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Whenever you apply to an accredited university, a college admissions officer will be the one reviewing your forms. Ultimately, they will be the ones either fighting for your acceptance or disregarding your application altogether.

Admissions officers go through hundreds and hundreds of applications every year to create a balanced and powerful class for the institution. And for the top schools, those applications can be extremely competitive with many talented and ambitious students all vying for their place in a finite student body.

In this competitive environment, it is essential to know the ins and outs of the application process and how to increase your viability as a candidate for the school of your choice. Ideally, a student would begin building their candidacy profiles early throughout their schooling, and make themselves a memorable application that would later lead to being an impactful student during their college career.

To do so, here are some factors that admissions officers look for while reviewing students' college applications—from our experts and former admissions officers here at InGenius Prep. Those factors include:

• Academic Performance
• Uniqueness and Diversity
• Leadership Qualities
• Compelling Personal Theme

Academic performance (GPA/ Test Scores)

The first and most ubiquitous factor, a student that performs well in their courses is favored during the admissions process. While perfect test scores are not a requirement for entry into an Ivy League school, it's better to have high test scores and a good GPA than to not.

Colleges often have thresholds for test scores. And because of the competitiveness, students who do not meet this threshold may not even be considered for acceptance at all. But while test scores were, and still are, highly valued in most academic institutions, academic performance is not the single most important factor in a student's application. 

Test scores and academic performance is a more complicated topic to broach than it was in the past. Over time, schools have become more test-optional, and now, even Ivy League colleges like Brown, Columbia, and Cornell are not requiring students to submit test scores with their 2023–2024 college applications. So, while good test scores set the foundation for a student's candidacy, even if you have lower scores, you can still get accepted to your top college if you apply your other accomplishments and build your profile as a strong student with these other traits listed here.

Uniqueness (Diversity)

Over time, colleges have moved away from the model of "well-rounded student" being the ideal for their applicants. These days, the goal of admissions officers is to create a well-rounded student body, but also for each student to be unique, specialized, and bring a fresh perspective. One does not need to be perfect in all categories. Colleges now are valuing the depth of a student's character over their range.

For this reason, diversity in perspective, in background, skills, ambitions, and passions is what colleges value in their students. And to stand out as a candidate, a student should have something about their character that is different from the typical applicant.

Forbes Contributor Brennan Barnard illustrates more of this shifting conversation in his article College Admission Zombies: Ideas That Need To Die. 

Leadership

Though it may seem like a specific trait to have, leadership is a quality that encompasses a wide range of skills and experiences—not limited to personability, ambition, management, ingenuity, compassion, and grit. Though Ivy League schools value diversity in their student body, one trait they want all their students to have is leadership and all the other aspects that come from it.

Students with leadership qualities are favored for their proactivity and willingness to better themselves and their peers. These students often have participated in—or even organized—clubs, programs, and even whole organizations, giving back to their community, uplifting those underprivileged, and have new and unconventional methods of achieving their goals.

Admissions officers are on the lookout for this trait in their applicants, and it is typically expressed through students' extracurricular activities, activism in their communities, and their accomplishments in their fields. Of all the qualities in a student applicant, leadership is often the most overlooked; to learn more about it, listen to our podcast “Leadership Experience: The Missing Piece in College Applications.”

Personal Theme (Application Persona)

Not one aspect but a combination of everything thus far, the "theme" is the unifying concept of a student's career. A Personal Theme—or Application Persona—is a broader concept that admissions officers often keep an eye out for.

Ideally, this reads as a student with a "story," with a goal, a narrative—an identity that they are striving for.

A student with a strong theme in the, for example, tech field will have taken multiple coding and computer science classes. They participate in robotics clubs and technology competitions. They may even take unrelated courses, such as creative writing or graphic design, to learn new skills that bolster their focus in technology.

A student with a weak theme will have accolades in multiple different subjects, be part of many different and diverse clubs, and work hard to make an impact in their community, but these activities will be unrelated and not in service to one another. It will read as a student casting the widest net they can just to impress the admissions officer rather than working to make strides in their field and empower themselves as a student.

It should be noted that, even if a student has lower academic performance, they may still be favored over their peers by admissions officers if they excel in these other areas: leadership, diversity, and their application persona. 

How to Get Noticed by Admissions Officers

Getting accepted into a top college is a very long and arduous process. It involves the labor of countless people all working in concert to determine the upcoming class year. Making an impression on the college admissions officer who will be reviewing your application—among the hundreds of others—will be a student’s first major hurdle in their fight for admission. 

So, making an impression on these admissions officers starts with building yourself into a strong candidate for your chosen college. Maintaining academic performance is important, but it is equally as crucial to set yourself apart by illustrating your leadership qualities, your diverse traits, and a compelling personal theme that will set the stage for your application persona—making yourself a memorable candidate when it comes time for committee review. 

To learn more about how to build your candidate profile for college admission, our team at InGenius Prep, comprised of Former Admissions Officers with first-hand experience in reviewing and selecting students, offers in-depth counseling programs to give you the best chance at acceptance into your school of choice. 

Learn more here and schedule a free call with one of our advisors.