<p>As I learned from an earlier post somewhere, the ND admissions office (and most admissions offices) are “forming a class.” So, let’s imagine what that takes. (1) Since this is a co-ed school, we’ll need close to 50-50 males and females, (2) We need to keep our athletics strong because it is the epicenter of our school’s sports spirit, so we’ll need more athletes in XX sports (football?) because we’ve been weak there before, and we need a stronger quarterback, (3) Since ND is not a public school, not funded by federal funds, we need to keep our family/community tradition and spirit, and be able to continue to afford providing financial aid to qualified students who need financial assistance, so, we’ll need qualified legacies whose parents have generously donated to the university, (4) We’ll need a lot of academic scholars, to keep the standards high and inspire other students to greater heights, so, let’s bring them in and offer scholarships to the best-of-the-best because we have to compete against other top schools for them, (5) We’ll need some people with leadership and initiative who can generate other school activities to keep our students engaged and give them choices, since there is not much to do in South Bend; so, let’s bring in the qualified “activity initiators and the passionate service-oriented students”, (6) since ND is viewed as homogenous by most outsiders, and our society has become diverse/complex and the economy has become globalized, we need somequalified internationals and URMs who can expand the experience of our student body beyond their limited upbringing in their hometown and make them men or women of the world, (7) As a university that believes in helping “the least of our brethren”, let’s find some very poor qualified students who would not otherwise get a shot in life unless they are given these opportunities, and we can fund those with legacy donations (8) and finally, let’s bring in a couple of people like DarkHorse90, so people will say - “What the HECK? How did that son of a donkey get in?” , just to remind people that “God truly works in mysterious ways” and that life is not a predictable state. So, looking back, at any of those decision points, anyone of us could have been cut. “Too many males, let’s cut out DarkHorse90…wait, no, we need him for category 8.” But they still have to pick “qualified” students, qualified means those who can do the level of academic work at Notre Dame. And the number of qualified students who applied to Notre Dame (or other schools) will far exceed the available seats. If they brought in ALL scholars or ALL who got SATs over 1500, no athletes-no legacy-no student leaders-no musicians, this would no longer be NOTRE DAME that we all seem to love. And who among us would even want to apply here?</p>