After spending 10,000 hours or more doing whatever it is you do, as Malcom Gladwell taught us, you get pretty good at it. When it comes to career educators and gatekeepers of higher education, long experience forges quick studies in distinguishing true students from grade grubbers, potential scholastic superstars from other types of high achievers.
Sometime the line is blurry, however—about as often as academic and worldly success intersect. Not often, but it happens, and when it does, assessment of achievement and worthiness of admissions become blurry, too.
Numbers, letter grades, and other quantifiable measuring sticks are supposed to objectify the process. To wit, many state departments of education mandate the use of detailed, numeric rubrics to factor out as much assessor subjectivity as possible. A student’s personality, so the theory goes, should not factor into measurements of scholastic achievement, kinda like bottomline measurement by dollars in the business world.
And here comes the uncomfortable personal memory part. Having been a secondary school educator and consultant for over half my life, I have to admit—even though I’m about to use some cliches to create distance—some students got my hackles up, got under my skin, got on my nerves, and lived rent free in my head: students with personalities I found abrasive, justified or not. They’d earn A‘s on just about every assessment I’d throw at them, and I’d somewhat begrudgingly record their success; I’d also experience a bit of schadenfreude on the rare occasions they got something wrong and lost a point. Maybe my judgment was blurred when assessing essays and class participation and other more subjective measures. Maybe? 100%. And…super uncomfortable…usually they were students who reminded me of qualities I found most objectionable in myself.
I was aware of my biases and attempted—to the extend of which I was capable—to work against them, trying my best to be “fair.” Looking back, I realize I wasn’t as capable as I’d thought at the time. Doh!
My personal, subjective perspective of students factored into my bottom-line assessments of them as measured by grades, comments, and letters of recommendation. Despite my feeble efforts, personal reasons did factor into bottom line report cards and transcripts.
Geez, Dr. Yo, I sure hope you feel better after getting that off your chest, but how does this very personal and, I must say, embarrassing, revelation relate to my or my kid’s chances for college admissions ? Good question, glad you asked.
Wherever possible—from application writing to interviews to visits to campuses—try to be likable. A major goal in getting into college and graduate school in today’s ultra-competitve admissions game is to convince committees you are a decent human being who will play nicely in the sandbox and collaborate well with classmates, teammates, and future career associates. Even if you took 18 AP classes, got 18 4’s and 5’s, are a three-sport captain, or just found a cure for a rare cancer.
Your track record of knowledge, skills, and experience are prerequisites in today’s admissions game, but no matter how scintillating and how well-captured in unarguable, objective quantifications, your record comes inside a human package that needs to work and teach and learn with others in an educational community. And that DOES factor in, in myriad ineffable ways. Be advised.