Class of 2016 Regular Decision Results!

D_yer_Maker
Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:13:27 +0000

And to add to what smartalic34 says, it’s not a crapshoot in a “the universe is totally random and indifferent” kind of way, but it’s a crapshoot in terms of you having no control over what they’re looking for and what stands out in any given year at any given highly selective LAC.

You could hire a single team of world-class application readers and pool their expertise for all of those colleges listed and come up with the same exact outcomes…because maybe Smith, Bryn Mawr and Mt. Holyoke are in desperate need of a mumbletypeg champion while Wes happens to be overloaded with mumbletypeggers(?) on campus and in the applicant pool (word of mouth travels fast in the mumbletyverse) and, while Swarthmore already has a decent mumbletypeg student base, maybe they just built a new mumbletypeg research facility so they want even more people who will put their fingers on the pulse of the action. The imaginary pooled application reader team would have one singular overall opinion of you but they will still see you as a great student who will shine in some environments and be unsatisfied in others where the super team of application readers is more intent of finding more students who are like the applicants in a different stack of folders on another table.

The outcomes listed above wouldn’t make sense if the application file was the only variable and if admissions officers didn’t factor in the specific needs of their respective employers – and if they didn’t rely on their expertise as to which kinds of applicants perform best in their specific environment. There’s so much more data that gets weighed and balanced beyond the application file…and not nearly enough spaces to accommodate all of the worthy applicants…that it becomes something of a crapshoot when viewed from the prism of an applicant – but it’s a highly informed and deliberate crapshoot. The Wes admission team may have known exactly what it was doing by not offering admission – while being every bit as impressed and charmed as the Swat and Pomona admission teams were.