The rest of The Gatekeepers was also filled with miscellanea:
As the admissions season came to a close the book follows the students and officers to the end of the journey. As Wesleyan continued to look for strong minority applicants (with the goal of about 10% each of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) it will make an offer to fly out a 'hot prospect' minority student in the hopes that such a gesture, and their experience on campus, will make them more likely to attend the following year. This isn't the case with strong white applicants because "If a white applicant spurned Wesleyan, there was usually someone of equal talent and ability to take [their] place" (171). In all the hustle and bustle, colleges can make mistakes too. When just such a 'hot prospect' tried to get an interview with a Wesleyan alum, there was a communications mix-up. Ralph knew that the incident was a huge PR fail.
In March, spread out over several weeks, were the last 5 days of committee meetings. All of the 400 applications to be discussed had been read/considered by 3 people who were unable to reach a consensus. Not only did the committee have the 400 apps, but there were still at least 2500 that had been read by only one person, or none at all, some of which would no doubt be added to the committee's pile. In such a high pressure environment, with so little time left, admissions officers were reading applications late into the night. One officer actually fell asleep during a committee meeting, but this occasioned no comment because either it wasn't too surprising, or it didn't merit stopping the meeting.
Because competition is so intense for selective schools, slight missteps can ruin your chances of getting into such a college. Harvard (and I would assume other Ivy League and high tier schools do this also) turned away 1/4 of applicants who got a perfect 1600 on their SAT. While this might seem discouraging, I think the opposite is true. Since these schools have the ability to fill their entire class with people who got a 1600 on their SAT or a 36 on their ACT, but don't, it means that those test scores aren't everything. However, The Gatekeepers also has some cautionary tales. One applicant was rejected by the committee despite having a 1400 on her SAT, strong grades, and a letter of recommendation from another school's president (Wesleyan's president doesn't require the admissions committee to automatically accept such applicants based on the belief that the admissions system is sound) because her senior course load was weak. Another student was rejected* because she wrote about a drug experience. Her essay told a story about how she saw someone distributing a pot brownie, how she had consumed in innocence (she hadn't known at the time that the brownie had pot in it), and eventually ended up being the only person to turn themselves in. Despite later going on to becoming class president and having strong academics the Wesleyan admissions staff couldn't get past the brownie incident. I disagree with the committee's decision here because many college students do drugs, but they weren't comfortable with one who had admitted a mistake and grown from it.
I'm not really sure how I feel about these tales. On one hand, these kids should've known that such a misstep could ruin their chances of getting into X college (although the brownie was consumed in innocence), but on the other, I don't think that a single mistake should have such an impact. As I discussed in my post 'why homework is (usually) lame' I discussed the negative results of too much homework. I think that the rigors of the college application process are similarly detrimental, although the only solution to such an issue seems to be a move away from such a selective process (a process that does have many merits).
*Ralph would later make a case to the dean of admissions that the student should get another chance. The student was wait-listed and eventually offered a chance to be in the class of 2005, but she ended up going to Cornell instead.
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