The Admissions Labyrinth: Navigating the Route to College

The Admissions Labrinth: Navigating the Route to College

As I sit down under the tree on Christmas morning, I immediately begin to tear open a promising present. Perfectly rectangular. Good weight. Obviously not clothes, unless some cruel trick has been played. Maybe an Xbox. I tear open the wrapping paper, surely about to unveil my new console... Wait. An Xbox doesn’t have pages.

Seventh grade me had just received the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2015 from my grandparents, and, while I promptly lost it before the new year, I still remember the book as my first experience with higher-level education (aside from watching Clemson football games). Though I may not own the original to this day, it has been replaced by the 2019 edition as my college search truly begins, heading into the second semester of my junior year.

And yet, after hours of combing through the book, innumerable college websites, and other resources, I still feel as if I know nothing about the requirements of the college process whatsoever. As students of Porter-Gaud and children of the digital age, we have amazing access to all kinds of statistics, informational meetings, visits, and third-party tools. These data, however helpful they may be to admissions experts, do little to answer questions of how to get into a particular institution or to alleviate stress, and students rarely receive straight answers to personal questions.

12 Well, let’s start with question number one. How do I get into college? The universal reply seems to be pretty simple: a successful applicant must do well in school, do well on standardized tests, write decent admissions essays, and stay out of trouble. Though

By Burke Thompson

these answers appear all well and good and may give some satisfaction, the rabbit hole truly begins when the applicant attempts to understand and undertake these guidelines. Important follow-up questions have hundreds of possible answers; for example, what does it mean to do well in school? Does it mean I have to have straight A’s? Does it mean I have to take all APs? Is it better for me to make a 93 in an honors class or an 84 in an AP class? When asked this question during visits or during Porter-Gaud college nights, many college reps will – understandably – squirm and reply “Admissions offices appreciate when you challenge yourself” and will move on to the next question.

Unhelpful answers like these are unavoidable due to the massive variety of applicants and course offerings from schools, but they still cause even more follow up questions and student confusion. Internally, we ask ourselves, “Well, what does it mean to challenge myself?” Does it mean we have to waste away our lives, poring over books precariously perched on dimly lit desks, trashing our social lives, ignoring our families, and losing sleep in pursuit of challenging ourselves? Or does it simply mean we need to continue to take a language through our senior year? As students, we have no resolution for these questions and are often stranded in the dark as we decide our courses and possibly our academic fates.

Similarly, the SAT and ACT also add to the confusion. I distinctly remember two contradictory statements offered by visiting college administrators; in sophomore year, a representative from Boston College assured the crowd that no college would reject an application based on scores alone, whereas

in junior year, a representative from Clemson University revealed that scores would, in fact, be used to filter applicants. Additionally, the process of studying for these vital assessments is just as nebulous as college standards for scores, and with hundreds of third-party organizations advertising their study materials for test-takers, students — like myself — may feel paralyzed and intimidated by the sheer number of third-party organizations and options.

Searching the admissions scatterplots from the PG-provided Naviance reveals that almost every university admits some students with test scores and GPAs significantly below their reported averages, leaving students to wonder why these students were admitted while those who outscore them were rejected outright. One possible explanation could be that those admitted had outstanding extracurriculars, but how could colleges possibly discern the value of these activities? Are a student’s extracurricular merits weighted based on the weekly time commitment? The type of activity? Their prowess in the activity? Accolades? Participation? Somehow, colleges have to weigh all of these factors together and compare them to the activities of others while also weighing them against entire academic transcripts. Because of this variety, we cannot blame the lack of clarity on either the unhelpful-but-wellintending college representatives or students like myself who just want to know if colleges will even notice my non-athletic extracurriculars.

And then there are the quotas. Not affirmative action quotas, but the lists of specific niches the university needs new students to fill. As the least controllable factor of the admissions process, quotas exist seemingly to spite those well-qualified students who made the unfortunate decision of selecting Spanish as their language of choice instead of Chinese in the sixth grade. As related to me by a University of Chicago admissions official, every college admissions team must satisfy several different goals for that year’s class. Whether the college needs drummers for the school band, strong performers for their student-run shows, or simply more Chinese majors and fewer Spanish students, the admissions offices will fill these quotas, making small sacrifices wherever necessary to bolster the university’s intellectual diversity. For many students, however, these small sacrifices could mean the difference between admission or rejection. Granted, quotas may not be a leading cause of student rejection, but the threat of rejection based on criteria wholly out of student control is certainly frightening. In practice, the policy of filling quotas could mean colleges reject highly qualified students in the administration’s pursuit of a more advertisable student body composition.

The only consolation for students may be the universality of the admissions confusion. No matter your GPA, SAT score, required essays, recommendations, extracurriculars, athletic ability, linguistic ability, or any other piece of your resume that seeks to define you as a student, everyone feels helpless at the hands of the college admissions process. Though some may claim to know the inner workings of the applications process, we have to take their advice with a grain of salt – no one can truly know everything about the admissions process, especially not your nosy aunt claiming to know the fast track into Harvard. Though it may seem impossibly complicated at times, the task of applying to college is as daunting as it is achievable. We may not be able to figure out what each and every college wants to see in our applications, but we can rest easy knowing that the college you apply to does not define you as a person. Just because some institution decided that your resume didn’t fit the exact archetype they were hoping to admit doesn’t mean your life is over. Just like high school, college promises to be what you make of it – motivated students tend to take more potentially beneficial opportunities than complacent students, no matter the university they attend. Though I always tend to take admissions advice with a cynical grain of salt, one small tip has stuck with me since freshman year – no matter where you attend, you’ll make memories that’ll last a lifetime.