“Counselor’s recommendation” is the same as the “school report”, isn’t it?
No, our counselor writes a student-specific recommendation and they include a school report. One is specific to the kid. The other is not.
No, the school report is a document that mainly describes the applicant’s SCHOOL and applicant’s place in it. The counselor’s recommendation is a more personalized letter that describes the APPLICANT.
Actually, the school report has the counselor make a subjective rank of the student for curriculum rigor, academic achievement, extracurricular accomplishments, personal qualities and character, and overall, so it is not only about the school.
Although it looks like there is also a separate counselor recommendation that counselors are supposed to write whatever comments they want.
Not to make things more confusing, but the School Report contains a School Profile section, and some schools instead have a School Profile prepared that they attach (see the intro to the Counselor Section).
The School Profile is therefore the part of the School Report that is not specific to the applicant, but then as you note, other parts of the School Report ask the counselor to discuss the applicant in relative terms given that context.
On the article in general: not a lot of surprises or revelations or details, but also not a bad overview of what a typical highly-selective holistic review college is considering.
What struck me most about the article is that the two admissions officers interviewed are brand new grads. I wonder if the process is different for AOs with more tenure who are more familiar with the schools in their territories. Also curious if it’s the norm to have new grads as AOs?
Yes, common. And entry level AO jobs tend to be quite low paying (I’ve seen some recently, at selective schools, in the high $30K range), and I’ve never seen one greater than $50K (although there could be some of course.) There is high staff turnover each year at all levels of admissions.
IME students who don’t have a counselor LoR can be at a disadvantage. It is more difficult to understand the context when admissions doesn’t have a counselor letter.
Separately, some counselors fully complete the other rankings/info in the school report, some leave it blank. It’s especially difficult if the counselor doesn’t give the students the highest rank marks, then writes a glowing LoR. Personally, I tend to rely on the LoR then.
It is interesting how different AOs read, which can be quite variable even within a given school’s process. And we know the processes across schools can vary tremendously as well…individual vs team reading, AI involvement, different priorities each year, different priorities by major, etc.
I found it interesting that only one AO is reading each application before bringing (presumably) a subset to committee for discussion. It seems like the more typical process at highly selective schools is to have two readers?
I also appreciated their saying that they do read every application thoroughly. The Brown application is a ton of work, so I’m glad to hear that they take the time to read all of the essays.
Brown has previously reported they do use a second reader before an application goes to committee. See for example here:
After the first read, the admission officer writes a quick summary of the application, said Bailey DiOrio, another admission officer for the University. Then it gets passed to a second admission officer, so the application can pass through another set of eyes. At the very end of the process, committees consisting of a chair and three to five voting admission officers meet to discuss applications from a given region and decide applicants’ outcomes.
Reading this article closely, I don’t think it actually rules out that is still happening. What this one says is:
According to Wagg and Berman, there is never just one person who decides the final yes or no on an application. Generally, applications are read by an officer who specializes in the geographic region that the applicant is from before the candidate is discussed by a broader admissions committee. Conversations among the broader group tend to be longer for students they are considering admitting, Wagg said.
It isn’t clear, but I think that reference to an officer who is an area specialist could be a reference to a second reader. That’s at least how I understand the system at some other colleges–the more junior readers are doing the first pass, and the second readers are often more senior officers responsible for overseeing geographic areas with which they have prior experience.
By the way, reading between the lines a bit–I don’t know if the second readers are always quite as thorough as the first readers. My sense is if an applicant is deemed uncompetitive by the first reader, the second reader may only do a relatively quick pass to make sure nothing leaps out as requiring further consideration. This is basically how the process can potentially work with more junior readers than senior readers.
However, if the first reader thinks an applicant seems promising, then the second reader will make sure the first reader isn’t being overly exuberant. But if the second reader agrees that the applicant does look promising, that is when they get a full presentation and discussion in committee.
One thing I want to point out…among schools that use the term “committee”…there are some where “committee” is not a group of people, it is one person. This was a surprise to me when I first started working in the industry.
Not only are these two just graduated, but seem to have had very privileged lives growing up (one attended an expensive private high school, the other attended a public high school which serves an extremely wealthy community).
I don’t begrudge them their privilege, however, the idea that admissions are being decided by very privileged graduates of the college really increases the risk that they will have no idea what to do with applications from the 90% of the population who did not grow up in that level of privilege. Their lives show no indication that they ever have spent any time outside of their bubble of wealth and privilege.
These are the people who are supposed to be able to compare their peers from wealthy White communities and schools with other kids. How do they know the barriers that these kids may, or may not, have faced?
These are AOs who have had lives which jumped from elementary schools for the wealthy to high schools for the wealthy a college for the wealthy, and are now working in that college. And yes, I looked them up on LinkedIn. There is zero evidence that either of them has ever held a position or spent any time with groups of kids whose families have income that are lower than $200,000.
How in the names of the goddesses and gods of admissions will they be able to look at an application of a kid from a public school that serves a community of families with the median income of $25,000, and figure out who this kid is? These AOs don’t have the tools to understand what these kids can or cannot do for ECs. These AOs have no tools to figure out how not having your own comfortable and quiet room with high speed internet impacts an applicant. They definitely don’t know how schools that serve low and middle income families have one counselor for every 350-450 kids.
I mean, look at this:
Here is a perfect example of his difficulty in understanding the reality for the majority of low and middle income students. He actually seems to believe that a GC who is dealing with 120 graduating seniors, on top of another 400 or so students, can actually provide anything but the most basic information about any of the students for which they are writing an LoR. As for the “opportunities”? Most of these GCs don’t even know what opportunities are missing.
I mean, look at Chetty et al. 2025 if you want to say how that plays in admissions. A novice AO is much more likely not to understand this.
The paragraph from this AO demonstrates to me, at least, that this AO has little understanding of the effects of school resources on the quality of LoRs written by GCs. This makes me feel that there is a good chance that they will interpret the differences between the LoR’s of kids from wealthy schools and LoRs of kids from poor schools as a difference in the “quality” of the candidates, privileging wealthy applicants even more.
Filling the AO positions with kids like these is guaranteed to reduce the number of high achieving low income kids.
PS I love this quote from the second article:
They seem to imply that admissions is not actually determined by ratings and algorithms. However, what they are only actually saying is that ratings and algorithms don’t guarantee that any particular person will be admitted.
Which I guess would be correct. To guarantee an applicant a spot at the University, you need to donate a lot of money, or have a very famous parent (or be famous). For example, it wasn’t an algorithm or a rating that guaranteed Emma Watson a spot at Brown (a lovely person, and she probably was qualified to be accepted based on all of the qualifications which played no part in her acceptance)
That was exactly my first thought upon reading this thread. And my second thought was “Good thing my kids didn’t waste effort on a Brown application, since counselors at our HS know next to nothing about our kids.”
I created this thread to help new/lurking CC members understand how highly selective schools make decisions. Even if it’s mostly general knowledge, some may be able to pick up a nugget or two about the admissions process from actual admissions officers.
I prefer posters share their insights that align with this goal and not off topic and derail this into a completely different discussion.
Perhaps I should’ve stated that at the beginning.
Sorry, I thought we were discussing the article? For me the most surprising (and educational) part was how the two AOs said they looked first at the counselor’s recommendation and school report, respectively. I would never have guessed that would be anyone’s preferred process, so this was news to me. If it’s common practice for highly selective schools, that’s interesting as well. The rest of the article just seemed to describe holistic admissions, although I may have missed some nuances.
Yes. The contents of the article, not critiquing the admissions officers background and speculating if they could be biased against low income kids (which could be an interesting separate topic with supported evidence).
There are many parents who dont have the time to listen to AO/Deans of admissions podcasts etc. The casual CC member who could get some information from a quick read.
I have been a volunteer college counselor for a few years now, focusing on two different ends of the student spectrum. One end is the low income student, and the other end is the ultimate high achieving student, usually in STEM, and usually from higher income families. I enjoy helping both of these groups, for different reasons. The first consists of smart kids that deserve to be in college. The second contains some of the brightest kids in the nation, and I just enjoy working with brilliant STEM kids.
And having guided few dozen students from each category through the admissions process now, and having access to the student profiles and outcomes of about 100 more low income students, one thing stands out very clearly to me:
There is a MASSIVE increase in student expectations for admission into the most selective colleges, based upon perceived family income.
I mentioned in another thread that this year I had a low-income student who was admitted ED to a top-10 college that is known to be academically challenging. Her academic profile put her at about the top 10% of her class, with no particularly outstanding extracurriculars, and a 1200 SAT (she applied test optional). She did however, write the very best essay I have ever read, and it was about a situation that was related to her family being low income. Something about her profile clearly clicked with admissions.
Last year, I had an academically very strong student, near the top of her class from a nationally known high school, with many solid extracurriculars, and pretty good essays. She had applied widely, including to a few Ivys and elite public universities like Michigan, UCLA, Virginia and Berkeley. But she was rejected by all of them (she did have several admits below the level of Michigan, including some full-ride offers). However, she was also admitted to international colleges that primarily admit on merit including McGill and Cambridge.
These were the most significant outliers of the students I have guided over the past few years. The first did better than expected with elite college admissions, and the second did worse than I expected.
But most other admission decisions fit my expected pattern of expecting much higher achievement from higher income families. Another example is Northeastern, which has a 5% admit rate, but admit rates exceed 50% for low-income students with grades in the top 10% of their class and good guidance from a community based college advising program. Northeastern wants low-income students that they are confident will thrive, even if they don’t have the same academic record as from high achieving school districts, and the track record of the college advising program gives them that confidence.
The point of all this is that it’s clear that colleges like Brown and Northeastern do adjust for a student’s circumstances. I suspect it is one of the first things taught to new admissions officers.
First, my comments were were aimed specifically at admissions at Brown, and what is happening at Northeastern really is not that relevant, nor is what is happening at any other university.
BTW, in this case we’re not just talking about an ignorance of life for low income kids. These two AOs have no idea what life and high school are like for middle class kids, with family incomes in the $120,000-$150,000 range. These AOs do not seem to have engaged in any activity with anybody outside their income range.
A kid from a family in the fourth quintile will be prepared academically if they attend a one of the middle income communities with good public schools. However, even they will have issues with overworked GCs. They will not get the glowing personalized letter that wealthy kids from super resourced high schools will get. Their EC will not look as good on paper as those of the super wealthy kid.
Again, an AO with experience with applicants rom a large range of income brackets will know this, and will have internalized this. However, somebody who lacks any experience outside of their upper income bubble will not.
Again, look at all the assumptions that Berman is making about the information that can be gleaned from the GC’s LoR. Berman seems to be assuming that the GC’s LoR will have all the details that can only be added by a GC who is writing 30 or 25, or even fewer letter that year while dealing with another 80-90 students from other classes. This is not the case even for GCs of mid income students who are looking at some 100 letters and another 300 students from other that they need to take care of.
PS. I will once again say kudos to you for your volunteer work with kids who are underserved. For that you deserve an actual Kudo:
These AOs graduated from Brown- a school where about half the kids? receive financial aid. It’s highly speculative to say they did not engage with anyone outside their income range - maybe in HS but not in college?
Are you saying Brown should not have hired these AO’s solely because of their demographic background?