History Lesson

Admissions Beat

Ever wondered how the elements of a college application came to be the elements of the college application? Today, essays, testing, recommendations, and interviews are fundamental ingredients of most selective admissions processes, but they were not always part of a college application as it evolved over the last 125 years. Dartmouth’s admissions dean Lee Coffin and Maria Morales-Kent, a former admission officer at the University of Pennsylvania and the longtime director of college counseling at Thacher School in California, draw lessons and insights from the courses they have both taught on the twists and turns of college admissions history.