Applications to the school were down 13% for both prospective seventh and ninth graders this year, according to the admissions office. The 2023-24 admissions cycle had an admit rate of 24%, the lowest on record. The admit rate increased to 31% the following year for rising seventh and ninth graders and reached 35% in the most recent admissions cycle.
Head of Admissions and Enrollment Chris Sanders said the sizable drop in applications can be attributed to past student deaths and displacement caused by the Palisades and Altadena fires. Sanders said the admissions department decided to be transparent with all prospective families regarding the tragedies, even if some were apprehensive about the situation.
“[President Rick] Commons and [Head of School] Laura Ross were willing to really talk about the deaths and how the school has responded all together,” Sanders said. “Families respected us for not running away from it. We talked about how mental health and wellness was a priority for the school well before the very first student death even happened. But now that we have some renewed resources and focus on it, including our director of wellness, we were able to highlight that [to prospective families].”
According to Sanders, a large number of prospective families affected by the Los Angeles wildfires withdrew applications early in the process.
“We do draw a large number of applicants from both the Palisades and Pasadena,” Sanders said. “There were families that mentioned they were going to exit the process because they were relocating to a different place because of losing their homes.”
Despite the drop in applications, Commons said the admissions department was still able to draw from an ample number of talented applicants.
“I am delighted to report that we had a pretty typical year in terms of having way more qualified applicants than we could possibly admit, and a very, very strong yield on those that we admitted,” Commons said.
Commons said another factor that could have impacted prospective applicants was the reinstatement of the ISEE requirement by the admissions department.
“Not every school in our peer group [required the ISEE],” Commons said. “As a matter of fact, at Marlborough, not only is it not optional, but they don’t look at scores. [The tragedy and the ISEE requirement] were headwinds with regard to the volume and the competitiveness that we are used to.”
Sanders said the admissions department decided to reimplement the testing requirement to compare applicants with a uniform academic performance metric.
“One of the primary drivers is that one of the things we saw during the time with [COVID-19] was grade inflation,” Sanders said. “Generally, grades were going to be a little more forgiving given that all we were facing, and I can understand that, but there started to be less differentiation between students and transcripts. We wanted a tool that would allow us to have more color on the candidate’s ability.”
The school’s admissions officers holistically review applicants through academic transcripts, letters of recommendation, interviews and testing scores. Sanders said the admissions committee prioritizes two main qualities in prospective students.
“The biggest thing that we’ve tried to look for and encourage school administrators to tell us about students is one, how are their executive functioning skills,” Sanders said. “If we can know that students can navigate a fast-paced environment like [the school], that’s beneficial. The second piece we really want to look for is if the child has grit and resilience. So that if there is a bump in the road, they’re going to say, ‘What can I do fix this?’”
Regardless of the adversity that the school has faced in the past, Sanders said the school still has abundant resources to offer to its students in their education.
“I think about the number of sports teams we have, the number of programs we have in the Visual and Performing Arts, the fact that we’ve been able to get started on River Park, those were all the reasons that folks cited as sort of the ultimate factors that they used to decide that they would come to [the school],” Sanders said. “This is the place to be.”
