Sure, colleges love to tout their record-breaking application totals. Yet those ever-growing numbers can cause headaches for admissions officers, who must review all those files on tight deadlines, often reading into the night and over weekends — whatever it takes.
That’s why dozens of highly selective colleges have recently embraced a new way of reviewing applications, as The Chroniclereported last year. In “committee-based evaluations,” pairs of admissions officers evaluate each application together, discussing it as they go. The tag-team approach to an initial review, proponents say, saves time without sacrificing thoroughness (and, yes, some applications get further scrutiny later in the process). For better or worse, this approach marks a shift in the nature of admissions work.
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Sure, colleges love to tout their record-breaking application totals. Yet those ever-growing numbers can cause headaches for admissions officers, who must review all those files on tight deadlines, often reading into the night and over weekends — whatever it takes.
That’s why dozens of highly selective colleges have recently embraced a new way of reviewing applications, as The Chroniclereported last year. In “committee-based evaluations,” pairs of admissions officers evaluate each application together, discussing it as they go. The tag-team approach to an initial review, proponents say, saves time without sacrificing thoroughness (and, yes, some applications get further scrutiny later in the process). For better or worse, this approach marks a shift in the nature of admissions work.
After The Wall Street Journal reported on the trend this week (“Some Elite Colleges Review an Application in 8 Minutes (or Less)”), many college counselors expressed alarm on social media. Was eight minutes, they wondered, really enough time to absorb the subtleties of a 17-year-old’s achievements, talents, and socioeconomic context?
It’s a fair question … as long as you don’t really think that colleges could (or should) spend significantly more time than that on most applications. They just can’t. For the record, the University of Pennsylvania told The Chronicle last year that its two-person teams now review an application in — feel free to gasp — four minutes, and that its reviews are “better” than the old ones, which lasted 15 minutes.
In the age of high-volume admissions, the need for efficiency is great. Still, some enrollment leaders have doubts about the new model. Among them is Jonathan Burdick, vice provost for enrollment initiatives and dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of Rochester. In an interview with The Chronicle, Burdick explained his concerns about the approach, which, he suspects, could lead to superficial reviews and more “vanilla” freshman classes.
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Q. You’re very skeptical of this new model. Why?
A. This isn’t a superior way to read files, and it shouldn’t be claimed as such. The hypocrisy I see right now in the profession is this basic idea that it’s good for colleges to go out and get more applications, to get the students they really want the most. What they want is more. They want to have the most applicants, the lowest admit ratios.
But they’re not willing to then pay for what that means. The reaction is, “We can’t possibly read all this, so we’ve got to find a way to cut corners.” But if you’re asking 20,000 or 60,000 applicants to give you 20 documents each, then what you ought to be able to do is pay attention to what those documents say.
Q. So you’re suggesting colleges could simply hire more admissions officers and/or seasonal readers to keep pace with the very application surges that colleges have helped bring about?
A. Yes. There is another way to address the problem. It’s not just a one-sided problem where you say, “OK, we’ve got a fixed resource, and we’ve got to make it easier on them.” You could make the case for increasing that resource.
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Q. Sure, but that’s easier said than done at many colleges where budgets are really tight.
A. I’m lucky. We’ve got 20,000 applications. When I got here [in 2003], we had 10,000 applicants, and since that time my staff has more than doubled. I’m blessed that I’ve got an administration that sanctions that. A lot of people in the business aren’t being given that. So I understand why they need to find different kinds of shortcuts, whether it’s committee-based evaluations or anything else. I’m not unsympathetic to those who are pursuing this.
This isn’t a superior way to read files, and it shouldn’t be claimed as such.
But it’s just not the case that this is uniformly better because your admissions officers have an easier life and don’t have to read as much. Because there is another way to address this problem.
Q. OK, let’s make sure everyone understands the more-traditional way of evaluating applicants under a holistic-review model. Tell us how Rochester’s process works, and what you think is good about it.
A. A first reader goes through every document. They’ll look at transcripts for grades and patterns, what an applicant’s interests and strengths are. They’ll look at the essay, sometimes up to five letters of recommendation, and interview notes if an applicant has done an interview. We want them to spend an average of 20 minutes going through all that, to try and figure out who this student really is. The reader makes notes and ratings — there are 20 reader ratings — and then recommends “admit,” “deny,” or “wait-list.”
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Q. What happens next?
A. A second reader does ratings on the same applications, making his or her own notes and recommendations. The application gets about 10 minutes from the second reader, who’s also looking at what we’re seeing with the rest of the class that’s applied so far. The second reader’s perspective is informed by something that looks like a rubric, though I don’t call it a rubric. If both readers recommend “admit,” then, usually, off it goes, and the applicant is admitted.
Q. And if the two readers disagree?
A. We get a lot of disagreement between the two readers. Each reads independently of the other, and they don’t see each other’s comments and recommendations. If their recommendations are at odds, they sit down together in the committee process, where they hash it out, along with a third person who’s an arbiter. This committee reviews about 60 percent of applications.
Q. There’s a key distinction here. In the new model, two readers are supposed to assess an applicant together, reach a verdict, and then move on. In your approach, readers working independently come to a conclusion on their own. Why does that distinction matter?
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A. With the former, you’re essentially saying “The more you agree and conform together, the better the process is.” I don’t believe that. Every reader brings his or her own ideas about what makes a great Rochester student. There’s no one fixed idea. You need people with different perspectives sitting around a table to get really good decisions. In our process, disagreements are legion. All day long, we figure them out.
Q. So, as you see it, good things flow from some degree of inefficiency?
A. Absolutely. We don’t really learn the most from the people who think exactly like us. That’s one reason I don’t particularly value making sure we get every student who scores the highest on the SAT and ACT, because, by
We want them to spend an average of 20 minutes going through all that, to try and figure out who this student really is.
definition, the people who score the highest are the people who have been trained to think a lot alike. So I’m very interested in bringing lots of students who don’t have gee-whiz- fantastic scores on those exams. Because those students who do line up very similarly.
Q. Some deans who’ve experimented with the new model say that pairing admissions officers up during reading season is a great way for the more-experienced staff to train the less-experienced.
A. That angle makes sense. But I think what’s going to happen is that the inexperienced person is going to take on the coloration of the experienced person. If the latter says “Oh, being an Eagle Scout doesn’t mean that much,” the less-experienced person is going to think that from now on.
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You’re going to evolve more independently if you’re reading on your own than if you’re reading under the watchful eye of someone more senior.
Q. What about the idea that two people working together and having a conversation can help each other spot things in an application that they might have missed alone?
A. Yeah, but it’s true that you can miss things whether you’re looking at a file independently or together. If two pairs of eyes are watching the clock, which is really what this is about, there’s a whole bunch of stuff they’re likely to miss.
I’m not trying to badmouth this choice of how to read files. It just should be seen for what it is: You’ve got a staff that’s too small to read the number of files that you would like to read, and you are solving that problem as best you can. Say that.
But don’t tell me that you get just as great a read, that you’re being just as fair to these kids, when you’re spending eight minutes per file as opposed to 30 minutes per file.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.
Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com.