The challenge: read three stu-dents’ undergraduate appli-cations and then, with clearreasoning, describe whichkid you’d pick to proudly

pull on a maize-and-blue University ofMichigan T-shirt. Each application is atleast twenty pages long and includes threerevealing and possibly controversial es-says. The students are a low-incomeAfrican American girl from the Midwestwho works twenty hours a week as aKroger bagger; a privileged white boyfrom the East Coast whose grandfatherwas his role model; and a Chinese Ameri-can girl in Hawaii who came to the UnitedStates against her will five years ago. Thisis not a game: these are real 2003 applica-tions, part of a packet that U-M admis-sions officials use to train high schoolguidance counselors—and, in this case, ajournalist—in how they made 21,000 un-dergraduate application decisions last year.

Until recently, getting into the Collegeof Literature, Science, and the Arts (LS&A)was an exercise in number crunching. Highschool grades, test scores, and other factors

were ranked on a work sheet and yielded a“selection index.” Grades were the biggestcontributor, but under the affirmative ac-tion system then in use, being a member ofan underrepresented racial or ethnic minor-ity group was worth an extra twenty points.

That all changed in June 2003, whenthe Supreme Court ruled against the U-Min Gratz v. Bollinger. Filed by a conserva-tive group on behalf of a white woman, thelawsuit argued that LS&A’s affirmative ac-tion system was itself illegal racial discrim-ination. The Court agreed. However, in asecond case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the jus-tices upheld a different admissions systemused by the U-M Law School.

So in a matter of months, LS&A devel-oped new admissions procedures similarto the Law School’s. The application nowasks students for more information, in-cluding three essays totaling 1,000 words.At the admissions office, points went outin favor of a “holistic” review process, inwhich all characteristics are consideredflexibly in the context of the student’s en-tire file.

To read all those files, the office used

sixteen part-time employees, almost all ofthem retired high school teachers or ad-ministrators. Under the old system, readerswere given just half a day of training; thisyear’s hires spent a full week reviewingdozens of real applications from the previ-ous year. Called “norming,” the processwas designed to produce consistent deci-sions. Senior admissions management first“normed” themselves by discussing thestrengths and failings of students in the ap-plications until their ratings were reason-ably consistent. They then led counselorsand readers in the process, which is nowrepeated each fall.

In 1998, when asked how important stu-dent essays were in admission decisions,the U-M gave them the next-to-lowestrating—“considered.” In 2005, when askedthe same question, the U-M said essayswere “important.” But it said recommen-dations, standardized test scores, talent/ability, character / personal qualities, stateresidency, and minority status were also“important”—and it rated students’ sec-ondary school records as “very important.”

Nonetheless, most students take the es-says very seriously. One student who wasadmitted last year says that he thoughtabout each question for a week before writ-ing the essays. Another says he wrotequickly but kept revising for a month. Yetanother says he got up in the middle of thenight to answer a question about how hewould contribute to a diverse campus. “I’mnot usually into writing,” he remembers,“but I felt like I had to write about how thecornfields in my hometown symbolizedwalls to me . . . walls keeping out diversity.”

He was perfectly sincere, but he’d alsosolved a riddle that troubles many appli-cants: what to say about diversity whenyou don’t belong to an underrepresentedminority. Two Community High Schoolstudents I spoke with—one a white male,the other an Asian female—admittedstruggling over the diversity essay, be-cause they knew that white males andAsians were already well represented atthe U-M.

In their cases, the struggles were evi-dently successful: both were admitted. So

The U-M picks its freshman class.

September 2005 ANN ARBOR OBSERVER 1

by Debbie Merion

The U-M receives more than 20,000 undergrad applications a year.Associate admissions director Sally Lindsley estimates that her

staff spend more than an hour on every one before the decision-making process even begins.

Last year alone, associate admissions director Chris Lucier reviewedmore than 3,000 applications.

PHOTOS J. ADRIAN WYLIE

2 ANN ARBOR OBSERVER September 2005

continued

how do those 1,000 words affect an appli-cant’s chances?

From her U-M application,seventeen-year-old “Anne”looks like a good bet in arace against the Energizerbunny. She has a 3.5 grade

point average in the eleventh grade at aprivate school; plays point guard on thebasketball team; holds office in theAfrican American, step dancing, and Ital-ian clubs at her school; and works halftime at Kroger. After school, while hermother works one of two jobs, Anne takescare of a younger, disabled sibling.

As I scan the seventy-five pieces ofbiographical data presented in nine-pointtype, my eyes quickly glaze over. TheU-M’s “applicant profile” reminds me ofthe dense sheets of important but coded in-formation that Realtors create for housesthey’re trying to sell. I know, of course,that higher is better in important numberslike GPA and test scores, but I’m not surehow low they can go and still be acceptable.So I focus instead on familiar territory—words—and start to read the essays, Anne’shandwritten application, and teacher andcounselor recommendations.

Apparently I’ve stumbled across a notuncommon technique. Ted Spencer, theU-M’s undergraduate admissions director,says he, too, occasionally leaves the num-bers for the end. “I build a story withoutknowing any of the data points,” he says.“So I don’t know if the test score is 1500or 15. I don’t know if their GPA is 2.5 or afour-point. But what I know is that, as Iread this—all this subjective informa-tion—I have an idea about this student.And I only go at the end of that and lookat, well, what are the grades?” Nine timesout of ten, Spencer says, there will be astrong correlation between the student’sgrades and test scores and the rest of theinformation in the application.

Anne’s diversity essay begins, “I am aunique individual with many wonderfulqualities and skills to bring to your campus.My background offers diversity in every as-pect, and my culture adds to the melting potof the people here. I am an African Ameri-can woman with strong opinions and viewson many different subjects.”

What were those many wonderful qual-ities? I wonder. What were her strongopinions on many different subjects? Heressay never explains.

Associate director Chris Lucier agreesabout Anne’s essays. “They don’t do any-thing for me. They don’t stand out,” hesays. “I think they’re adequately written,but there is nothing that really flows fromthem.”

The diversity question, Lucier admits,“causes the most angst.” His favorite re-sponse “was from a young man from ruralOhio, who has worked on his grandparents’egg farm since he was in eighth grade. . . .He talks about his summer job as an eggpicker, and he talks about what an egg pick-er does and all that—and the ending is that, you know, ‘I don’t think you have toomany egg pickers at the University ofMichigan!’And you know, he was right!”

U-M officials are a little jittery aboutproviding such examples, though, for fearof creating a formula. They don’t want fu-ture applicants to assume that, in TedSpencer’s words, “I need to be an eggpicker [to be admitted] next year.”

Applicants do “try to psych out that es-say,” says Julie Peterson, the U-M’s asso-ciate vice-president for media relationsand public affairs. “ ‘What do they meanby “diversity”? Do they really want me totalk about minorities? And I’m not a mi-nority, so I’m not really sure how I can an-swer this question.’

“First of all, we don’t have to use theessay as a replacement for a questionabout race,” Peterson points out. “We askstudents for their race or ethnicity right onthe application, because the Court decisionallows us to do that. And second of all, wedefine diversity broadly. So for us, diversi-ty could be someone who taught sign lan-guage to deaf students—or somebody whosees the cornfields as walls. Studentsshouldn’t hear the word diversity and thinkthat that is somehow only talking aboutrace and ethnicity.”

Chris Lucier’s analysis of the rest ofAnne’s qualifications reminds me of theguy on Ed Sullivan’s show who used tokeep dozens of plates spinning on poles:Lucier touches one part of the applicationand then rushes to touch another part,cross-checking back and forth, evaluating,balancing, reacting. Lucier needs to movefast, and with precision. Last year alone hereviewed 3,000 applications.

Thanks to her mom’s two jobs, finan-cial aid, and her own part-time work atKroger, Anne was able to attend what Luci-er calls “a fairly good parochial school.” Hebases that judgment on the school’s medi-

an SAT scores (990–1210), the number ofadvanced placement and honors classes of-fered (nine, ten), the percentage of studentswho go on to four-year colleges (99), andthe colleges they attend (“some great uni-versities such as MIT, NYU, and Yale”).

Anne’s grades aren’t a problem: “Shehas a 3.5 [out of 4.0] GPA at a pretty goodschool. [The U-M recalculates all gradepoint averages, omitting nonacademic sub-jects and ninth-grade grades.] Her math[SAT score] is a 460, so there’s some con-cern here.” But then he looks at her mathgrades and sees all As and Bs. “Okay!” he

says. “So in the classroomshe does pretty well inmath, but she doesn’t testwell.

“I do notice that she hada D-plus and a C inphysics honors last year.That’s of some concern. . .

. I look at chemistry, and she had an A and aB. I look at biology; she had an A and an A-minus. So what happened in physics? Don’tknow. Might not have time to actually diginto that. Maybe the counselor will addressit for us; maybe they won’t. That’s the im-portance sometimes of counselor input.” Ifnot for those poor physics grades, he calcu-lates mentally, “she’d probably have closerto a 3.8.”

He notes her extracurriculars and thecolleges her siblings are attending (they’reall in good schools: Northwestern, OhioState, the U-M). “Now,” Lucier asks, “doyou think she could be successful at theUniversity of Michigan? Not at a 4.0. . . .Can this student graduate with a 2.8 to 3.0at the University of Michigan?”

“Is that how you make the decision?” Iask.

“Absolutely. That’s the first questionalways, because that is what defines aqualified candidate from an unqualifiedcandidate. We do not admit any unquali-fied candidates, no matter their race, theirethnicity, their background.”

Lucier and I are talking in a conference

room at the Student Activities Building. Inthe U-M’s real world of application re-views, Anne’s application might be sittingon a reader’s dining table with a coffee-cupstain circling her GPA. Each reader takeshome sixty applications each week, spend-ing approximately twenty minutes on each.When the application is not living with areader, it lives in the basement of the Stu-dent Activities Building, safely doublelocked in a file cabinet surrounded by aneight-foot chain-link fence and guarded bystuffed monkeys who hang outside—as ifhoping, like the students, to get in.

The reader, chosen at random, scribblescomments on a yellow Freshman Applica-tion Rating Sheet and gives an applicationone of fifteen ratings—from HA+, for“high admit plus,” down through D–, for“deny minus.” If an application falls any-where between those extremes, a full-timeadmissions counselor who is familiar withthe schools in the student’s area reads theapplication independently and adds his orher own rating—without knowing the firstreader’s response. The application thengoes to a senior admissions staff membersuch as Chris Lucier, who resolves anydisagreements between the readers and se-lects the final rating. In the rare case inwhich the staff person can’t decide, the ap-plication goes to a committee that includesfaculty members from the school the stu-dent is applying to.

I still haven’t answered Lucier’s ques-tion about whether “Anne” can succeed atMichigan. “I think she can,” I say, butwithout a great deal of conviction. I’m newat this, and not sure I want to vote withouttalking about the other two first.

The second student, “Mason,”is the white boy from the EastCoast. He’s written a very poi-gnant essay about his grand-father, whom he calls Papa:

Papa has been one of my most significantinfluences in my life. He was a selfless indi-vidual. I can think of countless exampleswhere he put the needs of others before hisown, but the one I cherish most occurredduring a family vacation to Seattle. Unfortu-nately, I became ill the night we were plan-ning to see a Seattle Mariners’ game. Papa,who had been looking forward to the gamefor weeks, didn’t think twice about giving uphis ticket to stay with me. I think about thisoften when I miss outings with friends to de-liver Meals on Wheels. . . .

A lump forms in my throat after I readMason’s essays. This, I feel sure, is a goodthing for Mason. I check the one-pagesheet of “reading tips” that was includedwith the applications:

Does the essay tell you something aboutthe student beyond the transcript? What didyou learn? What qualities or talents does thestudent reveal? Do you hear the student’svoice? Do you get a sense of the student as aperson? Have they done an effective job oftelling their story? Are the grammar,spelling, and punctuation correct?

Mason’s school, in Washington, D.C.,sends 99 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges, including some excellent oneslike Georgetown, MIT, Yale, and Penn. Ithas higher average SATs than Anne’s school

Admissions director Ted Spencer sometimes bypasses a student’sgrades and test scores when he first reads an application. When hegoes back to check, Spencer says, nine times out of ten there’s a

strong correlation between the scores and the rest of the information.

does, and more AP classes—nineteen. Luciercounts them and seems impressed.

Mason’s GPA, 3.3, is lower than Anne’s.Lucier begins to compare Mason’s scoreswith the fiftieth percentile of U-M studentscores: “He’s lower than in our medianband, but he goes to a pretty good highschool, so that’s something to take intoconsideration. His highest SAT is a 1270,which is in the U of M’s median band.”

He thinks out loud, trying to decidewhat he thinks about Mason’s classes:“Given the richness of the curriculum thatis available to him, I’m not sure he haschallenged it as much as the first applicanthas.” But then he tallies Mason’s AP andhonors classes and reconsiders. “Okay,he’s working hard. Now he’s a child ofprivilege. He goes to a private school. Doyou hold that against him? He goes to agreat school, and he’s got a good SAT. . . .I take a look at the extracurriculars, and Ifind that he’s in the band, he plays severalinstruments, he’s in sports, National Hon-or Society. He’s a well-rounded kid.”

In one of his essays, Mason writesabout being adopted and how that gavehim mixed feelings about abortion:“Abortion is such a controversial and di-visive issue in this country and it is onethat I grapple with constantly. I respect therights of women and I do believe theyshould have the right to choose but I havetrouble with the ease and prevalence ofabortion in our society.”

“I think he’s honest,” Lucier says afterreading this. “He does do a little better jobat giving us insight into how he thinks. . . .He’s a seventeen-year-old male who’ssaying, ‘I’m adopted, and I can under-stand both sides, and I don’t know where Ifall.’ That’s pretty fair, I think.

“Now, I’m not asking you for your po-litical views, but if he had said, ‘I strong-ly oppose abortion [Lucier punctuates thisby pounding the table with every word],’and you support abortion, you have totake yourself out of your personal identi-fication as much as you can and say, ‘Isthat student reflecting what he believesin?’

“Is that student as good to have in aclassroom as someone who vehementlysupports abortion? Absolutely, becausewhat colleges are is a safe—well, we hopewith the University of Michigan—is a safetime that you can have these discussions . . .where students can broaden their views orstrengthen things they already believe in.”

“A lot of our time is working to try anddiscuss these things and mitigate them.Can you mitigate completely who you arewhen you go through these files? Absolute-ly not. That’s why we send them throughmore than one review.”

English lecturer Caroline Eisner trainsadmissions staff members on what to lookfor in essays. When she asked them whatthey thought went into a good essay, shesays, many emphasized “originality, cre-ativity, and risk taking. On the other endwe got academic writing skills—grammar,mechanics.”

How far can a student go in being arisk taker before the essay becomes a dealbreaker? One U-M freshman I spoke withwrote his essay on how he “got in troublefor drinking.” Another student, who was

admitted, wrote about how she handled aslight on a class trip, running along thebeach until she was exhausted.

Dick Tobin, the college counselor atGreenhills School, warns it’s possible togo too far: “If alarm bells go off in anadult, that’s probably worth paying atten-tion to. In some ways you don’t knowhow an essay will play at the other end. InThe Gatekeepers, by Jacques Steinberg, inwhich a reporter was given access to Wes-leyan admissions for a year, a girl con-fessed that she had laced brownies withpot and wrote about what she had learned.They didn’t take her because they thoughtthere was a drug risk.”

The third student, “Victoria,”is also impressive. Hercounselor writes, “She didwell on the national APtest, attaining ‘qualified’

status. What makes her achievement moreremarkable is that she moved to Hawaiifrom Hong Kong just four years ago. Shemastered these demanding essays in hersecond language, English!”

Her school is not as good as Anne’s orMason’s—Lucier describes it as a “privatebut not overly rigorous high school.” Henotes its average SAT (999), the numberof honors courses offered (11), and thepercentage of students who attend four-year colleges (80).

Diversity worked in her favor, though:“She goes to school in Honolulu. We don’tget many students from Hawaii. That

would be taken into consideration.” Howmuch consideration, I wonder? “We haveno guidelines,” Lucier answers.

She had a GPA of 3.4 through eleventhgrade, but she applied late in the process,so her first-quarter grades in twelfth gradewere also included—“which were notgood.” She has four Cs. Admittedly, shewas taking three AP classes plus advanced

physics: “She is challenging herself,”Lucier says. Then he comes across herACT scores and stops. “She has an 11subscore in English—the top is 36—and a490 in verbal [SAT]. I have significantconcerns about her English proficiency,given the fact that she got a C and B ineleventh grade and so far as a senior shehas a C in English.”

Her ship is going down. Will her essayor the recommendations float it back up tothe top? Lucier can’t remember any essaythat was so good that it changed his mindand took a student from a low to a highrating. “But,” he asks rhetorically, “can anessay make a difference? Absolutely!”

Victoria’s essay on what she wouldbring to a diverse campus begins, “Withmy positive attitude and willingness towork hard and learn, I believe that I couldmake a difference at the University ofMichigan.” Someone underlined “workhard and learn” on my copy. But Lucierisn’t impressed: “I see sometimes studentswrite, ‘I’m a hard worker.’ Well, we oftentell students, ‘Tell us something we don’tknow—if you’ve gotten great grades andyou’ve taken good courses and you’vedone extracurriculars, I’ve probably figuredout already that you’re a hard worker, andyou’re not telling me something differentfrom the other twenty-three thousand stu-dents who have also applied to Michiganand have also been hard workers.’ ”

Victoria continues, unwittingly reveal-ing her language problem:

As a bilingual student, I know a languagebarrier can really be a stumble rock in learn-ing. There, after going through all the strug-gles of adopting English from Chinese in thematter of three years, I’m ready to reach outto those who are really to break their lan-guage barrier and learn. For instance, as Ispent my junior year summer at UCLA sum-mer school, I helped several students fromHong Kong Chinese University to preparefor finals by making a small study group and

translating some difficult materials into Can-tonese. And I am proudly to say that, withmy help and their effort in working hard,they all pass their final exam.

“She’s trying to give me some lightinto her background,” says Lucier, “some-thing obviously important to her—hertransition to the U.S.—so you know a lit-tle more about her. But her writing is notengaging. It’s a good story, but it’s not thatgrabbing.” He touches his heart.

How important are grammatical errors?“Although you think you’re trying to readfor overall content, you can never getaway in writing from the fact that struc-ture, grammar, and spelling are important,”says Lucier. “A student who submits an es-say with a lot of errors, particularly in theage of spell checkers—it’s, like, how harddid this student really work on this essay?”

Applicants’ timing can affect theirchances, too. The U-M has “rolling” ad-missions, making decisions continuouslyfrom September through mid-April—andadmissions standards can vary slightlyfrom week to week. A committee calledthe Enrollment Working Group meets pe-riodically to discuss how deep to reachinto the next pool of applicants.

Last year the U-M admitted 62 percentof its first-time, first-year applicants, and45 percent of those accepted actually en-rolled. The tricky part is that students’ like-lihood to attend varies with their GPAs,their test scores, and whether they comefrom out of state. The U-M tracks thesestatistics as “yield rates” and takes theminto account when deciding how far downthe rating scale to go in any given batch ofapplicants. The highest of the fifteen rat-ings is high-admit-plus, but the universitymight, for example, admit down to thesecond-highest score (high admit) or eventhe third highest (high-admit-minus) atany point. Wait-listed students’ applica-tions continue to be evaluated throughoutthe cycle, so the sooner applicants diveinto the pool, the better their chances ofeventually landing at the U-M.

So who got in? (MichiganMarching Band drum roll,please.) Anne got the colorfulnine-by-twelve envelope witha color photograph of Angell

Hall on the cover, informing her that shewas accepted. Both Mason and Victoriareceived the plain, slightly dingy business-size envelope that goes to students whoare wait-listed or denied.

I understood why Victoria didn’t makeit. With her developing English skills, it’shard to imagine her being a successful stu-dent at the U-M. As for Mason, in anotheryear he might have gotten in, and maybeeven Victoria, says Chris Lucier. “It’s al-ways based on the total applicant pool.”

The U-M’s quest for diversity workedin Anne’s favor, as it did for Victoria. “Wetake note of your race when we’re lookingat admissions,” says Peterson. “So wemight select a student who looks interest-ing to us in part because they’re a racialminority.” African American enrollmentdropped sharply in 2004, the first class se-lected under the new system, mainly be-

September 2005 ANN ARBOR OBSERVER 3PHOTO J. ADRIAN WYLIE

Stuffed monkeys guard the locked cage where applications are stored.Last year, the U-M admitted 62 percent of its first-time, first-year

applicants, and of those, 45 percent actually enrolled.

4 ANN ARBOR OBSERVER September 2005

cause fewer black students applied. Af-ter intensified outreach efforts, applica-tions bounced back this year, andAfrican American students make up justover 7 percent of this fall’s incomingclass.

As on the applications, the numbersdon’t tell the whole story. Last year’sclass was bigger than expected, becausethe yield rate improved—that is, moreapplicants accepted the U-M’s offers of ad-mission. As a school, says Julie Peterson,“we’re hot.” During the peak season, fromThanksgiving through the February 1deadline, incoming applications fill asmany as three brown duffel-size mail-bags a day, in addition to those comingthrough on-line. Associate admissionsdirector Sally Lindsley estimates that ad-missions staff spend more than an houron every one—mostly creating the appli-cant profile and recalculating the GPA—before it’s ever seen by a reader.

Even when things are busiest, ChrisLucier says, the readers never skip theessays. Ted Spencer calls them an op-portunity for students to write “the sto-ries they want to tell about themselves.”And when I got the senior U-M admis-sions directors to talk about memorableessays they’d read, some varied storiesemerged. One student analyzed differentstyles of tennis shoes, comparing themto different colleges; another describedteaching fellow students to produce asign-language play for a nearby schoolof the deaf. There was a boy who al-ways wore yellow to distinguish himselffrom his twin brother, who hated yellow,and another who offered his red hair ashis contribution to diversity at the U-M.One girl had lived in eighteen towns andsaw her mother as her role model andher variety of hometowns as one of herstrengths; another girl, who was classpresident, talked about how she becamea leader.

Many of the most memorable anec-dotes described colors or objects. That’sconsistent with a tip in Michael JamesMason’s How to Write a Winning Col-lege Application Essay: “Give your au-dience pictures that say who and whatyou are.”

Of course, it’s hard to know howmuch weight to give a single piece ofadvice in a single book: according to arecent Wall Street Journal story on ad-mission essays, Mason’s is just one of202 such guides available onamazon.com. But it’s perhaps tellingthat the Journal article featured a girlwho wrote on her college applicationthat if she were a shoe, it would be pink,with a very pointy toe, a flared heel,straps, and a diamond buckle.

Can a memorable essay like that tipthe scales for an applicant? Because theU-M decides “holistically,” we’ll neverknow for sure. But a colorful essay thatreveals a student’s best qualities can, atleast, paint a strong picture in the read-er’s mind.n