Quotes & Sayings About College Admissions

Who, for example, would have ever predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that the poet who overuses the word I in his poetry is at higher risk of suicide? Or that a certain world leader's use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he'd lead his country into war? By looking more carefully at the ways people convey their thoughts in language we can begin to get a sense of their personalities, emotions, and connections with others. — James W. Pennebaker

Moreover, even at elite colleges, the personnel attracted to college admissions are seldom themselves part of the intellectual elite. Yet their job is to select students unlike themselves, to be taught by professors unlike themselves, for careers unlike theirs. It can hardly be surprising that admissions personnel are drawn toward non-intellectual criteria and toward ideas not unlike the notion of judging "the whole person," as found among educators at the pre-college level. Over the years, all sorts of criteria from popular psychology and sociological speculation have assumed increasing weight visa-vis such standard intellectual criteria as academic records and test scores. The — Thomas Sowell

I hadn't gone to Andover, or Horace Mann or Eton. My high school had been the average kind, and I'd been the best student there. Such was not the case at Eli. Here, I was surrounded by geniuses. I'd figured out early in my college career that there were people like Jenny and Brandon and Lydia and Josh - truly brilliant, truly luminous, whose names would appear in history books that my children and grandchildren would read, and there were people like George and Odile - who through beauty and charm and personality would make the cult of celebrity their own. And then there were people like me. People who, through the arbitrary wisdom of the admissions office, might share space with the big shots for four years, might be their friends, their confidantes, their associates, their lovers - but would live a life well below the global radar. I knew it, and over the years, I'd come to accept it.
And I understood that it didn't make them any better than me. — Diana Peterfreund

At its most intense, the admissions process didn't force kids to be Lisa Simpson; it turned them into Eddie Haskell. ("You look lovely in that new dress, Ms. Admissions Counselor.") It guaranteed that teenagers would pursue life with a single ulterior motive, while pretending they weren't. It coated their every undertaking in a thin lacquer of insincerity. Befriending people in hopes of a good rec letter; serving the community to advertise your big heart; studying hard just to puff up the GPA and climb the greasy poll of class rank - nothing was done for its own sake. Do good; do well; but make sure you can prove it on a college app. So — Andrew Ferguson

The mother of a student in Europe who was between his junior and senior years of high school called Motto in a frantic state. She had just read somewhere that college admissions offices looked for kids who had spent their summers in enriching ways, ideally doing charity work, and her son was due to be on vacation with the rest of the family in August. "Should we ditch our plans," she asked Motto, "and have him build dirt roads?" Motto reminded her that she lived in a well-paved European capital. "Where would these dirt roads be?" he said. "India?" she suggested. "Africa?" She hadn't worked it out. But if Yale might be impressed by an image of her son with a small spade, large shovel, rake or jackhammer in his chafed hands, she was poised to find a third-world setting that would produce that sweaty and ennobling tableau. — Frank Bruni

The other thing you can do is write a strong personal essay which lets admissions people inside your life, your heart, and your world.
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Anyway, it can be hard to figure out what to write about, so here are a few suggestions:
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5. Reasons it's wrong to be racist even though it makes sense to you. — Eugene Mirman

Our intentions are sound - more than sound: We love our kids fiercely and want only the very best for them. Yet, having succumbed to a combination of safety fears, a college admissions arms race, and perhaps our own needy ego, our sense of what is "best" for our kids is completely out of whack. We don't want our kids to bonk their head or have hurt feelings, but we're willing to take real chances with their mental health? — Julie Lythcott-Haims

Sign board outside my office - NO ADMISSION FOR ADMISSION — Amit Abraham

Many high school students are under so much competitive pressure. They are sometimes taught that if they don't have a 4.0 GPA, score in the 99th percentile on admissions tests, and demonstrate leadership in sports and participate in clubs, they won't get into college anywhere. Even highly credentialed professionals get caught up in this. — Elizabeth Thornton

That Steuben, who needed a translator, what with his English vocabulary consisting almost entirely of swear words, ended up being the perfect hire to upgrade the Continental Army should rattle every search committee, small-business owner, casting director, college admissions officer, headhunter, and voter. — Sarah Vowell

Colleges are becoming more conscious of their roles - too frequently neglected - in social mobility. They're recognizing how many admissions measures favor students from affluent families.

They're realizing that many kids admitted into top schools are emotional wrecks or slavish adherents to soulless scripts that forbid the exploration of genuine passions. — New York Times

How could he encapsulate in a pithy admissions-interview line all of his unique ideas and interests? — Alexandra Robbins

The SAT plays an important role in helping admissions officers around the country sort out students, well-deserving students from 20,000 high schools that have different curriculums, different grading standards, and different ability to help students get ready for college. — Jonathan Grayer

SAT scores play an important role in admissions, even though they are poor predictors of college performance.87 This benefits affluent students, who are far more likely to enroll in private test preparation and take the test multiple times to boost scores. — Elizabeth A. Armstrong

Colleges seem to want candidates that are so well-rounded they'd have to be two different people use together with mutually exclusive characteristics! They have to be gung ho athletes and sensitive artists, studious nerds and gregarious social networkers, future rulers of the universe and selfless altruists. — Rebecca Goldstein

The authorities should have taken a different approach. Imagine if it had been the far-right British National Party (BNP) growing on campus. Suppose that it was racism, instead of Islamism, spreading throughout the student population and the BNP had decided to stand in Student Union elections. If that had happened, and the BNP had taken over, the college would have acted immediately. They certainly would have seen the need for a solution, if only for their own reputation and the impact on admissions. They would have cited the college constitution about how hate speech was not allowed, how the BNP was an external political group attempting to hijack the college, and probably stopped them. But because of the religious element in our message, and the desire of the authorities not to offend our religious sensitivities, we were left alone. — Maajid Nawaz

college and meets the Dean of Admissions, who signs — Various

Applicant are just as important as race in determining college admissions ... — Auren Hoffman