Decisions 101, the Admits!

“The Admits” comprise a family of variations on the theme of:  YAY!  You’re in!  There’s the ordinary admit, the King of Decisions — you’re in, and there’s no fine print!  But some of our admitted students will need to read the fine print, and today’s post is to help in deciphering it.

By “fine print,” I’m talking about conditions that we may attach to the offer of admission.  Conditions that, based on information provided by the applicant in the application, and our own best judgment, we believe will give the incoming student the best possible chance of academic success.  The most frequently employed conditions require that before starting Fletcher classes, the applicant should:  improve foreign language proficiency; improve English language proficiency; or improve quantitative skills (MIB students only).

A more substantive condition:  We’ll occasionally (a dozen or fewer people each year) admit applicants for a future class, asking them to obtain a year’s professional experience before they enroll.  These “delay admits” would be strong students, generally graduating this year, who will gain so much more from Fletcher if they have some work experience behind them, and they will be admitted for the September 2012 semester.

Not exactly a condition, but still in the admit family:  Occasionally, we admit applicants to a program other than the one to which they applied.  Most common example:  You applied to the mid-career MA program, but you don’t have sufficient experience to be admitted.  For the MALD program, on the other hand, you’re looking good, so we’ll admit you to the MALD!  (There’s similar thinking behind offering MALD admission to a tiny number of PhD applicants who lack the master’s level study to enter the PhD program directly.)

Our process would certainly be simpler if there were only one type of admit, but the option to attach a condition to admission is the difference between admit and deny for some applicants.  We would hate to turn away a highly qualified applicant who needs a little brush-up of English skills, but we would be obliged to do so if we couldn’t be sure he would pursue a language program.

The happy bottom line is that conditional admission is (once the condition is met) admission.  And we’re convinced that fulfilling the condition will enhance the admitted student’s experience at Fletcher.  So The Admits will carry on as a big happy family, sometimes with conditions attached.