Institutional Priorities

In my last post I wrote about dealing with deferrals and it had me thinking a lot about how colleges decide on which students they will accept or reject (or defer). There are factors you absolutely know and control - your grades, the rigor of your classes, your ACT/ SAT test scores, but there are also factors you don't have any control over which can play a large role in an admissions decision and those are their institutional priorities.

Colleges have their own needs, goals and priorities. Those who work in the offices of admission work tirelessly to try to build an incoming freshman class that meets the identified priorities (think talents, qualities, and preferences) of their respective colleges. Some of those might be mission driven and others may be based on needs identified on a shifting basis based upon the students on their campus. But here is the challenge with institutional priorities... you can't influence them. So I would encourage you to let go of that element of stress and focus on the areas you can control. And, if you get a rejection to a college after doing everything "right" know that it likely has less to do with something you are lacking and more to do with the college's institutional priorities and some other students being a better fit for those goals.

Here is a list of some common examples of institutional priorities that a particular college admissions office may receive as a target from their college leadership team:

• Recruited athletes
• Artists, Musicians, Thespians
• Underrepresented backgrounds
• First generation college students
• Geographic diversity (they like to say things like "we have students from all 50 states")
• Academic stars
• College level research with a faculty recommendation
• Major academic competition and scholarship winners
• Students applying to under-enrolled or new academic programs
• Students with special talents
• Faculty and staff children
• Legacies (parent attended the college)
• Development potential (possible future financial donors)
• Gender (males are often rarer at liberal arts colleges and women can be rarer at STEM colleges)

It is important to realize that all of these are not going to be priorities at every college. Additionally, even if you fall into one or more of these categories and it is a priority at the college where you are applying, if you don't have the academic qualifications, you're not going to automatically end up getting admitted to the school.

I hope you had a great lo