Season 7: Episode 3 Transcript
What Counts?
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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As I make my way around my life, people inevitably say, "What do you do for work?" And when I tell them what I do, almost immediately I get this question: "What counts?" I was having a root canal once, and the dentist was quizzing me about what counts while I was all wired for the root canal. I say, "I can't really answer these questions." I've had it at weddings and airplanes.
And I think it ties back to this question of merit. What are the elements in a selective college application that count? And how does an applicant, parent, guidance counselor make sense of that and prepare an application where your story comes through in all of its component ways and we assess your merit? And the media has turned to this over the last few months and there have been stories about merit and meritocracy. Meritocracy, is this fair? And I thought, okay, let's have a conversation with one of my colleagues and friends who is exceedingly thoughtful on all things admissions. When we come back, we will meet Logan Powell, the dean of admission at Brown. And we will bat around this question, what counts? We'll be right back.
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Hello, Logan Powell. How are you?
Logan Powell:
Hello, Lee Coffin. I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on the pod.
Lee Coffin:
You're welcome. Logan. You're at Brown. You and I both started our current gigs summer of 2016, so I know you're in your ninth year turning into your 10th year momentarily. You've had gigs before Brown. Where were you?
Logan Powell:
That's right. I've been very fortunate like you to have a long career in admission and in selective college admissions. No one plans in college to go into college admission. It's something that most of us, in my experience, fall into. And I feel very lucky to have fallen into this career because I've really loved it and have done it for a very long time now.
I began my career at my college, alma mater, Bowdoin College. Started working in admission there. And then was very fortunate after that to work at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And from there, I went on to Princeton University. I was the director of admission at Princeton University for nine years. And as you mentioned, I'm finishing my ninth year of time now at Brown University where I'm the associate provost for involvement and dean of admission.
Lee Coffin:
A sparkling resume. And one of the reasons I thought you'd be a great guest on this topic is you have worked at three of the most selective universities, three of the ivies, first of all. But also with Bowdoin, you've spent your whole career in this really narrow end of the selectivity range where merit really matters. You've seen it in lots of different ways, and I thought... But I always ask first-time guests to go all the way back to high school, but how did Logan go from home to Bowdoin? What was the story of your own search way back when?
Logan Powell:
Well, it's a really good question, Lee. And I pinch myself every day I come to work because I was a low-income kid my whole life. I grew up totally poor in Florida. Literally grew up in a trailer park in Florida. Single parent household. My mother was a secretary her whole life. We got by on food stamps and government assistance and church charities and things like that, secondhand clothes. And so I was not part of a college-going culture in my little neighborhood, which was this little trailer park in northeast Florida. All of these places that I've worked and attended either for undergrad or graduate school were completely foreign to me. I had never heard of any of them. I didn't know anything about this when I was growing up in Florida. For me, it was just how do I get out of here? How do I get a job? And what comes next just in terms of being able to secure a meal, frankly?
And so answering your question, I knew that financial aid was going to be hugely important because, again, we were living on government assistance, and so there was no money at all to afford college. We could barely afford at that time to even visit colleges, so it was hard to even contemplate. When I saw the sticker price of these schools, which back then were obviously dramatically different than they are now, but the shock was still the same for a family of three. I have a younger sister, but for a family of three making $30,000 a year back then at most, it was inconceivable that I'd go to college and then go on to graduate school.
I have to say, by the way, I'm an avid listener of your podcast, and so I thought it was great that your first episode in this season was about beginning the search. And whether you want a big school or a small school, is there a major you want? And you talked about the Ps and the Cs and the Is, and all of that was great advice. For me, cost was really a huge factor, and so I began my search thinking about who had the most generous financial aid. And that led me incidentally to these schools that we've been talking about because they happen to be the most generously financial aid.
I was a nerd. I was a nerd and a runner in high school, and so I wanted a place that had generous financial aid, that had a great academic environment and that had a strong community, community of current students and community of alumni. And so I looked at a lot of schools in the Northeast, just wanted to get away from the environment I was in. Was very, very happy, very lucky to have a number of choices and was honored to go to Bowdoin. And loved it there. But I've also loved every institution at which I've worked. I think they're all special places. And every time I visit a college campus... When I visit Hanover, Lee, I think how could anyone not fall in love with Dartmouth? Every college and university I visit I think is an incredible place. I was lucky that I was excited about going to college almost anywhere, but affordability and fit were clearly a major factor.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Yeah. No, well, thank you for sharing that. It's both poignant and powerful. I have a similar background, maybe a step less socioeconomically severe than how you grew up, but similarly I often look around and think, how did I end up in the seat I'm in? Because nothing in my origin story ever suggested Lee would be sitting where I sit. And I think that's true for you too. But to listeners, it's an example of lots of us land in these roles from really humble origins. And in many ways, merit open the door. Here's the topic. People work hard, they do well, they tell their story, they get in, and life takes a turn in a really different direction. Logan, as you ponder this topic, what counts? but to be even more precise, the five letter word merit, what does that mean to you?
Logan Powell:
Yeah, it's interesting, Lee, I've been thinking about this, and I actually have been thinking about it just since we started this conversation because we've talked about what counts. And what comes to mind is the old adage that not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. There are things that count in this process that are not quantifiable. And I think that's part of the brilliance of the processes that many of these highly selective or selective call it generally holistic review colleges and universities employ that certainly the families who are listening to this podcast are thinking about SAT scores or ACT scores and GPAs and class ranks and how many extracurricular activities they're involved in.
But there's all this other stuff, we'll call it, there are all these other factors that you just can't quantify but that are equally important. Character counts, but how do you quantify it? Leadership in the classroom or in the community counts, but how do you count that? How do you quantify it? Quality of writing for the community, all of those things count. But I think that's the hard part for families to navigate, is all of the additional non-quantifiable pieces of information that we consider that are really critically important to the evaluation that we conduct in our processes. I hope that this episode provides a little bit more clarity and transparency on how all of those things come together.
Lee Coffin:
That's the goal. Because I smiled when you were giving the adage not everything that can be counted counts, not everything that counts can be counted. It's literally taped next to my computer. Albert Einstein said it, for posterity. And I use it every time I do reader training because I think those words from Einstein himself who had a spotlight on the point you're making that we see lots of things, many of them very quantifiable. And I think a lot of people go to the quantifiable elements first as, oh, that's what counts. They do count. And places that are more open selectivity, that's all that counts. But as you move into the selective range and go all the way to the edge of it where the acceptance rates are low, that's not enough. And I said to someone yesterday, "That's a foundational consideration." You have to have the merit of being able to perform in a classroom. But then what animates that classroom and the community around that classroom, that counts, maybe even more so than the grades and the GPA.
Well, but for listeners, let's start with the obvious part and talk about data. When I do junior programs, I will often say that you have the data and then you have voice. You have numbers and you have your narrative. You have what's quantifiable and what's qualitative, all this alliteration like the Ds, the Ns, the Qs. But I think the numbers are what jump out at everybody. If you're in a high school with a Naviance platform, and you can see previous decisions of students from your school to that college. You see here's an axis with your grade point average, here's an axis with your test scores, and here's little figures that said who got in and who didn't. And to me, that's a really flat representation of merit because it's just looking at the numbers, but for a number purposes, Logan, let's go into the data and just tick through them really quickly. Talk about data.
Logan Powell:
Sure. When we think about data in our process... And I hope this answers your question, Lee, because I think families do get overwhelmed with what are your averages? This is one of the things that I try to tell families all the time. People see averages not as averages but as minimums. And it's something that I hope we can recast the narrative around, that there's a broad range of academic qualifications that we consider in our process.
And so when we begin our process here at Brown, we're starting of course with a threshold of just asking the question, "Do we have enough information here to make an assessment about whether or not the student can be academically successful at Brown?" And for the vast, vast majority of our applicants, the answer is a resounding yes. Our selection process is not built around choosing who can do the work at Brown and who can't, it's choosing from among the many, many, many, many qualified students in our applicant pool who could clearly do quite well at Brown or any other college or university.
And then we begin the really tough part of selecting from within that group. And it's humbling because in every one of these cases, you're thinking, my gosh, I didn't do these things when I was in high school. These students are incredible. How do they do it all?
And I will tell you as a bit of an aside, I was on a panel years ago and someone asked me what about the admission process, if anything, could I change? And I said that I wish we could communicate personally with every student we were not able to admit to tell them how great they are. We didn't. And the situation that we face and that you face and that many of us face is not in choosing who is qualified and who is not, it's these really agonizing decisions among the most incredibly qualified students one can imagine.
In terms of data, the advice I would give, if that's what you're asking me, Lee, is families certainly should be guided by general thresholds, but they shouldn't be dissuaded or discouraged from applying if they think that college or university is a good fit and they're generally within the range. Because there are all these other factors like resilience and grit and leadership and community impact that we're also looking at that are not measured by the SAT or ACT or GPA. And so I would say families should not discount those non-data elements in the application.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, I think you're giving a good cautionary warning around the power of a mean or an average versus a range as people are looking at the data and saying, "That's what I have to have." How many times have you been asked, "What score do I need to give in?" And you're like, "It depends. It depends where you are. It depends where you fall in the range."
But when I think about the data part of our work and the merit that flows out of an academic assessment, listeners, we're looking at your transcript, we're looking at the courses on that transcript relative to what your high school offers. We can come back and talk about that for a second, especially 11th and 12th grade, so rigor. What does the school teach? What did you take? And then how did you do? Are there patterns?
I'll use myself. I was a humanities social science person, so I took all the honors courses I could take, but I really leaned into English history, foreign language more than science because it just wasn't my thing. That's a pattern. My grades, if I got a B in high school, it used to be in science. The testing usually syncs with that too. All of these pieces tell the story of can you do the work? Are you prepared for the curriculum we offer? And that's a type of merit that's not very sexy. Being able to say, as we both must do on the first day of school, "I certified that everybody matriculating today is comparably prepared." That's merit.
Logan Powell:
Right. That's exactly right. And just as I think a good juxtaposition to this, I was science nerd. I love biology and-
Lee Coffin:
You're the opposite of me.
Logan Powell:
Yes, exactly. And so it's important to say that, in addition to what we've been talking about, in terms of data, we don't look for perfection. How many times have we said, Lee, there's no minimum? There is no process for students above a certain test score and students below a certain test score. It doesn't work that way. We really just open every application individually and we look at it individually, contextually and holistically. And we're looking at who the person is. And so it's not just the test score, it's what does that test score mean in the context in which that student was educated and raised? That's really the question we're asking. It's not what is the test score relative to a 1,600 or a 36? It's what's the test score relative to the opportunities that that student has had in their 17 or 18 years at the time of application if they're applying as a first year student? That's really the question.
And I think that's the question that families need to remember we're actually starting with. It's not a measurement against perfection or against some arbitrary goal, it's a look into what has the student done based on the opportunities that have been available to them? That's what got into our discussions.
Lee Coffin:
I think most people either don't know it or don't believe it, that we really do zero in on where are you? What's your high school? What's the community that surrounds that high school? We've started talking about environmental factors. What are they? What percentage of your class typically goes to a four-year college? And the higher that is is usually a sign that there's some resources in that community that prepare students really well. And going to college is more than norm than not. And you go the other direction. I just was looking at a file from my high school alma mater, and I thought, oh, only 64% went to a four-year college. I didn't know that, and it didn't surprise me. Talk a little bit more about context, Logan. Why is that important? How does that help us assess merit?
Logan Powell:
Context is important for us, us meaning college admission professionals, because we're not just looking at achievement at a moment in time, we're also looking at trajectory. We're looking at what is the arc that this student is on? Can we see that there's a pattern of growth? Can we see that this student is exceeding expectations? And so it's not just looking at what is the GPA? What is the class rank right now? It's let's see what the story is of how the student has achieved over a period of time, and what is the likeliest continuous arc for that student's growth?
And so for many of our applicants, that means their test scores are far from perfect, but what they're demonstrating in their application is this remarkable sense of curiosity and desire for intellectual challenge and demonstration of growth and interest in pushing themselves beyond what would be normally required of them. That's the kind of excellence in context we're looking for.
Because if you think about a graph with X and Y axes and you're putting together a series of dots in that graph... And what you want to do is try to figure out where's the line going? And we're putting all those dots on the graph and we're saying, "What's the likely trajectory of this applicant? And if we see that there is a growth trajectory in that applicant, even if they're not perfect test scores, that's okay because we could see that they're going to continue to grow and push themselves and ask for help but do the kinds of things that our institutions that we'd really be proud of and that we would expect them to do. Those are cases that are really incredibly inspiring. Now, I should also say there are students who, at their present time when they apply, are really simply extraordinary and have taken advantage of every opportunity they have and they're superstars, but those are not the only students we admit. We admit students who are very much on the rise and demonstrate the capacity to be superstars in their lives.
Lee Coffin:
Well, it gets to this really elusive word, potential. Jerome Karabel from Berkeley wrote The Chosen History of Selective College Admission, and he identifies potential in that work as one of the most important things a college can acknowledge. And it's exciting to acknowledge it, but again, talk about a fuzzy concept. To me, reading a file and saying, "The merit of this person is potential. The evidence in this file is saying this flower hasn't fully bloomed yet, but it's going to be amazing when it does." And being able to honor that.
But I ask you about this context piece, Logan, because I think it's really important for listeners to understand that we talk about quantitative and we talk about qualitative, context is where those two Qs combine, where we're able to look at a number and say, "What does this tell us about where it was produced? And what were the elements that that B+ might be from a high school where nobody gets an A?" Or that A might be at the school where... I read a file the other day where 90-something percent of the seniors have A average or higher, which is great.
Logan Powell:
Great.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, good for them. But it's like that A in that context was not as noteworthy as an A from a place where very few people get As. We read that way and merit around the academic piece flows accordingly. That's data. There's a lot of it.
And the thing also that re-emphasizes, we're representing two places with single digit acceptance rates. In our part of this admission spectrum, the academic framing of a file is really important, but the story doesn't stop there. As you move in the other direction... I was just talking to a colleague was off on a junior college trip with his son, and they were out west visiting some of the big state universities. And he came back and he said, "My son loved them all and the admit rates are all 70+." And I said, "Yep, they're great places, and he's probably going to get in because he is a really good student. And they're looking at merit as defined by can you do the work? And they're big enough so that these other factors show up in the law of averages." And he said, "That's really exciting." I said, "Yeah."
Depending on where you land on where you're applying, this can be easy or this can be a bit more sticky. Let's stick with the sticky side because we live in the venus fly trap where it's all gummy. Let's talk about the other things. You mentioned grit. We've talked about curiosity and character. Where do you see that? Where does that merit sit?
Logan Powell:
I think about it in this perspective. We are educational institutions. Our mission is certainly to create new knowledge, but it's also in some way to share the knowledge that we come in with. And we want students, faculty members, staff members to share their knowledge, create new knowledge, but also be willing to adjust and grow to the knowledge that they receive. That's critical to what we do. It's the quintessential growth mindset. In fact, we don't want people to come in with a fixed mindset, we want people to come in with certainly a strong base of knowledge and even strong opinions. But we also want them to be open to the opinions and ideas of others and not closed off to the reality that there are many, many different perspectives in the world, and every student should be open to hearing about those in a way that emphasizes simple discourse.
Lee Coffin:
Think about when you were in college. Was the classroom more interesting when everybody agreed or when there were different points of view?
Logan Powell:
The most vivid memories I have in college were when we vehemently disagreed on a topic and we then rolled right into the dining hall and we had a two-hour meal and we left as best friends.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Yeah, no, I would say the same thing. I think about some of the late-night debates in the dorm. We'd order a pizza. It'd be 2:00 in the morning. And I had one of my friends would always yell, "I'm a communist. I think everything..." And he grew up on Long Island. It was a really funny... The politics and the demographics weren't what we've thought. But he would push, and it would be these really interesting conversations about economics and politics. And we didn't agree, but it was interesting. I'm raising this because as admission officers, if that conversation's going to happen, we have to do the best we can to make sure the viewpoints are in the class.
Logan Powell:
That's right. And it's so similar to your experience was my experience in college where I loved sitting down with people whose perspectives were just completely, completely different from mine. And we would have very strong disagreements about things, and we were still very close friends at the end of it all. And so that's really, I think, the essence of what these college communities should be.
And so you asked the question, how do we get a sense of that? Where do we see it? We see it in a variety of ways. We can see it in essays, the personal statements. We can see it in supplemental essays. We very often will ask questions that try to get to the heart of that. The ability to engage in civil discourse, disagreement, but civil disagreement, we try to get a sense of that. Some schools will offer interviews, some schools like Brown offer the ability to do a video introduction where we can just learn more about a student, their interests, their perspectives, and what they would add to the conversations on campus.
But I think there's a much broader range of perspectives that we want that we seek out that we actively recruit than people might really imagine, and so we're going all over the country and around the world to "recruit" in quotes students very specifically because we think they'll add a different perspective to the campus community. And that's really important. And so for those applicants who are listening and thinking about what to put in their applications, it's really important to know that offering a perspective that may not be the predominant perspective you think we have on our campuses can be really valuable because we want that perspective represented.
You and I, Lee, we deeply about having more rural first gen students on campus. We care deeply about having student veterans on campus. We could go on down the list and say, "It's really important to have these perspectives represented and to have their voices heard," and so we really actively seek them out in the process. And they should tell their stories in the application through essays, interviews, video introductions, whatever platform the college or university may offer.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. That's a type of merit.
Logan Powell:
That's right.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. We're talking about academics, we're talking about personal merit; there's almost a third category here like institutional merit. What goes into the way this campus gets built? And how do we proactively find it, ask for it, think about it, and knit it all together?
Logan Powell:
I think about these perspectives, whether we call it merit or we call it... Let's call it... Let's say there's a value to those perspectives that is not quantifiable that is really, really important. It is valuable to have those different perspectives represented on campus. All of the students who were thinking about applying to college were born into a set of circumstances, whatever they happen to be. But there's value in those circumstances. There's value in the perspective that they bring. And we're going to get as strong a sense of that as we possibly can in the application process.
Lee Coffin:
And students, you'll tell us about these values in your essays, your teachers will tell us about them in the recommendations they do. Some places will have an interview. Brown does not, Dartmouth does. And that's another platform. Your extracurriculars will be places where the things you care about show up. And there's not a right/wrong answer here.
Logan Powell:
I was thinking about this, Lee, before the pod. I was thinking, who's the modal listener of your podcast? And I'm thinking it's a very high achieving and striving student from probably a wide array of backgrounds. But it's someone who, prior to a test, asks the teacher, "What's going to be on this test? Mr. Coffin, Mr. Powell, how should I prepare for this test?" And there's a book or there's study materials, and the teacher will say, "These are all of the topics that are on the test," and you have a pretty good sense of how to prepare for it.
And then you get to the college application and you think, they haven't given me the answers. I don't know the question. And I think there's this moment of students having prepared for tests and papers for most of their young lives, and they get to this point and it feels like a test, but it feels like a test that for the first time in their lives they don't have all of the answers to. And I think that's really challenging.
And so I think when I talk to families, one of the things I try to say is, "Don't try to crack the test. It's not a test. The college application process is not a test, it's a process." Because people always say that the college admission process is a total crap shoot. How many times have we heard this? "Oh, it's a total crap shoot. It's a lottery system. No one knows." And one of the things that you've said that I try to repeat, and I don't get it quite right, so you'll tell me what your exact quote is, but you say that it's unpredictable, but it's not random. The choices we make are very deliberate. They're just not knowable or predictable in advance, and so I think trying to cheat the process or anticipate an outcome is going to be very nerve wracking. And so I've always said to families, "It can be anxiety inducing, but I also assure you that your level of anxiety is not going to change the outcome, so try to enjoy the process as much as you possibly can."
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. No, and I've started saying, "The work we do is informed subjectivity." It's not random, but it's not predictable. You've got a big scrum of high quality students comparably credentialed in context, and we're making decisions towards a scarce outcome; a seat in a class versus a lot of volume. It's a little Economics 101 there. When you say, "What counts?" Everything counts, but some things might count more than others depending on how you put it together.
I love having this conversation in February because we're in the midst of it. And if I have a reading day and I go through 25 or 30 of them, each evaluation is individualized. 1 to 2 to 5 to 12 to 15, each of them has told a different story that I respond to. And the values, in this macro way, are they accomplished people? Yes. Are they helping me build a community on my campus that each of them thrives and the community as a whole thrives? Yes. And all that comes out in an informed way, but it requires professional judgment.
Logan Powell:
Right. I think there are parts of our process, particularly for those of us who have residential college campuses, that is really often overlooked in this, and that is simply asking the question, "Do I think this person will be a good roommate? Do I think this person will be a good classmate? Do I think this person will be a good teammate?"
And going back to your question about merit, how do you measure that? There's no test for that. Students aren't sitting down for three hours on a Saturday taking a test about whether or not they would be a good roommate or a good teammate or a good classmate, but all of those things have merit in our process because we're creating a community. And you and I say this, Lee, all the time, and I don't know that we... I'll speak for myself. I don't know that I ever really explain what that means in our committee process. And what that means is that we really are asking those questions. We have some very, very bright students; many, many, many of them in our applicant pool. Many of them who stand out are the students who are really quite bright, who show growth mindset, growth trajectory who we think would just be a fantastic fit with this community. We think they'd be fantastic roommates and teammates classmate and future Brunonians. There's value in that. There's merit in that. But it's very hard to measure if you're a high school senior and you're thinking about applying to college. But trust us, listeners, these are the things that we're thinking about and looking for in the application.
Lee Coffin:
I'm stuck on Brunonian. I didn't know a person from Brown is a Brunonian. That's a-
Logan Powell:
Brunonian
Lee Coffin:
Yes. Good, that's a good vocabulary word today. Logan, I was reading a file the other day, and I don't want to be too specific because it's still an active file, but the essay was about sitting in the coffee shop doing calculus homework, and an older woman struck up a conversation with the student, and the student said, "Calculate problem sets weren't going to happen. She needed someone to talk to." And it was this beautiful essay about shifting your plan and having a conversation with someone who he hadn't met before, probably wouldn't see again. And I remember reading it thinking what a lovely kid. That essay had merit because I thought I want a person like this in my community. And I wrote it up accordingly. And in the big pile of people who have done well in high school, the student was among them, but the essay showed a humanity that felt powerful to me and didn't see that coming until I got to it. I didn't expect my eyes to well as I got into the essay, but they did. And I think for listeners, the thing to remember is that the humanity of the admission officers, we're not robots. We're reading and thinking and feeling as you share it with us.
Logan Powell:
That's right. I often think about something that I heard earlier in my career, which is that in the work that we do, we are embarking on the process of creating a 70-year relationship. And that really stuck with me. And I didn't really take it to heart when I was a younger admission officer in the way that I take it to heart now, because I have seen students from the time they were first years or sophomores in high school through the time they applied to college, through the time they graduated from college, and they're now off and they're young adults in the world. And it's incredible to see that growth. And it really is the beginning of creating a relationship between the institution and the individual, but also between a large group of individuals.
You talked about the humanity of it, and the humanity of it is central to our process. They're very trite and cliché about how many students with X incredible SAT scores we don't take or how many valedictorians we don't take. And I hesitate to share those stats because I worry that in trying to send the message that we're not just looking for the valedictorians, that we're scaring a lot of people away, so I am not going to quote that particular data point, I would simply say that there is very inherently a humanity in our process because we are creating this relationship when we're creating the community. And that's invaluable to what we do.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah. Well, and between us, we have each worked at eight very selective colleges and universities. And so I'm raising that to say you represent Brown and I represent Dartmouth. This podcast is for a more universal audience, but we have a reference point of eight institutions. Do you think what we're saying is true across those eight? Have you seen what we're saying at Harvard and Bowdoin? I saw it at Khan College and Tufts.
Logan Powell:
I do. I do.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, I do too.
Logan Powell:
I think the beauty of it also, though, is that every one of those institutions has... And probably many others have a similar foundation of looking for academic potential, academic growth, growth mindset. But they're all a little bit different, so it's not going to be the case that Dartmouth is looking for exactly the same kind of student that Brown is, and Brown is going to be a little different from Princeton, and Princeton's a little different from Harvard. And you can go on down the line like that school after school after school.
And I think that's the beauty of it is that there's the same question of can you be academically successful? But then the nuances at each school, I think, are what create some of that variability. Families in the applicant process would call it unpredictability, but I think that's... And that's the frustration of why are there outcomes that are so seemingly different and unpredictable? Why did one applicant get into this school and not that school? "Why did the classmate get in but I didn't?" And it's because we're all looking for something that's just a little bit different, whether it's you need to strengthen some part of an academic program or a music program or athletic program, et cetera. There are going to be these little differences from one school to the other, or in some cases, some big differences from one school to another. But I think that's actually great. I think it's good that we're looking for slightly different things even though it is probably one of the more vexing parts of the process for prospective applicants.
Lee Coffin:
No, I think that's right. I think what's vexing is the fact that we cannot say, "A + B + C = admit."
Logan Powell:
That's right. It's not an equation.
Lee Coffin:
There's not an equation. Our international listeners might be familiar with university admission where you take an exam and you pass the exam; you're in. And that's not how we do it. And it's not how we've done it for a long time. And that opens up the topic of, well, it can't be fair. And I think that's where the meritocracy piece is it fair?
Logan Powell:
I think imagining a certain set of academic qualifications as being necessary but not sufficient. Being able to show that you can do the work at our institutions is necessary, but isn't sufficient necessarily. That's not where we're drawing the line. We do ask the question, "Can you be academically successful?" And then beyond that is, going back to the beginning of me, all of these things that count that can't be counted. And that's where there's value and that's where there's merit and experience that was not quantified in a test.
Lee Coffin:
Yep. We come back to Einstein at the end. And I'm think-
Logan Powell:
By the way, I didn't know that Einstein said that, so in no way was I making any comparison. I actually had no idea. But it's such a powerful concept that stuck with me. Thank you for sharing that.
Lee Coffin:
Oh yeah, you're welcome. I stumbled upon it a bit ago and did a screenshot. And the picture I found he's got his tongue out and he's got this really goofy... The wild hair and his tongue out, and it's fun. How would you wrap this, Logan? Back to the question what counts? I think the answer is everything, which I don't know if that's helpful.
Logan Powell:
I know. I'm trying to think about if you're a listener, what do you take away from this that will be helpful? And I think it is a couple things. It is, one, everything counts. It does. In a process that is individualized, holistic, and contextual, everything counts. The other thing I think that's really important is that I think there's value in working hard for the simple reward of having done the hard work and not knowing when it's going to pay off, but trusting that it will. And it may not pay off in the way that you anticipated, but it will pay off.
And I think we live in a world, we live in a society where there are certain golden ring achievements. If you attain this particular goal, if you achieve this particular goal, you have succeeded. But I think it's such a narrow definition that it leads to disappointment. And I think long-term, giving advice to my younger self, I would never pretend to give advice to others, but giving advice to my younger self, I would say there is value in just working hard and being open to new ideas and new possibilities and trusting that the hard work that you put in will pay off, but never in a way that you could have or would've predicted.
Lee Coffin:
Well said. And I think my two cents on top of that would just be merit lives in places you don't always expect. It's our job as admission officers to read the file, to sniff it out, to contextualize it, and to make sense of it as it relates to you. Logan, thanks for joining me on Admissions Beat.
Logan Powell:
Thank you, Lee, for having me. I hope you're having me back.
Lee Coffin:
I will, I will. Next week we will be back with a cast reunion of last year's Learning to Read. It was our most popular episode in the history of Admissions Beat. I'm bringing back the admission officers from that episode to see how they've grown as readers from their first year into their second. We'll have that for you next week. For now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thanks for listening.