Faculty turnover is incredibly small. The entire student population, on the other hand, is new over four years. It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of the Admission Committee's work, for it is here that the mission of the school is put to the test. They have spent the past several weeks studying and debating 400 application folders, and their decisions are now mailed. The Admission Team literally crafts the community we will know. How do they do this? What qualities do they favor?

By the time the admission year is complete, we will have had 500 applications. How would the student body be different if we had 5,000? How easy it would be if we wanted more kids with SSATs above the 60th or 80th percentile! Happily, we have just as many of those students as is appropriate. We also have 100 students who meet with tutors four times per week. That's just right, too. So, what do we want, given the very real academic diversity that is stipulated in the mission? How do we measure qualities like character and integrity and--above all--that value that so many institutions claim to honor above all: honesty?

Well, it's a job. We send out recommendation forms that focus where it counts.... We make exhaustive telephone calls to clarify the responses to those recs.... The interview is usually critical. Ideally, during the admission tour earlier in the year, the kid picks up on vibes... figures out the ethos here... and either says, "I've got to go to this school" or "No way."

Every school chooses how and where it expects conformity: curriculum, dress code, attendance to this and that, numbers of teams you have to play on.... Every potential applicant should attend an assembly, and see students come forward to say whatever they want to say. We lean away from conformity, and prize the (OK...appropriate) expression of individuality.

Early next September, 100 boys and girls will arrive for registration and Wilderness Orientation. In the weeks and months that follow, they will shape--with great power and effect--the character of this human community. In his or her own way, each will validate the trust that the Admission Committee has placed in them today.