A former litigator turned admissions officer says families wrongly treat college admissions like a math test. It's actually a trial: one person reads hundreds of applications and builds a balanced class, like casting a movie. Chasing perfect scores wastes money and misses the point.
I spent years litigating cases before I ever touched college admissions, and I'll tell you something strange. The first time I sat in on a mock admissions committee meeting, it felt exactly like being back in a trial. There's a case being built, there's evidence being weighed, there's a jury— the admissions committee— deliberating behind closed doors, and there's a verdict That changes the rest of a kid's life. Most families walk into this process thinking it's a math test— grades plus scores equals yes or no. But I'm here to tell you, after doing this for years and writing an entire book about it, that belief is the single most expensive myth in college admissions. It costs families Money on the wrong tutors. It costs students years chasing the wrong activities. And it costs everyone their sanity every single fall. So today, I want to open this series the way I'd open a trial, with the truth about what you're actually walking into. 10 myths about how admissions really work. Some of these are going to make you angry. Good. Anger is useful. Let's go. Myth number 1: Admissions is basically a formula— grades plus test scores. If admissions were a formula, we wouldn't need admissions committees. We'd need a spreadsheet, a computer, somebody running the numbers. Here's what's actually happening at every selective college and university in this country. A real human being, usually a regional admissions officer, who has read somewhere between 500 and 1,500 applications that season, is building a class. Not selecting individuals, but building a class, the way a casting director builds an ensemble. They need the oboe player and the point guard and the kid who's going to run the campus newspaper. And the first-generation student who's going to change the culture of a classroom and a dorm.
