New Common App alternative: Online Portfolios from 9th grade onwards?

[quark]

Have you guys seen this?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/27/80-colleges-and-universities-announce-plan-new-application-and-new-approach

 

 

the colleges and universities are creating new online portfolios for high school students, designed to have ninth graders begin thinking more deeply about what they are learning or accomplishing in high school, to create new ways for college admissions officers, community organizations and others to coach them, and to emerge in their senior years with a body of work that could be used to help identify appropriate colleges and apply to them. Organizers of the new effort hope it will minimize some of the disadvantages faced by high school students without access to well-staffed guidance offices or private counselors.

 

 

Any thoughts from btdt homeschooling parents on whether or not this would have been helpful when your DCs were applying?

 

ETA: edited title to avoid confusion.

 

[Nan in Mass]

I don,t think my children were ready to think about college at that age, so I am not sure how helpful this would have been. I also am not sure I would have wanted them comparing themselves to other students in a competing for college seats sort of way, or feeling the pressure to perform for anyone other than themselves, or focused on their high school years with the goal of college admission in mind. I wanted the emphasis to be on learning to learn and on aquiring an education that would serve them throughout their lives. Gaining the skills and foundation knowledge to learn in a college situation was part of that, but not the whole thing. I think *I* might have found it helpful as the parent educator, but I think it would have been too much for my kids until later in high school? Maybe? I went and talked to an admissions person familiar with homeschooling when my older son was a sophomore and that was really helpful for me when it came to working out how to do high school in such a way that the emphasis was on education, not just college admissions checklists, but at the same time, keeping in mind what was necessary for college admissions. I liked that I was the one that received the information, though, and that my sons weren,t burdened with it until later. Or something like that. It is hard to put my finger on what bothers me about this idea.

 

Nan

[MysteryJen]

My first response is "ick." Lots of 9th graders not only are not ready to think about college, they are barely ready to deal with high school. Let them have a few years to mature and grow without needing everything to be seen and analyzed. This seems to be part of the trend that high schoolers should actually be ready for college long before they need to be. Obviously kids are in different places, etc. But many, many kids, especially normal, smart boys who will be ready, are not prepared for that kind of critique and analysis at 14. And could be permanently turned off of college by it.

[Lucy the Valiant]

(And is it too conspiracy theorist of me to think that this info is more interesting to the data collection departments of colleges and universities than it is to average high school sophomores? I wish I trusted the security of the internet more than I do.)

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Organizers of the new effort hope it will minimize some of the disadvantages faced by high school students without access to well-staffed guidance offices or private counselors.

 

It strikes me that whatever organization owns Common Application must be looking at all of the money rolling into College Board and wondering what they can package and sell, either to schools or to the students.

 

It also strikes me that an initiative like this is going to have a greater advantage going to students whose communities are helping them through this process at an early grade.  I don't really see how this is going to help a student who is one of a thousand kids in a graduating class in a school where the emphasis for the guidance office is on coping with the criminal element, drug use, chronic absenteeism and retaking failed courses.  How does it really help a student with little guidance?  Are they going to see a poster in the library or the lunch room and think, hey, yeah, I should start putting together my portfolio because the guidance office isn't going to do it for me?  

 

This whole process is making me a little bitter.  If Common Application really wanted to take a load off of students, they could start by aggregating and resending test scores to member colleges.  That way a student could send one of their free scores to Common App and not have to pay to send it all around the country.  Even after using my son's free scores, I spent about $90 sending more reports to the other schools that needed it.  Counting the SAT, AP, and score reports, I suspect that we will pay around $700 to College Board.  ($89/AP test x 5, SAT - $54.50, SAT Subject test - $80, Score Reports $11.25 x 6)  

 

Total right now is $647   

 

For testing and score reports.

 

That is with no additional score reports and nothing needed to be rushed.  That doesn't include the additional score reports needed for ACT.  Or the AP report that we will actually need to send to the college DS attends (though I guess that will be a free report on the last AP exam.

 

Death of a thousand cuts.  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

And for goodness sake, I want my youngest to have significant experiences as part of his education by spending time with his garden, wondering what will happen if he tries to grow an apple tree in Hawaii or working with the sea urchins in the lab or out in the mud pulling mangrove seedlings out of a historic fishpond.  He does not need to be wondering when he is 13 if his online portfolio will be of enough interest to get him looked at by Amherst.

 

The part that could be good about this is if it enables other entities, like church groups, scout troops, learning centers, or even active neighborhood groups to get in there and help with advising the kids around them.  There are some issues with tribal knowledge and a lack of information and understanding in many areas.  Even just within homeschool communities, you see a lack of information or bad information.  

 

I'm not talking about a difference of opinion on the usefulness of AP vs DE vs CLEP or online classes vs home based vs coop.  I'm talking about people who think that the mere fact of homeschooling is going to open a magic door to hyper selective colleges, despite SAT/ACT scores that are average.  Sort of the academic equivalent of thinking that because your kid started on the high school football team that he's going to have agents falling all over themselves to give him a full ride.

[quark]

Thank you all for chiming in. I edited the title as my earlier title made it sound like this was part of Common App when it isn't.

 

Seems like this is optional and under students' control? From the article:

 

 

Students could opt to share (with any privacy levels they desire) some or all of their portfolios with people who might provide advice. Community organizers focused on education might check in on students to see how they are progressing.

 

Basically, it sounds like students will have access to online application material earlier and can slowly build their applications from 9th grade if they so desire, giving them more time to think it through? Am I misunderstanding this?

 

ETA: fwiw, I am not for or against because I don't think I have enough info to come to a conclusion yet but I am just wondering if it could also be a blessing to some just like how it could be a total put off to others.

 

 

[Arcadia]

 

Basically, it sounds like students will have access to online application material earlier and can slowly build their applications from 9th grade if they so desire, giving them more time to think it through? Am I misunderstanding this?

 

I think it would be like LinkedIn in terms of concept.  The more info the student make public, the more likely they are to get hopefully useful critical advice and noticed by guidance counselors.

 

The Coalition website is this

http://www.coalitionforcollegeaccess.org/

[Gwen in VA]

I hate to see any part of the college process spilling into the freshman and sophomore years.

 

Yes, students in the early high school years need guidance on what classes to take, but that IS the schools' job. I can't imagine random colleges honestly giving meaningful advice to thousands of high school students on the basis of the students' posting stuff online. It isn't going to happen. Nope.

 

I agree with the earlier comment that this is about data mining.

 

Students do NOT need to have the college frenzy flooding into their early high school years. YUCK!

[regentrude]

Sounds like an effort to get at student data and use them for targeted college advertising. The "interest" sections on the ACT signup are already bad enough.

 

I can't see how this would be useful. For students in a b&m school, the school helps select the sequence of classwork. For homeschooled students, the parent does. I don't see what it could have helped us to fill out online portfolios in 9th grade. The college admissions requirements are spelled out clearly enough, and it is easy to reverse engineer what has to happen each year to get there.

 

She envisions universities such as Purdue accepting students' invitation to advise them as early as ninth grade, “so we can say, ‘yes, you are on a path to be ready for calculus,’ or can say, ‘yes, you did well in science courses so here are more to take,’†and so forth.

 

That is ridiculous. This should be the school's job - it should not require a consultation with a college. Also, "course suggestions" are of little help for many students, since their course choices are limited by what their schools offer - not what colleges would like to see. Most of my incoming engineering students know that physics in high school would have been beneficial, but many high schools simply don't offer any.

 

I vote data mining to increase ads. DD received 40lbs of college advertisement in the mail. We certainly don't need more.

 

ETA: I did not quite understand how they expect the "advising" to work. Will each school handpick over the high school students and select whom to give advice? Will the same student get - conflicting? -advice from different sources? What happens to students whose portfolio is utterly unattractive to good colleges?

The whole thing sounds unnecessarily complicated.

 

[FaithManor]

Sounds like an effort to get at student data and use them for targeted college advertising. The "interest" sections on the ACT signup are already bad enough.

 

I can't see how this would be useful. For students in a b&m school, the school helps select the sequence of classwork. For homeschooled students, the parent does. I don't see what it could have helped us to fill out online portfolios in 9th grade. The college admissions requirements are spelled out clearly enough, and it is easy to reverse engineer what has to happen each year to get there.

 

 

That is ridiculous. This should be the school's job - it should not require a consultation with a college. Also, "course suggestions" are of little help for many students, since their course choices are limited by what their schools offer - not what colleges would like to see. Most of my incoming engineering students know that physics in high school would have been beneficial, but many high schools simply don't offer any.

 

I vote data mining to increase ads. DD received 40lbs of college advertisement in the mail. We certainly don't need more.

 

ETA: I did not quite understand how they expect the "advising" to work. Will each school handpick over the high school students and select whom to give advice? Will the same student get - conflicting? -advice from different sources? What happens to students whose portfolio is utterly unattractive to good colleges?

The whole thing sounds unnecessarily complicated.

Absolutely this!

[EKS]

That looks horrible. In effect it is extending the college application season over four years. Also, I found that what seemed important, significant, interesting, or otherwise notable in the moment may not have been what actually ended up being part of my son's story over the long term.

[quark]

Thank you everyone for weighing in. Since it's something new, I really wanted to see if there could be more plus vs minus to this. The data mining part seemed very likely to me but I wanted to put that aside to see what else I could be missing. Thanks again!

[quark]

I don,t think my children were ready to think about college at that age, so I am not sure how helpful this would have been. I also am not sure I would have wanted them comparing themselves to other students in a competing for college seats sort of way, or feeling the pressure to perform for anyone other than themselves, or focused on their high school years with the goal of college admission in mind. I wanted the emphasis to be on learning to learn and on aquiring an education that would serve them throughout their lives. Gaining the skills and foundation knowledge to learn in a college situation was part of that, but not the whole thing. I think *I* might have found it helpful as the parent educator, but I think it would have been too much for my kids until later in high school? Maybe? I went and talked to an admissions person familiar with homeschooling when my older son was a sophomore and that was really helpful for me when it came to working out how to do high school in such a way that the emphasis was on education, not just college admissions checklists, but at the same time, keeping in mind what was necessary for college admissions. I liked that I was the one that received the information, though, and that my sons weren,t burdened with it until later. Or something like that. It is hard to put my finger on what bothers me about this idea.

 

Nan

 

At first, this idea was appealing to me on one hand, as a homeschooling parent, because I am not familiar with college admissions here in the US. I read up as much as I can but simple things still baffle me and sometimes I am frustrated by things that seem just so needlessly complicated (but I went to a much smaller uni in a much tinier country with a different education system). After thinking about this (can you tell I am a slow processor?) more deeply, yes, I think this is not for us. I already have a hard time fighting the pressure to conform or to group think or to think about credits when kiddo wants to learn something out of the box. I don't need this additional thing telling me what to do when we have so much fun doing things a different way.

 

"I wanted the emphasis to be on learning to learn and on aquiring an education that would serve them throughout their lives."

 

Yes, the hesitation I feel on the other hand, has to do with this. This is what I can put my finger on about what bothers me about this idea. I don't need them telling us to do calculus or science for the purpose of admissions. The math and science we like to do is much more multifaceted than that.

 

Thanks Nan.