Having just completed two very eventful Parent Preview days, I feel like I am ready to gear up for another exciting admissions season.  I very much enjoy interviewing prospective students, meeting parents and reading application files.  Even as educational competition has increased, CA remains in an enviable position: our application numbers are very healthy, and we are fortunate to have many excellent candidates from which to choose.  Prospective students and their families often ask me what we are looking for when we are reading through files and making decisions on applicants.  There is no easy answer to this question, as we consider many different variables in the process.  (Competitive colleges and universities approach their admissions process in much the same way.)  In the Upper School committee, we are certainly looking for strong transcripts, a reasonable track record in standardized testing, a demonstrated interest in athletics and the arts or other things outside the traditional classroom, interesting personal statements that demonstrate a student’s ability to express him or herself in writing, and a clear sense of why an applicant thinks CA would be a good match.  We also read applicants’ teacher recommendations very carefully, hoping to find evidence of students who are engaged in their education in a way that makes them a joy to have in the classroom.  Regardless of their achievement in classes, students who exhibit effort and perseverance are always looked upon positively.  Ultimately, especially when we are looking at next year’s freshman group, we are building a class.  We want a motivated, dynamic group of kids representing a diversity of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, interests, previous school experiences, and perspectives.  We of course also take into consideration the nature of our current CA 8^th grade class, the vast majority of whom will be staying on to enter the Upper School.  Students that we add to the mix in 9^th grade must complement the group of students already here.

 

This is certainly no easy undertaking.  Further complicating our task is the fact that these students are still young and relatively “unformed.”  They are still growing and maturing, and when you also consider the inevitable vicissitudes of adolescent development, you can see that we are faced with the daunting task of trying to predict what kind of high school student a current 13 or 14 year old will become.  I’d like to think our professional experiences and the student’s own past history help guide us to make very good decisions, but nevertheless admissions work is an inexact science to be sure.  There is no formula to guarantee admission, nor should there be.

 

The current senior class includes many students I helped to admit.  In many cases I can recall what was said about these students in their files, what they said about themselves, and what promise I saw in each of them.  It has been incredibly gratifying to watch these students mature and grow throughout the past three or four years.  Some grew in ways we might have predicted; others went in different directions.  (The boys especially grew physically in ways we could only imagine!  What happened to all those small boys of four years ago?)  But all have found their niche in positive and productive ways and have fulfilled the potential we saw in them.  Time flies but the changes brought by time are amazing to see.  I look forward to welcoming the class of ’19 next September.