{"id":1476,"date":"2017-11-29T13:39:48","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T13:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersons.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/college-acceptance-making-the-final-cut\/"},"modified":"2019-04-25T15:48:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T21:48:01","slug":"college-acceptance-making-the-final-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersons.com\/blog\/college-acceptance-making-the-final-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"College Acceptance: Making the Final Cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the admission committee at a college\u00a0is meeting, what do you think you might hear during the process of making an admission decision?<\/p>\n

College acceptance: Rating your application<\/h2>\n

The first thing you might hear is the rating each committee member gives your application. If there\u2019s not a consensus, the next thing you might hear is admission officers arguing for\u00a0the merits of the candidates they think are a good fit.<\/p>\n

At colleges that accept just about anyone, there\u00a0might not be\u00a0a committee. However, at the most competitive colleges, your application won\u2019t even be discussed in committee unless you\u2019re firing on all cylinders, meaning excellent grades and scores are a given. What then?<\/p>\n

Patricia Wei, of Yale University<\/a>, explains this step of the admissions decision: “In committee, we say, \u2018This is a good student. Now what is special?\u2019 A lot of times we call an applicant \u2018solid.\u2019 It translates into \u2018fine, but nothing distinctive.\u2019 At other colleges where I\u2019ve worked, \u2018solid\u2019 meant admissible, but here it\u2019s the kiss of death.”<\/p>\n

College acceptance: A peek at the process<\/h2>\n

The goal of the admission committee is to assign an overall rating that every member can live with. Committees often give numerical or letter grades rather than voting \u201dIn\u201d or \u201cOut\u201d, \u201cAccept\u201d or \u201cReject.\u201d For example, if an A to F scale is used to make the admission decision, committee members realize that A and B applicants are likely to be admitted and that C applicants stand a good chance. However, the final cut can\u2019t be made until all the files have been rated and compared. Competition and space availability change from year to year, so cut-off points vary. It\u2019s a serious and sensitive undertaking, but hardly an exact science.<\/p>\n

Decisions are more clear-cut at the top and bottom of the pool. The toughest admissions decisions to make are those about students who fall in the middle. This is where the strength of your application, as well as each college\u2019s particular needs and priorities, really come into play. Colleges don\u2019t always go by the book. There is room to make adjustments for “wild cards,” those candidates who, on the basis of statistics or in the light of tight competition, might be far from the top of the pile, yet have that special something that really knocked the socks off the committee members.<\/p>\n

College acceptance: Things you may not have considered<\/h2>\n

The committee is also tasked with other issues, such as fine-tuning the overall composition of the incoming class. Dean Lee Stetson of the University of Pennsylvania<\/a> states the following about the admissions decision, “Eighty-five percent of those who apply would thrive here, but we have to choose among them. We\u2019re not looking for only the best numbers, but also for those who will make each freshman class the most interesting…the most representative of the broad-based society we live in… and there is some element of crap shoot in the whole process.”<\/p>\n

Each institution has to determine how many positive college admission letters will net the desired number of entering students. While one college must accept 1,000 candidates so that 500 will enroll, another may need to make only 750 offers to net the same total. In any case, colleges always admit more students than they expect to actually enroll, and it’s impossible to always be right on the mark. Thus, you may be accepted, denied, or waitlisted. You might also get a more unusual type of college admission letter:<\/p>\n