Peeking Proctors

You may not know it, but throughout the year, any interaction you have with your friendly neighborhood proctor could end up in an evaluation at the admissions office, informing future admissions decisions.

Recently, the admissions office was forced to admit, via a mistakenly sent email, that information collected about current freshman, and possibly upperclassmen, may be used to determine who was an “admissions mistake” and who was a treasured find. The email—accidentally sent by a proctor to a Crimson reporter—condemned two students as “so self-centered that they have trouble even imagining another person’s point of view.” This report should have instead ended up at the admissions office, presumably with the intention of warning admissions officers off other such conceited types.

On a basic level, it is hardly a shock to learn that proctors are, and reportedly have been for centuries, monitoring their entryways. Among the variety of tasks assigned to them—from invigilating exams to providing academic advice—keeping an eye on students’ well-being is naturally a high priority. But, as well as filling in a once-a-term evaluation, proctors have been told to relay both their gratitude and angst to the admissions office for admitting both their “favorite” students and those labeled the more “problematic” types. The admissions office in turn can use this feedback as a way of aiding judgments about how students in certain groups—among them different high schools and current students’ younger siblings—are doing overall and whether to recruit more or fewer of them.

Despite concern amongst many freshman that they were not told about this practice, we can see no problem, provided this information is used sensibly. Collecting feedback about previous actions is a natural part of any review or strategy for improvement, and we welcome anything that will better inform admissions on what type of person is likely to contribute to the Harvard community.

But this information must be used with caution. Proctors vary in quality and are being asked to pass on profoundly subjective reports on students’ progress. Comments that students are “self-centered,” for example, are probably not as helpful as concrete feedback about their involvement in campus activities. Information about said groups should also be treated with skepticism until it can be proved to be evidence of causation rather than mere correlation. Fortunately, the admissions office is used to dealing with this kind of subjective information all the time—in school reports, personal essays, and references—and has said that it would only act on the feedback were it to inform some kind of “pattern.”

If used properly, ultimately, feedback from proctors and senior tutors about their students can only help to improve admissions procedures.