Wrong Answer

(Photo illustration by Mary Kocol)

My colleague tried to assure the applicant's father that the decision to admit the athlete, whose GPA and course selection, as it turned out, were stronger than the daughter's, had no bearing on the decision about his daughter, and that there are no quotas for applicants from particular high schools to particular schools within the university. Although the father eventually cooled off and apologized for his behavior, he failed to see the irony inherent in his position -- that recruited athletes should not be given the admission boost so richly deserved by legacy applicants.

I've dealt with lots of parents just like him. A few weeks before the transfer application deadline last year, a father called me to inquire about the transfer admission process. He didn't introduce himself as a father, though. "I'm Doctor X," he announced. "I'm calling on behalf of my son, who is very busy. He's a freshman up at College Y." I wasn't sure how to break it to the doctor that if his son was anything like many college freshmen, he didn't stir before noon.

At an information session I conducted in Manhattan, a mother approached me to ask whether I had time to meet privately to discuss her son, a senior at a boarding school a couple of hours away. As it turned out, what she really wanted to discuss was not her son, but his licentious father, who had "traded in the family Buick for a new Corvette" the summer before her son's junior year. She asked a seemingly innocuous question: "Does the admission committee care about personal circumstances that might affect a student's academic performance?"

I told her that although we do care about special circumstances, often they are not enough to positively affect the outcome of an admission decision, given the very selective nature of an applicant pool. I also mentioned that many applicants experience divorce, or even the death of a parent or sibling, right around their pivotal junior year and that many of them continue to succeed despite such hardships. The admission committee would care that her son's world had been shattered the summer before his junior year, but there was no guarantee that this would translate into an admission offer.

Ignoring my words of caution, she recounted her husband's infidelity and detailed the debilitating effect it had had on her son. As she talked, it became clear that what troubled her more than her husband's betrayal or the dissolution of their marriage was his timing. The third time she mentioned how much better things would be if her husband had been unfaithful one year before or after junior year, I offered what I thought was a self-evident: "Or never."

She looked stunned, as if she had no idea how she'd come to spend the past 20 minutes of her life discussing her husband's indiscretions with a stranger.

WHEN I MANNED THE PHONES last April, I don't think I convinced many parents of the truth: that there aren't quotas for particular high schools or counties or states or countries; that we do care about special circumstances; that we evaluate applicants, not the secondary schools they've attended. I'm not sure I convinced any angry callers that their behavior was only exacerbating their children's disappointment.

But I did have one meaningful, satisfying conversation that day. It was the half-hour I spent on the phone with the one applicant who had called on his own behalf. He had been deferred during early decision and then denied admission to the university's architecture school. I suggested that, to the best of his ability, he should try to get excited about one of the schools where he'd been offered admission.

"That's the problem," he told me, "I haven't been admitted anywhere."

Unlike the sons and daughters of the outraged parents who had phoned all morning and who undoubtedly had been admitted to many fine schools, this kid had been placed on several wait lists but had not been admitted to a single college. One school apparently had lost his application. He did not have a parent or counselor to help him navigate the selective college admission process, let alone contest its outcome or advocate on his behalf. He was the only honors student at his high school without a single college option, he tearfully told me.

I urged him to go back to the university that had lost his application and press the admission office for help. He was well-qualified to go there, and the school might be willing to take a late application. If that didn't work, he could enroll in a community college and reapply to U-Va. in a year or two.

He was grateful I had taken the time to talk him. Thank you so much, he said over and over.

Marjorie A. Schiff is a former senior assistant dean of admissions at the University of Virginia, where she now works as a strategic planning manager.