Understanding Contextual Admissions

One of the most commonly asked questions I get as an admissions officer is about how a student’s application will be reviewed. While those of us in the admissions world frequently use terms like “contextual” and “holistic” to describe the application review process, it can be understandably difficult to know exactly what we mean when we use these terms. Add on a global pandemic, and there can be a lot of uncertainty surrounding the application process and if admissions officers are going to understand how hard you’ve worked to accomplish your achievements. The first thing I hope to convey with this post is that, yes, we do! We’re humans too, we all went through the college application process ourselves, and we are deeply respectful of the time and energy you have put into your applications. To honor that time and energy, we want to make sure we’re giving your achievements their full deserved weight; in short, that we are properly contextualizing them within your individual circumstances.

Here’s a quick example of how we might consider context when looking at a student’s transcript: You spend a lot of time in your application telling us how much you love chemistry. You’ve had a chemistry set since you were three years old, you love baking because it’s chemistry in action, and you hope to conduct chemistry research in college. But when we look at your transcript, we see that you haven’t taken a chemistry class. What’s up with that? But then, we take a look at your school profile, a document your counselor sent us that gives us a lot of information, including what courses are offered at your school. We see that you were planning on taking AP Chemistry during your junior year, but the course had to be cancelled because of curricular changes due to COVID. Well, that explains it! We can’t expect you to take a course that your school doesn’t offer. Without this context, we would have been left wondering why you hadn’t taken a course in your favorite subject. With the context, we know that it was out of your control.

The primary thing to remember with contextual review is that we want to see how you have thrived with the opportunities you have had. When it comes to thriving during COVID, this is more important than ever. Did your school implement Pass/Fail grades? Great! We won’t expect you to have letter grades. Were you not able to participate in most (or any) of your extracurriculars? We were stuck inside our apartments and houses too, and understand that involvement outside of school has looked very different over the past year and a half. Were you the one virtual student when everyone else went back in-person in Fall 2020? We can imagine how difficult that must have been, and will understand that your school experience looked very different than your classmates’.

The most important thing you can do to help our contextual review is to give us that context. Any application platform you choose (Common App, Coalition Application, or QuestBridge) will give you space to tell us about how the pandemic impacted you, as well as any other circumstances you’d like us to know about. By giving us as much information as you feel comfortable providing, you’ll help us understand your achievements within your individual life circumstances, and allow us to give you the credit and praise you rightly deserve.