The Gatekeepers.

• Author: Steinberg, Jacques
• Position: College admission pratices, spotlight on Wesleyan

Want to get into an elite university? You'll have to pass muster with these people first.

The candidate is a high school senior from Florida who played soccer, built houses for Habitat for Humanity, and is taking advanced placement courses in English, calculus, and physics. Her grades are A's and B's, with straight A's in her junior year, and her College Board score is 1360 out of a possible 1600--not bad, although lower than those of many applicants.

But the 10 admissions officers of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, are focused on something else. They home in on her personal statement, where she describes a protracted bout with cancer in her junior year, when she had to fly periodically to New York for chemotherapy.

"She was still doing soccer while being treated for cancer," one officer notes.

"She was the captain," another says.

"She's apologized to us for not having submitted a third SAT II score," the acting chairman, Christian Lanser, says in nearwonder. "But she has Hodgkins'."

With that, Lanser raps his knuckles on the 12-foot-long cherry table to call the vote. Three arms rise to recommend the waiting list. Lanser and six others vote to admit.

Majority rules; the Floridian is in.

This was Day 2 of the annual rite of the admissions season known as "committee," the last round of the process at Wesleyan, when the university's gatekeepers convened to consider 368 applications still unresolved for the few spots that remained unfilled for next year's freshman class of 715 students. At a time when admission to elite colleges is more competitive than ever, Wesleyan had agreed last spring to give UPFRONT full access to its selection process to show who got in and why. It became clear that, while top grades and academic skills remained central to admission, it was often the personal details that tipped the balance.

THE FINAL ROUND

Of the nearly 7,000 applications submitted to Wesleyan, these 368 were the hardest calls, for reasons as varied as a single failing grade, an extended absence, a borderline test score, or a rating of "arrogant" from an alumnus interviewer.

At least two officers had read each of these files thoroughly and made a recommendation to the dean. But no early consensus had emerged on whether to admit these students, deny them, or offer them spots on the waiting list. Each of these 368 applicants would get a two-minute bonus hearing before the entire committee. In the end, about one in four would be admitted...