College Admissions Gatekeepers are not Omniscient Gods

One of the biggest myths that communities and families believe is that the admissions gatekeepers are all-knowing and all-seeing. Students worry that universities will see their social media posts or contact their counselors to verify that they volunteered for fifteen hours at a food bank. Working in and around college admissions makes me realize that it’s highly undemocratic. It bears a closer resemblance to entry into medieval priesthoods than a level playing field open to all comers.

It isn’t a coincidental turn of phrase that we call admissions reviewers “gatekeepers.” Christianity’s Saint Peter is the apocryphal keeper of the keys. He alone possesses the book of names granting souls admission to Heaven’s pearly gates or descent into Hell. In the Gospel of Matthew 16:19, Jesus offers to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Peter must be accountable for his actions; he has skin in the game. He understands the gravity of his decisions and what’s at stake. If he allows dastardly souls into Heaven, he risks catastrophe.

In our admissions story, universities face few if any consequences for their behavior. They lack accountability, and praying to them doesn’t do any good. Souls seeking entrance to Heaven have the benefit of knowing who’s potentially sending them to Hell. They can look Peter in the eye, if otherworldly beings permit such a thing.

College admissions doesn’t have an equivalent to Jesus the Son of God anointing carefully chosen gatekeepers to decide the fates of hundreds of thousands of teenage souls. Admissions gatekeepers seem omniscient and all-powerful to their applicants, but they’re not. Most of the few thousand professionals at America’s top universities stumbled into their admissions jobs. Turnover rates are high, with most first-time counselors exiting the profession within two years. Many campuses outsource their admissions file review to noncounselor readers paid $15–20 an hour.

No high school student dreams of enrolling at college to work in the office that makes admissions decisions. I’ve yet to read or assist with a college essay that declares working in admissions is their dream job. There is no typical academic major that leads to an admissions position, so it isn’t an obvious career choice. Most college admissions counselors were mediocre students themselves.

Elite universities have traded the pre–twentieth-century doctrine of admission by your family’s pedigree for a more insidious gospel of meritocracy supposedly open to anyone demonstrating sufficient talent. Merit-based holistic review distorts incentives for students to pursue their genuine interests. A distorted value system paradoxically makes it more difficult for universities to select for the very qualities they purport to seek: sincerity, curiosity, and internal motivation.

Yale Professor Daniel Markovits warns that “meritocracy traps entire generations inside demeaning fears and inauthentic ambitions: always hungry, never finding, or even knowing, the right food.”

Like religion, a holistic review meritocracy mandates that prospective applicants’ beliefs, behaviors, and decisions flow into a single point: Am I pleasing the admissions gods?

Students who don’t know the rules or refuse to play the credentials-accumulation game and spend their time freely will not be rewarded for their efforts. Parents sometimes apologize to me because their children play too many video games, the implicit assumption being that their hobby is a missed opportunity to build their college resume. Even video games are emerging as a pathway to college admissions and scholarships as the eSports industry booms. Unstructured play and hobby time without adult supervision or college admissions consequences are increasingly rare or nonexistent in affluent communities.

Adherents bow down to the admissions regulations and surrender themselves to whatever it takes to enter the hallowed grounds of Harvard Yard. They prostrate themselves to multibillion-dollar institutions in 650 words or less for the honor of incurring five- and six-figures debt. Substituting the eucharist’s wine for M&Ms and Diet Coke, admission gatekeepers are modern-day high priests who deliberate on Zoom and around closed-door conference tables. Their pulpit is your mailbox and inbox, and their holy texts are a catalog of glossy brochures and spammy emails.

Like the Pope appearing on Easter Sunday, the admissions high priests dust off their Doritos Cool Ranch finger dust, rise from their Excel sheets, and press Run Program.

Behold! Your admissions decisions!

And the applicant masses scramble to make sense of the latest revelations.

Admissions high priests take themselves so seriously, but when you take a more detached view of their gospel and rituals, you realize how it’s absurd, silly, ridiculous, bizarre, nonsensical, and downright wacky. Laughter can often be the best medicine. It might also be your only option for preserving your sanity.

Taking a step back, rolling your eyes, and mocking your college applications might help reframe the anxiety and indirectly improve your admissions chances. I used to believe college admissions memes shared among students were immature and unproductive, but I understand now that they give expression to fears and offer catharsis. Memes and mockery are a powerful form of resistance.

Many families believe these admissions fictions, accepting blindly that what the admissions high priests say gives them their power at the expense of your independence of thought. Universities claim to seek innovative thinkers and community disrupters, yet applicants are expected to have unquestioned faith in a highly unfair admissions system. You’re less likely to question the rules and pay the application fees if you perceive their expectations as legitimate and the rules fair. Their reassurances of fairness are nothing except public relations speak to cover for their revenue-generating agendas.

Elite universities do not care about you.