To some degree, the disconnect is easier to explain.  I no longer live in the Cambridge area.  The Red Line no longer delivers me to the Kendall/MIT stop on a daily basis, and I no longer spend my days with the wonderfully idiosyncratic family of the admissions office, who will always be special to me.

The feeling of connection is a bit more complex. When I think of MIT, I think of an incredible place where amazing people do remarkable things every day. It is also a place where many discover that their quirks and eccentricities are an important dimension of who they are, and fit quite nicely into the mosaic of the community.  When students, in particular, are freed from the pressure to conform, because their value to the community is based primarily on what they accomplish, they rarely cease to amaze.

While all of that is good, I was not, and am not, one of those amazing people. My role, which I was privileged to have, was simply to help identify and select them. As I reflect about my experience at MIT, I am reminded of something that Stu Schmill once said to me, which was essentially that MIT is a dynamic place and that any new member of the community (including me) changes it. At the time, I don't think I fully appreciated what he was saying, and I certainly didn't think about the ways that I would be changed by MIT.

In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. It is the same reason why the Ben Jones' and Bryan Nance's, whose tenures ended prior to my arrival, and the Matt McGann's and Quinton McArthur's whose tenures extend beyond my departure, continue to build and sustain connections here... Because they are MIT, and I suppose that even from a distance, to some degree, I am as well.

So despite my departure, I will probably continue to check in periodically (as long as I am permitted to do so) to share insight and perspective from a variety of experiences, including my new life as a high school college counselor.

My College Counseling Colleagues @ Moses Brown School (photo by Peter Goldberg)

In the admissions office, we are particularly conscious of the magnitude of this selection process, given the limited availability relative to the significant demand, for the exceptional opportunities that await. Since our desire is to make the best possible admission decisions, we utilize a wide range of sources to help confirm and validate our impressions of each applicant.

While this external validation is an absolutely essential aspect of the college admissions process, it is somewhat problematic that it frequently seems to be part of a continuous feedback loop.

Allow me to explain.

In a selective, competitive, holistic, merit-based admissions process, the information and insight that applicants share about themselves is critical, although potentially meaningless if not supported or otherwise corroborated by outside sources.

You say you're an excellent student who is highly proficient in math and science. We say great! Show me your transcript and test scores.

You say you're a leader in your school community. We say great! What do your teachers and school counselors have to say about you?

So even at the most fundamental level, external validation is both necessary and appropriate.

Where I think the use of external validation is less appropriate is reading too much into what an admission decision means. If you are offered admission to an institution, it means that you have the opportunity to matriculate. If you are not offered admission to an institution, it means that you do not have the opportunity to matriculate.

You might say “David, thanks for stating the obvious!” Yet I maintain that if it were obvious to everyone, then I wouldn’t need to say it.

All too often students are lauded for being admitted to places like MIT, with the underlying rationale that they are awesome because they were admitted. Many students are awesome and deserving of accolades, and that is frequently why they were admitted. Not the other way around. A student does not become more awesome as a result of being admitted, but rather from what they achieve by taking advantage of the opportunity.

The flip side of this is that not receiving an offer of admission does not make an applicant less awesome. It just means that they need to be awesome somewhere else, and that is exactly what happens for students we are unable to admit. I had an alum recently share with me that although his highly accomplished grandson was not admitted to MIT, the grandson recently earned dual bachelors degrees elsewhere, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Oxford on a full scholarship. (That seems pretty awesome to me.) While the alum acknowledged that he was initially disappointed, he reports that he is now grateful that his grandson was not admitted.

My point is that the admission decisions that we make are about a lot of things that have been discussed ad nauseum. Preparation, match, distinctions and intangibles are all considered. Since we are admitting 1 out of every 10 applicants, we end up splitting a lot of hairs while making agonizingly difficult choices. Regardless of the decision that we make on an application, that decision should not redefine how an individual sees them self, nor how others perceive them.

That may be too much to ask, and this may simply be another of my quixotic quests to change the nature of larger conversations about college admissions, but some things just need to be said if for no other reason than to highlight the things that should be most important.

I can't speak to the situations for all the children in the world, but I will give you my take on the subject of the college admissions process. The reason the situation is unlikely to change is because the priority is enrolling the desired class, and not fairness. Think about it. When is the last time you heard an admissions officer emphasize how fair the selection process is? Even if fairness was the priority, what would it look like and how would you define it? There is no universal definition. So as it stands, enrollment priorities vary from one institution to the next. The methods employed to achieve those priorities vary just as much.

At one institution, the sole priority is admitting enough students who can be successful. If the admissions staff thinks that you can hack it, you're in. How can they do that? The application volume is such that there is more capacity for students than the application pool requires.

At another institution the priority is access, and the standards are specified by the state legislature. If you meet those standards, you're in, and so are thousands of other similarly qualified students.

At yet another institution, the priority is consistency, so that similar decisions are made for similar applicants from the same school, unless there is a recruited athlete, legacy or some other special case for whom inconsistency can be excused.

At a fourth institution, the emphasis is selecting the students who are most likely to enroll, where two-thirds of the class are selected before any regular action candidates are considered.

These are not hypothetical places. I have worked in each one of these admissions offices, and not one of them is MIT. On the topic of MIT admissions, much has been said by me, and others, about our values and priorities. Maybe we share too much, or are trying too hard to help you to understand. Maybe you think the admissions process works like the courtroom, and you can argue your way in. It doesn’t. In fact, the more adversarial you are, the less likely that you are going to be welcomed warmly into a community that admits fewer that 10% of its applicants.

Curiously, it is a byproduct of an extremely selective admission process that makes institutions even more desirable. Even at face value, if an institution is known for selecting only the best and brightest, who among the applicants doesn’t want the cachet that comes along with just being admitted? Beyond that, having the opportunity to spend four years living and learning, collaborating and teaching, working and playing with amazing people doesn’t happen by accident. It is intentional. The faculty and the rest of the university community facilitate that experience, but it all begins with the selection process that students initiate by applying for admission in the hopes that they will be among the select few admitted.

So let’s go back to the concept of fairness, and enrolling the desired class.  Chris cites an example that equates choosing a class to putting together a group to go mountain climbing. This example works for many, but clearly not for all. I grew up in Florida. The state is flat. There are no mountains. So I will try a few different examples.

If one is going to select a basketball team, why bother with tryouts? Why not simply select the tallest players and be done with it?

For a football team, why not choose all the biggest players? Or the fastest?

For a band why would it matter if you had only drummers, or an orchestra made up solely of tubas?

Hopefully, you get the idea. If you don’t, there’s probably nothing else that I can say.
 

While I don't want to minimize my contributions or the work of other admissions officers, our roles in the admissions process are far easier than the tasks that students and their parents face.

For me to weigh in on the merits of an individual applicant, I don't need to be introspective or do any soul searching to figure out who I am. I don't need to assimilate tons of information accumulated through extensive research, campus visits and conversations. I don't have to figure out how to organize all that information, or even determine the criteria that will be used to make the decision. Fortunately, everything that I need to know typically comes together in a nice, tidy package.

For students and parents, this is simply not the case.

If you approach the process thoughtfully, there are no shortcuts. Guidebooks can be useful if you are looking for a quick synopsis. Rankings can provide a comparative yardstick. But there is no substitute for figuring out who you are, who you want to be, what experiences you need to have to help you get there, and what institution is best suited to provide you with those experiences.

I have had several conversations in the last few weeks with students and parents, struggling with issues ranging from which high school environments will provide the best foundation for admission to how does one actually make the choice between enrolling at MIT or one of our similarly selective peer institutions, assuming that one is fortunate enough to have that choice.

I won’t answer either of those questions here, as those conversations were long and nuanced. What those and other similar conversations highlighted for me is that I just haven’t come across a lot of great resources that help students and parents consider these questions. So I am curious, has anyone come across a great resource (other than the MIT Admissions Blogs) that helps students and parents identify and explore these aspects of the college search and admission process (without the misguided focus of attempting to gain admission to a specific institution or type of institution)? If you have, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below. There is a good chance that everyone else will appreciate your recommendations as well.
 

Try as I may, to put my kids on the right path, sometimes things go awry.  I am not perfect and neither are my children, but at the end of the day they are generally heading in the right direction.  Frequently, the hardest thing for me to do is nothing, because I have so much more life experience than my kids have and I can envision the train wreck up ahead.  There are also definitely times when my insight is neither desired nor appreciated, and sometimes even counterproductive.

Even though my kids aren't always receptive to my counsel, one of the things that I most enjoy about my work in the admissions office is being able to share my perspective.  While I frequently have opportunities to offer guidance, I am sorry to say that I don't always give the best advice. Case in point--there was a parent of a fourth grader (that's right, elementary school) whose child has known for a couple of years that MIT is their college destination. As such, the parent wanted to know how best to prepare the student for admission to MIT.

As an admissions officer, I recognize that while the application process can be very competitive, it is not inherently a competition. This is a nuance that I don’t think that many students, parents and journalists appreciate. I have the luxury of being able to be a purist in this regard, and I acknowledge how radical my thinking might seem.

Recently, I have been putting my radical thinking into practice by regularly suggesting to potential applicants that they should avoid trying to get admitted.  In my mind, it makes perfect sense.  It is, at least initially though, nearly incomprehensible to the vast majority. I do explain that I am not discouraging them from applying for admission, but rather making a distinction between submitting an application and trying to manipulate the process in order to gain admission.

In case this distinction is not clear, applying for admission involves the submission of academic credentials and supporting documents from which a composite is formed that enables the admissions office to determine whether an applicant is a good match. Trying to get admitted, on the other hand, is essentially the exact opposite. A prospective student, based upon what they believe will create a “winning” application, works backwards to repackage themselves into their vision of the perfect applicant.

Sometimes students have wonderfully transformative experiences in situations like these, and even do a great deal of good along the way.  However, much of the time, students fail to connect with any underlying meaning, and merely end up with a contrived essay topic or an additional faux activity that frequently does more harm than good for their admission chances.

WARNING: You are about to encounter a mini-rant. Have you ever considered how community service became the de rigueur activity that everyone needed to do in order to look good for college? I imagine it went something like this. At the end of another very competitive admissions cycle, a journalist made calls to admissions offices fishing for an interesting bit of information that might make a good story. From that fishing expedition, an admissions officer recounted how there was this one kid that was really memorable, because she saw a need in her community and took action because somebody needed to. Her actions inspired others, and the community came together and made a significant difference. She wrote about her experiences in her college application essay because those experiences were a big part of who she had become. The journalist wrote a compelling story, which got picked up by a number of other outlets, because in addition to being a positive human-interest piece it also represented the discovery of a formula for success in the admissions process that could be replicated by virtually anyone.

Don’t get me wrong. I think kids doing community service is great, but if all they get from their experience is a tally of hours, or they have to travel half way around the world to discover that there are poor people, they are missing the point. If they can’t talk or write about their experiences with some level of introspection, and ponder questions like "Why are resources distributed in such a way that there are individuals in great need, whose very survival may depend upon the charitable assistance of others?" then something is lacking. Rather than creating an image that is unique and distinctive, they have simply completed an elaborate “paint by numbers,” that may be appealling at first glance, but is woefully short on substance. End of rant.

If you are wondering what my point is, it can be best summed up with a Latin phrase that I heard several months ago that has really stuck with me – Esse quam videri, which translates “To be, rather than to seem.”

Beyond the college admissions process, I would say that this is also a good core principle for life. Most of us want people in our lives who are what they seem. This is especially true for close friends. Most would also acknowledge that a relationship that is based upon being something that one is not, is destined for failure. Why then, would the college experience be any different? Of course, it is different because it involves multiple relationships, rather than a single one. And although, an undergraduate experience is finite (4 years for most), the relationships are anything but finite, as they continue throughout the course of one’s life.

The bottom line is this. If an institution doesn’t appreciate applicants for who they are, then the applicants will ultimately be much better off in places where they will be appreciated, particularly if they have the freedom to be themselves. If they want to have that freedom, they need to ensure that the central focus of the college search and application process is on who they are and what is right for them, rather than the prized offer of admission, from the big name universiy, that will impress their friends and family.
 

In my role as the Director of Minority Recruitment, I have fielded numerous calls and emails soliciting advice on how to complete the race and ethnicity section of the MIT admission application. When the questions began, I will admit to being a little perplexed by what seemed to be widespread confusion.

When I was a kid, I recall having to identify my race on all kinds of forms, including standardized tests, long before I contemplated completing an application for college admission. From my perspective, checking the box, or boxes to indicate one’s race should be as automatic as providing one’s name. As Chris Peterson, once put it, “If you have to pause, for more than a second or two, to pick your race or ethnicity, you're doing it wrong.”

If anything, the ability to check multiple boxes should make it easier to identify one's race. In my experience, individuals from multiracial backgrounds resented having to choose one race over another, and now they no longer have to.

While I try to avoid being overly cynical, it has been my sense that very little of the confusion is actually about racial identity and identification.  In reality, most of the confusion is about how to best leverage a dimension of one's personal background to maximize the likelihood of admission in a highly selective college admissions process. Instinctively, I knew this to be true, but most students are unwilling to state this outright. In that respect, I appreciate the spotlight that is now shining brightly on this issue. My concern is that the spotlight is focused on the wrong area.

Many colleges and universities value multiple forms of diversity in their student populations. This diversity may include students that are first-generation to college, students from a variety of geographical regions, students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds or any number of other qualities and characteristics.

While one's race can certainly come into play in a college admissions decision, the actual impact bears no resemblance to the common perception that checking a single box somehow guarantees a pathway to admission. What most people either fail to recognize or appreciate, is that amongst a host of factors ranging from academic preparation to institutional priorities, the factor that is both most salient, and most likely to swing an admission decision in a highly selective process, is what an applicant makes of the opportunities that are available to them. While I acknowledge that this may seem like an oversimplification, it takes into account both the disadvantages that one may have to cope with as a function of coming from a low-income family or attending an under-resourced school, as well as the advantages that one might experience living in a highly educated household or attending an affluent suburban high school.

Regardless of one’s background, if an applicant maximizes the opportunities that are available to them, they should be a viable candidate for admission to a highly selective college or university because they are likely to both take advantage of the myriad opportunities that exist in those settings and have a positive impact on the campus community. If an applicant has to create their own opportunities because none are available to them, admissions officers typically get excited about the prospect of such a student stepping foot onto a resource and opportunity rich campus. Conversely, if an applicant has abundant opportunities and chooses to pass on them, they are likely increasing the chances that an admissions committee at a highly selective institution is going to choose to pass on their application.

Most institutions that place a premium on diversity utilize a much broader definition of diversity than what can be captured or satisfied by a simple check box. The most selective institutions scrutinize applications with sufficient rigor to easily differentiate between disingenuous applicants, who are simply looking for an edge in the admissions process, and the authentic applicants that are the most likely to truly enrich the incoming class and the greater campus community.
 

While that is what I do, that doesn't really tell you who I am.  The best insight that I can give you is based upon feedback that I get from my colleagues.  On a number of occasions, I have been told that I tend to channel Dr. Huxtable from The Cosby Show. I don’t know if that is a fair comparison, since he’s a doctor and is on a TV show, and I, sadly, am neither. I have heard the comparison frequently enough to reflect on it though.

I will grant you that I have a penchant for sweaters, but not of the wild variety favored by Heathcliff Huxtable. I have also collected my fair share of college sweatshirts and apparel, having worked at four other universities prior to my arrival at MIT. I have a knack for speaking extensively about nothing in particular, and as a result, neither my children nor my colleagues like to ask me questions. If I do get asked a question, it is much more likely that I will tell a story to illustrate a point, rather than simply answering “yes” or “no.” Of course, one doesn’t need to ask a question to get a story because I frequently “Remember when…” I have a tendency to indulge in foods that are not necessarily the best thing for me, particularly desserts. In fact, within the admissions office, I have a legendary sweet tooth, ensuring that whenever anyone brings in some sweet treat, I am frequently among the first to be notified, possibly for my approval and endorsement, or perhaps simply to remain in my good graces. I also tend to see myself as an irascible curmudgeon, but nobody believes this since I rarely go anywhere without a mischievous grin. 

I don't necessarily see the connection, but I am happy to allow you to come to your own conclusions.   As for this space, I can't promise to be amusing and entertaining all of the time, but you can reasonably expect me to provide some guidance as you navigate to college search process.