An article on how the Admissions Department at the University of Virginia accepts or rejects early admssions applicants, from December of 2002.
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Where Early Decision Is Won and Lost : Behind Closed Doors at U-Va., Borderline Cases Make for Angst-Filled Debates By Amy ArgetsingerWashington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 16, 2002; Page A01
Of all the cases that poured into the University of Virginia admissions office this fall, few were more vexing than that of the soccer-playing student council president from the Southwest. Three days before the deadline for mailing decisions to applicants, the entire staff gathered on a gray and blustery late-November morning to consider her fate.
"Her essays are lively," declared Roberta Platts-Mills, an admissions officer assigned to read the young woman's application. "But there's not a lot of intellectual heft here."
Specifically, Madame President was taking a light senior-year course load, opting out of Advanced Placement calculus. Yet her grades were in the top 1 percent of her class. Teachers raved about her work ethic. Her essays radiated an unusually buoyant charm -- "a joie de vivre," Platts-Mills said. And she was so enamored of U-Va. that she was ready to commit to it -- through an early decision program -- over any other college, 10 months in advance.
They liked her. They liked her enough to want to admit her. But did they like her enough to let her in now, when hundreds, even thousands, of more qualified applicants could present themselves in the spring?
More than ever, elite colleges across the nation grappled this fall with the fairness of early decision. Yale and Stanford universities announced last month that they will drop the increasingly controversial admissions option, which binds applicants to attend the college that promises them a verdict by December.
Some smaller schools, including Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, have made similar moves, and others are debating whether to follow.
But at U-Va., the angst over early decision went beyond mere policy debate. It was the nagging issue that hovered over the reading of each of the record 2,410 early applications sent to Charlottesville this fall.
The university filled 32 percent of its current freshman class by Dec. 1 last year, only to realize later that many of those accepted early would likely have been wait-listed if they had applied in the spring. As a result, it was forced to wait-list several spring applicants who appeared more deserving of a place in the Class of 2006.
Such a tilt has long been suspected at many private colleges. Princeton, for example, admitted nearly one of every three early applicants last year. But the trend unnerved officials at U-Va.
"I don't think a public university should be giving an advantage to students who can apply early," said Dean of Admission John A. Blackburn, who allowed The Washington Post to observe part of this fall's early decision deliberations on the condition that no names of applicants or identifying details be revealed.
Nuanced Process
Few aspects of higher education carry as much mystique as the art and science of deciding who gets in. That may explain why early decision, offered by only the most elite schools and chosen by a tiny fraction of college-bound seniors, has generated so much debate.
At competitive schools such as U-Va., the admissions process can be brutally nitpicking -- a single B-minus sometimes is enough to sink an otherwise sterling record -- yet surprisingly nuanced. Admissions officers often clock overtime hours to plumb the sincerity of a personal statement or compare the relative virtues of two similar applicants.
Though U-Va. has offered early decision for decades, Blackburn agrees with much of the criticism leveled at the policy recently: that it pressures students to pick a school too soon in the race to gain a strategic edge and that it handicaps minority and low-income students, who cannot commit early because they need to weigh financial-aid offers from several institutions.
Last year, only 80 of U-Va.'s 2,397 early applicants were black, and just 20 overall applied for financial aid.
Soon, Blackburn will ask the university's admissions policy committee to study whether U-Va. should drop early decision in favor of a nonbinding alternative known as early action, which would offer students a verdict by December without extracting a promise to enroll.
But already last month, when it came time to weed this year's crop of early applications, Blackburn had handed down an unofficial mandate: Admit only about 850 students early -- 28 percent of the freshman class -- to keep the playing field level for applicants in the spring.
So as his staff slowly warmed to the soccer-playing Southwesterner, Blackburn remained the voice of skepticism. And when one assistant dean blurted that she really wanted to admit the young woman now, because "she's not going to get in later," it was all Blackburn could do not to wince.
"I'm trying to squelch that tendency," he sighed later.
Complex Deliberations
In most cases, it's obvious.
Each application to U-Va. gets two thorough readings -- first by an admissions officer, then by Blackburn or either of his associate deans. Generally they agree on a verdict with little difficulty. (About half of all applicants from Virginia are ultimately offered admission, compared with little more than a quarter from out of state.)
So the challenge facing the 16 admissions staffers who gathered around a mahogany table in an airy, Jeffersonian room on the Friday before Thanksgiving involved a small but crucial part of the process -- the borderline cases.
First up: a Central Virginia straight-A student recognized by the staff as "a terrible writer." He also drew flak for failing to take a foreign language or a laboratory science his senior year.
One admissions staffer offered a possible explanation: Perhaps his commuting time to the prestigious state magnet school where he is taking three advanced courses cuts into his regular school day?
Associate Dean Lawrence Groves shrugged dismissively: "It's only a 20-minute drive."
It wasn't a question of whether they had to take or reject him that day. Because this was early decision, the committee had the luxury of deferring his application until spring. Still, it was hard to imagine that he wouldn't ultimately merit a slot. They admitted him on a close vote, swayed largely by an energetic pitch from his guidance counselor.
Next, they agonized over an accomplished Florida athlete with an A-plus average but whose English teacher submitted a shockingly negative letter of recommendation. Some staffers were ready to reject her -- "She's a grind," said one -- but others kept trying to parse the meaning of the baffling letter.
"I think there may be some jealousy on the part of the English teacher," mused admissions counselor Ryan Hargraves. Finally, they conceded that they could never know the truth behind the letter. They agreed to defer the student while quietly acknowledging that her chances in the spring would be slim.
Early Decision's Growth
Born nearly 45 years ago, early decision programs operated for decades on a far more modest scale. Few students cared to make an early commitment, and only the very best tended to apply. Even into the 1990s, U-Va. rarely got more than 1,000 such applications each fall.
Then, unexpectedly, early decision mushroomed across the country.
Many deans contend that its growth was spurred by the debut of U.S. News & World Report's rankings of top colleges, which are based in part on a school's admissions selectivity. Suddenly, such obscure statistics as what percentage of applicants a college admits and what percentage of admitted students choose to enroll became highly visible and closely watched.
Schools with large early decision programs did well in the rankings, since so many of their applicants were committed to enroll and they had fewer slots to dole out in the spring. In the mid-1990s, several colleges that had previously offered nonbinding early action made the switch to early decision.
Many colleges denied giving an edge to early applicants, noting that those who applied early tended to be unusually well-qualified. But a Harvard study last year showed that early decision gave Ivy League applicants an advantage equivalent, on average, to 100 extra points on the SAT.
Students took note of the trend and started applying early in larger numbers. Blackburn said that U-Va. never promoted early decision heavily but experienced a "trickle-down effect" as the option became more fashionable among high school seniors.
Today, he said, his office has come to rely on early decision. The process helps spread out the admissions workload, he said, and makes it easier to determine how many nonbinding offers must be made in the spring to fill the class without overenrolling.
The downside for Blackburn and his staff is that ever-wavering numbers have made it harder to predict in November what the appropriate cutoff for the incoming freshman class should be. Which is how they ended up in last year's quandary, when regular applicants had a harder time getting in than early ones did.
Hence Blackburn's order to raise the bar for this fall's early decision -- to resist the temptation to admit just any old straight-A student with a nice set of essays.
A Roiling Debate
But where exactly to draw the line? And on which side to place the bright young man from Hampton Roads with a flurry of small writing errors on his application? He had few meaningful extracurricular credits to his name. But he also ranked among the top few students in a class of nearly 500.
Marianne Kosiewicz didn't see how they could turn him down. "This kid has 9 APs [Advanced Placement classes]," said Kosiewicz, an associate dean. "This is not a soft program."
Blackburn wasn't convinced. "I saw all that 10th-grade, 11th-grade stuff," he said. "But what do you do with a kid who takes a light senior program? Public speaking, he's taking. Fashion marketing?"
Another colleague noted that the teenager's school required him to take a certain number of electives, which could explain his fluffy senior-year schedule. Blackburn groused that the student should have tried to take a second year of calculus. But after eight minutes of debate, the dean was one of only two at the table voting not to admit the boy early.
Concerning another student, a young man from Pennsylvania who wrote beautiful essays but had never taken an AP class, there was no question of early admission. The only issue was whether to reject or defer. Some at the table argued passionately that, coming from a low-income family, he deserved the second chance. "It's heartbreaking," said Marjorie Schiff, senior assistant dean. "The guidance counselor says he just doesn't have confidence in his abilities."
"We've seen this type of kid before," responded Hargraves. "But they support their intelligence with high AP scores. Here we have nothing."
Time to decide. Seven votes to defer him; eight votes to deny.
"That's so close," Blackburn murmured.
Then they realized that one of their readers had left the room moments before, leaving behind her vote -- to defer.
"I'm the vice president of the Senate," joked Groves, meaning that as the final reader of the student's application, he had to break the tie.
"I vote to defer."
Analyzing the Tally
With almost all the early decisions complete, it was time to second-guess their choices to ensure that the verdicts they were about to put in the mail were fair and consistent. Victoria Muradi, an assistant dean, was staring at a chart of all the students who had applied from a particular public high school in the outer suburbs of Northern Virginia, listed by class rank.
Most such charts followed a pattern -- a string of names marked "X" for being accepted, then a string of E's for deferrals, then a string of R's for those rejected. But this school's chart showed a more erratic lineup. A highly ranked boy had been deferred -- an E amid the X's -- while a much lower-ranked girl had been accepted. Could U-Va. justify this?
Muradi pulled out the files on both students. The young man had an A-plus average and a 1,250 SAT score. But as a volunteer attendance monitor, he was leaving school early every day this fall.
"He's out early three periods? Hel-lo?" Muradi exclaimed. "He should have been taking APs instead! He's not even trying!"
She checked the notes. As first reader of the student's application, she had recommended that U-Va. reject him. Blackburn had overruled her, though, and deferred him. She could understand why.
"He's done everything right," Muradi said of the applicant. "People call here saying, 'My kid got straight A's and you turned him down?' "
Deferral, she reasoned, might nudge him to take a tougher course load in the spring. But in reality, deferrals offer applicants little hope. Only about 10 percent of those deferred in early decision get an offer of admission in the spring. The odds are slightly better for in-state applicants, but near-impossible for non-Virginians.
Meanwhile, Schiff had found a similar discrepancy in the ranks of a Northern Virginia private school. Two girls, with almost identical grade-point averages and SAT scores: One was admitted and the other deferred.
She pulled the files. The admitted girl had three AP classes, an A in French honors, a busy schedule of student council and cheerleading. "It is a strong transcript," Schiff conceded. The deferred classmate had two APs and B's in both her honors classes. Yet she also had a nice record of volunteer work and glowing recommendations, which made her arguably just as worthy.
But already, Blackburn's staff had admitted more than 900 early applicants, well above the intended threshold. At Schiff's urging, Blackburn changed the acceptance offer to a deferral. The near-identical classmates would share an identical verdict.
In all, Blackburn's staff ended up admitting 914 applicants early -- 30.1 percent of next fall's freshman class and about 64 more than he had originally hoped. More than 1,000 were deferred. Only 384 were rejected outright.
"We tried very hard to do the same things we did last spring -- to keep the selectivity that high," the dean explained. "But they were there, and they were good."
Such as the Southwestern student council president, whose intellectual heft and spotty transcript continued to be debated for more than 10 minutes. As it turned out, the committee learned, she had been required by her high school to drop a class in order to serve in her elected post.
"We're going to condemn her because she didn't take strong enough classes or we're going to condemn her because her extracurriculars aren't impressive enough," sighed Kosiewicz. "This is the bind we always face."
"Do we have a lot of student-body presidents in the top 1 percent?" another officer wondered aloud. Jaded heads nodded from around the table. It wasn't looking good.
Then someone noted that the girl was one of the few from her home town ever to apply to U-Va. Suddenly, momentum began to shift. "I think she'd be competitive in regular decision," Groves offered grudgingly.
It was time to decide. Only Blackburn and three others voted to defer her. She would be invited to become a member of the U-Va. Class of 2007.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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