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Let me first say that reading applications is hands-down my favorite part of admission work. It’s such a sacred window into the hearts, minds, and values of what I think is a truly impressive generation. Gen Z’s global awareness, their investment in equity and justice, their can-do attitudes – these convictions are all quite aligned with ������̳’s own values. 

If you’re engaged in the college search at ������̳ or anywhere else, it’s likely you’ve encountered the phrase “holistic application review.” It is, perhaps, the most overused phrase in college admissions. But what do we really mean by it? Let’s break it down. 

I have to start by reframing “holistic review” – I invite you to think of it instead as “human review.” That’s because here at ������̳, as at many liberal arts colleges, our aim is to understand you not just as an academic performer, but as a whole human, one shaped by the multiple, rich contexts in which you exist. Who are you in the context of your family? Of your community? Who are you with your peers? In your school setting? What opportunities may or may not have been available to you because of these contexts? How did you leverage the opportunities you did have? And – very importantly – how have the life experiences that emerged from these contexts informed your values and aspirations? 

We can find the answers to all of those questions in your application. Our core job as application readers is to synthesize these details to paint the fullest picture not only of your past accomplishments, but your future potential for success at our institution.  If you were to sit in our admissions committee room, you’d hear us refer to this combination of achievement and potential as “spark.”  We might apply that term to the student who had more limited academic opportunity but reads much wiser than her years, one whose leadership capacity and convictions leap off the page, or one whose quest for knowledge feels insatiable. We pay attention to what the summative feel of an application tells us about a student’s spark, intellectual curiosity, and convictions because these qualities have long been the hallmark of a ������̳ student. I like to think of that detective work as the art of holistic application reading. 

But there’s a science to the work, too – which ensures that admission offices are reading with consistency across applications. So when I or one of my Admissions Counselors open a file, we evaluate the academic components of a student’s application first, things like the transcript and the school profile, test scores if submitted. Now, lots of students think we distill academics to a single metric: their GPA or SAT scores. We don’t.