Admissions Committee winds down

The Committee portion of our admissions process concluded late last week, which makes now a good time to update readers a bit on this year’s process. Admissions Committee is a high point of our annual cycle, though it’s also a fair amount of work that involves coordinating lots of busy schedules. We’re fortunate to have a process that involves both faculty and current students, and it’s an opportunity to get to know them and work together in a unique context. As always, it’s a rewarding process, and provides our applicants with the care and attention they deserve. It’s also an excuse to order in lunch!

“Committee cases” are typically those applications that have many of the fundamental pieces needed to succeed at Fletcher, but which have a notable shortcoming or two (such as limited professional experience, or a bit of a bumpy academic record). In some cases readers of an application have differed markedly in their assessments, and in others all readers agree that they’re not quite sure what to recommend. The strength of the Admissions Committee is in the variety of voices around the table, and in the capacity of group discussion to produce consensus. I always feel confident that our process serves our applicants well, and that candidates whose cases come before the committee receive the detailed and thoughtful deliberation they deserve. Multiple perspectives at work bring out valuable details of each applicant’s case, and also help to smooth out the implicit and unconscious biases any reader brings to a review of an application. It’s a fair amount of work keeping the Committee process running, but it’s work that is well worth the effort and in the best interests of our applicants.

I’m always a bit sad to see the committee process come to a close each year, but it also means we’re getting close to decision time! The next couple of weeks will be a flurry of final application evaluation, scholarship allocation work, and preparation of decision letters for release. Not too much longer to wait now, current applicants!