“But Another Kid From My School…”

With the next batch of admissions denials and waitlist letters hitting the streets this week, I figured I’d address a few things here.

Our admissions process for freshman this year was difficult. Very difficult. We’d love to admit a huge freshman class, but realistically, there’s a limit on space — space in the residence halls, space in classes. So when the applications pile up, we need to be more selective.

If you receive a waitlist letter this year, and you’re interested in remaining in the active pool — make sure you return the bottom of that letter indicating your interest ASAP. We can’t promise we’ll take anyone off the list this year, but if we do, we’ll pull from those who have indicated that interest first. Wait list decisions will be made after May 1, however.

Jay Mathews in the Washington Post has great thoughts for high school seniors about how to survive the April “college crunch.” My favorite point:

How to handle happy, or grieving, friends: The college admissions system, at least for our most selective schools, has become as rational as who wins bingo night at church. Nobody, including the college admissions officers, has a clear idea why certain students are admitted and others are not. Some rejected applicants are just as good as the accepted. Through no fault of their own, some of your closest friends will get into their first-choice college and some will not. You should put aside your own worries for a moment and practice two short speeches. To those who win this lottery, you should say: “That’s terrific. You worked so hard. You earned it. You are going to have a wonderful time.” To the losers you should say: “Of course you realize this is totally random. It has nothing to do with you. You will have a great time at East Pecos State. You will be running the place, and as you know, the research shows the name of your college has no effect on your success in life. All you need is great character and drive, and you have that.”

There’s a good amount of truth in that, and The Quick and the Ed had an interesting post about the “randomness” of the admissions process at selective schools. I would never call our process random, but there’s certainly an amount of randomness to it, especially when you’re looking at a very small piece of the puzzle, i.e. you and a handful of other students you might know who also applied who have different admissions decisions than you do.

Yes, there is likely someone with “worse stats” than you who might have been admitted. And there might be people with “better stats,” too. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet, and everything your friends tell you. I’d say more than half of our students tell me their GPA and/or SAT is one thing, but their transcript says something very different. Or they’re thinking of a weighted average, but we’re looking at the unweighted grades. Or they’re just looking at junior year, or senior midyear grades, when we’re looking at the whole picture. Or they’re thinking of their 1500/2400 SAT score, when it’s really only 960/1600.

There’s a lot that goes into the process, and again… I’m sorry we can’t admit everyone. For those of you who will be headed elsewhere this fall, I wish you the best in your future endeavors, and I encourage you to keep us in mind should you wish to transfer down the road.

(Two quick side notes: One, I wouldn’t follow Jay’s waiting list advice at Stony Brook, though, as I honestly don’t think that it’ll help. And two, as jealous as I am of their success, let’s go Binghamton! Beat them Dookies!)