I recently watched the movie Admission, and found myself increasingly curious about how the process for boarding school application reviews really works inside the admissions offices. Seemed like something that might have been posted in an article or forum post at some point, but I have not been able to find anything specific. Really just thinking about the inner workings of the process as a matter of curiosity - there is no action to be taken from the information. Still, I find myself wondering things like:
Are the applications read by multiple AOs (first and second reader)?
Is the person who interviewed the child the "champion" who advocates or dismisses applicants?
Do the AOs read applications as they come in, or are they all collected after the submit deadline, and then distributed?
Does the admissions group build a set of wants/needs that they then look to fill before reviewing applicants?
Do they start with the highest potential candidates (e.g. legacy, major donor, faculty kids), fill those first and move on?
I could go on with detailed points of interest, but suspect you get the idea. If anyone can point more toward an article or post covering this stuff I would be appreciative, or if anyone who knows the admissions process firsthand could share some background on what actually happens, I for one would find it interesting.
Don’t forget Admissions was a light comedy… doctors don’t like hospital shows, cops dont like crime shows… as they take a lot of ridiculous creative license. My daughter goes to the school that Paul Rudd founds in Admission… it’s a funny yet ridiculous parody. The amherst video is pretty intense though… someone should produce a documentary about this… or a news essay. I’d watch it!
I’ve never seen the movie Admission, but I think the process is fairly similar at most boarding schools. I’m a Duke alumni and work as a volunteer interviewer, so I’m familiar with the Duke admissions system. Most boarding schools are probably similar to what is shown in the Amherst video except for the following:
Most boarding schools won’t have enough staff to break up schools by region. But I believe that each school will try to have more than one reader per application.
I suspect that students with strong hooks (major donors, faculty kids, athletes) get reviewed first
Unlike colleges, most BS have to worry about their financial aid budget during admissions deliberations. So I suspect that they probably go down the list in order of those applicants who don’t need FA getting reviewed first, then onto the students needing FA.
Like the Amherst video, I suspect that only a fraction of the students actually go before the committee for deliberation. Students who are clear admits or clear deny probably don’t even get a chance for committee.
Unlike colleges, AOs actually interview the students themselves. So the AOs themselves probably have a better chance of strongly advocating for a student they like.
Thanks for the intel. I am certainly aware that Admission is a comedy, and was not trying to imply that it represented the way things actually work. It was merely the prompt that caused me to think about the inner workings of the process.
In both the videos above, their votes are Admit or Waitlist, which seems to imply that there’s a Reject pile somewhere that’s not even being discussed. There was one candidate in the 2nd video that got like 8 Waitlist votes and 1 Reject vote, but otherwise they didn’t seem to even consider Rejects. I suppose they could have edited out the Rejects, but I’ve always suspected there is some minimum threshold to even be considered, whether that’s based on grades or test scores.
Thanks to @oak2maple for posting this Youtube link (from Grinnell).
Did anyone else notice that one of the factors Grinnell uses is “Likely to Enroll”?? This is on the screen. Goto 1:10 in the video and you can see it yourself.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a college publicly admit (probably not intentionally) that acceptance yield is used as a factor when deciding upon students.
It is pretty common knowledge that admissions yield is important to admissions officers. It is a statistic they have to report to their board of trustees and often times you can get that information from the schools if you look at things like their quarterly or annual reports….I suspect less true for boarding schools as there is no official “first choice letter” or “early decision thing” but for kids coming out of K-8 schools with a real boarding history it is not at all uncommon for feedback to come back unofficially from a school that they are “looking for a first choice letter.” Nobody wants to be throwing offers away. Also when considering yield they know siblings and legacies are much more likely to come, and conversely if you are a sibling or legacy someplace ELSE you often must write the school you WANT to attend a first choice letter so they know you are a serious applicant.
I agree on the impact of declaring first choice interest and it being a real factor. I think this is often abused, with applicants suggesting they will go to a school if admitted without necessarily being committed to backing it up with the choice, but in the case where a school really believes they will fill a slot with certainty, it does elevate your chances. Why? Not only because of the yield reporting numbers. At some level, schools are portfolio building their student bodies. Imagine fielding a sports team. Knowing you can lock in a few positions with certainty allows you more flexibility in how you try to field the rest…
Separately, I have wondered a bit about the school’s incentive set for rejection vs. waitlisting applicants. Sure if there is no chance they would admit a candidate (straight Cs, 10% SSAT, whatever) I imagine them dishing out a rejection. But why would they ever reject rather than waitlist a runner up candidate who is full pay, for example? Keeping them on the wait list just creates option value for the school, and it’s not as though the school has any obligation to maintain a wait list of less than X students…
I think BS AOs care a lot about yield, especially at the more selective schools, where they are competing against similarly selective/prestigious institutions for the essentially the same pool of kids.
But as noted by blackbeard, please please please don’t take this to mean you should be firing off 4 “first choice” letters to your top 4 schools. You should be willing to stand behind a “if admitted, will matriculate” statement, barring some unforeseen terrible experience at revisit or some other significant change/event.
What is the best way to communicate to a school that it is your first choice? …through a letter, at the interview or by your current school’s placement advisor?
Letter, from you (assuming you’re the applicant) to the AO who interviewed you. Only do it if it really is your first choice. Don’t do it by email, and write the letter after your application is complete (including the interview).
First letters definitely don’t hurt, in fact can be extremely helpful come crunch time. There is 20% they know they want, there is 20% they know they don’t want and then there is the remaining 60% they just don’t know. Don’t play games with a first choice letter or when it comes to having an Alumni or Board member write a letter. It’s an incredibly small boarding school world.
Of course, some kids don’t really have a first choice, and of course many kids get in without a first choice letter. Just as background, though, the reason I suggested it is because we were told to do it. My son attended a well-known JBS with a very good placement record, and the placement officer REQUIRED every kid hand write a first choice letter-- provided they actually HAD a first choice, of course-- and submit it shortly after January 15th (not earlier, because it needed to be clear they had visited all the schools on their list and then decided on their first choice). Lots of kids got their first choice (including my DS). I’m not saying that the letter helped, since I have no way of knowing what actually went on inside the AO, but I’m just saying we were told to do it. The reason they were supposed to hand- write it was because that showed more effort and therefore a real commitment than an email.
I don’t really understand the argument against indicating your first choice, assuming you actually have one. This isn’t a negotiation where tipping your hand will reduce your bargaining power. At worst, it would have a marginally positive effect. At best, it could have some reasonable influence. Along the same lines, if schools didn’t care about your level of interest and specificity in selecting them, many of their essay questions would be irrelevant. Seems fairly clear that the admissions folks are keenly interested in why a child and family have chosen to apply, and spend a fair amount of time vetting the quality of the answers. A “you are my first choice for well thought through reasons XYZ” letter is just one more strong piece of information for them to collect.
Last but not least, while they are of course focused on things like yield, they ultimately are trying to pick kids who will be happy and successful at their schools. I am not a behavioral psychologist, but it does not seem to be a stretch that the correlation of happiness would be higher with kids who see the school as their first choice, assuming they are otherwise qualified to be there…
Schools are quite interested in protecting their yield. I actually think that reverse psychology happens to some extent. Pandering to a school might make you seem desperate, and therefore less desirable. Being somewhat aloof and not giving any hints to your first choice might make you more desirable.
Those two statements seem like they cannot simultaneously be true. If the schools are highly interested in managing yield, wouldn’t being aloof be a low yield signal? Also, not clear to me that indicating first choice and pandering are the same thing. “I have visited many schools and if accepted I choose you” is not the same as “you are so awesome and I love everything about your school including everyone in admissions.”