What colleges want actually isn't all that complicated:
1. Students who enjoy learning and are excited about doing more of it in college.
2. Applicants who will become a part of the campus community, like playing saxophone in the marching band, doing improv with the drama club, or staying up late doing physics problem sets with fellow future Nobel Prize winners.
3. Students other people will like being around.
That's pretty much it.
Everything in the college application process, from transcripts to applications to essays to interviews, is designed so colleges can look for evidence that you would do those three things if you were admitted.
momof3 says
If this is true, why are grades (and to a lesser extent test scores), which may bear zero relevance, so heavily weighted?
Kevin says
Grades bear a lot of relevance, as they probably should. College is school, after all. The classes a student takes and the grades he or she gets are a good indication of intellectual capabilities, desire to learn and work ethic. Test scores, especially the SAT and ACT, aren’t as accurate an indicator of those things, which is why they’re almost never as important as grades. In fact, plenty of good colleges no longer require test scores. Check out http://www.fairtest.org.
John Carpenter says
Actually, I’m afraid that colleges want WAY more than that: they want national or regional recognition, status in the rankings, financial solvency, representative diversity, a solid endowment, improved land grant value, the ability to attract and maintain excellent teaching and research faculty, and a pleasing safe environment–all of which are factors in making difficult decisions about the kinds of students they admit. Colleges are businesses first, and if an institution can’t succeed as a business, it won’t succeed as an educational venue no matter how much its students enjoy learning, contribute to the community, or play nicely with others.