March Madness Part 2: "How Do You Decide?"
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admission and financial aid, and this is Admissions Beat.
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It's still March, so March Madness endures in college admission offices around the country as decisions are being rendered, admit packets are being put together, deans are signing letters. And by the end of March, seniors in high school who have applied to selective colleges will have all the offers and decisions they need to move into April with a plan. But before you get to April, we need to talk about decisions, because part of what happens in March is this final step. People have applied, files have been read, and now it's time to convene some type of selection committee on each campus where the evidence is reviewed and a class is shaped.
And to me, that shaping is such a fundamental part of my job as dean to think about the campus I represent, the community we're trying to build and reinforce and sometimes shift, and the decisions that flow around those ideas are very intentional. So in part two of our March Madness two-pack, we welcome back Jacques Steinberg, a New York Times reporter on all things higher ed and admission, author of The Gatekeepers and The College Conversation, for a peek behind the curtain on the decision part of the process. How does a college actually figure out who gets a yes, who gets a maybe and who gets an "I'm sorry?" So when we come back, we'll say hi to Jacques and he will interview me about the decision-making part of each season's selection process. So we'll be right back.
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Hey, Jacques. Happy March.
Jacques Steinberg:
Hello, Lee. It's always a pleasure to visit with you and Admissions Beat listeners in March in particular.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Caesar talked about the Ides of March. Here we are.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yes.
Lee Coffin:
So I'm going to let you nerd out, as you love to do, about the way a college makes its decisions. Take it away.
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's first start with a recap. I know some listeners, Lee, have listened to part one of March Madness, which dropped last week, but there may be some listeners who haven't gotten there yet or who have just discovered the Admissions Beat. So let's do a quick recap as if we were a serial series on TV. So last week on March Madness you had four admissions officer colleagues who joined you and they talked about how they and you read. I listened to that episode. I heard them talk together as a group and individually about how much they love to get to know an applicant through their application, that they bring empathy to that reading process, which is not an adjective that applicants may necessarily associate with this process, but as somebody who has observed you and colleagues for many decades, I think it's a fair adjective.
One of your colleagues even talked about bringing warmth to that process. They talked about bringing their own lenses to how they read a file, who they are, what they value, what they've experienced. They can't edit that out of the process that all of that comes down to as a factor when they read. What else did you hear from them in terms of how they read a file?
Lee Coffin:
I heard them kind of sighing with a degree of exhaustion. I mean, applicants often talk about how hard it is to apply. And I heard my colleagues, I think we recorded that first week of March, and they're tired. They've been reading for several months. And I put a highlighter on that, because it just, again, shows the human piece of this, that on this side, this invisible side, you've got real people reading, thinking, documenting, debating, doing it again.
But I agree with the way they characterize reading it. For me, it has always been my favorite part of the admission cycle. And that goes all the way back to when I was pre-dean, where it was the paper-based world where I would have a pile of vanilla folders on my desk at home and I would just read each one. And it was satisfying to watch the queue go down each day and then tomorrow start all over again. But I think the comment about meeting each file with optimism is always the way I've read and the way I've always taught people how to read, is that you're looking for the evidence that brings someone forward towards a yes. Can't always happen.
But that idea that we're looking for ways to get to yes surprises people, because they think of selective admissions, and really selective admissions as more punishing. We're saying no. And we do say no a lot, because we have to, but the goal is always yes. One of my colleagues used the metaphor, "Each file is a quilt." And she said, "As I read, I'm stitching together all these different pieces of fabric into something warm and lovely." And I said, "Yeah, that's exactly right."
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's pivot from our recap of last week's episode to our current episode. And we're moving from reading and sort of synthesizing, absorbing, and sharing stories, each of you as colleagues to the point of decision where it's yes, sadly no in many cases, or maybe, in the case of the waiting list. Let's first set the scene. So as we record this, it is the 12th day of March, so we're in the final few weeks. Set the scene at least in your office. What would we see if we walked into the Dartmouth Admissions Office this week in terms of people meeting small groups, en masse?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, you'd see multiple smaller committees working through what we call a docket. So a docket is a group of applicants organized by some theme. So either a docket could be everybody who applied from one high school, that's a school docket. Could be everyone who applied from a state, that's a state docket. It could be everybody applied from a country, that's a country docket if you're in the international space. But the docket is what it sounds like; the docket is this organizing concept. So we're going one by one, we're making decisions, and we're looking at how each of those individual candidacies make sense with the docket from which they emerge.
So you look at a school, and I often ask a committee, "As you say yes or no, does this make sense in the context of the docket in question or in the high school senior class where this decision will land?" If we're reading it on a state docket, particularly a smaller state, what are the themes that animate that geography? And as we move from school to school, what should we keep in mind as we meet people and consider them in context?
So that's happening. It's every day. I've worked at places where the committee review will happen seven days a week. I've worked at places where the committee review is much more front-loaded and it started in January and it kept going weekly as people read. So different ways of organizing happen across different colleges, but the idea is the same. It's a group of admission officers coming together to make informed decisions about the candidates who are still in the running for a seat in the class.
And by still in the running, Jacques, by this point, a fair number of files have been—I'm hesitating to say the word "eliminated," because that sounds like a reality TV show—but to use that as my example, since you went to a TV show earlier, you go round by round. By round, I don't mean early decision or regular decision; it's like you're reading in waves and the decisions become more precise as you move from January to now.
Jacques Steinberg:
there are so many parts of this process that are fraught for applicants, including that this part of the process as you describe it as outside of their control, although they had a lot of control in terms of the story that you all are discussing that they presented. But I do think in terms of the glass half-full, the fact that they have the floor, that in many instances, you all are going into a bonus round, extra mile, pick your metaphor, to make sure that they have the floor for their story.
When I visited this process in past years, there is a screen, often parts of the application are flashed on the screen, whether an essay, a transcript, or a recommendation, and there's conversation. Give us a sense of when an application and an applicant have the floor, how you all talk about the individual components of that story as well as the sum of the parts.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, the territory manager who was the primary reader introduces the file. Last week when we talked about reading, I described it as a reader, you're dehydrating the common application in all of its many parts into a shorter summary that then gets rehydrated in the committee room as the notations bring the file to life. Because most of the people in a committee will not have read the file, so your task as the territory manager or as one of two or three readers is to share with your colleagues the evidence from the file and to help the rest of us meet someone we didn't actually read.
And that works more than it might sound like it would. The note-taking that is part of our reading process is aimed at giving either the dean or the selection committee enough of the story to make an informed decision. So when we're in that committee, what would surprise many people is we don't spend a lot of time talking about the data. By the time you get to the selection part of the work, we've already certified that the students in that last step are qualified. They have the grades, they have the curriculum, they have the testing to not just be competitive, but to be someone who would thrive on the campus we represent. So the conversations end up being more qualitative, thinking about the whole person, thinking about how that person enhances the community we're building both generally at the college and the class itself.
So you'll see files pop up where someone says, "This is that glue kit that makes the community cohesive." The person who's not necessarily out front, but an important bridge between groups or somebody who is the doer behind the scenes making things happen. And that's a persona that every campus must have. And so, you meet that person and you say, "Yeah, this..." And so, you have conversations like that, that consider the sum of the parts more than just the data.
Jacques Steinberg:
Students spend so much time on their essays. They spend so much time on that story. They give great thought to who their recommenders are and what they might say about them. I feel like when I've been a fly on the wall for this stage of the process, that there's really a return on that investment of time. And I'm struck by how deep you and colleagues will go into an essay, a recommendation, an alumni reader's report to, as you say, sort of dehydrate details and bring them to the surface. The details really matter and they really help. Is that fair?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, it's very fair, because the part of a selective admission process and especially a very selective admission process is you're forced to make really precise decisions. I was looking at our pool the other day as we started a committee, and using our academic ratings, a quarter of the pool had the top academic rating. So just think about that: If we admit five or 6% of the pool, we can't even take everybody with the top academic rating. And then when you look at the holistic ratings, the admission officers this year recommended over 7,000 people for admission. They read the file and they said, "This is a yes, we're probably going to admit 1,600."
So when you ask about the essays and the teacher recommendations and the interview report, what we're looking for are those fine details that help us take a course sort. "Is this person qualified? Yes, no?" And turn it into a fine sort. They're qualified, they're competitive, but do they help us build the class we're trying to build? And that last step is very individualized. And so, the student storytelling, our ability to both bring some poetic license to the storytelling, because every student doesn't come from a school or community where the storytelling is as sophisticated as the next. And so, we know that. And so, we're reading with that in mind as well, but we're going to the evidence. And it could be the essay, it could be a teacher rec, it could be somebody was all-state clarinet in Ohio, and we think, "Okay, that's a point of excellence that we're going to pay attention to."
Jacques Steinberg:
So one myth that I'd like to debunk about the college admissions and decision-making process is that there is a formula, that there's a formula for admission to highly selective colleges and universities, and that if only we as outsiders, as students, parents, and counselors can kind of crack that code, it's a, "Directly go straight to go, you're in."
I've spent decades as a journalist, as an author, as a trained observer, looking for that formula, looking for that code. I can tell you with every confidence that it doesn't exist. This is my Indiana Jones quest, and so far I have come up empty and I expect that I will always come up empty. And hopefully I can save you the trouble, parents, students, counselors in looking for that surefire formula to admission. And for students listening, if I'm a high school senior and I hear this and my application is already in the pool at a highly selective institution like Dartmouth, I might be thinking to myself, "I can't possibly know what a committee like yours might be looking for at this stage of the game."
Lee Coffin:
Nor should you worry about that.
Jacques Steinberg:
The advice probably is you've done your best to tell your story, now let you all do your job.
Lee Coffin:
Yep. Yeah. And if you're a junior, imagining the application you'll submit six or nine months from now, it's the same answer I just gave the seniors. You cannot control the process that happens on the campus. All you control are the inputs. When I use the analogy of me being a lawyer in a courtroom, I'm presenting the evidence on behalf of my client to the jury. Your job as an applicant is to give me, the admission officer, the evidence so that I can share it internally and we can make an informed decision. You should not and cannot second guess or project which evidence is most important.
We've covered this in previous episodes, "What Counts?" Your task is to just tell your story in your own words to the best of your ability, and then give us the opportunity to diagram all that evidence and make your case. Sometimes we make the case really eloquently on your behalf and it's still a no, and that's just supply and demand. That's not you are weak. And whether you're a senior or a junior, the advice I always offer now when decision-making is happening is when you choose to apply to the most selective colleges, you have to own the degree of selectivity that is true on that campus. And if the admit rate is below 10 or below 20, lots of precision is going into making that admit rate workable.
Jacques Steinberg:
And while that admit rate may be anxiety-producing, again, glass half-full, I hope it is of some reassurance to listeners that you all agonize and swept these decisions.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Jacques Steinberg:
In the course of from the first time an admissions officer, a territory manager might pick up a file for the first time, say in January until mid-March, how many people at a place like Dartmouth, how many admissions officers might be exposed to and weigh in on an applicant's story?
Lee Coffin:
So it could be a couple of people, where the territory manager reads a file and says, "This is a no-brainer. This is a clear, strong, compelling, powerful file, and I'm sending it to the dean or some senior officer to make a decision." And in my case, I would review it and say, "I agree." And that's it. More commonly, the file gets reviewed a second time cover to cover by someone who's not the territory manager to see if there's a shared perspective on the file and the way it has been evaluated.
At that step, it could go to the senior admission officer for action. It could continue to the committee round where then you've got four, five, six, eight admission officers looking at it together. So it could be two, it could be 10. I've heard some places have huge committees where there's faculty members and there's the entire staff in the room together for every file. So there's lots of different formats that colleges use to make decisions. But whether it's two or 12, it doesn't really matter to the student, it's just a democratic system that that campus has put in place to move files through a process.
Jacques Steinberg:
So these conversations take place at this late stage in the process. As you say, these are academically qualified candidates, but the funnel is getting quite narrow.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah.
Jacques Steinberg:
Help us imagine how you all get from all-day conversation, multiple day conversation in these final rounds to sort of "pencils down," notifications go out, yes, no, or waiting list?
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. So there's a step in between "pencils down" and decisions going out. And that kind of penultimate step is one where, as dean, I have to look at the group that has been projected as acceptances and run the numbers. Is this the right number of people to create the class we want? It could be not enough, could be too many, and we need to make some adjustments. I need to look at all of the different categories that go into building a class. So we'll have interest lists from our music department, sends over feedback on audition tapes that have been submitted. And so, these are the musicians that we are most interested in enrolling. And if you can find a viola, we would love to... I'm making that up, but we desperately need violas in the orchestra. And so, if this group of candidates has that talent, we go there.
My friend, Eric Kaplan, who used to be at Penn, had a great line. He said, "You may be a piccolo in a viola year." And it's not that you were unqualified, it's just that campus in that cycle needed a different instrument than the one you played. It didn't mean you're not getting in, it just means the piccolo, in his example, was a priority. So you're doing things like that, the debate team. We have a club rugby, we'll say, "Hey, these are the rugby players." We'd look at people who are ROTC. There's this amazing number of little cohorts that come into this last step that I'm cross-checking. And it may be, I'll stick with ROTC, we have an ROTC program, those matches just came through and I said, "Oh, look, nobody from ROTC is in the final group, but there's 10 of them in the queue as projected admits." I look at them. So it's a lot of housekeeping, but it's very pragmatic.
Jacques Steinberg:
And that process will continue to within perhaps hours before the announcements go out.
Lee Coffin:
We try and seal it a few days before decisions are released just for the sanctity of the people preparing the decisions. I'll say, "Stop making decisions." So then it is "pencils down." And that's usually three or four days before we're like, "The class is done."
And there's a moment where you organically realize the class is finished. You've included as many people from as many different backgrounds and talents as possible. My arithmetic says this group of people projects to a class of 1,175 on May 1st, which is our target and the candidate's reply date. And if my projection says 1,092, I have more people we could admit. If the projection says 1,292, we have to go in and adjust, because that's a class that's bigger than our campus's ability to welcome them.
So those are the last pieces of choreography that happen as we make decisions. And I also really like this part, the analytics, the tallying of the different cohorts and the forecasting, to me, is a bit magic.
Jacques Steinberg:
Yeah. I mean, the elephant in the room for this part of the process, which we haven't said aloud, is there are going to be people who receive offers of acceptance from you. And at this point, the decision-making has flipped and they're going to reject you and you have to-
Lee Coffin:
They're not going to reject us, Jacques. They're going to have other invitations that seem like better fits. So they will decline the invitation to join us.
Jacques Steinberg:
Fair, fair, fair, fair, fair. But you have to take into account a certain number of no's on your end.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no campus in the country has a 100% yield. "Yield" is the word that represents the percentage of acceptances who enroll. So 100 doesn't exist. So you build into your selection process more admits than you have seats. And I always have people say, "What happens if they all come?" They won't, because things happen. People get admitted and they realize, "My priorities have changed. And what seemed like a plan in January is no longer my plan in April." Or they come to an accepted student open house and realize, "This campus doesn't sing to me in the way it did when I was touring it a year ago." Or a place that wasn't your top choice explodes in front of you, you're like, "Wow, I see myself here in a way I didn't before."
I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know which student is going to have which reaction. So there's data that I use to model the behavior of 18-year-olds in the spring of their senior year. So when I say magic, anyone who has an 18-year-old at home and hears me say I can use data to predict their behavior is going to say, "March Madness." I'm like, "Yeah." But I can't say Jacques says yes and Lee says no, but I can say two applicants with attributes that both Jacques and I have, one of two will say yes. That's how I do it.
Jacques Steinberg:
So let's take off your Dartmouth cap for a moment and have you more broadly as a college counselor speaking now to those applicants who are already receiving decisions, will receive more decisions, some acceptances, perhaps some declines and some offers to join waitlists. What are two or three of your best pieces of advice as students and families try to make sense of the choices that are now in front of them?
Lee Coffin:
Yep. So last week I went to mass and the priest gave a homily that boiled down to this idea, "Play the hand you're dealt. Don't look backwards and wish something else were true." And when Father Peter said that, I thought, "That's very applicable to my work as well. Play the hand you're dealt." So to the question you're asking, Jacques, channeling my priest, you get to the end of March, the selective decisions have been received, play the hand you're dealt, not the hand you wish you had.
But these are the places that have offered you an invitation to join them. It could be two, it could be five, it could be 10. I don't know. If it's 10, you've got a bonanza that you need to now narrow quickly. And I think to a student who finds herself in that situation with an abundance of yeses, make some hard decisions early and say it's really down to these four, because you can't go through 10. Narrow it. If you've got four, two, make a plan to engage with those campuses between end of March and May 1st. Go to the open houses, do virtual programming, go to an accepted student event in your hometown, hang out on Instagram and see what the vibe is. If it's a financial aid question, line up the financial aid offers and see if they all make sense.
And my advice to any of you with financial aid as part of this final choice, remember, the scholarship you might get from campus A could seem larger than the one you got from campus B in dollars, but what's the cost of attendance? $70,000 from a place that costs $70,000 is a very different proposition than $70,000 from a place that costs $100,000. So do some of the arithmetic. If decisions came back as disappointments, you did your best. And for the places that are very selective, it just didn't work. And to parents, I say it's like applying for a job and you don't always get the job you thought was going to be perfect. There are no appeals. People always email and say, "Please take another look." And the answer back is always, "The committee has made the decision. I appreciate your disappointment. We can't reopen it because we've made difficult decisions on thousands of people."
And then there's the middle group, the people who get a wait list offer. And a wait list means you filed a competitive candidacy and space was limited. And so, it's an invitation to stay in the mix for a few more weeks to see how does April play out. And when May comes, I'll use my example again, if I need 1,175 and we have 1,150, means I have 25 more seats to fill, and the wait list is where we turn to reopen the admission process. So if you're on a wait list and you know, "This is really my first choice," tell the college that. Or maybe it wasn't your first choice in January, but channeling Father Peter, you're playing the hand you were dealt and you look around and you think, "You know what? This is the best option. This was my number three, but one and two didn't happen." Let the college know that. But don't hang onto a wait list as the golden ticket that has to happen. Spend April focused on the yeses. My prediction is one of those yeses is going to make you smile.
Jacques Steinberg:
One beat more on those who've received a wait list. In addition to letting a school know whether or not they wish to be included on a wait list, and if indeed, if they know genuinely that if accepted off a wait list they would come or they would likely come, that's good information to convey. Is there any other information that a school like yours or others might want to hear from someone who has been invited to join a waiting list in terms of updates?
Lee Coffin:
So by way of updates, start with your preference. If you see the campus as your best home, share that. If you are someone who got cast as the lead in the spring musical and you want the college to know that your interest in drama is robust and just got more pronounced, share that. If you have a third marking period report card and you want that to go in, send it in. If you want to visit campus and go on a tour, come on. It's a chance for you to take stock of yourself and the place one more time. But don't feel compelled to... I mean, my caution here as I'm trying to answer Jacques's question, you don't need to be in constant contact with the admission office. The letter you're going to get says, "We invite you to stay on the wait list. We're not going to know what our class looks like until early May." That is sincere.
And everywhere I have worked or heard talk about waitlists, they're not ranked. So it's not like you're going to have an admission officer say, "You're number 32 on a wait list of 407." It's we offer the wait list, people respond to it. You must respond. So there's news you can use. If you're on a wait list, you have to say, "Yes, I would like to be considered on the wait list." If you don't, you get closed out. So there's a transactional piece there. If you get admitted and you decide, "I don't want to go to Dartmouth, I'm going to the University of Arizona." Tell Dartmouth you're going to the University of Arizona. Close out your file so that we know of the people we admitted, are we on track to fill the class? And if the answer to that is no, then the wait list benefits from that information. So this is where it's symbiotic. Your decision-making on the acceptances help us make additional decisions on the waitlists.
Jacques Steinberg:
Well, I appreciate this conversation. I hope it was helpful to listeners. I heard at least either two book titles or at the least two headlines in this conversation from you. The first was from your priest, "Play the Hand You're Dealt." And then the subtitle of that could be, "Not The Hand You Wish You Had." I thought that was profound. And I could also see the book title, "You May Be A Piccolo in a Viola Year." I think that says so much about the admissions process. And with the punchline being, in other words, you can't possibly know as a piccolo whether it's a viola year or a piccolo year.
Lee Coffin:
No, but I shared that because it informs the decision in some ways that matter, and don't worry about it. But that could explain why two people who seem very comparable, one got a yes, one got a no. That's going to be a campus by campus assessment. So what one place needs, someone else doesn't and vice versa. So you've got your set of qualities and the decisions will reflect both your application, but also the campus's needs in that admission cycle. But ultimately, my priest was wise. As you get to the end of the admission process, you're going to have certain outcomes. That's where you need to focus your attention.
So, Jacques, thanks for coming on again to Admissions Beat for the second part of this episode of March Madness. For listeners, I hope these two episodes give some insight into the way a selective campus finishes the admission process. I think so many headlines that follow are just spotlighting the acceptance rate. That's important, but it doesn't tell you what happened behind the scenes of that. How did we get to that? And that's what we were trying to do this week.
Ultimately, the end of March is poignant and emotional. If I can offer just a tiny little homily of my own to applicants as you start getting decisions, remember my reprimand to Jacques about rejection. We didn't reject you. You were declined in a competitive process and the admit was an invitation to join a community based on the evidence we had. And I emphasize the evidence we had. It's a human process, it's not a perfect process. And by saying that, I'm not shortchanging it, it's a job I've had for a long time and I love it. I just want to emphasize the sincerity of the decisions when we say we regret to inform you that difficult decisions were made. They were. And there's never any joy in that part of our work, but it's a necessary byproduct of very selective admissions.
But to flip it, as you get offers and start to imagine where's your home, what comes next is fun. You get to think about not just what might be, but you now have offers in your hand. So we'll keep having that conversation with you as we move through the next few weeks. But for now, this is Lee Coffin with Jacques Steinberg. From Dartmouth College, thanks for listening.