If you didn’t know it, May 1 is a big day in the world of college admissions. It is the enrollment deposit deadline at the majority of American institutions, also known as College Decision Day. This should be a happy day for all college-bound high school seniors, as it signifies the end of the long journey toward getting into college and the beginning of the actual college experience.
But, in today’s hypercompetitive and often confounding college admissions environment, there are undoubtedly some students who aren’t happy with where they’re placing their deposits. The students who feel like the system failed them. The ones who worked so hard to get into College A, only to be left with consolation-prize colleges B, C and D. What happened? They had the grades, they had the test scores, and they did “all the things.”
A holistic approach to college admissions requires colleges to consider more than grades, test scores and extracurricular achievement when evaluating a student, and it is not based on merit alone. One factor that weighs heavily in decisions at more selective institutions is something referred to as institutional priorities.
Selective colleges (typically any college with an acceptance rate below 30%) are shaping a class of students, kind of like taking building blocks of various shapes and colors and fashioning them into a cohesive design. In that class, they need students for every major, every sports team, every seat in the college orchestra, etc. They also may want certain attributes in their class. They may want students from every county in the state, every state in the country and X number of countries around the world. They typically want students with diverse backgrounds, experiences and thought. They may have introduced a new major and need students to fill those classes, or they may need to balance a growing gender disparity and are currently accepting more men than women (or the other way around). Those are institutional priorities.
Understanding the role of institutional priorities and the fact that there will always be factors outside a student’s control in college admissions may not completely take away the sting of rejection, but it can inform the decisions students make when they apply to colleges. For one, students should have a clear understanding of a college’s values and the kind of students they seek to enroll, so they can highlight their fit for the college in their application. A college’s values and institutional priorities are not always one and the same, but they do tend to overlap. Secondly, students should find colleges they like that don’t have sub-30% acceptance rates and where institutional priorities matter less. Applying to a balanced list of colleges ensures that students are happy with colleges B, C, and D when College A doesn’t work out. (Despite popular opinion, there is not a direct correlation between a college’s acceptance rate and its quality of education).
Above are the colleges where my Class of 2025 was accepted and where they chose to attend. Each of these outstanding students worked hard–not only on their college applications–but on building their college lists. If they were disappointed by being rejected by one school, they were equally as happy when accepted to another. Congratulations and Happy College Decision Day to them all!
