College upholds early admissions program

Author: Scott Greene

Middlebury will not follow the likes of Harvard University and Princeton University in discontinuing its early admission program. Instead the College reformed the admissions process over the past year through the introduction of an academic rating system for all applicants. The Class of 2010 reflects the first implementation of the rating system, one of two fully executed recommendations from the Strategic Plan.

Recommendation number three of the Plan called for the development of the new system, suggesting that "each applicant should be rated on his or her academic qualities and potential to contribute to, and benefit from, the invigorating intellectual life at Middlebury," and that "professional judgment should be exercised that takes into account more than standardized test scores."

Although the College has always considered more abstract measures of a student's potential when selecting a first-year class, the new rating system displaces more standardized indicators such as the SAT with clear rankings of a student's "intangibles." Dean of Admissions Bob Clagett said that the SAT has the least predictive power in terms of an applicant's ultimate performance at Middlebury. Dean of Planning John Emerson agreed.

"I believe that test scores are valid and have useful information in them, but I do not think they tell the whole story," Emerson said.

In replacing its old rating system, the College became one of the last schools to join a now-standard practice in admissions' circles. However, in doing so it has further blurred the lines between objective and subjective ways of looking at an applicant.

"It sounds like we're trying to make it into a science but it's really an attempt to make admissions an art," Clagett said.

Traditional academic yard-sticks such as GPA and SAT scores still factor heavily in the decision making process, but the rigor of one's high school program now plays a more prominent role. In addition, such characteristics as "inquisitiveness and other qualities of the mind" now factor into an applicant's overall rating, according to Emerson.

Clagett said that although parts of the rating are "very subjective," it allows the admissions office to get a more confident feeling in the applicant's broad level of scholarship.

"Sometimes it's kind of a gut feeling about how much fire is there, not just horsepower, but how much desire is there to come to a place like Middlebury," he said. "We ask ourselves 'to what extent does the applicant demonstrate intellectual achievement, engagement and potential for academic success at Middlebury?' We then look at all the things."

Associate Director of International Admissions Barbara Marlow said that the previous rating involved much of the same subjective criteria and the only difference now is that the rating specifically asks admissions officers to put a rating on items such as "love of learning" and "engagement, tendency to jump into a discussion."

"Instead of folding it all mentally into an overall decision, we're actually breaking down the component parts and ranking each on a one-to-seven scale," she said. "We're formalizing something we were doing in our heads anyways."

Though personal qualities now weigh more formally in rating an applicant, the College does not mark an application with an "attribute" if a student identifies him or herself as gay. The news website InsideHigherEd.com reported this week that the College began to flag such applicants, but Assistant Director of Admissions Shawn Rae Passalacqua called the report "erroneous."

"We don't have a policy that has any sort of affirmative action, and we certainly don't have affirmative action for gay students," said Passalacqua, who added the misinterpretation of the article resulted from miscommunication between himself and the reporter. "When we're looking at an applicant we are looking at all the positive attributes, from academics, extra-curricular activites, recommendations from counselors and that is really the basis of how we make our decisions, regardless of a student's particular background."

While the College's admissions process has changed in terms of selection technique, Clagett said Admissions has every intention of retaining its early admission option for applicants. Harvard and Princeton announced in September that they will do away with their early admission programs after a summer in which elite institutions such as Amherst, Williams and Swarthmore discussed the process during a two-day session.

Clagett echoed the sentiments of his colleagues from across the country, saying that the process of applying early had warped since its inception.

"Too many students apply early somewhere for the wrong reasons. They go into the process as high school juniors thinking, 'I don't know where I'm going to apply early but I'm going to apply some place early because of the advantage it gives me,'" he said. "The original reason of early decision, back when it first started 30 or 35 years ago was to reduce the anxiety for those students who in fact found their be-all, end-all college, but the sad reality is that too many students apply for these strategic reasons, and that's a silly way to do it."

Eric Muther '08.5 said that applying to college for him was a "cyclical process" in which college guidance counselors highlighted the fact that early decision gave the applicant a clear advantage, and pressed students to utilize the tool. He ended up applying for early admission.

"Our college guidance counselors pushed us to do it because they wanted to have better schools on their list of where kids from this high school went," he said. "You're made very aware at a New England private school that these are the opportunities you have to get an edge over other students."

Critics of the early admissions process claim it serves to "advantage the advantaged" and that the pool of early applicants is disproportionately wealthier than those applying regular decision. But Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy claimed that early admissions as a program does not give any advantage to those that apply early, and if it does it is only because of the standards used by the institution.

"It all depends on whether the university imposes lower, the same or higher standards to the early pool," he wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Sept. 27th. "If the early pool is, on average, more qualified, then applying precisely the same standard will result in a higher rate of acceptance."

Clagett agreed, saying that the decision a few years ago by the U.S.News and World Report to take a college's yield rate out of its calculations helped to curb the tendency among some institutions to "take all the kids early that you can because that will boost your yield and then that will boost your ranking and everybody will be happy." However, he said that the criticism that binding early admission programs do not allow students accepted early to compare competing financial aid packages is legitimate.

"I try to emphasize it every time I talk about early admissions - that for students for whom financial aid is going to become an important issue, they shouldn't apply early because they are really locking themselves into that college's package," he said. "We will release students [from the binding commitment] who have been admitted early and don't receive the kind of financial aid they might need."

Though early admissions will remain an institution at the College, the Strategic Plan recommends the formation of an admissions advisory committee for a general review of early decision policies. Clagett said the group will be formed in the near future, but made it clear that if the College abandoned its early admission program, the result would be "more chaos."