Arjun Bhamra ’22
Over the course of the last few years, Episcopal has been becoming more selective. This means EA has been admitting a smaller percentage of total applicants. In fact, the Upper School’s admission rate has been decreasing since 2014, and is currently at an all time low of 34.1%.
The school’s increase in selectivity can be explained by the need to balance a variety of factors, such as attrition and yield, as well as the needs of coaches, faculty, and alumni. These factors, however, can be increasingly volatile and hard to predict. Attrition is the number of students that continue to stay at the school, and the school needs the number of students that stay and the number of accepted students to add up to a range of around 130 to 135. Michael Letts, the Head of the Upper School, mentions that “the class size is my top priority. It’s a big issue if we’re too big. And it sounds easy, but you have to figure out the attrition value, and then hit a number around 130. Then you have to consider the boy/girl balance, and finally you have to consider the number of kids that you can accept.”
On the other hand, yield is the number of students that actually come to the school. “Every year,” says Peter Anderson, Head of Admissions, “we pick many more students than we have spaces, and the range of the yield rate varies from 43% and 56%.”
He adds, “If we instead only accept the number of people that we have space for, and then replace them with wait pool kids as they come in, we will lose a significant fraction of those people, because it’s just before the reply date. This is why EA accepts a larger number of students and then anticipates the yield.”
These two factors are some of the reasons why Episcopal’s selectivity decreased this year. Anderson explains that “there are factors like smaller classroom sizes, more intimacy, not too big a school. We have to look out for these things, but we also have to consider the balance between attrition and yield, and how weighing those two factors may get us to the class size we need.” Emily Staid ‘22 agrees: “You want to make your school more selective, especially for colleges, so that they know they’re getting the top students from a very exclusive institution.”
Myles Davis ’22 summarizes the overall sentiment, saying, “It’s going to be a really difficult process regardless of the rate. With the number of factors to consider, it’s impressive how consistent we are each year.”
That process is arduous. The admissions office evaluates everything from a student’s potential community impact to the consistency in class sizes, even to the rate of athletic recruitment, which has gone up in past years.
79% of initial stage interest at the Episcopal Academy comes from word of mouth, meaning that the students and families that are a part of the EA community are enjoying their experience, and relaying this to their neighbors. Elizabeth Boruff ‘23, talked about her search for schools: “My parents heard about EA through parents of my tennis club members, and we also looked at the website, which was really helpful.”
Anderson elaborates on this process: It’s not just a two step process. A prospective student and their family will usually visit our website, and if they are enticed by what they see, they’ll usually schedule a visit, where the student may have liked
hanging out with the Middle schooler or Upper schooler, and now they’ve decided to apply.” “[The shadow process] was honestly quite intimidating, but it’s helpful for anyone on edge about attending EA, because it really shows how everyone functions and the intensity of the students,” adds Boruff.
However, most of the main decisions come when the faculty looks at each applicant. The admission process is holistic, and considers a variety of factors. “There are nine main people on the committee, and each committee member reads every single application and provides a rating based on components of their application,” explains Anderson. He adds that, in the booklet they check against, “a one is the best, a nine is the worst, and so there’s a whole bunch of descriptors in here that allow us to be very precise and fair across reviewers.”
Members of the committee will analyze a variety of sections: level of English ability, grades and transcripts, the relevant school test scores, each with a different weighting. For example, recommendations from teachers are weighted much lower than grades and transcripts. When asked about how the weight for each section was decided, Anderson explained that “all these different weightings are decided through conversations with Mr. Letts and senior administrators about what our greatest priorities are as a school.”
He highlights the difference in weight between grades and the interview process: “Recommendations, the grades and transcript, and the ISEE testing add up to about 65%, that’s saying that we, as a school, want our students to be sharp, smart, and social. The interview rating is only 10% because there’s not typically a significant connection between how you perform in an interview and how the student will perform academically.” Davis likes the system, explaining that “with such a thorough vetting process for each potential student, it really fits well with our reputation and high standards, plus the academics takes precedence, which is always good.”
One of the more important sections in the rating book is that of community impact. “We care a lot about whether someone can carry a musical, will they be a powerful contributor to a field hockey team or the football team,” Anderson explains. For all accepted students, there is a spreadsheet of names and color coordinated boxes. Each colored box represents a certain level of community impact. He adds, ”These show who would perform well on the varsity team, who has experience with community service, who may support the band. We want high impact students to attend, so the more colors in the accepted pool and wait pool, the better!”
Anderson acknowledges that “[the committee members] are all different personalities, we all prioritize things and read into checked boxes differently than one another, so there is some variance, but generally speaking, and because this is so well described, you can count on some measure of consistency across these reports.”