Peeling Back the Onion: Jeffrey Selingo’s “Who Gets in and Why”
I spent last week reading Jeffrey Selingo’s “Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions.” Selingo conducted his research with rare access to the admissions offices of the University of Washington, Davidson College, and Emory. Many of his observations overturned American assumptions about early decision, application credentials, and college rankings. Over the next two weeks, I’ll delve into each of these topics and summarize the main takeaways from Selingo’s research.
Today, our topic is the most controversial and important: by what metrics are students deemed worthy of admission to America’s most prestigious universities?
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is David Clarke and I am a recent graduate of Columbia University, which was recently exposed by Columbia mathematics professor Dr. Michael Thaddeus for submitting misleading data to U.S. News that resulted in its inflated ranking of No. 2 in 2022. This scandal resulted in feelings of betrayal among Columbia students, myself included. Jeffrey Selingo’s research allowed me to reflect on Columbia’s behavior and understand the incentives that drove them to make seemingly backwards decisions.
“We like to talk about our higher education system as the linchpin of meritocracy. But as the stories in this book will show, it never was that, and likely never will be.”
There is no fixed mold for an “acceptance” to an admission officer. Rather, the profile of an “acceptance” shifts depending on a university’s financial, practical, and political needs. Let’s start by laying out the groundwork.
The Joint Role of Standardized Tests and Grades
Together, standardized test scores and grades are important guidelines for admissions decisions. However, they are not sufficient metrics on their own. Due to grade inflation and variances in grading policies, grades can be an unreliable metric for admission, but standardized tests can supplement grades as “a confirmation of the grades and high school curriculum.”
Many students and parents, frustrated by the affirmative action policies of prestigious universities, urge a meritocracy based on grades and test scores to guide admissions decisions. The numbers clearly reveal that such a policy is insufficient: “of the 26,000 domestic applicants… at Harvard [in 2019], 8,200 had perfect grade-point averages in high school, 3,500 had perfect SAT math scores, and 2,700 had perfect verbal scores. But Harvard had only about 1,700 spots to offer.” Therefore, admissions officers at selective universities must turn to other measures of student ability.
How Extracurricular Activities Affect Early Decisions
A student’s extracurricular activities can be the factor that gains them admission to an Ivy League school. On the other hand, their extracurricular activity may only result in marginal gain for their admissions profile. What factors decide how an extracurricular activity is considered by an admissions officer?
During the early decision round, admissions officers seek to fill the “gaps” in their student body. For those that don’t know, “early decision” is an application option in which students apply to one school with the understanding that an acceptance would be binding. This option eliminates student flexibility, thereby allowing admissions officers to precisely design their student body. Consider the following example from Amherst College, where approximately 35% of the student body are early decision applicants.
If the college’s best (and only) tuba player graduated in 2024, Amherst would seek to fill this slot in their incoming freshman class. The best time to find a tuba player would be during early decision. Among their thousands of early decision applicants, they find a single tuba player from Juilliard’s Pre-College program with mediocre grades and test scores. She is immediately offered an acceptance, and the gap is promptly filled. Although this example is specific, it illustrates how a college’s niche needs influence early decision admissions.
Extracurricular activities offer significant benefits when the college has an early decision “gap” to be filled. Finding these “gaps” is a game of luck for the applicant. Fortunately, extracurricular activities can also show commitment and achievement among young students who generally lack significant work experience or life challenges. In other words, students should commit to your extracurricular activities but shouldn’t expect admission for winning a national championship.
High Schools in Context
Many undergraduate applicants do not understand the relevance of their high school for their application. According to Selingo, a student’s high school and zip code shape the context in which students are evaluated. The admissions officers interviewed by Selingo each specialize in a geographical region. For example, one admissions officer specializing in the Southeast would have strong fluency in the region’s prominent high schools, standardized test scores, and even guidance counselors. Every fall, these admissions officers visit schools in their regions to meet their future applicants, often forming relationships that span the entire admissions cycle.
As a result, a student’s merit is evaluated within the culture and curriculum of their high school. Parents at New York’s best public and private schools may wonder, “Does this put extra pressure on my child to achieve more than the nation’s average high schooler?” Absolutely, Selingo answers. Applicants from high schools offering a dozen AP courses, college outreach programs, and well-funded extracurricular activities are expected to take advantage of these resources, which are frequently unavailable at the average American high school.
There is also a silver lining: an admissions officer, familiar with your child’s high school curriculum, may pardon ambitious students slogging through their high school’s most difficult courses. Admissions officers may be familiar with the high school’s challenging STEM curriculum and will consciously read a student’s transcript within that context.
One final note about high schools: the admissions officer who visits your child’s high school will likely be the same admissions officer who reads his or her application. Therefore, it is imperative that your child attends these college visits to demonstrate interest in the university.
That’s the end of this post, but check in next week for Selingo’s research on college rankings and financial aid! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the author using the contact information on our website.