The Deans of Discontent

Charlottesville, Va.—Admissions officials are known as counselors, recruiters, and gatekeepers, but in the spring they become something else—the deans of discontent.

At selective colleges and universities, the people who evaluate applications must bring bad news to thousands and thousands of teenagers each year. Then, they must manage disappointment in its many guises. The fiery parent. The blue student. And these days, the anonymous online commenter.

Such is the lot of Jeannine C. Lalonde (left; photo by Tom Cogill for The Chronicle), senior assistant dean of admission at the University of Virginia. Over the last week, hundreds of students and parents have posted messages on the blog she writes about the university’s application process. Many of those messages have been nice, but some have been mean, even hateful.

Call it a professional hazard of admissions work in the communication age: As many deans have discovered, blogs allow colleges to communicate with applicants like never before. But the technology also opens the door for nastiness, especially during this season of supersonic emotions.

Ms. Lalonde created the blog a few years ago to demystify what happens inside Peabody Hall, where she and her colleagues practice the misunderstood art of evaluating applications. Writing as “Dean J,” Ms. Lalonde uses the forum (called Notes From Peabody) to answer students’ questions and to preach the importance of perspective. Last Friday she posted a message meant to calm the 22,516 applicants who would soon learn their fates. “Remember,” she wrote, “that your decision is not a statement about your value.”

At 5 p.m. that day, applicants were finally able to view those decisions online. Minutes later, waves of joy and despair washed over the blog. Ms. Lalonde had posted separate messages for those UVa accepted (6,907) and those it denied, and the respective comment fields were a contrast in moods. At 5:05, a joyful “James” wrote just one word: “yessss!” The first unhappy commenter had beaten him by one minute, writing “this really sucks.”

Ms. Lalonde let that post stand, but she deleted the next one, which paired “UVa” with a four-letter word. Later that evening, a commenter posted several rants. One included homophobic slurs and described UVa students as “preppy douche bags.” The dean deleted it, then posted a reminder that she would not permit hate speech.

By the end of the day, the blog had received 23,000 hits, roughly eight times as many as on most days in March. Ms. Lalonde knows the blog helps people blow off steam, so she left most of the negative comments alone. Still, watching for inappropriate posts was a round-the-clock chore. While out for lunch on Saturday, she used her iPhone to monitor the blog. Sure enough, while munching on soup and salad, Ms. Lalonde spotted and removed an especially raw post.

After 10 years in the field, Ms. Lalonde understands that admissions decisions, which often seem random to outsiders, carry a frustrating lesson. “People realize that it’s not just a meritocracy,” she says, “where you do x, you do y, and you get z.”

‘Not Life or Death’

The first business day after decisions go out is all about dealing not with the admitted, but with the omitted. On Monday, UVa’s admissions office opened at 8 a.m. The telephone rang at 8:02, the first of 496 calls, about four-fifths of which concerned admissions decisions. One mother demanded to see her child’s admission file, including the staff’s evaluations.

That morning, Senem Kudat Ward, assistant dean of admission, took about 20 telephone calls from unhappy parents. More than one caller said they knew of an admitted student who was less qualified than their children, who were denied.

After one mother complained, Ms. Ward opened the applicant’s file and noted that the student had earned subpar grades in his freshman and sophomore years. The mother countered that his mid-year grades this winter were excellent. The mother then asked whether her child had been rejected because of the family’s last name, which was Indian. “I’m not letting this drop,” she told Ms. Ward. “I’m taking this to the end.”

Difficult conversations are nothing new. Admissions officials here have heard from parents who said that their child who had just been denied was much smarter than an older sibling, whom Virginia had admitted. Other parents have charged that minority applicants took spots from their children. A while back, a young woman who was on the waiting list showed up in the admissions office with five or six family members, who sat down and began to wail.

Once, Ms. Ward got a call from an applicant who was upset because she had been admitted. She had planned to attend a less-selective college with her boyfriend, but she knew her parents would not let her turn down an offer from UVa. The student, who had hidden the letter, asked Ms. Ward if the admissions office could send a rejection letter instead. The answer was no.

On Monday an unsuccessful applicant telephoned from Paris. The concerned grandfather of a denied student called.

Many callers want to know, specifically, what an applicant had done wrong. Sometimes, an admissions official might open the applicant’s file and see a D in the junior year. But often, they must explain, there’s no single, concrete reason why an applicant was denied.

“It’s like being a psychological counselor—you have to figure out what they need,” Ms. Ward says of callers. “Many of them just want to know that they did as best they could as parents.”

Acknowledging an applicant’s specific achievements tends to calm an upset mother or father. Sometimes, just listening helps. On Monday, Ms. Ward let a mother ramble for three or four minutes. “Thank you,” the caller said at last. “I think I just needed to vent.”

Ms. Ward is sympathetic, to a point. She loses patience when callers start yelling or crying. “It’s about peoples’ kids and their future, so it’s a big deal,” she says. “But this is not life or death here.”

Still, for some students, it’s the death of something important. Of an expectation. Of a dream. Of self-image.

Ms. Lalonde knows that for some students, a denied application is the first time they have not gotten something they really wanted. That’s one reason why she tries to strike a balance on her blog. “I want them to feel excited to come here,” she says, “but I don’t want to get them to the point where they think it’s the only place they can go.”

Admissions is serious, so Ms. Lalonde often lightens the mood. The star of her blog is “CavDog,” the alias for Baxter, her 2-year-old golden retriever. Over the last two years the dean has posted numerous photographs of the sad-eyed, handsome pooch. CavDog has become an icon among applicants and parents, who seek him out when they visit. Last year, though, one denied applicant lashed out on the blog: “Nobody cares about your stupid dog.”

Nonetheless, Gregory W. Roberts, dean of admission, believes the blog has helped ease admissions angst. “We look at it as a way to educate people about what we do, to show that there are human beings behind this decision,” he says. “The challenge is to be loose but not too loose.”

Some readers expressed their appreciation over the weekend. One denied applicant described her heartbreak, then wrote: “It was great even being involved with this blog; it was so open and honest and made the whole process much easier.”

On Monday afternoon, Ms. Lalonde sat in her office, with Baxter snoozing at her feet. She responded to several e-mail messages from applicants who had been wait-listed. She updated her blog. Her telephone rang every few minutes. “I’m sorry, we don’t do appeals here,” she told one caller, and then another.

Ms. Lalonde recalls trembling the first time she got off the phone with a screaming parent years ago. The most difficult communications, however, are usually with people who aren’t hysterical, just dejected.

Like the young man who wrote to her that Monday afternoon. This is not a “sob story,” his message began, but, in fact, it was.

Ms. Lalonde thought about what she wanted to say before writing back. She offered what she could: not consolation, but closure.