A Wilton College Admissions Expert, On Race And Entry Success

WILTON, CT — A higher education has been the traditional gateway to career success and financial stability, but a disproportionately lower number of Black high school students are traveling that path. Enrollment in the 468 best-funded and most selective four-year institutions is 75 percent white, according to a report from the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce.

Many top universities in the United States have voluntarily adopted admissions policies meant to redress past discrimination against minorities.

Stephanie Klein Wassink is the owner of Winning Applications in Wilton, and a college admissions consultant. She specializes in getting her clients accepted to top universities. Wassink told Patch that she believes such affirmative action programs are fair, just not terribly effective.

"It's not something that gives African American or Hispanic students so much more of an advantage that a 'C' student goes to a great school because they have a minority background," she said.

What affirmative action policies can do is provide some minority students and their families with a false sense of security and the notion they are getting a "golden ticket" due to their race.

"The problem that African American students have — and I've seen it with my own family — is you have to listen to the noise of affirmative action from everywhere, and when I say noise, I mean people thinking that a C-plus student is going to be admitted to Harvard just because they are African American. That is not how it works," Wassink said. "They (Colleges) expect a student to do well. They don't want their statistics hurt."

Wassink has three college-age sons. One is a graduating senior on his way to Harvard, one is at UPenn, and the other is at Dartmouth.

The best indicator to college admissions officers that they won't be embarrassed by their recruits somewhere down the line hasn't changed much since the middle of the 20th century, according to Wassink. Grades in honors and advanced placement courses, grades in all the other courses, the strength of the school's curriculum, scores on standardized tests like the SAT, and the student's essay are still the drivers of Ivy League acceptance.

"And whether you are African American, or Hispanic or white or Asian, schools are pretty much looking for those same types of things," Wassink said.

The strength of the high school curriculum can be a stumbling block for disadvantaged minorities who live in sub-par districts and can't afford private schools. Wassink cited organizations like A Better Chance, which help families navigate the admissions programs at college prep schools, as an example of the resources available to minority students to improve their pre-college chances.

One disparity at the high school level that has Wassink scratching her head, however, is what she called a "disequilibrium in the accommodations." In a nutshell, way more students in wealthier school districts ask for, and receive, special treatment when it comes to time allotted for tests, including the all-important SAT and PSAT exams. The special accommodations are only granted with a doctor's note, and are meant as a counter to students' medical conditions or learning differences. It's not that the accommodations being made in the better high schools aren't legitimate (Wassink stresses that they are), but they are just under-requested in poorer neighborhoods, which makes no sense, statistically.

Before an Ivy League college will accept a Black student, the student has to apply. Wassink said that her experiences counseling minority students is that they tend to "downplay their abilities," and don't apply to four-year colleges, even when they have grade-point averages of 3.5 or higher. They tend to apply exclusively to community colleges.

She chalks that up to a lack of information, and affordability. But affordability can be deceptive, as many Ivy League schools are inclined to be more financially supportive of minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds, if they have a strong transcript. Most students don't know that, however, and that lack of information narrows their perspectives and chances. Wassink blames a lot of that ignorance on Ivy League universities' reticence to recruit at inner-city college fairs, which are dominated by lower-tier schools.

Another reality, not so numerically black and white, is the perception a college admissions officer may have of a student based upon their extracurricular activities and interests. A 2018 study out of Florida Gulf Coast University, "We Want Black Students, Just Not You: How White Admissions Counselors Screen Prospective Students," called out the "intraracial discrimination" of white college admissions officers. The study's author, an assistant professor of sociology, said his data indicated that Black high school students whose transcripts telegraphed a keen interest in racial disparity issues were less attractive than candidates with the same interest in other activist issues. In other words, a member of a high school's Climate Change Awareness Alliance would be better positioned than the president of the Black Lives Matter Club.

"The reality is, those are the things that are going to determine whether a school is going to admit a student," said Wassink. Her Wharton MBA makes her see everything through a "business lens," she said, and "universities are businesses. Because they are businesses, and they have to make money, they have to be sure that the students they admit will graduate."

As a result, she said she gives Black students the same advice she gives white students: "You have to make yourself look like you're going to do well academically at the institution, that's the bottom line."

College admissions consultant is Wassink's third gig. She left working in the Admissions Office at Northwestern University for a Wall Street job, got pregnant, got laid off ("Best day ever!") before opening Winning Applications in Wilton. That was over 22 years ago, and college admissions consultants were rare then.

"Now, it's a growing business," Wassink said, because navigating the college selection and acceptance process is not easy, and can be especially frustrating for a parent.

"Very often, your kid will work a lot harder for someone else," she said, comparing it to teaching your child to drive. And just like learning the proper way to drive, the end result will impact them the rest of their lives.

It's a lucrative business, as well. An admission consultant's services can easily fetch a five-figure bill. Recognizing that many of the families she wants to help the most may be priced out of that model, Wassink created a more economical entry point, AdmissionsCheckup.com. There she's assembled a team of college admissions officers who provide "thorough, brutally honest feedback" on a client's college applications and essays for under $400.

The winning applications will be those that underscore achievement over any kind of social portrait. Colleges "are not going to admit students they don't think can do the work, and who are going to make some professors scratch their heads and be annoyed and wonder why certain students got in." Wassink said. "It's just not a successful strategy."