Top Schools with Most Holistic Admissions

paying3tuitions
Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:33:01 +0000

Now, please don’t shoot me or anything, but it’s possible that the top LAC’s are as a group more holistic in their review of “other factors” than top universities. I have NO DATA to prove this, only several generations of family experience that attests to the appreciation and dependence of LAC’s upon their undergraduate populations to generate a humane, lively, culturally-particpatory community for each other once they unpack their bags. To “create community” starting at age 18, rather than depend on trickle-down from the awesome resources of the large university, means that students must come to campus ready to join the orchestras, dance troupes, theatrical productions and more that make up campus cultural offerings. So isn’t it logical that the LAC’s would want to see highschool EC’s where skills and passion for the arts have been built up? Performing arts is only the area I know most about, and I’m sure it applies to many other EC’s.
That said, the 2 schools I know most about are Oberlin and Amherst. Oberlin absolutely looks for the whole person, IN ADDITION to academic qualifications, because when your campus is “in the middle of a cornfield” yet offers national-quality resources, the students remain on campus to generate virtually all of the “entertainment”, not only in music (from the Conservatory) but in the arts. In her senior year there, my D spends her time equally between very serious attention to her academic courses (Religion major) and creative extracurriculars: comedy improv troupe, planning a multi-arts theatrical circus for the coming spring, co-teaching an ExCo course in stilting. She came to campus with those skills from highschool, and has had much opportunity to explore and develop them there for pleasure. This entertains other students as well. She was able to begin applying and improving those talents starting in freshman year. Perhaps the colleges know this about themselves, and look out for talent in the EC’s, “just for pleasure.”
Amherst College says explicitly that they value the student’s extracurriculars during college in equal measure to coursework, so perhaps that’s another place where h.s. EC’s are noticed. Mind you, it’s only worth thinking of Amherst if you come in with high stats already. Also, the fact that Amherst interviews NOBODY means they devote all their time to reading the essays with utmost care.
I am by no means saying these are the only LAC’s that treasure the whole person, but I can speak positively for these two places.
And now I’m sure a reader who can present how HYP…also value the whole person, as expressed through EC’s, essays, etc. will also chime in.
Above all, it’s more important to show improvement after a bad, slack-off year as a h.s. sophomore by IMPROVING ACADEMICS than anything else, I’m guessing. So, first things first! But after that, yes, a focussed and meaningful presentation of EC’s could catch the attention of an AdCom and help offset academic blunders, as long as the academics improved!!!
Side-story, kind of funny, about sophomore slump: We toured Brown University and a wonderful guide with a science major pointed to the dorm “for sophomores.” I asked him if the roof slumped and he did a double-take, halting the tour to look it over until I quietly clued him that I was just kidding re: “sophomore slump.” Actually, it impressed me about Brown, because obviously his intellectual curiosity was alive place at every moment. I felt that, if he could have, he’d have found and analyzed the buiilding’s flaws right there on the spot.