Playing the University Admissions Game

I was in my third year as Director of Admissions at Western Washington State College 40 years ago, when our head basketball coach approached me one Saturday afternoon while I was painting my front porch.

“Hey, Dick, can I give you a hand?”

I couldn’t believe he drove over on a weekend just to help me paint, so I politely turned him down.
“No thanks, coach. What’s up?”

He told me he was recruiting a very talented kid whose high school grades were questionable. He asked if I could get him in, since he was not only a “helluva good basketball player,” but a “really nice kid.” He said he’d like to bring him in to meet me. I told him I couldn’t make any promises, but I’d be happy to talk to him.

Early Monday morning the two of them appeared at the door to my office. I noticed the young recruit, whose name was Tom, had to duck his head as he entered the room.

After Coach Randall excused himself, I asked Tom what came hardest for him in high school. He told me his most difficult subjects were the ones requiring a “lot of reading and writing.” I told him there was a lot of that going on here, but he could get some practice doing that at a two-year community college before coming here. To my astonishment, he agreed.

I thought of Tom a few days ago, after watching Academy Award-winning actress Felicity Huffman walk away from her two-week stay in prison. She’d been in there for paying someone to correct her daughter’s mistakes on the SAT to buy her daughter’s way into the University of Southern California. Huffman admitted she had gamed the admissions system, a system I spent 30 years enforcing at three universities.

Today’s admission scandals, ranging from cheating on tests, to bribing university officials, are alien to my own experience as a gatekeeper to higher education. At Western Coach Randall put very little pressure on me to do what may have helped his team but hurt a young man’s future.

The pressure I felt for making admissions exceptions came from applicants, parents, friends, faculty and the occasional state legislator. On only one occasion was my decision overturned by a higher authority.

When I shared my experience at Western with a colleague, Purdue University’s director of admissions at the time, he just laughed at my innocence of big time athletics. In his world, recruits were promised admission and scholarships by the athletic department. No need for student athletes to begin with admissions applications.

The greatest challenge of my career in admissions began on November 4, 1987, when Western’s president, together with two vice presidents, died in a small plane crash. In addition to the shock and grieving to the University community, the tragedy brought national attention that caused admissions applications to soar.

Struggling to handle them in a timely manner required me to take unusual steps to control enrollment, including adhering strictly to application deadlines and raising standards. The pressure to make exceptions came from all directions. It was the only time in my career that someone asked if there was anything they could do for me personally to change my mind.

After 16 years at Western, which did not offer athletic scholarships, I took the same job at Indiana State University, which did. I arrived there ten years after All-American Larry Bird brought national attention to the basketball program in the NCAA championship game.

The ISU athletic department was far more interested in my admissions decisions. Fortunately, Indiana State had a learning skills center that provided help for “conditional admits” who needed help to succeed in the classroom. The University had a history of serving first generation college students, which supported my admissions exceptions. Many student athletes fit into that category.

After eight years at Indiana State I accepted a similar position at California State University San Marcos. The school had no athletic teams at the time. My boss, the vice president for academic affairs, supported my decisions, except for the time the president entered my office with a transfer student I had denied in tow. With a broad smile on his face, he asked me, “Hey Richard, I think we can find a place here for this young man, don’t you?”

I agreed. The student had sweet-talked his way into President Stacy’s heart and into the university.   

My experience has been entirely with public universities with moderate admission standards, designed only to identify students who are prepared to succeed in college, based on high school grades (the best predictors of college grades), and standardized test scores.

More selective universities use grades, test scores, essays, personal experience, ethnicity, and children and grandchildren of graduates (legacy students) to choose their entering classes.

Follow the money. Those are the universities most susceptible to cheating in the admissions game.