Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Myth #3: Colleges always choose the "best" students

"Nope, it's not true.  College admission staffs work long and hard to choose students, but no foolproof or magic formula exists.  Furthermore, what does 'best' mean?  Their decisions are human and, hence, open to interpretation and judgment.  Colleges consider so many variables as they decide on admissions: courses taken, scores, grades, extracurricular activities, as well as geography, athletics, kids of faculty members and a host of other variables.  Admission directors often say that in any given year, if they had o go back and make their decisions all over again with the same candidate pool. they would  then choose different students to receive letters of admission.  So students should be certain their final college list is well balanced in terms of admission difficulty.  (In other words, students should apply to some colleges where their admission chances are so-so, and some colleges where their chances are quite good.)"


Source: "College Match" by Steve Antonoff

No comments:

Post a Comment