By TAMAR LEWIN A word of warning to those high school seniors celebrating the end of the whole college admissions process: Not so fast.
Yes, the choice is made, and the deposit is paid. But there’s one more hurdle — namely, finishing senior year with grades that bear some resemblance to the ones that won the admissions offer.
Somewhere in all those college letters, after the “congratulations’’ part, is a sentence to the effect that admission is conditional upon the student completing high school with the same academic and personal achievement on which the offer is based.
And they mean it. Each year, colleges rescind offers to students whose grades plummeted after they were admitted. Generally, one stray “C’’ won’t have serious repercussions. But make it a couple of “D’s on a transcript that had been crammed with A’ s and B’s and there may be trouble.
“It’s felt to me like there’s an increasing number of students whose grades go down the tubes senior year, and I want them to know that we do look at their end-of-year transcripts, and we rescind admissions decisions,’’ said Robert Clagett, the dean of admissions at Middlebury College. “Every year that I’ve been here, we’ve rescinded a few decisions in July, and frankly, we’ve seen the problems on the upswing.’’
The University of Washington revokes about two dozen offers a year after reviewing final transcripts, a number that has stayed fairly steady, according to Philip Ballinger, the director of admissions.
“We see it as a matter of fairness to students who were not admitted or wait-listed,” Mr. Ballinger said. “Students know it can happen, and counselors tell us thank you, thank you.”
At Connecticut College, Martha Merrill, the dean of admission, said her office sent out 13 warning letters — they have two variants, which she calls “big oops’’ and “ little oops’’ — last summer, compared to 9 the previous year.
Bad grades are not the only possible pitfall. Some students lose their admissions offers because of plagiarizing, cheating, drunken misbehavior, or arrest.
“Last year, we rescinded an early decision offer after a student was kicked out of boarding school,’’ Ms. Merrill said. “It’s especially painful for the early-decision candidate, because they have no other options, and it’s often too late to apply anywhere else.’’
At Northwestern, Christopher Watson, the dean of undergraduate admissions, said one or two offers are revoked each year.
“You would have to have a severe drop-off in your academic performance that would make us pause as to whether you could do the work to be successful here,” he said. “We would engage the family and the school before we make the decision, because it’s heartbreaking when you have to do it.’’
Far more common than revocation, everywhere, is a warning letter, expressing disappointment, and asking for some explanation.
“In my seven years here, I can only think of two cases when we rescinded,’’ said Paul Mathers, the dean of admission at Reed College. “But every year, when grades drop, or there is some misbehavior, we send out warnings, what we think of as a ’’Come-to-Jesus’’ letter, because we want them to be aware that we considered rescinding their offer of admissions, and we want to know if they are going to be serious students here. What we’ve found, generally, is that those students don’t end up flunking out or on academic probation.’’
Bowdoin College has several different classes of warning letters, according to Scott Meiklejohn, the dean of admissions.
“It’s a spectrum,’’ he said. “Students who have a slight decline get a letter noting our disappointment that their grades are different from the grades on which they were admitted. For students who’ve had a larger decline, we ask them to write back with their comments and explanation. For the more serious, we tell them we’re going to review the case and decide if we are still offering admission, and in the most serious, we sometimes revoke the offer.’’
Admissions directors say they want students to understand the possible consequences of plummeting grades — but they do not want students who have always had all A’s to torture themselves with worry that getting a B will doom their college career.
Accessed on 1/25 from The Choice Blogs, NY Times http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/a-warning-colleges-can-change-their-minds/