Article on potential change of emphasis in college admissions - NYT

[Hoggirl]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opinion/rethinking-college-admissions.html?_r=0&referer

 

What do y'all think? There is a mention of legacy thrown in at the end which is a topic in another current thread.

 

I hope this link works - not sure what impact that "mobile" in there is going to have???

[Reefgazer]

I have mixed feelings on this initiative.  On one hand, it seems like it may slow the college-application nuttiness that I am refusing to play in high school with DD, so that's good for people like me.  OTOH, like so many education initiatives that are floated around, it also seems to not recognize real exceptional achievement (or at least puts a limit on how much will be considered), which harms the very tippy-top students.

Edited January 20, 2016 by reefgazer

[MarkT]

More Harvard is the center of the collegiate universe crap.

 

"specifically, a survey of more than 10,000 middle- and high-school students that asked them what mattered most: high individual achievement, happiness or caring for others. Only 22 percent said caring for others.
"
These are teenagers why would you expect a different outcome?  It is a fairly self-centered time in one's life. Most of them will mature eventually. Our job as parents is to help keep them grounded.

 

some favorite comments:

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They are not doing our young people any favor by misleading them into believe their feelings and concerns will matter more than performance in a globally competitive workplace.

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Let me get this straight. For the top kids applying to college, grade inflation has rendered grades fairly irrelevant. Now they are recommending getting rid of standardized test scores too (which, btw, were invented to put kids from lesser known schools on equal footing with kids from fancy schools)? And they want to limit the number of extracurricular you can put on your application? On what basis do they think colleges are now going to chose to admit kids? The reality is that the number of spots at the top colleges is in short supply, which creates a competitive frenzy. No amount of well meaning, but silly tweaks to the application process is going to change that. And even if you get rid of standardized test scores, who do you think is going to figure out how to work the process to get their kid in? Hint: it's not the kids that the this report is trying to help.
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As long as there are 35,000 kids applying for 2500 spots at elite institutions, the admissions process is going to be stressful and maddeningly arbitrary. No amount of tweaking, and re-weighting of parameters, will change that. The "fixes" described here, to my mind, just open the door to new varieties of gaming: focus on making your community contributions look sincere, snare those positive recommendations - all easily achievable by the privileged private school crowd.

When it comes down to it, the standardized tests remain the fairest and most objective criteria - yet the call here is to downgrade those as factors. The association of SAT scores with higher income families merely reflects the higher education level of the parents, and access to better k-12 education (which shows that the tests are actually measuring something real - don't shoot the messenger). No one has shown that these "expensive tutors" really impact scores any more positively than simply retaking practice tests on one's own. And stories from NYC and Silicon Valley notwithstanding, I believe the prevalence of these tutors is highly exaggerated. Any kid with 20 bucks can buy a review book and get equally effective preparation.

What needs to change is not the admissions process, which is reasonably holistic as it stands. It's the culture wherein you are deemed a failure if you don't attend one of a tiny number of colleges. It's the parents and communities that are at fault, not the admissions offices.
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University Education in the US is a complex phenomena. With half of the resources you find in an american university, people in the third world acquire and develop deep intellects. You cant have a national/general quality student body at Universities if you don't have a solid elementary/middle/high school programs. After finishing High School in Cuba and taking University Entrance exams I migrated to US. I was shocked to see student quality of admitted students to community colleges in NYC. Those people in Cuba would have struggled to graduate from High School, and yet they were there. There had been a serious dumbing down of the curriculum in order to meet political/social agenda here. You are not doing any favors to the poor/minorities by doing that. What you gotta do is step up the elementary/middle/high school level; but don't dumb down College. My brother told me that at City College, cheating level was alarming. This is a Science/Tech/Engineering School. Used to be Public MIT in this country. A joke now.

[Crimson Wife]

I take issue with the false dichotomy that "high individual achievement" is pitted against "caring for others". As a Christian, I feel a moral obligation to follow Jesus' call to help others and to stress that to my kids. But the Bible also calls on Christians not to "hide their light under a basket". God gave us talents not to hide them away but to make the most of. I have ambitions for myself in terms of educational and career achievement and I'm not ashamed of that. I want to do well by doing good in this world and I want the same for my children.

[plansrme]

I can't say that I see the point of this initiative.  Are the tippy-top schools really not getting diverse student bodies?  I find that hard to believe.

 

The easier fix is for parents, students and GCs to say, "Enough."  We can all relieve ourselves of the delusion that attendance at a school to which admission is more or less arbitrary (Harvard, for example) is required to be successful in life.  Do those of us with children with Ivy-like stats really think that our bright, motivated kids won't do just fine as a top student at Big State U or at a small LAC with an abysmally high acceptance rate of oh, let's say, 50%?  Does my kid need an undergraduate degree from Ivy or Brown or MIT to get into a top Ph.D. program?  Or to get a job in her field?  No, she does not, and neither does yours.  If the best and brightest students out there all say, "Screw the Ivies, I'm going to the University of My Home State, and there I'm going to root out the best education I possibly can," then the administrators of tippy-top schools will shut up about leveling the playing field and diversifying their student bodies and get back to actually running their universities.

 

There is an outstanding education to be had at plenty of schools that don't have acceptance rates in the single digits.  I, for one, am having a hard time finding any sympathy either for students who don't make the single-digit cut or for the admissions committees at these schools who could throw the stack of applications down the stairs, accept the 2,000 that hit the ground first, and still have a solid student body.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

This might be worth cross posting in the chat board or general education or high school board. Great article.

[Crimson Wife]

  Does my kid need an undergraduate degree from Ivy or Brown or MIT to get into a top Ph.D. program?  Or to get a job in her field?  No, she does not, and neither does yours. 

 

Depends on the specific industry. In my DH's, either you have elite credentials or you have Mumsy & Daddy pulling strings to land you the job. If you don't have those connections or a degree from an elite school, you are S.O.L. DH had a headhunter call him one time for a position that wasn't a good fit for him but would've been perfect for his friend. The recruiter wasn't interested because the friend's undergrad degree was from UT-Austin (which has a fantastic engineering program) rather than Stanford, MIT, CalTech, or Princeton. The Harvard MBA and strong work experience that the friend had apparently did not make up for having an undergrad degree from the "wrong" school :001_rolleyes:

 

Stupid but when there are so many candidates vying for each position, the hiring managers can afford to be snotty.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Having watched my son struggle to capture his experiences over several years in essays, I question the ability of essays to equitably convey useful information.  What it will mostly convey is who submitted the most emotional or provoking essay.  There are any number of reasons why a student might not be able to express passions well in an essay, including a natural humility that makes them feel that such essay prompts ask them to brag, a sense that what they did was very personal and not something they are comfortable putting on display, or a belief that what they did wasn't as extravagant as what other people do.  

 

 

[MysteryJen]

This article made me thankful that swim times were the objective measure of dd1's offers and options. We are seeing grade inflation up close in the district we have moved into. A's are meaningless when everyone gets them. Everyone we know took or is taking prep classes for tests. Many have college "coaches" to help with essays. My kids are horrified at the injustices of public education (having moved from a poorer district).

[snowbeltmom]

If these changes are implemented, I think it is bad news for homeschoolers. Unlike traditional schools, our homeschools don't have track records with the colleges. Grades issued by us are already heavily discounted in the current college application process.

 

At least test scores are standardized. Relying on grades and student essays on how she/he contributed to her/his community is moving in the wrong direction, imo.

[madteaparty]

nm

Edited January 21, 2016 by madteaparty

[Sebastian (a lady)]

If these changes are implemented, I think it is bad news for homeschoolers. Unlike traditional schools, our homeschools don't have track records with the colleges. Grades issued by us are already heavily discounted in the current college application process.

 

At least test scores are standardized. Relying on grades and student essays on how she/he contributed to her/his community is moving in the wrong direction, imo.

 

The emphasis on "caring" as demonstrated in breathless essays, non-profits established and other "good deeds" does seem tailor made for manipulation on the part of the students and the colleges.  The colleges have another avenue to justify picking whom they will.

[JanetC]

Places like Harvard which are so brutally competitive, nothing they can say or do will change that. They might change which hairs they split, but there are still way too many applicants per slot for it to ever feel friendly or fair to the students.

 

But, the next tier down, say places that accept 30-50% of their applicants, could start to put some boundaries on over-achievers to the point where they don't have to stress out so much. Let them know that after a certain point, it's "enough". You don't actually have to be perfect in every way.

 

1. All SAT sub-scores above 750 will be treated as equal. Don't bother trying to go for 800 if you have a 750.

2. A maximum of 6 AP tests will be considered. You don't have to take 5 per year starting in 10th, unless you really want to.

3. A report card with up to three B grades (one per year for 9th,10th,11th) will get the same consideration as a straight A report card. Don't flunk, but a small imperfection will be automatically ignored.

 

You might be treating more kids the same academically, but the colleges still have essays, recs, and ECs to consider to build the class.

 

They could also set a floor and actively discourage some marginal candidates. Be up front that the kids who are below XXX on SAT or YY on GPA or Z% class rank are only admitted via athletic or other preferences. (But, honesty in that direction is much less likely to happen, I think.)

[Nan in Mass]

Places like Harvard which are so brutally competitive, nothing they can say or do will change that. They might change which hairs they split, but there are still way too many applicants per slot for it to ever feel friendly or fair to the students.

 

But, the next tier down, say places that accept 30-50% of their applicants, could start to put some boundaries on over-achievers to the point where they don't have to stress out so much. Let them know that after a certain point, it's "enough". You don't actually have to be perfect in every way.

 

1. All SAT sub-scores above 750 will be treated as equal. Don't bother trying to go for 800 if you have a 750.

2. A maximum of 6 AP tests will be considered. You don't have to take 5 per year starting in 10th, unless you really want to.

3. A report card with up to three B grades (one per year for 9th,10th,11th) will get the same consideration as a straight A report card. Don't flunk, but a small imperfection will be automatically ignored.

 

You might be treating more kids the same academically, but the colleges still have essays, recs, and ECs to consider to build the class.

 

They could also set a floor and actively discourage some marginal candidates. Be up front that the kids who are below XXX on SAT or YY on GPA or Z% class rank are only admitted via athletic or other preferences. (But, honesty in that direction is much less likely to happen, I think.)

Youngest,s college is rather like this. We were grateful. It allowed my son to concentrate on senior year classes, for instance, rather than test prep for more tests.

 

Nan

 

Eta Relatively easy to get into, tiny school and much of what they are looking for isn,t linked to grades or test scores, so for them, as long as they know their students can handle the level of academics, they are more interested in other things so this works out. My older two went to schools like this, also. Can you survive the classes? Yes? Good. Then lets figure out if you really want what we have to offer, whether you will be a credit to the school over the course of your life, and how you are going to pay for it. Part of that last, in the youngest,s schools case, I am pretty sure is a question of Can you pay full boat so we can also take this other desirable but poor student? Not fair, but I can,t figure out how else the poorer students could manage a private school, even with alumni support. Maybe paying back when you are an alumnus should be heavily emphasized from orientation on.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[angela in ohio]

Only 22 percent said caring about others... failing to see how this is the fault of admissions as opposed to, well, parenting and poor role models. In fact, a lot of of high schoolers around here would not think of helping someone else except that they think they need to to get into college and get scholarships. They have no experience with the concept of doing for others until they hit high school and have to get required hours or a guidance counselor tells them they need to.

 

[Gwen in VA]

These changes will make college admission even more of a lottery than it already is. If the colleges ignore the difference in SAT scores between 750 and 800 and ignore more than 6 AP's and ignore this and that, what will they use to differentiate students? I know that the difference between 750 and 800 is statistically meaningless, but it does provide a separation point.

 

The rejection letter my dd received from Princeton ten years ago (when the acceptance rate was approximately 10%), said that 1/3 of the applicants were fully qualified. So even then the lottery was only one in three for acceptance (10% accepted, 30% fully qualified). By setting the bar so more students will "qualify" for admission, the admissions people will enlarge the pool of acceptable students and therefore make admissions even more of a lottery than it currently is.

 

I am actually rather curious as to WHY the colleges are planning these changes. These changes may (or may not) benefit students, but since when have colleges made admissions changes that benefit students?

 

1) The effect will lower SAT scores, which will affect rankings, etc. Why does Harvard want to do something that will potentially lower its ranking?

 

2) The effect will increase the number of less-wealthy students. Lowering the number of wealthy families associated with the college will presumably adversely affect giving. Why would Harvard want to lower the amount of money donated?

 

I agree with the person who said that these changes would allow the admissions process to be even more random than it already is.

 

Perhaps I am cynical, but I would like to understand better how the colleges benefit from these changes. Any thoughts?

 

 

[JanetC]

I know that the difference between 750 and 800 is statistically meaningless, but it does provide a separation point.

 

The rejection letter my dd received from Princeton ten years ago (when the acceptance rate was approximately 10%), said that 1/3 of the applicants were fully qualified.

 

I would like to understand better how the colleges benefit from these changes. Any thoughts?

First, how is separating students based on something that is statistically meaningless different from a lottery, or even fair?

 

Second, I did have the caveat that this probably wouldn't work for places like Harvard and Princeton that are always in the hair-splitting business.

 

Finally, what about what is best for the kids? I know academic high achieving families where the kids have NO other responsibilities outside of school and college-resume building. The parents or their housekeepers do all the chores, they hire tutors, etc. You worry about getting that homework done and we'll take care of everything else. Their every non-school responsibility is kept to the minimum. What happens to these kids when they hit the real world away from mom and dad?

 

According to the ladies in my dentist's office, no one gets through our local high school without a tutor. I know two neighborhood girls who almost didn't survive the pressure cooker, one graduated on time using an alternative school program and one is still struggling even to finish in that program due to her mental health.

 

I'm on a "mommy board" that started from one of those pregnancy websites that were popular way back when. When the website died, we moved on to Facebook. So, moms that have known each other electronically for all our kids 17 years and comfortable talking about our lives. Three suicide attempts. Two others with mental health issues. Not just one bad school, we come from all over the country and even a few in Canada.

 

I do not care if changing the system would benefit colleges.

 

The. Current. System. Is. Hurting. Kids.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I would have less issue with an open lottery, as long as I thought that the prerequisites to qualifying for the lottery were fair and available to students who were willing to put the work in.  (In other words, not something that could be gamed by schools changing their gpa weighting schemes or through expensive test prep courses.)

 

I had a rep for the Coast Guard Academy explain that their summer program for rising seniors was so popular that they took the few students that they absolutely had to have, eliminated the students who were clearly not qualified and then did a lottery for the remaining slots from the qualified applicants.  I thought this was a great idea, because it eliminated the sense that if the student had a 750 instead of a 740 or had just written a more passionate essay that would have made the difference.  I think a lot of the stress on students comes from the idea that if they are more sincere, more passionate in their essay word choice, or win one more award, that will be the thing that magically gets them into the prestige school.

 

 

Ironically, I have kids who are high scorers on tests who aren't interested in most of the tippy top schools.  One struggle with this application cycle will be convincing schools like VA Tech that they really are in the top 3 schools that DS would like to attend.

 

[JanetC]

The current system in school is motivating nonOlympians to take the same courses as Olympians. It would be wiser to choose an appropriate course load if they are indeed harming themselves. Parents can override course choices.

 

My district has eliminated AP level math and science. It hasnt stopped unprepared students from developing men tal health issues, but it sure has stopped the prepared students..

I agree that it's not just the "Olympians" and "wannabe Olympians" - it's also the kids on the other end that suffer mental health issues. (One of the kids I mentioned above has a documented nonverbal learning disability which the high school didn't feel inclined to "coddle" regardless of what her neuro evaluation said.)

 

But, it's not just poor choices on the part of individual parents and students when the pain is so widespread. It's "the system" as well.

 

One of the things that shocked me as I tried to do a "low key, low stress" college application season with my DD was the level of outside pressure. It came from her peers (the girl in tears for not getting into her dream school ED), it came from her emails (the College Board sends out emails urging kids to take AP's, and sells their lists to colleges who send emails urging kids to apply early so they don't miss out), it came from adults around her (where are you going to apply, what are you going to study, etc.?). I am not a helicopter parent. I did not tell my daughter that only failures take gap years. She got these messages from the air high school seniors (even homeschooled ones) breathe.

 

Why did your high school eliminate AP? Was it to reduce stress or was it simply to reduce costs? A program to reduce the stress levels in high school will require more than just eliminating course offerings. The problem runs deeper than that.

[OnMyOwn]

Depressing. It sounds like they want to completely level the playing field so that effort and ability don't mean anything? Do they plan to lower their academic standards as well so that "any" student can succeed in college. Even more depressing. Right now it seems like if a student works really hard, their efforts may pay off and they might get into a good school. To remove the one objective piece of information they have about a student's ability and then discount their effort seems unfair and is going to lead to a whole new level of stress.

 

I do agree there is a lot of pressure on students. But I do not believe that panic is being generated by college admission standards so much as from the fact that our economy is changing and our middle class is shrinking. People are scrambling to either stay in or aspire to at least the middle class. Jumping through the hoops may be stressful, but at least there is a specific path for them to follow which gives a sense of control over the situation. These new changes tell them it doesn't matter what they do. I think that will just lead people to lose hope and give up.

 

And the article sounds so smug to me. Some of the richest and most powerful have the nerve to judge all our young people and decide there is something wrong with them because of a poorly designed survey question? Oh, the gross hypocrisy! You would normally ask someone which is more important to them -- wealth/career success or happiness. Throwing in a third option of caring about people is a whole other category. I mean, really, you are supposed to pick between being happy and caring about people? Odd selection of choices to me.

 

So, no, I didn't care for that article at all. Lol!

Edited January 25, 2016 by OnMyOwn