The U.S. Naval Academy received 19,145 applications for the class that began in fall and accepted 1,426. Its admission rate was 7.5 percent, one percentage point lower than Princeton’s.
Or was it? Academy leaders acknowledge that only 5,720 of those applications were complete. The rest, more than two-thirds of the total, were partial applications that never reached the university’s admissions board and were never seriously considered.
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Colleges in the Washington region routinely count applications that are incomplete, a lapse that typically means the application will be rejected or quietly “withdrawn” by the institution. It’s part of an admission process that has mushroomed into an intense — some would say overblown — marketing effort for many schools.
Selectivity is currency in higher education. Colleges have every incentive to raise their application totals, even if it means counting applicants who have no desire to attend.
But at most schools, incomplete applications remain the exception. At the Naval Academy, they are the majority.
“There’s this novel by Gogol called ‘Dead Souls,’ about counting dead serfs as people. And that’s what we do,” said Bruce Fleming, a Naval Academy English professor whose public information request prompted the Nov. 22 disclosure.
Academy officials say there is good reason for unfinished applications. The institution’s rigorous admission process includes an in-home interview with an officer, a drug test, a 1.5-mile run and push-ups. Each applicant must complete 11 distinct steps.
“Other colleges don’t require push-ups,” said Cmdr. William Marks, an academy spokesman.
The complexity of the admission regimen yields a certain amount of weeding-out. Such is the nature of the Naval Academy, an institution founded to forge military officers.
“We want it to be hard,” Marks said. “We want you to be a dedicated person just to apply here.”
But the school’s unconventional approach puts it at odds with convention in college admissions. The admissions community has gone to great lengths to define what does, and doesn’t, constitute an application so that colleges cannot game the system. The appearance of selectivity can give a school an edge over its competitors.
The accepted definition, embraced by the federal government and collegiate rankers, states that an application should count only if it is “actionable,” meaning the applicant has provided enough information for the college to make an informed decision.
Most applications have three principal components: the application itself, a high school transcript and standardized test scores.
Applications missing any of those items are generally regarded as not credible. A student who submits an online form but nothing else likely is not a serious applicant.
Yet an informal survey of local colleges found several that include at least small number of incomplete applications in their annual totals.
Of the 12,825 applications counted last year by the College of William and Mary, 115 were tabulated as “withdrawn” because they lacked basic information such as test scores or a home address, said Henry Broaddus, dean of admission.
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