (New York, NY)	33%	(37/111)
Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, NH)	25%	(16/64)
Phillips Academy (Andover, MA)	23%	(13/56)
Acton-Boxboro Regional High School (Acton, MA)	35%	(7/20)
Deerfield Academy (Deerfield, MA)	24%	(9/38)
Horace Mann School (Bronx, NY)	27%	(9/33)
T. Jefferson High School/Science and Technical (Alexandria, VA)	48%	(14/29)
Norfolk Academy (Norfolk, VA)	89%	(8/9)^*
Harvard-Westlake School (North Hollywood, CA)	30%	(7/23)
Mirarnonte High School (Orinda, CA)	25%	(4/16)

It would seem that the reality is quite opposite to the public's perception: The admission rate at these very competitive high schools is higher, not lower, than the average in every case. In other words, it is not harder to get accepted from a strong high school like Stuyvesant because even though Dartmouth receives over one hundred applicants a year, it typically accepts 30 to 35 percent, since many are extremely qualified academically. You should also notice that of these top ten high schools, four are public and six are private.

The acceptance rate at private high schools versus public high schools is virtually identical at most highly selective colleges. Although, for example, Dartmouth's population has a much greater percentage of public school students (about 65 to 70 percent) than private school students (usually 20 to 25 percent), that simply reflects the overall number of applicants from each group, public and private. Dartmouth always receives more applications from public school students than from private school students, but the important fact to note is that the acceptance rate from both groups is almost identical year after year. Even if you look at the above list, many will be surprised that it is not the elite private high schools like Exeter and Andover that have the highest acceptance rates, but, rather, the big public high schools like Stuyvesant, ActonBoxboro Regional, and Thomas Jefferson Science and Technical School. (I left out Norfolk Academy, since the number of applicants was significantly smaller than that of the other high schools on the list.)

But, parents ask, don't a higher percentage of students from elite prep schools attend Ivy League schools than do students from public schools? Not necessarily, and as we have seen, the actual acceptance rates are no higher. Why, then, do the prep schools themselves sell their schools to parents by asserting that a high percentage of the senior class attends Ivy League schools? What they are neglecting to mention is that admission to these high schools is highly selective in the first place, so the group applying to colleges is already self-selected to some extent and is going to be a much more college-bound group than the typical public high school class.

Let's examine two typical private schools: Phillips Academy in Andover (Massachusetts) and the Hotchkiss School (Connecticut). For its graduating classes of 1996, Andover admitted only 603 students out of the 2,276 who applied for admission. Thus, only 26 percent of the students who wanted to attend Andover were granted the opportunity. Of course, these students were judged primarily on academic ability, so what we have is an already very able academic group who are bound to be very competitive students and good candidates for highly selective colleges. In that Andover senior class, 112 out of 361 seniors, 31 percent of the class, were accepted to Ivy League schools.

These numbers are indeed high, but no higher than any highly selective high school, public or private, which would include most competitive magnet schools like the Bronx High School of Science in New York, Stuyvesant High School in New York, or, for that matter, the magnet IB program in Coral Gables High School in Miami, Florida. In effect, the students have already been through a rigorous selection process just to get into high school, so naturally a high percentage are going to continue on to highly competitive colleges.

Note that the numbers in the preceding examples do not necessarily reflect the percentage of students accepted to each of these colleges. In fact, the actual acceptance rate from Andover was only 23 percent—that is, only thirteen out of fifty-six applicants were accepted to Dartmouth (the total is thirteen, not seven, because I have selected two different years of comparison—the totals would naturally vary a little bit by year). This rate is pretty close to Dartmouth's overall acceptance rate of 22 percent.

At the Hotchkiss School, 28 percent of a recent senior class was accepted to Ivy League schools. Out of 152 seniors, 12 were accepted to Brown, 5 to Columbia, 5 to Cornell, 3 to Dartmouth, 10 to Harvard, 3 to Princeton, 3 to the University of Pennsylvania, and 2 to Yale. Again, the same argument applies. The senior class at Hotchkiss already faced a rigorous selection process to get into Hotchkiss in the first place. These numbers do not reflect the individual acceptance rates to the Ivy League schools, only the total number of students accepted.

Thus, of all the tip factors, the ones that play the smallest—indeed, the most insignificant role—are geographic diversity and public versus private high school. This is as it should be, since a student should be neither handicapped nor aided by the strength of his high school, especially since more often than not, the student's choice is limited by financial means.