As much as we understand the concept of holistic admissions, it’s hard to remember how it actually works. I’ve talked to many, many people—both students and adults—who can tell you what holistic admissions means, but then go on to say that it’s “really” all about test scores. Or that someone got into a particular college because of their essay. Or didn’t get into a particular college because of their essay. But holistic means that there’s not one single piece of information that leads to your acceptance or denial. It’s just hard to really believe that colleges take the whole application into consideration, and then evaluate it in a nebulous, non-checklist kind of way. So let’s use an analogy to perhaps make the process more intuitive.

Imagine that your family lets you know that they’d like to hold a graduation party for you this summer, and they’d like you to give them a list of people to invite. (This assumes that you’re a graduating senior, and that this coming summer, unlike this past summer, we’ll be able to have parties. It’s an analogy, work with me.) Out of your all your friends and classmates, you choose 60 that you’d like to invite. You give the list to your parents. Are you crazy? they ask. We don’t have room for 60 people. You can only invite 20—narrow it down.

This is actually a lot like the first step in holistic admissions. A college will get a lot of applications. At least two people will give the application a thorough, but fast, reading. They’ll spend as little as seven or eight minutes each reading over everything (this is what they do for a living, and they’re very good at doing it quickly) and decide if you are basically qualified or not. If you’re not basically qualified, you’re not going to be accepted. But they’ll have more qualified applicants than they may be able to take—at super-selective schools, they may have a lot more qualified applicants than they can accept. So once the original pass-through is done, they’re a lot like you with your guest list, trying to find a way to narrow down a big list of good candidates into a smaller list.

So what do you do to narrow down your guest list for your party? First, think about what you don’t do: you don’t rank all 60 of your possible guests from first to last, and then only invite the top 20. Maybe a third grader has a best friend, and second-best friend, and third-best friend, and on and on, but you’re more complicated and mature than that. You don’t rank the candidates from top to bottom and then use a cut-off line, and neither do colleges.

What you do instead is start to think of good combinations. Which 20 people will give you all the elements you want at your party? Think of some of the considerations you would need to make to narrow down your guest list.

If you invite Sally, are there any people you would feel like you had to invite with her? And if you invite Sally, are there any people you feel like you’d have to avoid inviting, maybe because they don’t get along with Sally? Inviting Sally means more than inviting just Sally; it has an effect on who else makes it onto your list. If you decide not to invite Sally and invite Jose instead, you’ve still got the people who you feel pressured to add because of him and pressured to leave off because of him. You have to find a combination of people that gets you the mix that has people eager to come to your party.

And for your party, you probably want to have a mix of categories of people. You’ve got school friends, but you probably also have friends who don’t go to school with you. Inviting 19 school friends and one non-school friend, who may not know anybody else, could make it uncomfortable for the non-school friend. You need a balance. You’ll want to avoid inviting only your most high-energy, rowdy friends. That could make your party a little more chaotic than you want. But you’ll also want to avoid only inviting your most chill and quiet friends. That could make for a more relaxed party than you really want. You have to find a way to balance those things.

So you start trying out different combinations of people, where each person invited affects who else does or doesn’t get invited. There’s no perfect combination, so you try out a few. Your guest list is getting a little complicated to figure out now. But there’s more.

You may have three friends who are definitely in your narrow list, but you know that none of them drive. And there’s another friend who probably wouldn’t make it onto the narrow list, but you know that he would easily give all of them a ride. Do you invite him, just to make sure you get the other three? If not, who else will you invite to make sure you can have the three you really want? And if you do invite him, who will end up being left off?

Let’s make it even more complicated and fun. On top of all the other consideration, what if there are a few people on your list of 60 that your parents insist you have to invite, no matter what? And what if there are a few who your parents refuse to invite? Now you’re working with a few more constraints. You’re not necessarily in complete control of all 20 people on your list of 20.

There’s one more thing to consider: what if everyone you invite isn’t able to make it to your party? What if they end up going out of town that week? Or what if they go to someone else’s party instead of yours? If you want a party of 20 people, you need to invite more than 20. Invite too few, and you’ve got wasted food and wasted opportunities. Invite too many, and there may not be room for all of them. But what’s the right number to invite? Nobody knows. You’ve got to make a good guess and hope for the best. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if you could use a waiting list the way colleges do. I wouldn’t advise it for a real party, though.

So now you have a better sense of what it’s like for an admissions committee to put together a class. They’re not just looking for qualified candidates, but combinations of candidates that give them the balance and mixture they’re looking for. There’s no single combination that’s perfect, and any qualified candidate may or may not make it onto the narrowed-down acceptance list based on factors that have little to do with them personally.

Once you have your (hypothetical) party, there may be resentment afterwards. There may be people who didn’t get invited and feel like they should have. They may accuse you of bias and favoritism. They may decide they no longer want to be your friend. It will be ok. You may be upset about people who said they would come to your party but didn’t, throwing off the carefully balanced mix you set up and wasting a spot that someone else would have enjoyed. It will be ok. Your family may be really angry if you didn’t invite the right number and more than 20 show up. That will also be ok. Unless they just kick some people out and leave you to deal with the aftereffects of that.

But here’s the good news. In your metaphorical party, you don’t have to ask any of your friends to pay to come. You’ve got enough to pay for all the food, drinks, and entertainment. A person’s ability to pay isn’t a factor in whether or not you invite them. That’s a luxury that you and a small number of colleges have. There are a few universities with so much money that they can accept only applicants with full need and be fine. Most schools have to invite people who can pay, or they have to find ways to get others to pay—remember the friends who don’t drive and the guy you may invite just to get them to your party?

So that’s how holistic admissions works. Each separate school decides how many people to invite to their party and has to narrow down a list from a larger one of qualified candidates. They know that most of those applicants are also applying to more parties than theirs. Some don’t need to do much narrowing—around 80% of colleges admit at least half their applicants. Some of the most famous colleges can only invite a small percentage of the qualified candidates.

Ok, you get it. Holistic admissions is like a party, and the guest list is just one of many possible combinations that would have worked out for them. Beyond a basic understanding, what does this mean for you?

For one, it reminds us all that “didn’t get accepted” isn’t the same as “couldn’t get accepted.” That won’t necessarily help with the initial sting of getting denied someplace, but it will help in the long run to understand why you get accepted some places but not others.

Secondly, it helps us understand why we want our applications to be as full and robust as possible. You want an admissions team to know as much about you as they can, so that they have more information to fit you into as many different combinations as possible. They’re looking for high GPAs, but that’s not the only thing they’re looking for. So sending out an application that only emphasizes your high GPA doesn’t give them much to work with. But giving them as clear a picture of your many facets will give them more places to find a place to fit you into their guest list. I’m not a fan of the “never leave a blank, answer ALL the optional questions” approach. There may be some optional questions that just don’t really pertain to you, and trying to shove an answer into them makes you look awkward as much as enthusiastic. But definitely don’t neglect to answer a question that pertains to you, and always give the most complete answer you can.

It also helps us understand why you have to apply to more than one college unless you have some sort of guarantee that you’ll be accepted to it. You should never assume you’re a “shoe in” for a college that uses holistic admissions, no matter how your test scores fir their profile or what their acceptance rate is. You can feel confident that you’re qualified and still understand that your spot isn’t a sure thing.

Have fun at your metaphorical party, and good luck with your actual applications!

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