“Well we can agree to disagree. I spoke to Director of Admissions, did you? Just sharing my experience.”
@preppedparent , yes, I did. I spoke to the Dean of Admissions, Nancy Meislahn, in fact.
While my kid didn’t attend an elite boarding school, she was a highly recruited athlete (pursued by every school in the NESCAC that maintains a varsity team in her sport), she hails from a part of the country in which Wesleyan is keen on developing more of a presence, and she presented as a full IB diploma with nearly a 4.0 UW GPA and high test scores.
This being my first trip to the D3 elite admissions / athletic recruiting rodeo, I was that guy who, w/o any shame or awkwardness, asked A LOT of questions. I’m sure they were all happy to get rid of me when it was over.
I can say without qualification that there was never even a scintilla of a suggestion from Nancy, the coach, the AD (yes, he had to deal with me too) or any one else that she was an auto admit. They allowed that she had a very good pre-read, but like an Ivy League “likely letter”, nobody promises anything. In fact, Nancy was very clear that there are no #s that guarantee admission or that translate to 100% admit statistics.
Take it for what it’s worth I guess: another anecdote.
^^Yup that’s what it is. I never said anyone was an “automatic admit.” I did say above a cut off (maybe only at some identified schools), if you meet a threshold, you’re likely to be admitted. I would think if a candidate had some serious flaws in other parts of the application like rec letters, they would take a pass. I know NESCAC admissions are difficult, but take it down a notch. We’re all just trying to shed some light on a complicated black box by sharing our own experiences meant to be helpful.
^^^ Well, the OP has now heard back from Wesleyan, and regretfully the result was not what she wanted, so none of this is helpful to her at this point. But with that said I’m not sure why I need to take anything down a notch: you wrote rather clearly that above a given threshold, “everyone gets in.” Moreover, you suggested rather clearly that her chances at Wes were dramatically different than those at “elite LACs” without a hook. Others read it that way as well. As another poster tried to point out, Wesleyan may, here and there, take a chance on a unique lower stat kid other elite schools might pass on. That, and whatever that contributes to lowering their composites by a tiny click, does not help inform, at all, what will happen to a given high stats kid, the likes of which they turn away all the time.
Am I missing something here? Nobody is a shoe-in for Wesleyan any more than for Vassar, Middlebury, Hamilton, Colby or the like. I just started posting here recently, but I’ve been reading the forum for years, and I get it: Wesleyan isn’t your favorite school. But this is tone deaf.