College admission decisions often don’t make sense to outside observers. Why is one student admitted over another? How could the seemingly perfect kid be denied? How can a student be accepted at one school but denied at another statistically less selective?
The entire process can seem arbitrary, and even unfair. This new post from the Georgia Tech Admissions Blog agrees (bold emphasis is theirs):
“‘That’s not fair!’ Well, my friends, neither is college admission. If you applied to a college that has a selective (meaning below 33% admit rate) process, or if you are a counselor, principal, parent, friend of someone who has gone through this lately, you know this to be true. Inevitably, you know someone who was denied or waitlisted that was ‘better’ or ‘more qualified’ or ‘should have gotten in.’ I try not to specifically speak for my colleagues, but I feel confident saying this for anyone that works at a highly selective college that has just denied a ton of the students you are thinking about/calling about/inquiring about: We know. It’s NOT fair. You’re not crazy. In fact, we’d be the first to concur that there are many denied students with higher SAT/ACT scores or more community service or more APs or who wrote a better essay or participated in more clubs and sports than some who were admitted. But here is what is critical for you to understand– ultimately, the admission process for schools denying twice or three times or sometimes ten times more students than they admit– is not about fairness. It’s about mission.”
After you read the article, please remember that while the decisions might not always seem to make sense, they’re rarely arbitrary, as this past post explains.