The Holistic admissions process continues to change the factors that matter in the admissions process at the vast majority of colleges and universities. With the elimination of Affirmative Action and advances in technology, changes have only increased with each college increasingly more individual in how they evaluate their applicants.
For many families, the revelations about character and applicant personality playing an important role in the admissions process at Harvard in the 2023 Fair Admissions vs Harvard case were a surprise. The reality is that while their popularity has increased, consultancies like AACRAO have been helping colleges understand and implement non-cognitive variables in their admissions processes for some time. In a recent survey by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), 70% of admissions officers said that they consider personal qualities to be an important factor when selecting applicants. In fact, NACAC’s new Character Focus Initiative’s goal is to pursue the potential evaluation of character traits and other non-academic skills in college admissions. Part of the reason for the increased focus is their fall 2023 survey which showed 66% of admissions respondents highlighting character as a moderate or considerable factor in admissions decisions. In the survey, admissions representatives consider character to be a bigger factor than essays, interest, recommendations, extracurricular activity, standardized tests and work experience.
While consultants can help train admissions representatives to look for specific personality traits, AI and technology are also increasingly playing a role. The University of Miami reflects the changing way information is collected. “We seek traits to spot individuals who’ve conquered challenges. While we still need human judgment, AI can efficiently sift through huge applicant pools.” Schools like Northwestern who highlights desirable personal traits on their website, the UC system and their PIQS essays and Carnegie Mellon who has mentioned traits and presented on the subject are more obvious examples of schools that care about applicant personality but there are many others. Representatives of The University of Michigan, The University of Minnesota, The University of Pennsylvania and Pomona sit on the Character Focus Initiatives Advisory Council. Importantly, the methods of determining character are changing with software vendors and AI tools from organizations like Student Select gaining interest.
Essays, letters of recommendation, outreach to representatives and interviews are all mentioned as the sources representatives and AI models look at to determine character traits. For savvy students, understanding the character traits a school cares about and highlighting the ones they have in all communication with the school is a way to advantage oneself in the process. While we can tell applicants what personality traits individual schools value and how they find and keep records of them, some schools are fairly transparent about their process and the applicant profiles they are looking for on their websites. For many parts of the admissions process spending time on your target college websites well in advance of applying is an activity that can increase admissions odds. The reality is that even with the resurgence of standardized testing at some elite schools, applicant personality traits are increasingly important and need to be accounted for in every student’s admissions process.
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