As the next generation of Brunonians walks through the Van Wickle Gates, these students may be left wondering how they ended up on College Hill. But that’s not a question any of us can completely answer. The journey an application takes from the Common Application portal to an acceptance letter is one shrouded in mystery. Maybe I can guess that the admissions office appreciated my extracurriculars, or a friend may believe it was her supplemental essays, but we’ll never know for sure.
This doesn’t have to be the case. In October, The Herald reported that Brown’s admissions office discards admissions officers’ comments at the end of each cycle. By destroying these files, Brown hides its admissions practices behind a wall and loses a vital piece of its institutional history. In 2015, students at Stanford University discovered a loophole in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that meant enrolled students could request their admissions files from their universities. There was a torrent of requests to view files at Stanford, and a subsequent surge at other elite universities. But even then, Brown refused to let students view their files.
Next week, hundreds of lucky high schoolers will open their computers and see a golden ticket granting them admission to Brown University. Many students will finally see their years of hard work in high school, months toiling over essays and endless retakes of their video introductions pay off. And, soon, the reasons why they received admission to Brown will be lost. Regardless of whether these records can be accessed by students, destroying them outright precludes some opportunities to go back and learn how Brown admitted students, and what officers looked for. Without officers’ comments to act as an archive of how Brown admissions have evolved over time, the University’s progress seems arbitrary.
Several first-year students interviewed by The Herald, feeling like little fish in the big pond of College Hill, wanted to read their admissions comments to combat imposter syndrome. Applying to college is a difficult and often demoralizing process and reading over their admissions files would remind them of their strengths and why they deserve to be at Brown. We pour all of ourselves into our college applications, and it’s only natural to crave some acknowledgment — and validation — of how our stories resonated.
With tens of thousands of applications and only a few admissions officers, college admissions are increasingly a game of luck, but one that crucially affects all of us. Brown students deserve transparency. Without a glimpse into how the sausage is made, it seems impossible to have faith in an increasingly inscrutable system.
Whether we like it or not, college admissions are changing — be it from the advent of artificial intelligence or the effects of federal actions. As a leader in the educational community, Brown has a responsibility to promote transparency in a time when an already secretive process is only becoming more convoluted. Though it might seem natural to sweep the paper trail of such a divisive process under the rug, doing the opposite would show that these difficult decisions are made thoughtfully rather than capriciously. Releasing the files would align with Brown’s mission to promote “free inquiry” and hold the University accountable for maintaining a responsible, integrity-based approach to admissions. Indeed, as an institution that asks its students for openness and honesty, Brown must start to practice what it preaches.
Isabella Gardiner ’28 can be reached at isabella_gardiner@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
