Direct admissions take off at West Texas A&M

A few years ago, Walter V. Wendler was at a high school near West Texas A&M University, where he serves as president. The assistant principal told him about a student who would succeed if admitted to West Texas A&M but who was convinced “she wouldn’t have a chance” of getting in. Wendler met the student and reviewed her high school transcript. He admitted her on the spot, and she enrolled at WT, as those at the campus call it. That experience led to the creation of a program in 2018. Under the program, principals at 137 high schools in or near the Texas Panhandle are invited each year to nominate five students for automatic admission to WT. An admissions officer reviews their transcripts, their test scores (for those who have them) and their class rank. Then they are usually admitted (Wendler said that in one case a student was told to enroll first at a community college).

He stressed that he’s in a part of the country with many small high schools, which allows the principals to truly know their students. WT has received 972 nominations of students and has enrolled 234 students through the system. He has not studied the decisions of those who don’t enroll. He plans to study how the students who enroll are doing, compared to students admitted regularly, but he says that anecdotally, they appear to be doing as well or better. “There’s this triangulation going on,” said Wendler. “We commit to the principals. The students are burdened to perform because of this.” He said he’s mentioned the idea to other university presidents and got no interest. “They asked about quality control,” he said. But those universities, like his own and like most colleges, admit most of their applicants. WT rejects only about 25 percent of its applicants. “We put entirely too much stock in measurement” as opposed to trusting principals, Wendler added.