One of the reasons the college admissions process can seem so complex and mysterious is that families don’t have a good sense of who the people reading students’ applications really are. It’s hard to guess what people you’ve never met will—and of greater concern, will not—appreciate. And that’s one of the reasons that families are often far too concerned about things that will make absolutely no difference in a student’s candidacy.
This week, one of our Collegewise students had such a concern. He’d done something smart, mature, and responsible while attending a program offered by his dream school (a highly selective college). But he was worried that the action he took might make him “look bad.”
We reassured the student that, if anything, his actions would actually be appreciated, not judged negatively. In fact, one of our Collegewise counselors was an admissions officer at the school in question, and he offered this final piece of insight in an email to our student:
“Look dude, that program is run by (names of the two in charge). I’m friends with these people. I went to lunch with them every single day for a year. Their favorite two subjects of conversation are Virginia Wolf and Justin Timberlake. They watch The Real Housewives and debate which of the husbands on the show is hottest. The last thing that I can possibly imagine them doing is putting anything negative in your file for doing something smart and responsible. So sleep tight.”
Families often have a vision of admissions officers as stuffy, uptight folks who gleefully spend their days watching and judging, always on the hunt for a way to knock a kid down a rung.
But it might help to remember that admissions officers are real people, and most of them are in their mid 20’s. Yes, at a highly selective college, one reality of their job is that they have to deny far, far more people than they accept. But for most, that’s the worst part of their days. They’re far more interested in finding good reasons to admit than they are in finding trivial reasons to deny.
Yes, if you graffiti your school, get caught cheating, or do anything that would put the safety of yourself or others at risk, there’s a good chance that will affect your admissions candidacy.
But for just about everything else, most admissions officers remember what it was like to be teenagers. They don’t expect you to behave as if you aren’t one now. And they’ll presume that you’re a good kid unless you give them a legitimate reason to believe otherwise.