Choosing the Class of '83

How Ivy League Brown does it, from A (admit) to Z (reject)

A few minutes after midnight on April 14, some 2,500 thick letters and 9,000 thin ones will leave the Providence post office. The thick letters offer admission to Brown, a highly selective Ivy League university. The thin letters say no or relegate applicants to the limbo of the waiting list. Those who go through thick and thin are participating in a process that mixes careful weighing, educated guesswork and plain horse trading. TIME's Evan Thomas sat in on the admissions committee. His report:

On a rainy Sunday morning in March, Brown Admissions Director Jim Rogers and three committee members contemplate a fat computer printout. It measures, in code, the credentials of the 11,421 high school seniors who have applied to Brown. Next to each applicant's name, a long string of numbers and cryptic abbreviations shows college board scores, class rank, grade-point average and a preliminary rating for academic promise and personal quality on a scale of 1 to 6. Other symbols reveal more: "LEG 1" is a legacy, the son of a Brown alumnus. "M1" is a black; "M8" a Chicano. "50" means the Brown football coach is interested, "70" that Brown's development office has marked the candidate's parents as potential benefactors.

Rogers and his committee begin with 25 applicants from a high-pressure high school in a prosperous Midwestern suburb. They rapidly reject a dozen students with mediocre grades and below-550 board scores, then slow down. The prospects begin to look alike: board scores in the 600s, class rank in the top fifth. Many applicants from competitive schools realize this and mail in poems, photo albums, homemade cookies, anything to stand out. One student has sent an 8-by-10 glossy of himself water-skiing at a 30DEG angle, spray flying, muscles rippling. Others have mailed in serious portfolios, evaluated by the art department.

The committee passes around a thick application folder from "Mary." "Whoops!" says Rogers. "A 'Pinocchio'!" In Brown admissions jargon, that means her "guidance counselor has checked off boxes rating her excellent for academic ability but only good or average for humor, imagination and character. On the printed recommendation form, the low checks stick out from the high ones like a long, thin nose. "A rating of average usually means the guidance counselor thinks there is something seriously wrong," explains Admissions Officer Paulo de Oliveira. Mary's interview with a Brown alumnus was also lukewarm, and worse, she has written a "jock essay," i.e., a very short one. Rogers scrawls a Z, the code for rejection, on her folder.

"Peter" is a "double leg"--both his mother and father went to Brown. He is unexciting but unobjectionable, and his grades and scores are good. "We're trapped," sighs a committee member. There is laughter around the table, but no one doubts that keeping the alumni happy is worth it. After all, they pay for Brown's quality. Peter gets an "A 83"--A for admit; the 83 warns that a lop-off is still possible when Rogers re-examines legacy applications in April. The committee moves on to "John": "Third in his class, 730 verbal, a genuine interest in history," says Committee Member Steve Coon, "and he can hit the long ball."

Brown may stress academics, but it likes jocks, too, especially after suffering with a football team that went 9-58-2 in the Ivy League during the '60s. At Rogers' elbow are "depth charts" listing athletes by sport, the position they play and ranking by Brown coaches, usually on a scale of 1 to 6. There are also depth charts for alumni children, music, art, theater. The music department, for instance, rates oboists and violinists by ability and the orchestra's need for them. That evening Rogers meets with the hockey coach to review 82 prospects. Picking up the application of a defenseman from Canada, Rogers reads his courses aloud: "English, auto mechanics, consumer math, shop ..." He looks for the essay. There is none; instead, the candidate has enclosed his team's player program, listing goals, assists, penalty minutes. Rogers shakes his head and starts reading another folder. "Bingo!" he cries. " A's and B's, 600 boards. You've got him." Several "weak but still breathing" candidates later, the coach anxiously states his need for ten forwards, five defensemen and two goalies. Rogers is good-natured about it, but he makes no promises.

The next morning the admissions committee scans applications from a small rural high school in the Southwest. It is searching for prized specimens known as "neat small-town kids." "Amy" is near the top of her class, with mid-500 verbals, high-600 math and science. She is also poor, white and "geo"--she would add to the geographic and economic diversity that saves Brown from becoming a postgraduate New England prep school. While just over 20% of the New York State applicants will get in, almost 40% will be admitted from Region 7--Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Amy's high school loves her, and she wants to study engineering. Brown badly wants engineering students; unfortunately, Amy spells engineering wrong. "Dyslexia," says Jimmy Wrenn, a linguistics professor. After some debate, the committee puts her on the waiting list. Argues Member Betts Howes: "She's 'B for B.' "

"B for B" means "Burning for Brown," and it counts. Until now, because of the almost immutable pecking order of colleges, only about half the students admitted actually enrolled at Brown. The rest went to schools like Princeton, Yale and Harvard, which has about a 75% "yield." But lately Brown has become very popular. At a time when the end of the baby boom spells a declining applicant pool, the school's applications have jumped 25% in two years. With good reason. Brown works hard to sell itself. The 16 members of the admissions committee are young, diverse, impressive--the kind of mix Brown wants to enroll. The group visits almost 1,000 high schools in the fall. A network of 2,900 loyal alumni follow up with interviewing and more recruiting. They tell high school students that Brown is remarkably relaxed in an era of grade grubbing; that Brown has a beautiful campus; that Providence is not as blighted as it looks from Interstate 95; that nearly every Brown student who applies to grad school gets in. They are telling the truth, and Brown students confirm it on the college-high school grapevine.

As do other schools, Brown automatically sends a letter to everyone with board scores over 650 in selected zip-code areas, many of them urban ghettos. The competition for top minority students is fierce. "A black with 650 verbals can heat his house for the winter with college catalogues," says Rogers. Brown's black applicant pool steadily declined from a high of over 700 in 1971 to 374 two years ago. Thanks to a recruiting push, more than 500 applied this year; of them about 200 will get in. Some will be risks: "Elaine," for instance, has board scores below 400. But she is near the top of her class at a tough inner-city school, and she has been getting up at 6 a.m. to take courses at a nearby college. Her mother is a maid, and she has six siblings, including a brother at Yale. Her essay radiates energy and will. She gets an A 83--admitted, unless Rogers has second thoughts at "minority review": "If we take her, I'm going to grab that grade book a year from now and see how she's doing."

This week the committee makes its last and hardest choices. On Sunday Rogers conducts "athletic review." "It does no good to take 48 split ends and no linebackers," he explains. The director of athletics invariably appears and nervously paces the hallway outside the committee's meeting room. Sunday afternoon is set aside for "legacy review" to make sure the alumni have not been slighted. Monday morning is "geographic review," to make sure the regional mix is right. Then a waiting list of some 500 candidates must be drawn up; for most, it is Brown's polite way of saying that they came close but could not be squeezed in. Rogers will also look at the ratio of males to females. Last year Brown took more women than men, although more men than women applied. This year the ratio will be about fifty-fifty.

Similar trade-offs are being made in admissions offices around the Ivy League. The bartering is purely intramural. Contrary to rumor, the Ivy schools are not involved in a conspiracy. They get together only to make certain that financial-aid applicants are offered the same tuition reductions at every school. If Brown's admissions committee has given A's to more needy students than the college can afford with its $1.25 million financial-aid budget, a few A's will become Z's, a cutback Brown has been forced to make only twice in ten years.

By Wednesday night it should all be over. A weary Rogers will hear last appeals. The next morning he will get on the telephone and start apologizing to certain loyal alumni whose children have been rejected. "It's an exciting time," he says, working up a smile. It is an expression familiar to anyone who has watched baseball managers approaching the cutoff date, politicians on the stump and admissions directors in the spring.

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