@lvperuvian1995. Thank you for your comment. The percent of local students might seem out of whack to you, but for a family and student who has been part of the Basilica community and prepared to attend ND for years to be rejected still stings. I’m fortunate in that I have a high school classmate who spent many years as senior level staff member in the ND admissions department who talked to me after my son’s application was rejected. She transferred to another job out of admissions a few years ago because the weight of the “big lie” Notre Dame perpetuates was taking a toll on her. As I described my son’s application to her, I started with his ACT score, which is 2 points below the median for ND. She said, “Stop right there. With that score, a white, Catholic male doesn’t stand a chance unless his family is a major donor.” When I explained that he had a 3.99 GPA, top 1%, essays his counselor said “were the best she’s ever read”, and leadership experience that generated awesome recommendations, my friend said, “They never cracked the file open to read that information! His file would have been pulled and rejected immediately because of his ACT score. The process is not holistic and that’s what bothered me so much over the years. They simply can’t read…really read…the thousands of applications they receive. It would be better if Notre Dame just told the truth regarding its admissions process.”
Complicating matters further, a person in the endowment office at Notre Dame told us that Notre Admissions doesn’t think highly of the high school my son attends because of its comparative scores to other high schools in our state. What ND doesn’t take the time to find out is that 40% of the school population is first generation Mexican immigrants for whom English is a second language. Our anglo-only scores rank among the best in our state. The overall scores are brought down by the first generation immigrants. The school dedicates a disproportionate amount of resources to trying to raise the standards among this group of students (to meet state and federal requirements), that it can’t afford to offer college test prep to college track students or other amenities (like departmental awards and honors). Pouring more salt into the wounds of rejection, my son is a leader both in our parish and community in helping to assimilate the Hispanics into our community.
By comparison, Michigan, which had made a great effort to get know our high school over the past decade, has admitted him and offered him academic scholarships that will cover about 60% of the cost of attendance. He has been accepted by Marquette and should hear from its Honors Program in the next week or so; Marquette has already offered substantial merit based scholarships, too.
Here’s the final kicker. I told my friend who works at Notre Dame what my son’s hook was and she couldn’t believe he didn’t get admitted! The hook is that he is related to St. Andre Bessette, the first saint from the Holy Cross order.
