University Times

Each weekday afternoon at this time of year, a staff member from the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid gathers up a stack of violet-colored folders and takes them to 226 Alumni Hall.

That is the meeting place of Pitt's Marginal Admissions Review Committee (MARC) and the folders contain application materials from students judged by Admissions as academically "borderline" candidates to be Pittsburgh campus freshmen.

MARC determines who among these applicants will be offered admission to the Pittsburgh campus and who will, instead, be offered admission as "Options" students — i.e., referred as freshmen to one or more of Pitt's four regional campuses, with the possibility (if they qualify academically) of transferring to Oakland when they become upperclassmen.

Late winter and early spring represent MARC's busiest time, as Pitt fills the last few hundred openings in the next fall's freshman class.

After perspective students pay their application fees and submit their materials to Pitt (completed application form, SAT or ACT test scores, high school transcript, optional essays and letters of recommendation), Admissions and Financial Aid forwards that information to the committee most likely to make the admissions decision. See box on page 11.

"MARC has the hardest job of any of our admissions committees," said Betsy A. Porter, director of Admissions and Financial Aid. "My most experienced people serve on that committee. Most of them have more than 15 years of admissions experience."

One of those long-term staffers, Senior Associate Director B.J. Ore, said she and other MARC members spend weeks considering some students' applications: writing and phoning students and their parents, requesting additional information such as senior year SAT scores, consulting high school guidance counselors.

"There are even students you go out on a limb for — you feel that their circumstances are extenuating, you argue their case for them within the committee, you take their applications back to the committee with new information — and they end up enrolling elsewhere," Ore said.

For examples of MARC decisions, see story on page 11.

Like Porter, Ore remembers years when Pitt had to scramble to recruit academically competitive freshmen. No longer. During the last six years, Pittsburgh campus freshman applications have almost doubled, from 7,825 for fall 1995 to 15,468 for last fall. Sixty-two percent of last fall's applicants ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes, up from 43 percent of fall '95 applicants.

Admission to the Pittsburgh campus for next fall is even more competitive than it was last year. In a planned reduction aimed at trimming undergraduate class sizes, Oakland is accepting 2,775 freshmen for next fall, down from 3,208 in fall 2001.

As Pitt becomes more selective, academically borderline applicants compete for proportionately fewer freshman slots at the Pittsburgh campus. ("Options" admissions have soared from 648 applicants referred to regional campuses in fall 1995, to 4,119 such referrals last fall.) q Pitt officials say the best indicators of a student's success in college are class rank and academic performance in high school. But Admissions keeps in mind that not all high schools are equal.

For a small number of elite schools where 90 percent or more of graduates go on to four-year colleges and universities, MARC finds academically strong students in the third fifth of their graduating classes, said Porter. Conversely, students in the top 10 percent of lower-achieving high schools might not be admissible to the Pittsburgh campus, she said. Class rank in small, private, college prep schools can work against good students, so Admissions may disregard it in such cases, according to Porter.

Porter and her staff advise would-be freshmen to submit their application materials ASAP. "There is some benefit to getting your information in early because, with Pitt's rolling admissions policy, we review it as it comes in," Porter said. "If we hear from students beginning in their junior year of high school, so much the better."

She urged students to communicate with Admissions staff — by phone, e-mail and snail-mail, responding promptly to Admissions' requests for additional information. "Some students submit their information and leave it at that," Porter said. "For borderline students especially, it's important to interact with my staff and participate throughout the Admissions process. If we get to know the student and his or her family, we can play an advocacy role for them."

But advocacy is based on academics, not personalities, Porter noted. "One of the things that often happens is that parents will say to me, 'I'd like my son or daughter to come and meet you. I think you'll like them.' Well, the truth is, I like almost every kid I meet who comes to this campus. I think that they all have something to offer, and probably everybody on my staff feels that way. But if we got into a situation of admitting students because we like them, the admissions process wouldn't have much integrity.

"It isn't about making a nice impression and being conversational," Porter said. "It's about performance criteria that predict academic success at an insti-tution that is becoming increasingly competitive."

–Bruce Steele