What I Learned About Highly Selective Admissions During My Time in the Ivy League
Admissions at elite colleges is an obscure process. However, in my experience evaluating applications at Columbia, UPenn, and Yale—and researching the college admission process in my scholarly work—I can tell you that its arbiters follow a specific framework. Here, I will share some of the key elements of that framework, illuminating how admission personnel evaluate the thousands of applications that come across their desks in a given cycle year. Here is what higher education market consumers—aspiring students and their guardians—should bear in mind while navigating the college search and admission process.
Consideration 1: Admissions personnel are biased. You can use that to your advantage.
My experience in elite and highly selective admissions has taught me many valuable lessons—one of the most important being that admissions work is a human-driven process. It is also, by extension, deeply psychological, involving conscious and unconscious biases. Admission personnel activate biases while doing the hard work of differentiating between similarly profiled candidates, many of whom are highly, and often equally, qualified. For example, an admissions officer who studies physics might be especially impressed by students who excel in sciences; a former college gymnast might relate more to the applications of high school athletes than those of non-athletes; or someone with strong ties to the Cuban community in their hometown might deeply appreciate applicants who are likewise shaped by their cultural or regional ties. Likewise, biases can link to seemingly innocuous experiences, like attending a certain high school or living in a certain neighborhood, that tend to correlate with an individual’s (or family’s) social background and status.
The takeaway here is that biases can work for or against applicants in the admission process. One way to alleviate potentially negative effects of bias is to ensure that, across all application materials—the various opportunities to give readers a sense of the applicants' strengths—you avoid painting a duplicative or overly narrow picture. Admission officers tend to get excited about applicants who are multifaceted, so it’s beneficial for an applicant to highlight the multiple elements of their profile that might connect to the variety of interests and experiences often shared by committee members.
Consideration 2: You can connect with admissions officers by finding a compelling personal voice.
It is important that applicants are aware of their audience and build a profile that will resonate among the core constituents of an admissions committee: faculty members and academic department partners, admission officers, and alumni. Second, applicants should be mindful of their voice, which embodies their way of being and their way of seeing the world. It makes them human and helps readers understand how applicants can make substantive and distinctive contributions to a university (e.g., within a classroom and larger campus community) in ways that align with its stated values.
For example, based on an applicant's experience navigating poverty during their childhood, they could be motivated to investigate the wealth gap in the U.S. or the relationship between schooling and socioeconomic status, using the disciplines of economics and sociology, which might be situated in a college of arts and sciences. In speaking to their experiences and ambitions in relation to the college's academic offerings, the applicant would be effectively articulating their voice and perspective and, thereby, giving the admission committee a sense of their potential contribution to the community.
Admission committee members are trained to discern an applicant’s voice and consider how it will fuse with the myriad of voices and experiences that will comprise a curated incoming class. Therefore, considering the applicant’s voice and factoring it into their overall profile can help applicants think about themselves in relation to: (a) a larger community and (b) the breadth of perspectives, interests, and preferences that committee members might bring to the evaluation process.
To that end, here are some very important questions to ponder while assembling application materials:
Keeping in mind admission officers’ essential task and the human-driven and psychological nature of admission decision-making can help students and families achieve success in the college admission process.
Consideration 3: You can also impress admissions officers by addressing two core questions in your application.
Generally speaking, when evaluating an application, admission officers want to extract the following information about a candidate:
The first core criterion in selective admissions is excellence of mind––students who are capable of excelling in their undergraduate coursework.
The second core criterion is impact: they are looking for students with the potential to be leaders and contributing members of the campus community. Admission officers extract this information from the activities list within applications and from applicants’ résumés, when included. Applicants can demonstrate leadership potential in various ways, such as participating and excelling in sports, serving their school and local communities, placing in regional or national competitions, or taking on substantial responsibilities at home.
If you take only one thing away from this blog, I hope it is this: gaining admission into elite colleges often comes down to strategy. You should find a college that aligns with your specific interests and values and make sure that you show them why you’re a good fit.
