The Challenge Is to Choose - Swarthmore College Bulletin

With his cleanshaven face, bright eyes, and glad-to-meet-you enthusiasm, you might peg Jim Bock as a 20-something grad student or minister-in-training. Yet Bock has had 15 years of experience in college admissions--first as a student worker and later, after graduating from Swarthmore in 1990, working his way up in his chosen profession. This summer, he got one of the best jobs in that profession when he became Swarthmore’s new dean of admissions and financial aid.

In a sense, Bock’s admissions experience goes back even further--to his sophomore year at McCallum High School in Austin, Texas, when he first started to wonder which college he might attend. For most college-bound kids, that’s when the admissions game begins, at about 16--only it’s not a game. As ambitious teenagers know, it’s a serious competition that not only compares students to their peers but increasingly pits selective colleges and universities against each other.

At 33, Jim Bock is both a seasoned veteran and an eager novice in one of the top jobs in college admissions. After graduating from Swarthmore with a major in religion, he spent three years as assistant director of admissions at Connecticut College, then earned a master’s degree in education at the University of Virginia before returning to Swarthmore in 1995. He was appointed director of admissions in 1998, taking over day-to-day management of the office, and, when Dean Robin Mamlet left unexpectedly last fall for Stanford University, Bock was named acting dean, successfully bringing in the Class of 2005 this spring.

He was an obvious candidate for the permanent job, and in June, after a national search for Mamlet’s replacement, Bock was offered the position.

Bock’s manner of speaking may be a mark of youthful energy, but when you listen to what he has to say about Swarthmore--and about college admissions in general--you know he’s ready for his new job. Mamlet observed that Bock “knows the College well. His instincts, knowledge, and experience with admissions make him a great choice for the job.”

Bock credits former Dean of Admissions Bob Barr ’56 with interesting him in admissions work. “He was my unofficial adviser for four years, and I learned a great deal by being around the Admissions Office while he was dean.”

Bock says he loves “being able to share with prospective students and their families what’s special about Swarthmore and the liberal arts. But it’s more than just telling our story and trying to get students to apply. As an alumnus, I think I have a good sense of who will do well here, and I try to communicate that. Too many students still choose a school based on its name or reputation. I want them to see that what we offer is different--and maybe just right for them.”

If Bock sounds evangelical about Swarthmore, it’s because he sees admissions as a kind of ministry--a career he briefly considered. These days his flock are the seekers who line up at the doors of higher education each year. Outwardly, they seek entrance to the school of their choice, but inwardly, says Bock, “though they may not even know it, they’re looking for something else. Our job is to show them what this place has to offer and to see if it fits their needs.”

In its worst sense, selective college admissions is a winner-take-all competition, especially at the top of the admissions food chain, where Swarthmore sits with a handful of other top-ranked institutions. You either get into the top school, or you don’t. But Bock refuses to see it in such Darwinian terms. If there is a loser, he says, it’s Swarthmore because there are so many more outstanding applicants than the College can accept. Bock takes it personally, counting up the losses during the long process: “Most of the students I meet won’t apply, most who apply won’t be admitted, and many of those who are admitted won’t come. Of those who end up at Swarthmore, I’ll get to know a couple dozen as students, but it’s those relationships--seeing the outcome of our work--that keeps me going. I get paid to talk about Swarthmore--who wouldn’t want that job?”

What does it take to get into Swarthmore? Because the process is so focused on the individual student, says Bock, there are as many answers as there are students who are admitted. There’s no formula or profile that will automatically place a prospective student in the freshman class. Bock is not trying to be intentionally vague--it’s a complicated process with lots of variables that are both objective and subjective, both dependent on the nature of the applicant and the needs of the College.

“Our admissions process is holistic,” Bock says. “Everything we do is designed to evaluate the whole person, not just a set of scores or grades. We try to get beyond the resumé and understand who each applicant is and how he or she might fit into the Swarthmore community.

“Our goal is to bring in the most talented class of scholars-- students who love to learn both inside and outside the classroom. We’re a first-rate academic institution, and the work here is serious; so we must have students who can do the work, but we’re also looking for people who can add value, who can give back to the College in a variety of ways. Much of the Swarthmore experience happens in the classroom, but we also need students who can contribute through other activities--people who have a passion for what they do, no matter what it is.

“When we look at a prospective student, we think about the ‘whys’ versus the ‘whats.’ We want to know why you have a passion for academics, why you play the oboe, why you write for the newspaper, why you have committed yourself to soccer for 10 years. Being a top speaker at the Model U.N. is important to us if we can understand why a student has done this, what has motivated her.”

Bock is sympathetic to the high school student facing the admission process. “Most don’t know what they want or what questions to ask. American higher education offers a huge range of choices--it’s overwhelming, so where do you begin? A lot of kids get scared and follow the path of least resistance,” which often means following in a parent’s footsteps, attending a state university, or applying to only schools with national name recognition.

Explaining the idea of the liberal arts is particularly challenging, says Bock: “I hear students say wonderful things after visiting here--they feel the energy of Swarthmore; they love ideas. But some believe they will have more opportunities at a larger school or think they want a more career-oriented program. I tell them that their career possibilities are almost limitless with a liberal arts education--especially from Swarthmore.”

Lately, the competition isn’t just among students but among the colleges themselves. And Swarthmore’s strongest competition in admissions comes less from other liberal arts colleges than from well-known national universities. Bock names Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, and Stanford as schools that students most often attend if they decline Swarthmore’s offer of admission. “We still have students who choose another liberal arts college, but the Ivies are the most popular option for our admits,” says Bock. (For a definition of admits, see “How to Talk Like an Admissions Dean.”)

But wait a minute--isn’t selective Swarthmore choosing its students--not the other way around? Yes and no, says Bock, explaining that there are really two admission processes. The goal of both is to bring in a freshman class of 375 of the all-around best students in the world, but in this game, the ball changes court once the offer of admission is made. First, Swarthmore evaluates the applications it receives--3,530 last year--and chooses the students it would like to have. About 150 are offered early admission in the fall or winter; these are committed to Swarthmore, and almost all will matriculate. Of the remaining applicants, about 1 in 5 is offered admission in late March, giving the College an overall “admit rate” this year of about 25 percent of applicants.

At this point, the ball is in the other court. Many admitted students have also been offered admission to other schools, and the choice is theirs. Unless they have a clear first choice, most shop around, using the month of April to compare schools--and, increasingly, financial aid offers--during a round of campus visits.

For the bright high schooler, this complicated courtship starts early, resulting in a wave of mail from colleges during the junior year. Swarthmore sends more than 60,000 direct-mail “search” pieces each year, with many of the names supplied by the Educational Testing Service and other standardized testing organizations. About 30,000 application forms are distributed to high school seniors who have expressed interest in the College and to high school guidance counselors across the country. (See “Marketing Swarthmore.”)

Each application ends up on the desk of one of eight assistant or associate deans responsible for the geographic region where the applicant attends school. In many cases, this dean is familiar with the high school, the counseling staff, and the community--and may even have met the student in person.

Every application is given at least two readings. When a decision is unclear, it is presented by the regional representative for discussion by the entire group of deans, who weigh a variety of factors. “Some schools use a rating system--assigning values to grades, test scores, and extracurriculars and then setting an arbitrary cutoff point,” says Bock. “We don’t reduce our applicants to numbers. As much as possible, we look at the individual.”

One often-cited number, Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores, is no exception. Bock calls them “useful when used appropriately,” but scoffs at the idea that Swarthmore has a particular target or standard. “Sure, our median is high [1,450 for the Class of 2005]; it reflects the overall quality of our applicant pool. But we may accept students who are well below our median when we see that he or she is way above the average student in a school. These scores can mean different things in different schools, so we work hard to understand their context.”

This year, more than half of all applicants with perfect 800 scores on their SAT verbals were not accepted. Just under half of those with 800 math scores were also not accepted. It’s pretty clear that if SATs were the deciding factor, Swarthmore could admit a class with near-perfect scores. “You wouldn’t need us,” says Bock of his staff. “We could just plug in the numbers.”

Bock would rather spend his time reading the essays, probing the student’s personal history, and thinking about what he or she might bring to Swarthmore. As dean, he looks at every application before a final decision is made, reviewing a narrative evaluation placed inside the cover of the folder that records the evaluation of the regional dean and, in most cases, one other reader.

“The essays are the most interesting part of the folder,” he says. “They give real insight into the student. Not only is it a writing sample, but it can tell us a great deal about how a student thinks or where he or she is coming from.”

Swarthmore’s essay question has changed over the years, but it’s currently very open-ended: “Please write an essay that tells us more about you. You may want to write about people who have influenced you, situations that have shaped you, difficulties or conflicts with which you have struggled, goals and hopes you may have for the future, or something else you consider significant.”

Another important factor in admissions decisions is what Bock carefully calls “special talents and interests.” In some ways, this is a nod to the numerous pressures brought to bear on the Admissions Office from within the College. Some of these are academic, such as the ongoing need to provide students for critical programs such as engineering. The music program needs horn players; the chemists want students with a passion for molecules; theatre studies needs actors; and classics would like students who want to learn Latin and Greek. Without all these things--and many more--the liberal arts would be a hollow shell.

And then there’s athletics. Jim Bock had been acting dean for barely eight weeks when the Board of Managers decided last December to limit the number of athletes given preference in admission to between 10 and 15 percent of each entering class. Football, wrestling, and women’s badminton were dropped as varsity sports. The Board’s stated goal was to strengthen the College’s 21 remaining intercollegiate sports by, among other measures, giving all of them the opportunity to recruit key players.

As an alumnus, Bock sympathized with his classmates and others who disagreed with the decision, yet he defended it in several public forums last winter and continues to think that it was right for the College. “It’s an equity issue,” he says. “If we’re going to have competitive intercollegiate teams, we have to support all of them. Before, we had ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ among our teams, but this year, every coach had a voice.”

Recruited athletes must meet the same academic standards as everyone else, explains Bock, who goes on to say that “you can’t assume that because someone plays a sport well, that’s all they bring to the College. Only those students who can make it in all areas of College life are considered for admission; all of our students bring a wealth of talents to Swarthmore.”

Athletes, musicians, chemists, dancers, computer geeks, actors, poets, math whizzes, debate champs, budding doctors and politicians and journalists and social workers and entrepreneurs and professors--they’re all there in the brightly colored folders that crowd the drawers, desks, and briefcases of the admissions staff.

This is the diversity of students who pass through the exhaustive admissions process and enter Swarthmore each fall--and no individual student represents just one of these attributes. Although Bock believes in the vital importance of achieving diversity in the traditional sense--assuring that Swarthmore reflects the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of America--he defines diversity more broadly:

“It doesn’t mean one thing. I see it as cultural, social, geographic, gender, learning style, language, individual talent and interest--the whole potential of a young person today. We’re looking to make Swarthmore look and feel like our society, filling it with people who can thrive here academically yet who bring many values and ideas to the campus. The love of learning comes first, but after that, the possibilities are limitless. The challenge is to choose.”