Inside the Admissions Selection Committee

Admissions Beat

Ever wonder how admissions officers decide which applicants to invite to join the incoming class? Jacques Steinberg, who wrote a New York Times best-seller, “The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College,” based on a year of reporting at Wesleyan two decades ago, recently spent a day behind the closed doors of Dartmouth’s undergraduate admissions selection committee. In this week’s episode, he and host Lee Coffin, Dartmouth’s dean of admissions and financial aid, discuss what Steinberg saw and heard, as Coffin and colleagues considered, debated and voted on the applications of dozens of candidates for the Class of 2027. Among the factors the admissions officers weighed: the narratives, personal as well as academic, that emerged from the various components of the students’ applications.