Times' Steinberg, Rapelye talk admissions reforms

Summer experience is a “wildly overrated” portion of college applications, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said at a talk Thursday night with Jacques Steinberg, editor of The New York Times blog “The Choice,” which focuses on college admission.

Rapelye said many applicants sacrifice family values to attend summer school. Instead, she said she hopes that summer experiences reveal the applicant’s interests.

“We’re always looking for students to be authentic in this process and not strategizing over what we want,” Rapelye said.

The explanation came during a discussion with Steinberg on Princeton admissions and issues and reforms that can be made in the world of higher education admission in general. Steinberg led the discussion, asking Rapelye about the sometimes-mysterious inner workings of the Office of Admission.

“That curiosity [about college admission] in my case has fueled more than a decade of my work, trying to understand how this process works,” said Steinberg, the author of the 2002 nonfiction book “The Gatekeepers,” which focused on admission at Wesleyan University.

Rapelye added that the most important component of the application is the transcript and whether applicants take advantage of the curriculum available at their high schools. The Office of Admission also takes into account letters of recommendations from teachers and counselors for an idea of how the applicant may contribute to the University community.

“Our faculty want engaged and engaging students, and a way that we can see that is from what your teachers said about you in high school,” Rapelye said.

During the 2011-12 admission cycle, the University accepted 7.86 percent of applicants. With this all-time low acceptance rate, Steinberg suggested that luck may be a significant factor in determining admission to the University.

However, Rapelye said that she does not “necessarily believe that.” She said her office attempts to select students that contribute to the residential campus, keeping in mind that they are limited by the number of bed spaces the University can offer. However, she added, this search for originality is often misinterpreted by applicants.

“I think the myth right now is that we only want students with one well-honed talent; and we want students who are well-rounded and have lots of talents,” Rapelye said.

She added that the Office of Admission is looking to diversify the student body. Rapelye said she recognizes there is a large disparity between the resources and curriculum at different public schools, and the office deliberately tries to draw students from a large and diverse pool of high schools.

“Princeton looks very different now than it did 30 years ago, and that wasn’t by accident,” Rapelye said.

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Another issue that Steinberg and Rapelye addressed is the perceived culture of elitism in some of the high schools with the highest representation at the University. In their lines of work, both Steinberg and Rapelye have seen communities in which a large amount of focus is placed on the most selective universities and the myth that the admission rate is indicative of the quality of the school.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are communities in which high school students are not getting exposure to Princeton and peer schools. Rapelye said the Office of Admission attempts to reach into both types of communities.

Rapelye added that the media contributes to the anxiety of college admission by highlighting the low admission rates of Princeton and a small handful of other universities in the country while neglecting the good universities across the country that accept a larger percentage of their applicants.

Steinberg said the creation of his blog was intended to recognize the power the media has in shaping college admission. While he does cover admission to elite schools, he said that selective university coverage is “such a small part of what we do.”

The talk was co-sponsored by the American Whig-Cliosophic Society and the class governments and was held in the Whig Hall Senate Chamber at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.