Behind The Scenes: How Do You Get Into Amherst?

Tovia Smith, via a kind reader's email:

Admissions committees at selective colleges sometimes have to plow through thousands of applications to choose the members of next year's freshman class. The committee at Amhest College in Mass., will accept only 1,000 of the more than 8,000 students who applied.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Spring is a mean season for high school seniors. It's college acceptance time. And if students don't get in, they never find out why.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:

Was it that C in Algebra 1, the lukewarm recommendation, the essay that should have gone through spell check?

MONTAGNE: NPR's Tovia Smith got a rare chance to sit in on an admissions committee at Amherst College in Massachusetts. The liberal arts college will accept only 1,000 of more than 8,000 students who applied.

TOVIA SMITH: High school kids may imagine the admissions officials deciding their fate as a bunch of tweedy old academics in spectacles and suits.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 1, 2011 9:43 AM
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