Many college applicants are more talented than their admissions reviewers
Admissions professionals prefer to pat each others’ backs at exclusive conferences and virtue signal superficial support for marginalized demographics on social media and woke press releases. Even the best collection of the world’s most thoughtful and conscientious higher education professionals and admissions counselors participating in a broken admissions system will still produce unintended consequences that damage society more than they help. Despite their considerable admissions powers, they receive mediocre salaries, work long hours, and were likely average college students themselves.
If two-thirds of an Ivy League campus’s graduates begin careers in consulting or finance, and most others attend graduate school, who do you think constitutes the remaining people who work in their admissions offices?
Careers in college admissions do not attract a university’s most talented graduates. Some veteran counselors wouldn’t have gained entry to their alma maters if they were applying today, including me to UT-Austin Freshmen Honors. Yet, they collectively decide the fate of millions of applications. Many of their future students are already more brilliant and accomplished than the middling gatekeepers rendering their verdicts. Most college applicants will never know who adjudicated their decision, whether they received a fair hearing, or why an outcome went one way or the other.
Higher education journalist Jeffrey Selingo reminds his readers in his recent popular book Who Gets in and Why that “While many people initially enter the admissions profession to serve the needs of students, they soon find out that selling the college is a necessity in an increasingly competitive industry.” Admissions counselors are like proselytizing missionaries who are more interested in your tithes than anything else. Increasingly, admissions counselors are becoming salespeople at the expense of their primary responsibility, selecting the most desirable applicants.
Perverse incentive structures preclude heroic acts by individuals seeking change. Individuals may do great and important work, yet it is impossible to undermine financial and budget incentives determined by senior university administrators. Tuition dollars and athletics revenues will always supersede student well-being. The only way to stimulate reform is from the outside, which partially explains why the best college admissions books don’t come from universities or current admissions counselors.
