The Real Reason Why You Got Into Princeton

Last Friday afternoon, Dan Kang '15 found out why he really got into Princeton.Over the years, whenever he went home, family, friends and "random parents" would always bombard him with questions: how to get their son our daughter into an Ivy League school like Princeton. And he would never have a ready answer, because he had no idea why Princeton chose him.Now, though, after having reviewed his admissions records – long thought to be inaccessible, but now readily available thanks to a close reading of a law by a group of Stanford students – he has a much better idea."Daniel is number 6 on our slate," one of the admissions officers had written."Getting assigned a number was interesting," Kang said.They also thought that he would make a great engineer. "This kid is destined for the EQuad," one officer wrote. "He is certainly capable of thriving in the EQuad," wrote another.Kang is part of a growing number of students who are gaining access to their admissions records.Earlier this year, in January, a student group at Stanford University, named Fountain Hopper, published what they called a "tried and tested Five Step Plan™ for getting hold of your admissions records, including qualitative and quantitative reviews by your admissions readers." And it would be easy. "Requesting your admissions documents is a simple 5 step process that takes less than 5 minutes," they wrote.How did they do it? Essentially, the Fountain Hopper group had found that under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), passed in 1974, students are entitled to see their educational records.Since the group has made their findings public, students across university campuses have filed requests for their own admissions records. What did the admissions officers think of an applicant? What numerical scores and rankings did the officers assign? Did the officers see potential in the applicant? For a long time, these were questions that students had thought they would never find the answer to. Now, though, it is only a 45-day wait away (the university must comply with your request within 45 calendar days).U. Penn has seen an "avalanche" of such requests. Yale and Stanford have both seen a increase in the number of requests made. And it seems to be catching on in Princeton, too.After Kang made his FERPA request, several of his friends also told him that they had also sent in emails asking for access to their records.Perhaps what surprised Kang the most was the fact that, as inferred from two distinct styles of handwriting, the comments were mostly made by one officer, with a small paragraph made by another officer."The fact that it only seemed to get reviewed by two people was kind of surprising, because I thought there would be more people involved in the process," Kang said.Overall, though, the process itself was fairly anti-climatic, Kang said. "It's things that you would expect if you are somewhat familiar with the process."At the micro-level, Kang didn't think that looking at each individual file illuminated much. But at the macro-level,  "it would be really nice to get more transparency in the admissions process."Might a wave of student requests for their records change the nature of the admission game?-MH