

What Is Holistic Admissions?
In years past, a student could assess his chances of admission to a certain college by comparing his class rank and test scores against well-known benchmarks. There were tacitly acknowledged cut-off scores below which the applicant could not expect to be admitted. That was a reach school. But even more important, there were scores above which you were virtually certain to get in. This was how you knew you had a safety school. Many public colleges and universities still op