Why I've stopped doing interviews for Yale

[JanetC]

Math With Bad Drawings is usually about math, but today he tackles college admissions....

 

http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-doing-interviews-for-yale/

 

We aren't shooting for Yale, but a good perspective for those who are.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I love the idea of a lottery among the students considered qualified.

 

It's just as fair as basing decisions on the emotional impact of personal essays. It might also lend a touch of humility that there were plenty of other qualified students who migh have been selected.

[Sunshine State Sue]

OMG.  What a funny guy.  Thanks for sharing.

[EndOfOrdinary]

Great article. Definitely going yo have Ds read it as he is shooting Ivy.

[Catherine]

The essayist expresses many of my doubts about the process of admission to competitive schools.  It's not only a crapshoot, it's a crapshoot that you are promised is NOT a crapshoot.  I posted last year about the asian valedictorian of my son's school and her surprising lack of college acceptances (she ended up salutatorian, at the end).  But it all makes sense if you understand that the school has an agenda, and very likely, that agenda differs significantly from yours. AND the agenda is unwritten and unacknowledged publicly.  

 

I think a lottery would be a perfect solution and feel more fair to students than the current system. 

[daijobu]

One thing the blogger brings up that I hadn't thought before is the volume of materials that is expected of student applicants these days.  When I applied to competitive colleges I had my one single essay that I used for ALL my applications.  Then I had a couple of shorter paragraphs about extracurriculars and whatnot.  Easy peasy.  

 

Nowadays, students spend so much time and emotional energy on their applications, it is a huge letdown and a huge amount of wasted time if they don't get in.  

 

Like he says, what should be a Tinder swipe-left turns into a break up after 6 month intense relationship.  

[Sebastian (a lady)]

What's more there is an industry built around the idea that the right essay or right activities or right academic credentials (magnet school, IB, AP) will get them into elite schools.

I posted a video showing the admissions board at Amherst considering applicants. It's heavily edited but appears to favor a candidate with a dramatic story of family upheaval before her AP Chem exam. Dramatic but also self reported and unverifiable. They also seemed to take family connections at Harvard as a negative (possibly with an eye toward yield?)

 

I think that the colleges themselves are not innocent of suggesting that the result of their admissions board considerations are based on a holistic review of the students in order to form the best possible class.  One of the more helpful candid things I heard from an admissions rep was that they could pick a full class, set it aside, pick another full class from who was left, set that one aside and then select a third class and have no significant difference in the quality of the classes formed.  

 

A review to determine if a student was qualified and prepared to take advantage of the offerings at the college, perhaps with some tagging to mark qualities of special interest (got to get that bassonist) and then putting them into a randomizer would at least be honest.

 

Of course that would require schools to also stop giving exceptional special preference to people who play ball.  I'm not saying that students gain nothing of value through athletics.  I am saying that being an exceptional ball player does not remedy test scores that are well below median for all students, let alone the particular school, and that students who cannot yet read and write on an 8th grade level do not belong in college classes on scholarship.  

[teachermom2834]

I think what bothers me most is seeing kids we know IRL spending their entire senior year testing and retesting and writing essay after essay and having it end in rejections. So hard on the kids and the parents. I know some must thrive on or enjoy the process but going after those Ivy admissions would have made my whole family miserable. I don't fault anyone for doing it. If I had a kid with high stats who was driven toward that I am sure I would have been supportive. But, it is hard to watch friends go through and it seems to be such an intrusive processes that leaves most kids with a rejection.

[EmilyGF]

I was really bothered by one section of his article:

 

Dozens of people have asked me, “Wow, how did you get into Yale?â€

Not a single one has ever asked, “Wow, how did you manage Yale coursework?â€

Wow. What a waste. I went to a college that was hard. I once asked a new prof who had just come from Princeton if I was in danger of failing his class. 

"No, why would you think that? Do people fail classes here? I never heard of anyone at Princeton failing a class."

"Yes, all the time." I did a lot a lot a lot of work and passed it, but I went to one of those rare colleges where getting in was hard, but getting out was quite hard, too. The professors were always afraid someone would call their class easy.

That is what I want for my kids. :-)

Emily

[Nan in Mass]

So perhaps the way to do a lottery would be to do an initial screening, build those three (or whatever) balanced classes, and then do the lottery in order to pick which class to accept? This way, the application could be less extensive, less emotionally invasive and time consuming.

 

My sons did not apply to super selective schools, but each had their hearts set on one particularly unique one which had an extensive application process and each had hurdles to overcome making us very unsure about acceptance. We had an extremely stressful year or two when they were applying. I worried about burnout.

 

Fortunately mine needed unique but not tiptop selective, so the whole application process, although potentially heartbreaking, did make a certain amount of sense and was fairly transparent. But having been through the emotionally stressful, invasive, extensive application process, and knowing students who really need those tiptop schools, I worry about how the process favours the early bloomers, how invasive it is, how intensive and time consuming. Fortunately, the fact that it is for all intents and purposes a lottery is well advertised.

 

I think perhaps the soul-searching essays the admissions people like so much serve a purpose other than determining whether the student can write. Perhaps that, put together with the list of achievements, gives them a sense of whether the student is that desirable early bloomer. I can,t see them voluntarily giving that up, so I doubt they are going to go for a shortened application process any time soon. I should think they would be able to tell this by having experienced people do interviews, but the logistics and expense involved probably makes this impractical.

 

Nan

[Catherine]

 

I think perhaps the soul-searching essays the admissions people like so much serve a purpose other than determining whether the student can write. Perhaps that, put together with the list of achievements, gives them a sense of whether the student is that desirable early bloomer. I can,t see them voluntarily giving that up, so I doubt they are going to go for a shortened application process any time soon. I should think they would be able to tell this by having experienced people do interviews, but the logistics and expense involved probably makes this impractical.

 

Nan

I'm posting this answer to what Nan has said.  For those who don't want to bother reading the whole piece, it's a press release from Bard college about their alternative path to college admissions, which we've discussed here before.

 

 

http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2474

 

I'm going to add one illustrative quote from the above press release:

 

“The tradition of high stakes examination, using multiple choice questions, has made the entire apparatus of high school and college entrance examinations bankrupt,†said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “Teachers, scientists, and scholars must once again take charge of the way we test. What the Bard Entrance Examination asks is that students study source materials and write comprehensively in order to show the quality of their reasoning.†Botstein notes that modern technology has made this possible. “Students who want to do this can go online and read the Federalist Papers, Gogol’s ‘The Nose,’ Aeschylus, and Mary Shelley. They can study scientific papers. With broad access to this tremendous breadth of materials, home-schooled applicants, students from rural areas, and students from abroad all have the same opportunity.â€

 

 It's refreshing to hear that at least one influential thinker has ideas that may hopefully begin to change the conversation about college admissions.  

 

Disclaimer:  my son just started high school at a Bard Early College High School so I am very invested in Leon Botstein's ideas and approach.  His experience so far, short though it is, has been wonderful.  

[Tsuga]

I've sent this to my friend who teaches at a top public school in our state. Ultra-competitive and ultra-privileged. Almost all the kids apply to at least one Ivy as a reach school. I think her kids will really appreciate this. Thanks for sharing.

[regentrude]

I was really bothered by one section of his article:

 

Dozens of people have asked me, “Wow, how did you get into Yale?â€

Not a single one has ever asked, “Wow, how did you manage Yale coursework?â€

Wow. What a waste. I went to a college that was hard. I once asked a new prof who had just come from Princeton if I was in danger of failing his class. 

"No, why would you think that? Do people fail classes here? I never heard of anyone at Princeton failing a class."

"Yes, all the time." I did a lot a lot a lot of work and passed it, but I went to one of those rare colleges where getting in was hard, but getting out was quite hard, too. The professors were always afraid someone would call their class easy.

That is what I want for my kids. :-)

 

DD got admitted to and attends a school that rejected 92% of applicants. So  getting in was definitely hard.

But the coursework? Absolutely difficult and miles above the level at the good public uni I teach. (Our grad students can't solve the homework problems of her freshman honors physics - we verified). The professors don't have to be afraid of their class seeming easy, because nobody in their right mind could mistake it as such. Being professors ourselves, DH and I are constantly blown away by the insane pace and the high expectations

 

Students don't fail because the entire class is made up of ambitious overachievers who prioritize academics above all else and would rather kill themselves studying than fail - a vibe that permeates the entire culture at this particular school. Unlike at my college, nobody in her classes skips class, and they finish their math homework before going to parties.

The students who fail at my school don't fail because they are not smart enough - they fail because they lack work ethic and study skills. And students who lack those would never get into a top tier school.

 

So, the fact that students at a top school don't fail does not mean anything about the difficulty in classwork.

 

[creekland]

DD got admitted to and attends a school that rejected 92% of applicants. So  getting in was definitely hard.

But the coursework? Absolutely difficult and miles above the level at the good public uni I teach. (Our grad students can't solve the homework problems of her freshman honors physics - we verified). The professors don't have to be afraid of their class seeming easy, because nobody in their right mind could mistake it as such. Being professors ourselves, DH and I are constantly blown away by the insane pace and the high expectations

 

Students don't fail because the entire class is made up of ambitious overachievers who prioritize academics above all else and would rather kill themselves studying than fail - a vibe that permeates the entire culture at this particular school. Unlike at my college, nobody in her classes skips class, and they finish their math homework before going to parties.

The students who fail at my school don't fail because they are not smart enough - they fail because they lack work ethic and study skills. And students who lack those would never get into a top tier school.

 

So, the fact that students at a top school don't fail does not mean anything about the difficulty in classwork.

 

 

A college Bio teacher here at my high school used to tell his students that his class was the same identical material they would get at any college they want to, after all, a cell was just a cell.

 

I took him the first test middle son had in his Bio 101 class.  It took him seconds to be stunned.  "Why would they ask that?" (regarding some detailed things).  "Only people doing graduate level research would need to know that!"  Uh, yeah... It's a research university. Roughly 80% of undergrads are involved in "graduate level" research.  The 101 class there starts by assuming all kids entering it have had the basic "college/AP" version already.

 

He no longer tells his classes his spiel.

 

Youngest son took the DE version here and sat in on one of middle son's classes during a visit.  He calls the DE/AP version "Bio-Lite."  That, indeed, is what it is.

 

I cringe when I hear people asserting that College A = College B.  While it may be true pending levels of A and B, it's not a general rule.

[EmilyGF]

DD got admitted to and attends a school that rejected 92% of applicants. So  getting in was definitely hard.

But the coursework? Absolutely difficult and miles above the level at the good public uni I teach. (Our grad students can't solve the homework problems of her freshman honors physics - we verified). The professors don't have to be afraid of their class seeming easy, because nobody in their right mind could mistake it as such. Being professors ourselves, DH and I are constantly blown away by the insane pace and the high expectations

 

Students don't fail because the entire class is made up of ambitious overachievers who prioritize academics above all else and would rather kill themselves studying than fail - a vibe that permeates the entire culture at this particular school. Unlike at my college, nobody in her classes skips class, and they finish their math homework before going to parties.

The students who fail at my school don't fail because they are not smart enough - they fail because they lack work ethic and study skills. And students who lack those would never get into a top tier school.

 

So, the fact that students at a top school don't fail does not mean anything about the difficulty in classwork.

 

I know where your daughter goes to school. Some students (maybe not a lot) fail because they can't handle the work. Your daughter's school has a reputation for requiring hard work. 

 

When I chose where to go to college, my friend Alex (whose father had gone there and who had decided to go a lower-end Ivy League) asked, "Why would you do that to yourself?" Also, my hubby went to Princeton for graduate school. He saw the work load difference. Alums of my alma mater would say things like, "Get ready to drink from the fire hose." When I started taking graduate level classes as a junior (as is normal), I saw the graduate level students being frustrated due to lack of preparation.

Emily

[Nan in Mass]

Catherine - It is the soulsearching essays that I think could be cut out of the process. I was thinking of college applications that ask that the student describe how they overcame a challenge. I read the article on Bard,s application process awhile back and was impressed. If real academic essays were substituted for the soul searching type, I wouldn,t be bothered by the process as much.

 

Regentrude - My nieces are in our good local public school, taking AP and honours classes. Comparing the material they covered there (and the enthusiasm and class discussions) to my children,s experience with some of their CC classes was pretty depressing. My husband, who graduated from our state,s public engineering school and now has over 25 years of problem solving experience, has mentioned grad classes when helping youngest solve some of his private school engineering problems. Universities differ greatly. (And I am greatful for those differences.)

 

I am not trying to say that I think the application process should be shortened so much that admissions counselors have trouble figuring out who is a good fit for their school and who is not. It just seems like the process could be less invasive, more focused on academics, less time consuming for the student, and more efficient.

 

I also think schools are right to balance their classes. If it were a straight lottery, they might wind up with a class which had too many STEM students for their STEM prof,s to deal with and not enough arts students to sustain their art department. If a lottery would be more fair, then I think it needs to be a lottery by class rather than by student.

 

Nan

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Catherine - It is the soulsearching essays that I think could be cut out of the process. I was thinking of college applications that ask that the student describe how they overcame a challenge. I read the article on Bard,s application process awhile back and was impressed. If real academic essays were substituted for the soul searching type, I wouldn,t be bothered by the process as much.

 

Regentrude - My nieces are in our good local public school, taking AP and honours classes. Comparing the material they covered there (and the enthusiasm and class discussions) to my children,s experience with some of their CC classes was pretty depressing. My husband, who graduated from our state,s public engineering school and now has over 25 years of problem solving experience, has mentioned grad classes when helping youngest solve some of his private school engineering problems. Universities differ greatly. (And I am greatful for those differences.)

 

I am not trying to say that I think the application process should be shortened so much that admissions counselors have trouble figuring out who is a good fit for their school and who is not. It just seems like the process could be less invasive, more focused on academics, less time consuming for the student, and more efficient.

 

I also think schools are right to balance their classes. If it were a straight lottery, they might wind up with a class which had too many STEM students for their STEM prof,s to deal with and not enough arts students to sustain their art department. If a lottery would be more fair, then I think it needs to be a lottery by class rather than by student.

 

Nan

 

I think you could get past the issue of potentially enrolling too many STEM students for the department if you did acceptance by college (engineering, sciences, humanities).  While I realize that students may not know exactly what they want to do for a degree, I think that most students could decide if they are applying for science or for liberal arts.  [As an aside, I wonder if there is any connection between schools that require students to state an intended major and graduation rates.  If you go to college undeclared because college is just the next step, are you more likely to float along and leave without a degree?]  I think a lottery by entire class would just add randomness onto the beauty pageant rather than removing the beauty pageant aspects.  

 

I've been reading a lot of early American history lately and it strikes me that what many college application essays seem to be asking for is something akin to the conversion story that colonial Puritans valued and required for full church membership.  The problem that the Puritans ran into was that the children and grandchildren of Puritans didn't always have a conversion experience to relate.  Colleges seem to be looking for a similar testemonial, where the student describes an epiphany or a life changing experience or evidence of overcoming a horrible circumstance.  But every high school student doesn't have a story that is worth of an afterschool special.  And some that do have those stories, don't want to be defined by them.  (Really if you are a talented academic student, do you want your application to be defined as the kid whose brother went to jail or the kid who lived in their car or the kid with cancer?)  The application process thereby misses out on (or at least undervalues) the kid who is a quiet hard worker who just keep working until the work is done.  They miss out on the kid who didn't care if he had a job title in the student club, but was always there early and late to set up and clean up and could be relied upon to work at all of the service projects.  

 

Just musing here.  A few years ago a dean of admissions recommended the book The Gatekeepers.  I think that she meant it to be an inspiring story of considering students who were out of the box applicants.  I was honestly horrified by the book, which seemed to value students who had interesting hooks, even if they were relatively unprepared for the college situation they were applying to.  It sounded more like the adcons were engaged in baseball card collecting (Have you got a Hispanic girl on scholarship at a boarding school?  I've got a first generation college Native American?)

[idnib]

Just musing here about the effects of a lottery not on the pool of applicants, but the matriculants as well. The OP's link seems to be more about the rejected students that the accepted ones so I'm mulling while I eat lunch.

 

I wonder how those in the matriculating class, not just those who applied and were rejected, might feel? 

 

Lucky? Not like they were the best of the best? Right now perhaps they feel they had an edge over other applicants, and who could blame them after all the hoops they jumped through? I guess it would depend on the personality of the student. Perhaps some would feel humble, others guilty, others deserving despite the randomness.

 

Knowing myself, if I were selected through a lottery, I would feel guilty and wonder if someone more "deserving" lost out. Of course that happens with the process now as well, but the students who are accepted may take some comfort in feeling it was a competitive process and not a random one. Explicitly removing that comfort could have some interesting effects.

[daijobu]

And just to make everyone more depressed, here's a recent article in the WSJ about Chinese students being recruited to US universties:

 

By TE-PING CHEN And  MELISSA KORN
Sept. 30, 2015 10:18 p.m. ET

Like many U.S. colleges, Wichita State University wants more foreign students but isn’t a brand name abroad.

So the school, whose mascot is a muscle-bound wheat bundle, in late 2013 started paying agents to recruit in places like China and India. The independent agents assemble candidates’ documents and urge them to apply to the Kansas school, which pays the agents $1,000 to $1,600 per enrolled student.

Overseas applications “shot up precipitously,†says Vince Altum, Wichita State’s executive director for international education.

But there is a down side: Wichita State rejected several Chinese applications this year from an agency it suspected of falsifying transcripts, Mr. Altum says, adding that it terminates ties with agencies found to violate its code of conduct by faking documents.

Paying agents a per-student commission is illegal under U.S. law when recruiting students eligible for federal aid—that is, most domestic applicants. But paying commissioned agents isn’t illegal when recruiting foreigners who can’t get federal aid.

So more schools like Wichita State are relying on such agents, saying the intermediaries are the most practical way to woo overseas youths without the cost of sending staff around the world. No one officially counts how many U.S. campuses pay such agents, most of whom operate abroad, but experts estimate at least a quarter do so.

“Using agencies to help connect with talented, qualified prospects has been very helpful,†says Michael Heintze, associate vice president for enrollment management at Texas State University, which began using agents in 2012.

Critics of agent use like Philip Altbach, a Boston College professor who studies higher education, say it is rife with abuses and conflicts of interest, and may eventually degrade the quality of U.S. higher education. “The growing reliance on agents is a terrible development, and it’s very widespread,†especially at less-elite schools needing help boosting enrollment, says Mr. Altbach, whose institution doesn’t use agents. “Why are American universities doing this? The answer is very simple: money.â€

The agent debate is dividing U.S. higher education. Concerns about recruiting through paid agents—they range from freelance operators to firms with hundreds of employees—are deepening as the foreign-applicant flow grows.

A record 886,052 overseas students enrolled in U.S. universities and colleges in the 2013-2014 school year, versus 573,000 a decade earlier, with nearly one-third from China, says the nonprofit Institute of International Education. Chinese enrollees were up 41% in the year from two school years before.

 

The increase is driven partly by schools offsetting budget cuts. Nationwide, per-student funding at public colleges fell 13% in fiscal 2014 from 2009, says the State Higher Education Executive Officers association. Foreign students usually pay full nonresident tuition. At Wichita State, that is $12,681, versus $6,022 for in-state tuition this school year.

Hugo Hu, U.S. deputy director of EIC Education, a Chinese agency that recruits for American campuses and also takes students as clients, says it is hard for Chinese students, who often don’t have college counselors, to navigate the maze of applications on their own. “There are so many U.S. schools out there,†he says, “and that’s where we can help students.â€

Phony applications
Skeptics say agents, whether paid by a school or an applicant, can open the door to falsified applications that make admission easier for unqualified candidates, such as those with poor English or spotty academic records.

For a college, poorly qualified students can add burdens—requiring professors to bring them up to speed in class, say—or jeopardize accreditation.

North Dakota’s Dickinson State University says its accreditor sanctioned it after an audit found most of its agent-recommended students weren’t fulfilling graduation requirements. “We’re still working to recover our reputation,†says D.C. Coston, who called for the audit as Dickinson State’s president in 2011 and retired this August. Interim President Jim Ozbun says the school has stopped using agents.

For a foreign student, an agent’s guidance may mean landing on a campus that doesn’t offer the appropriate curriculum or support. And when an unqualified student gets a college slot with a falsified application, it can mean a lost college prospect for a qualified applicant.

“We find third-party recruiting agents to be not just not cost-effective, but dangerous,†says Dale Gough, international education services director at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

The debate intensified in 2013, when the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which previously barred use of commission-based agents among its members, changed its ethics code to permit them for foreign applications if schools ensured integrity and transparency.

 

 

Some nonmember colleges were already using commission-based agents for foreign applicants, as were some member colleges despite the NACAC ban. But the shift by NACAC, whose members include most major U.S. universities and many smaller ones, opened the door wider.

Paying commissioned agents remained illegal for most U.S. applicants under a ban Congress enacted in 1992 after agent-fraud concerns.

NACAC reversed itself after hearing from about 100 colleges that wanted to expand recruiting, says David Hawkins, its executive director of educational content and policy. “Ultimately,†he says, “this association is governed by its members.â€

Member schools that started using commissioned agents since then include campuses like Wichita State and Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W.Va. Colleges typically pay an agent 10% to 15% of first-year tuition for a foreign student who enrolls.

“The most efficient way to recruit international students is through agents,†says Charles Nieman, director of international initiatives at Shepherd, which wants to increase international enrollment to about 5% of its 4,500 students from under 1% now.

A Beijing agency
Students also hire agents to help land them in U.S. colleges, a practice especially popular in China. “My impression is 80%-90% use some kind of agency services,†says Rick Shang, who moderates an online forum for Chinese students in America.

Agents meet with prospective clients inside the Beijing headquarters of Tiandao, a large Chinese agency that helps students apply to U.S. colleges and universities. In the background, a message in LED lights congratulates a client on her recent admission to Yale. ENLARGE
Agents meet with prospective clients inside the Beijing headquarters of Tiandao, a large Chinese agency that helps students apply to U.S. colleges and universities. In the background, a message in LED lights congratulates a client on her recent admission to Yale. PHOTO: TE-PING CHEN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Demand for agents was visible recently at Tiandao Education, an agency that spreads across a Beijing office tower’s sixth floor. Dozens of students and counselors sat in clusters or conference rooms named “Ivy 1,†“Ivy 2†and “Ivy 3,†flipping through images of U.S. schools on iPads.

American-college pennants and admission letters adorned Tiandao’s walls, with statistics on how many Tiandao students got in. A placard by a Cornell University letter said 239 Tiandao clients gained admission there.

Eric Xiao, director of Tiandao’s college-application business, says agencies often ghostwrite student essays but Tiandao discourages students from engaging in such activities or other falsification. U.S. students also get outside help, he says. “It’s a question of the extent,†he says. “OK, in China, it might be a little more.â€

Cornell says it doesn’t use agents and doesn’t allow applicants to use them to complete applications. Students found submitting misleading materials face possible expulsion, it says.

Shawn Felton, Cornell’s undergraduate-admission director, says it is concerning that agents tout their ability to get students into Cornell. “Students should be completing and submitting their admission applications themselves. Agents should not be handling these particular tasks.â€

 

Adding to concerns, some agents work for both students and colleges, taking commissions from both sides for a successful enrollment. That can give an agent the incentive to get a student accepted at a client school’s detriment or to place a commission-paying student on an inappropriate campus to get the school’s commission as well.

Some schools prohibit double-dipping. Shepherd says it bars agents from charging both school and applicant.

Several Chinese students interviewed say agents in China falsified their documents or wrote their essays, sometimes discouraging them from playing any role in preparing their applications.

A University of California, Berkeley, sophomore from China says his family paid roughly $30,000 to an agent who rewrote his essay using language the student never used. He feels uneasy, he says, but “no one knows about the whole application process better than they do so I had no choice.â€

A Berkeley spokeswoman declines to comment on specific cases. Berkeley doesn’t pay agents and discourages their use, she says, but lets students use them if work submitted is “their own and accurate.†The school randomly requests additional documentation to combat fraud, she says, and students who provide false information can be expelled.

A Chinese student who started at New York University this fall says her family paid $26,000 for an agent who wrote her personal statement, inventing a tale about how the student dragged her father out of a gambling den to save him from a life of vice, and how he stopped gambling and “has instead devoted himself to spreading his appreciation of nature.â€

The student says “that stuff didn’t actually happen†and that she wrote her own essay. NYU doesn’t pay agents but allows applicants to as long as they don’t falsify any information. If the student had used the fake essay, an NYU spokesman says, she would have been subject to expulsion.

Spotting falsification can be hard, other schools say, given small admissions staffs and high foreign-applicant volume. The University of Pennsylvania says applicants to this fall’s freshman class include students from roughly 1,000 schools new to its database of about 10,000. Penn, which doesn’t pay agents and says it discourages families from using them, uses Google searches and input from alumni to learn about unfamiliar schools, and occasionally verifies reference letters with schools.

But “we’re not going to pick up the phone on every single application,†says admissions dean Eric Furda. “We can’t.â€

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign doesn’t do “a lot of individual fact-checking,†says Charles Tucker, its vice provost for undergraduate education. Its applications from China for the fall 2014 class rose to 6,160 from 2,595 four years before.

The university doesn’t pay agents but lets applicants do so. Applicants provide self-reported overviews of high-school records, filing official transcripts only after admission. “The admissions people feel fairly confident†they can spot falsifications, Mr. Tucker says. Still, he says, the only compelling way to determine that an essay or test score doesn’t reflect capabilities is to see the person struggle in class.

Curbing fraud
One way to curb fraud, says Charles Wester, associate director of Asia outreach at Omaha’s Creighton University, is to spot-check candidates in video interviews. Another is to work principally with overseas high schools that ensure secure transcripts and recommendations, he says. Creighton keeps a database of trusted high schools.

Many campuses are “all too eager to turn a blind eye, however revenue’s coming in,†Mr. Wester says. Applications from Asia have increased 30% since 2012 at Creighton, which doesn’t use commissioned agents and interviews all Chinese applicants in person or by video, he says.

Federal data show 64% of nonresident-alien students starting full-time undergraduate programs in 2007 graduated within six years, versus 59% for all students. But some overseas students start in remedial programs, not on degree tracks, never making it into mainstream courses nor on rolls used to calculate graduation rates.

They can still hurt a school. Dickinson State, which isn’t a NACAC member, began using agents about a decade ago. The internal audit, released in 2012, found that it was admitting students—recommended by agents it paid—with questionable qualifications and that it had been duped by altered transcripts.

Only 10 of more than 400 foreign students receiving degrees over the prior decade had fulfilled graduation requirements, the report said. The school’s accreditor sanctioned it for that shortfall and issues including financial-stewardship concerns. Dickinson State has stopped paying agents and beefed up admission requirements, and the sanction was lifted in late 2013.

“There may be a role for agents,†says Mr. Ozbun, the interim president, “but at least for the moment we’re not anticipating moving ahead with any of that kind of activity.â€

Wichita State, which previously worked with agents whom students paid, started to pay agents after NACAC’s reversal. Many rival schools were paying agents, Wichita State’s Mr. Altum says. “This was our way to remain competitive.â€

One graduate-school dean worried agents would hurt its reputation, he says, but most were on board. With more applicants, Wichita State can be more selective, Mr. Altum says. It had 1,848 foreign enrollees in fall 2014, up 65% from fall 2010, a rise he attributes to agents.

Wichita State contacts high schools when there are document-authenticity concerns and sometimes “spit tests†signatures, wetting them to see if they smear (ink does, laser-printed signatures don’t), or uses black lights to check transcripts for doctoring.

Wichita State has stopped requiring essays of any applicant, Mr. Altum says, because “it’s too easy to have someone write an essay on your behalf.â€

[Sebastian (a lady)]

And just to make everyone more depressed, here's a recent article in the WSJ about Chinese students being recruited to US universties:

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing this; I'd wanted to read it, but couldn't get it to open.

 

Definitely a conflict of interest when agents are paid by the college to find students and also paid by the students to help them get acceptances. I think that these schools are very much underestimating the level of fraud that is happening.

 

There was an article a year ago that 10% of University of Illinois Champlain Urbana was international students, with the majority being Chinese.