Gambier, Ohio - A FEW days ago I watched my daughter Madalyn open a thin

envelope from one of the five colleges to which she had applied. "Why?" was
what she was obviously asking herself as she handed me the letter saying she
was waitlisted.
Why, indeed? She had taken the toughest courses in her high school and had
done well, sat through several Saturday mornings taking SAT's and the like,
participated in the requisite number of extracurricular activities, written a
heartfelt and well-phrased essay and even taken the extra step of touring the
campus.
She had not, however, been named a National Merit finalist, dug a well for a
village in Africa, or climbed to the top of Mount Ranier. She is a smart, wellmeaning, hard-working teenage girl, but in this day and age of swollen
applicant pools that are decidedly female, that wasn't enough. The fat
acceptance envelope is simply more elusive for today's accomplished young
women.
I know this well. At my own college these days, we have three applicants for
every one we can admit. Just three years ago, it was two to one. Though
Kenyon was a men's college until 1969, more than 55 percent of our
applicants are female, a proportion that is steadily increasing. My staff and I
carefully read these young women's essays about their passion for poetry,
their desire to discover vaccines and their conviction that they can make the
world a better place.
I was once one of those girls applying to college, but that was 30 years ago,
when applying to college was only a tad more difficult than signing up for a
membership at the Y. Today, it's a complicated and prolonged dance that
begins early, and for young women, there is little margin for error: A grade of
C in Algebra II/Trig? Off to the waitlist you go.
Rest assured that admissions officers are not cavalier in making their
decisions. Last week, the 10 officers at my college sat around a table, 12 hours
every day, deliberating the applications of hundreds of talented young men
and women. While gulping down coffee and poring over statistics, we heard
about a young woman from Kentucky we were not yet ready to admit
outright. She was the leader/president/editor/captain/lead actress in every
activity in her school. She had taken six advanced placement courses and had
been selected for a prestigious state leadership program. In her free time, this
whirlwind of achievement had accumulated more than 300 hours of
community service in four different organizations.

Few of us sitting around the table were as talented and as directed at age 17 as
this young woman. Unfortunately, her test scores and grade point average
placed her in the middle of our pool. We had to have a debate before we
decided to swallow the middling scores and write "admit" next to her name.
Had she been a male applicant, there would have been little, if any, hesitation
to admit. The reality is that because young men are rarer, they're more valued
applicants. Today, two-thirds of colleges and universities report that they get
more female than male applicants, and more than 56 percent of
undergraduates nationwide are women. Demographers predict that by 2009,
only 42 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in the United States will
be given to men.
We have told today's young women that the world is their oyster; the problem
is, so many of them believed us that the standards for admission to today's
most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men. How's that for an
unintended consequence of the women's liberation movement?
The elephant that looms large in the middle of the room is the importance of
gender balance. Should it trump the qualifications of talented young female
applicants? At those colleges that have reached what the experts call a
"tipping point," where 60 percent or more of their enrolled students are
female, you'll hear a hint of desperation in the voices of admissions officers.
Beyond the availability of dance partners for the winter formal, gender
balance matters in ways both large and small on a residential college campus.
Once you become decidedly female in enrollment, fewer males and, as it turns
out, fewer females find your campus attractive.
What are the consequences of young men discovering that even if they do
less, they have more options? And what messages are we sending young
women that they must, nearly 25 years after the defeat of the Equal Rights
Amendment, be even more accomplished than men to gain admission to the
nation's top colleges? These are questions that admissions officers like me
grapple with.
In the meantime, I'm sending out waitlist and rejection letters for nearly
3,000 students. Unfortunately, a majority of them will be female, young
women just like my daughter. I will linger over letters, remembering
individual students I've met, essays I loved, accomplishments I've admired. I
know all too well that parents will ache when their talented daughters read
the letters and will feel a bolt of anger at the college admissions officers who
didn't recognize how special their daughters are.

Yes, of course, these talented young women will all find fine places to attend
college -- Maddie has four acceptance letters in hand -- but it doesn't dilute
the disappointment they will feel when they receive a rejection or waitlist
offer.
I admire the brilliant successes of our daughters. To parents and the students
getting thin envelopes, I apologize for the demographic realities.
Op-Ed Contributor Jennifer Delahunty Britz is the dean of admissions and
financial aid at Kenyon College.

Cidney Speas
Ms. Lawson
English 1.11
16 August 2016
New York Times Article Reaction

This article influenced me a lot, mostly because this is the year to start applying for
colleges. As the reader, I can relate to this article because colleges are going to look at other
things other than your grades. They are going to look at what you do outside of school, things
that make you successful during your high school career, and your academic ability. Colleges do
not take into full consideration that it is hard as a student to keep up good grades, support our
needs as a student and person financially, and worry about things outside of school. This year as
students apply for colleges, it is almost certain they will not get accepted into every college
applied for. Parents all around the world are going to feel the same emotions that this mother did,
even though they may not make decisions of letting students into colleges as the one in the
article. It is always very heartbreaking as a student to know that after all the hard work and time
you put in during high school, sometimes its still not good enough.

New York Times Article Summary

This article is about a mother by the name of Jennifer Delahunty Britz, who is helping her
daughter understand that getting on the waitlist or not being accepted into a certain college is not
as bad as it seems. Jennifer denies women and men, mostly women, from being accepted into
Kenyon College, that is her job. She knows what it is like to have to deny a kid with such great
potential. This mother is letting readers who could be mothers of daughters not getting accepted
into college, or daughters who are getting put on the waiting list, that it is not fair to women most
of the time in the college accepting process. Statistically, more women graduate from college
than men, but it is a lot easier for men to get accepted into college. Jennifer is apologizing for the
unfair results in the college accepting process, but is reassuring parents that the kid will
eventually get credit where credit is due.