Sometimes admission outcomes don’t seem to make sense. You may be asking yourself: How could I have been admitted to a Top 10-ranked university but not to a Top 50-ranked university?
Well, here’s how:
Princeton University in Princeton, NJ
1. Rankings Aren’t Everything
First, here’s an important note on rankings: some of the most widely-referenced lists take many factors into consideration when determining these rankings, and different weights are given to each of these factors, some which you may not care much about.
Do students’ lived experiences and opinions of campus culture matter to you? What about the percentage of students who graduate with jobs in-hand? Neither of these are metrics considered in the U.S. News and World Report, and yet these may be very important to you when crafting your college list. By this I mean that while rankings can be helpful to reference at a high level, they have limitations (by design) and should not be used as a “source of truth” by any means.
Just because a university is ranked lower by U.S. News or has a higher overall acceptance rate does not necessarily mean it will be easier for you to get accepted there. For example, last year I worked with a student who was accepted at Pomona College (#3 in National Liberal Arts Colleges, 7% overall acceptance rate) but waitlisted at Vassar College (#13 in National Liberal Arts Colleges, 20% overall acceptance rate).
2. Institutional Priorities Shift
Second, something students and families don’t always consider is that universities have different institutional priorities year-to-year that impact how admission offices review certain applications.
Does the music department have a great need for double bassists or bassoonists to round out their university orchestra? Does the theatre department have a new state-of-the-art auditorium it hopes to fill with talented actors and dancers? Has the university received a generous donation to expand financial aid to a larger number of applicants with demonstrated need? Does the university receive a ton of very strong engineering applicants but also have a robust humanities department that has been overlooked in recent years?
Believe it or not, in the holistic review process, these and other not-always-publicly-shared situations are frequently considered during the admissions process.
Admission officers in admission committees cast votes for applicants.
3. Fit Matters
There’s a reason we talk about fit a lot in the admissions process: it matters a lot! Every highly selective university receives far more applications from smart, interesting, engaged students than they can ever hope to admit. So, how on earth do they decide who to admit? Fit.
In addition to institutional priorities, every college and university has their own campus culture and their own ideas of what makes a student perfect for their school. A student that is a perfect fit for Brown may not be a perfect fit for Columbia (and Pomona clearly thought my student was a perfect fit for them while Vassar didn’t feel as strongly).
This is why it’s so important to be authentic in the creation of your application; so that colleges can see who you really are and help you join a college community that values the same things you value.
4. Admission Officers Are People Too
Finally, remember that your admission officers are people — meaning they may bring a certain degree of (unconscious) bias into this process that impacts how they read your application. What resonates with one reader may not resonate with another, which is also why most admission offices have more than one person reading each application to provide a variety of perspectives.
Keep in mind that each university receives a different pool of applications in a given year, and not every student from your school is applying to the same set of universities either. This matters because your applications are reviewed within the context of the high school you attend, and then considered broadly against the whole pool of applicants from that year. This means the “competition” at one university may look very different from that of another university, which can account for why one offered you admission while another did not.
My Advice? Just Breathe.
Since you don’t have all the information about each college’s applicant pool (or even your entire application — hello, recommendation letters), you’ll never really know how your application stacks up against anyone else’s — and that’s okay. That is to say: breathe.
What you can control is how accurately your application reflects your abilities, accomplishments, character, personality, and promise. The rest will fall into place, and we know you’ll make the most of any opportunity that comes your way.