Wednesday, February 19, 2020 // The Statement
6B

I

t was early February, and a woman 
with short brown hair was leading 
me through a long, twisting hallway 
in the Student Activities Building. I held 
my coat in my arms, feeling stunned until 
we arrived at an empty office with just a 
chair and a sad, barren desk. Once inside, 
the woman directed me to sit at a small, 
round table as she took her place in the 
chair at the desk behind me, watching. 
“You have one hour,” she said. It seemed 
like a short time to look at everything 
and take notes by hand, as phones were 
prohibited during this process. Before 
I could get a word in, a stack of papers 
was placed in front of me: my college 
admissions file. 
I had this meeting in my calendar 
for a month, and I had been anxiously 
awaiting it. When the semester started 
back up in January, I heard whispers 
about University of Michigan students 
requesting to view their admissions file, 
sparked by a YouTube video uploaded by 
a student at the Ross School of Business. 
I was intrigued and wanted to investigate 
further, so I let myself fall into a dark hole 
of YouTube videos and Reddit threads. 
Similar videos existed of students from 
other schools reacting to their admissions 
files, and reactions across them were 
mixed — there were both positive and 
negative 
evaluations. 
Reddit 
threads 
vaguely described the process, with some 
users warning others about imposter 

syndrome. 
I 
felt 
apprehensive 
and 
considered avoiding this whole process, 
but my curiosity was too strong. When I 
came out of my mini investigation, I came 
to a decision: I was going to request to see 
my admissions file. 
The ability to view college admissions 
files is nothing new. Through the Family 
Educational Rights and Privacy Act — 
more commonly known as FERPA — 
schools are required to provide students 
who currently attend the school with 
access to their educational records if they 
request it. This includes law enforcement 
records, 
employment 
records 
and, 
of course, admissions files. Once a 
student requests these records, FERPA’s 
guidelines require the school to comply 
within 45 days. 
Though FERPA was signed into law 
by President Gerald Ford in 1974, I didn’t 
know much about the process until 
stumbling upon Jack Liu’s video earlier 
this year. Last year, my senior year of high 
school, college seemed so far away. The 
possibility of seeing my admissions files 
was something I hadn’t thought about 
until I was on campus. 
When I was in the process of applying, 
college admissions always seemed like 
a secretive process, but the lawsuit filed 
by a group of Asian American students 
against Harvard University re-opened the 
conversation 
around 
the 
college 
admissions 
process, especially since it has forced 

Harvard to reveal the factors that their 
admissions office considers. Additionally, 
ever since a group of anonymous Stanford 
University students came forward and 
urged others to request their records 
through FERPA in 2015, students have 
grown more curious — the University 
of California, Berkeley, for example, 
reported that they had experienced 
a spike in file requests shortly after the 
Stanford news. In recent years, there has 
been more and more coverage that details 
how FERPA allows students to request 
their admission files, which has likely led 
to a rise in requests. 
The decision to see your file is a hot 
topic, too. While many students on the 
internet, like University of Pennsylvania 
student Christy Qiu, appear to recognize 
that the act of viewing their admissions 
files was revealing to an extent and 
promotes transparency, there are still 
those who caution people from doing so. 
Many of the comments I read on Reddit 
warned fellow students from viewing 
their files because it might lead to feeling 
demoralized. Seeing yourself on paper, 
evaluated by people who have most likely 
never met you, can be a disheartening 
process. 
When I spoke to some University 
students about the admissions process, 
it was clear students felt similarly. “The 
college admissions process gave me a 
ton of anxiety,” LSA freshman Anya 
Dengerink-Van Til said. “I don’t want to 
reawaken those anxieties.” 
I’ll admit that even though I felt 
confident about wanting to see my file, 
I was still nervous about it. There was 
definitely something terrifying about 
reading what people thought of me. After 
all, I find even regular criticism to be hard 
to accept at times; I even get hurt when my 
mom tells me she doesn’t like the sweater 
I’m wearing. But there was a part of me 
that feared something beyond criticism 
— a part of me that wondered if I was 
somehow lesser than those who had been 
accepted before me, especially because I 
had been deferred. 
There was one thing that pushed 
me to go forward with seeing my 
application. I was far enough away 
from that version of myself to view the 
file somewhat objectively; even if it was 
only a year ago, I felt different from the 
girl who had filled out all those forms 
and written all those application essays. 
A year ago, I was insecure, and more 
than anything, I cared about how I 
looked in comparison to other students. 
I wanted to seem like the best. Passions 
came second. But a lot has changed 
between then and now. My mentality 
about school is completely different — 
I attend class because I want to learn, 
and I pick my organizations because I 
genuinely care about them. 
Back at that small, round table, I flipped 

through the papers anxiously. Any actual 
evaluations made by the admissions 
office were at the bottom of the stack, 
compiled into two pages; the majority 
of the papers were printed pages of my 
Common Application. My extracurricular 
activities, 
grade 
point 
average 
and 
test scores were listed multiple times 
throughout the file, accompanied by a few 
handwritten comments. One admissions 
officer in particular had specifically 
pointed out two of my extracurriculars, 
in which I held a position of leadership 
in, specifically: Model United Nations as 
head delegate and National Honor Society 
as an officer. Both of these, from what I 
could tell, seemed to be good examples 
of leadership, which made me an “EXC 
stud.”: Excellent student. 
This was something that struck me. In 
high school, Model UN was important to 
me. It was one of those clubs that helped 
me grow more confident with public-
speaking, which I’d always felt insecure 
about. NHS, on the other hand, never felt 
personal to me. Sure, I was proud to have 
been elected as an officer by my class, but 
it felt obligatory — especially at the time 
— and I had never experienced personal 
growth in NHS like I had in Model UN. 
Seeing those two extracurriculars next 
to each other as if they were equal felt 
absolutely bizarre to me. Yet, they were 
there, right in front of my eyes and printed 
in ink. 
As I continued through the admissions 
officers’ evaluations, there was another 
comment that stuck out to me. Each 
admissions officer ranked me with a 
single digit number. It was printed next 
to my name, twice, above each section of 
their comments. To me, it was clear that 
it was a ranking. But there was no way of 
knowing what it meant. It didn’t say what 
the number was out of or if it was simply 
a doodle from a bored admissions officer. 
Was it meant to be a score? Why was I 
that number and not another one? And 
was it a good thing, or a bad thing? There 
was no way of telling, and the uncertainty 
terrified me. 
For some time after, I lingered on the 
number that haunted my admissions file for 
a bit. The mystery behind the number was 
somewhat uncomfortable, but I quickly 
realized and accepted there was nothing 
to be done about it. Besides, I reasoned, at 
this point it’s not as if it matters. Seeing 
that number hadn’t changed anything 
about myself in the present, and it’s not as 
if they had actually ranked me as a person 
with those numbers. They had ranked 
me as an applicant — an amalgamation of 
test scores and clubs and leadership roles. 
Regardless of their comments, evaluations 
and rankings, I still have pride in who I 
am. I am still a thinker, a writer, a friend 
and a student. Regardless of admissions, 
I will continue to grow and establish my 
place here.

BY CHELSEA PADILLA, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
Just a number?

ILLUSTRATION BY NOAH FINERRR 

