Las Cruces Academy

Who is on the committee

The names of the people on the committee are not available to the public. This is to avoid any pressure being placed on members of the committee to admit or reject particular students (this would be bad, as they would likely have to recuse themselves for those cases, meaning we would have to select a substitute member to consider those students' cases).

What we look for

In admitting students, we are looking for children who will gain the most from what Las Cruces Academy has to offer, and who will be able to contribute to the community—both at Las Cruces Academy and in general. We will look specifically for gifted and academically advanced students, but either giftedness or advancement can show up in many ways. Similarly, the ability to contribute to the community can show up in many ways. However, while giftedness and advancement can frequently be inferred easily from concrete observations of ability or advanced knowledge, contributing to the community is something we are looking for in students’ futures, so the relative merit of each student in that area will necessarily be based on the intuition of the Admissions Committee.

Process

Any member of the Board of Trustees, faculty, or Board of Advisers may run for the admissions committee. All members of the three groups will then vote using the MiniMax Condorcet method to determine which three candidates will compose the admissions committee. If a member of the committee believes they may have a conflict of interest regarding a particular student, or another member of LCA provides evidence that the member may have a conflict of interest, the Director is required to choose a substitute for reviewing the admissions materials of that particular student.

Each member of the committee will review the admissions materials of every applicant (with the exception of cases in which a conflict of interest may be present). The committee—as a whole and as individual members—is free to discuss or not discuss particular students among themselves and with other trustees, advisers, or faculty members. Each member of the committee will vote to accept, deny, or indefinitely defer admission to each student. If a student receives at least two votes to accept their admission, they will be admitted pending their parents’/guardians’ acceptance of admissions and first tuition payment. Likewise, if they receive two votes to deny their admission, their admission will be denied. In any other case, their application will be held and their admissions materials will be added to the wait list. The students’ parents/guardians will be notified in any of the three cases.

After a student has been either admitted or denied, letters of recommendation on their behalf will be destroyed. Unless at least two members of the Admissions Committee vote to hold an application for the following year, any applications still on the wait list when the admissions quota has been reached will be denied and have their letters of recommendation destroyed. All applications for admission will be retained as a permanent record, at least in digital form.

General Rules

1. As with everything else at Las Cruces Academy, prospective students may not be discriminated against on the basis of race, religious beliefs, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, physical disability, or sexual orientation.
2. Any member of the Board of Trustees, faculty, or Board of Advisers may review the admissions materials of a prospective student as long as they have no conflict of interest regarding that student. They may also present their opinion regarding that student to members of the admissions committee, again only if they have no conflict of interest. However, any information contained in the admissions materials is considered confidential unless it has been disclosed in a public setting, and may not be communicated to anybody outside of the three groups mentioned above without explicit permission.