I regret to inform you …

An Admissions Don at a major British university lays bare the quota-driven process of student selection and imagines what honest acceptance and rejection letters may look like

IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME of the academic year. Up and down the country, universities receive piles of admissions applications; some edifying, others vomit-inducing. In due course, I hear, our progressive state will replace them with TikTok videos, which we, who are responsible for admitting the leaders of the future, will doubtless watch with equal pleasure, discernment, and most likely nausea. But for now, the time-honoured rhythms of the seasons run their course. After we’ve read the piles of applications, the mêlée commences: deciding which students to admit. Th is reveals both the academic bandwidth of this year’s generation, and the true colours of some university academics and administrators. In the pages that follow, I shall set out what it would look like, were it honestly done, at a time…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2023

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