The Other Side of the Application:Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions; An Interview with Karl Furstenburg

By Arthur J. Monaco and Matthew Soldo | Wednesday, June 5, 1996

Editor's Note: Karl Furstenburg has been Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the College since 1993. Before Dartmouth, Dean Furstenburg directed admissions at Wesleyan College in Middletown, Connecticut.

The Dartmouth Review: Why have we seen an increase in Dartmouth applications over the past few years?

Dean Karl Furstenburg: All of the Ivies have been much more aggressive in recruiting in the last seven years, and there is greater national competition for the best students. Some of that has been accelerated by things like the US News and World Report annual rankings.

When you consider Dartmouth in relation to other places, there are two things worth noting. First, if you go back five to ten years, Dartmouth wasn't attracting quite the quality of students that it gets now — there was a little bit too much disparity between us and some of the other places in the League. Our closest competition is with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Brown. Dartmouth and Harvard have had the largest growth in applications in the last couple of years. In terms of test scores, Dartmouth has seen the most significant increase in the measurable quality of the entering class. The profile of our class now is much more similar to Yale's than it was a few years ago. We've made some real headway. We're making Dartmouth the first choice for a lot of people.

The second thing is that we walk a fine line between positioning ourselves relative to other places, but also as a unique institution. You've heard this I'm sure a hundred times. We are of the same quality intellectually. The opportunities here are as strong as the other places. But, this is more of an undergraduate college. We are the best blend of research university and liberal arts college. Here people get a more personal education, and there is a greater sense of community. Some of the Dartmouth history, tradition, and spirit is still very evident to people. Our location also makes us a little bit different. We appeal to students that are more interested in the outdoors and the vigorous kind of life. People interested in environmental studies and that sort of thing will be attracted to Dartmouth.

Review: Has there been a conscious effort to attract a certain kind of student?

Furstenburg: I wouldn't say we try to attract a particular kind of student. Dartmouth has been a place where there are many students that view us as a clear first choice. People feel very positively, almost emotionally, about it. It's interesting to me; we have had early decision for many years. Yale now has early decision, and they have about 1,100 early decision applications. Princeton has early decision and they have about 1,200 as well. They are bigger places and maybe a bit better known. This year we had 1,250 early decision applications. When it comes to a first choice, Dartmouth is right with them.

Review: Do you ever track the performance of students once enrolled in the College, to see if your predictions were accurate?

Furstenburg: Yes, we do. It happens in two ways. Periodically, we do what are called validity studies. We take the whole class and look at a measure like grade point average and relate that to their admissions statistics. That's interesting, but it's superficial, and usually tells you what you'd expect. The other way we do it is more anecdotally. We read about students, see students performing. It's probably not as regular or as in-depth as we would like. I'd love to have the time to interview faculty and students, and ask them, 'Who are the leaders in your freshman hall? Who are the leaders in your student organizations?'

Review: What has been the effect of recent affirmative action decisions — like at the University of California or the University of Texas — on admissions across the country?

Furstenburg: Of the two decisions you refer to, the one in California was directed at the state college, the University of California. The other, the Texas case, is within the Fifth district and also pertains to a public institution. It has no direct bearing on Dartmouth or the other Ivies in a legal sense.

The California case has received a lot of national attention. In an indirect way this creates a chilling effect on the whole country. Public institutions might now say, 'Geez. It's happening in Texas. It's happening in California. We'd better reexamine our policies. We'd better be more careful.'

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the Attorney General in Georgia issued guidelines to the state colleges to give up any race-based — I forget how it was phrased exactly —admissions programs. The people in the college said, 'He has no right to do that. Let's not listen to him.'

It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court takes the Texas case. Who knows what they will decide. It's also possible they won't take the case. My hunch says they will not, because they don't want to get involved in the whole review of Bakke.

Review: What effect will the California Board of Regents' decision have on California students as they apply to college?

Furstenburg: It might have a chilling effect. I think a lot of students from California are now starting to look outside the state. So in some respects the Regents have created a funny kind of export, made up of some of their brightest kids. The students in California think the Regents are crazy. That's had a slightly positive effect on us.

Review: Could the California Regents have handled things a little better? Could they have achieved their goal without frightening students away?

Furstenburg: This is a problem when you get a state board running things. There should have been more discussion and dialogue. The Regents should have consulted more with the administrators and faculty. It's really odd that the Board of Regents says one thing while the Chancellor at Berkeley — the flagship of the UC system — is saying something different. This is, to me, too rancorous. It just is not a healthy thing.

Take Dartmouth, however. It's one of the benefits of being a private institution. Our President, Trustees, faculty, and administrators — when there are going to be policy changes, they get together and come to some reasoned agreement.

Review: Would race blind admissions undermine your ability to fully judge applicants?

Furstenburg: At the Universities of California and Texas, certain percentages of each class were set aside for certain groups. They had a different process for those groups — they had a race based admissions program. I would not say that
Dartmouth and the other Ivies have race based admissions in any way, shape, or form. We don't make decisions on that basis. For us, affirmative action is more directed at the recruitment side of things, where we try to generate a more representative pool of candidates.

If anything, we take socioeconomic background into account. That applies to students of all races — minority or not. For a long time we had a program for students from northern New England who came from socioeconomically disadvantaged families. I think that our process is really pretty thoughtful and sophisticated.

Review: So we have been a step ahead?

Furstenburg: Much further ahead. Our process is more thoughtful. It's an integrated process, if you will. All students go through the same process. California got into trouble because Berkeley was following an admissions policy mandated by their previous group of Regents. They were directed to base admissions policies on race because of a concern that Asian-American students were overrepresented. Asian-Americans have long argued that their numbers are kept down at Berkeley. It's almost operated like a quota. California is like this yo-yo that goes up and down on these things depending upon the political climate.

Review: Dartmouth has need-blind admissions. Since you can't look at financial aid requests, how do you judge a student's socioeconomic background?

Furstenburg: We can figure it out more from the biographical information that comes with the family. Parents' education and occupations are a pretty good clue — it's not hard to figure out. We know a lot about the high schools around the country and what percentage of students go on to four year colleges from those schools. You can tell good schools from weak schools.

If someone comes from a modest background and community, the schools might be weaker. It's not the school they go to or the parents' occupations alone. You look at all those things together. There might be a family, where neither the parents nor the siblings went to college, and the student went to a weak high school. Very often in that situation, the kid that has risen to the top has overcome more obstacles than some others. We tend to say that person has got a lot of gumption and motivation — no one has been spoon-feeding him. He's done it on his own.

Review: The hot-button issue of the fall seemed to be gender parity. The Class of '99 is the first with more women than men. How has gender parity been achieved? Was a conscious effort made to accomplish this?

Furstenburg: I think it has been achieved by a natural evolution. That's occurred in the last couple of years. Five to ten years ago there was a general feeling that Dartmouth was a man's school and women weren't welcome here. It was dominated by fraternities. It just was a bad place for women. Of course that's not true and I think the more balanced view of Dartmouth has started to get out.

A number of years ago, there was an article in the Times that said Dartmouth had the highest percentage of women on the faculty in the Ivies. This was kind of striking. People said, 'Dartmouth! That doesn't fit our image!' The increase in applications over the last several years has been much steeper for women than for men. The applicant pool, while not at parity, is much closer.

It turns out that in terms of academic credentials, women tend to be a bit stronger. That's true nationally, and it also is evident in Ivy League applicant pools. As we shifted the focus a little bit more to measure academic credentials in the admissions process, it probably helped women applicants. The Women in Science Program helps. Dartmouth's women's athletic teams are quite strong. If you look at it across the board, they are probably a tad stronger than the men's. Interestingly, two years ago we admitted more women than men, and the class still turned out more men. Last year, the opposite was true. I think it will probably continue to bounce back and forth like that.

Review: Higher academic credentials — is this why women were accepted at a slightly higher rate over men this past year?

Furstenburg: Last year, there was maybe a two or three percentage point difference between the rates of admission. Last year there were more daughters of legacies than sons of legacies. That's a category we pay some attention to.

There's a lot of concern nationally about gender equity in athletics. Brown has been sued a number of times for not offering equal opportunities to women. Dartmouth is on very good footing there. If you go back five years, there were many more male applicants than female applicants. Now it's much closer. Five years ago the Ivy presidents decided to eliminate freshman football, make freshmen eligible for all four years, and cut the maximum from 50 football players per class to 35. Now, fifteen people: that's a percent and a half of our freshman class. There are more legacy females now, 15 more of them — that's another percent. Now all of a sudden you've got another 3% of women in just two groups. We've also seen that there are a lot more women interested in science. If you look at science students, legacies, and athletics, all were once male-dominated. All three of those categories are now closer to 50/50.

Review: One would think that legacies come from better socioeconomic backgrounds than the average student. How do you balance out the two — legacies versus socioeconomic diversity?

Furstenburg: To some extent I think they do. We like to think so. I think our approach on legacies is pretty sound and is consistent with the other most selective places. We consider legacies only to be the sons and daughters of BA degree holders. It does not include granddaughters, uncles, nieces, and nephews and anybody that went to medical school. It's strictly undergraduate. That's what Harvard, Yale, and Princeton do.

There are so many qualified applicants. You get to a point where you've taken the exceptional one. You have a large number of people that are very qualified left, and you could take any number of them. It's at that phase of the process where legacy status can be a bit of a plus. At Dartmouth now, about 7% of each class is legacy. That number has gone down, not because we are admitting a smaller percentage of them, but alumni have had fewer kids. The whole baby boomer generation just didn't have many kids and we're starting to see that now on college applications. So we're getting a bit of a break.

Review: The amount of applicants has gone up so dramatically. Do you plan on capping the admissions numbers?

Furstenburg: We do pretty much cap the size of the freshman class. We look at the total undergraduate population. We know that we can not have any more than about 4,200 undergraduates at Dartmouth and no more than, say, 3,600 taking classes each term.

The fluctuation you see in the freshman class has pretty much been between 1,050 and 1,080. The size of the class reflects the previous year's graduating class. So, this year we're looking for a class of about 1,070, because the class that is going to graduate in June is a little bit larger. It fluctuates about by about twenty or thirty students from one year to the next.

I think you know there are no plans to get any larger. I think we are satisfied with the size. It would be tempting, given the size of our applicant pool, to let in more students. This year we admitted 19% of the applicants. Yale admitted 18%. I think Princeton was about 14%. Harvard probably admitted 12%.

So, we're highly selective. There's no shortage of great kids, but we want to stay this size.

Review: The low admittance rate will drive our ranking up, which in turn will produce more applicants, right?

Furstenburg: It's a funny cycle. The harder you are to get in, the more people apply. We're definitely a hot place, which is nice.

The Other Side of the Application:Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions; An Interview with Karl Furstenburg

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