MIT's Diversity Decline

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed on September 3, 2024)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Admissions Office recently released the profile for its incoming Class of 2028.  The announcement garnered national coverage in publications including The New York Times seen as a first glimpse into how last summer’s Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admission has impacted diversity at elite colleges and universities.

The headline emanating from the profile release was that Black and Latino enrollment at MIT has dropped precipitously in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in the cases filed by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Whereas the combined percentage of Black, Latino and Native American and Pacific Islander students had in recent years accounted for a quarter of the entering classes, the percentage dropped to 16 percent for the Class of 2028.  The percentage of Black students in the entering class dropped from 15 to 5 percent, and Latino students from 16 percent to 11 percent.  The percentage of Asian American students increased from 40 percent to 47 percent, while the percentage of white students remained steady (37 percent compared with 38 percent a year ago).

So MIT finds itself in a situation where, just one year after the Class of 2027 had the highest proportion of students from historically under-represented racial and ethnic backgrounds in the institution’s history, the Class of 2028 has one of the lowest proportions in decades, on par with MIT classes from the late 1980s and early 90s.  

And since MIT released its freshman profile, two other highly selective institutions, Amherst College and Tufts University, have released data showing similar declines in the proportion of first-year students who are students of color.

Should we be surprised by the decline? And what’s the explanation?

The decline in diversity was anything but surprising. MIT’s experience mirrors what happened at public universities in states like California and Michigan after race-based affirmative action was outlawed in those states.

The materials posted by MIT in connection with the class profile included a detailed blog post written by long-time Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill. I appreciate his taking time to try to lay out the issues, and both MIT’s institutional commitment to diversity and his personal passion come across clearly. I subsequently reached out to him with several questions, and he responded promptly and thoughtfully.

Schmill’s blog asserts that the diversity decline is solely explained by the impact of the Supreme Court decision.  That is an obvious conclusion.  In philosophy there is a principle known as Occam’s Razor, named for the 14th-century philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham). Occam’s Razor argues that the best explanation is usually that which is simplest.

Then again, Occam never watched police procedurals or suspense movies with surprise twists and endings. In this case, there are a couple of factors besides the Supreme Court ruling that could be impacting the MIT decline.

One of the unknowns is whether the applicant pool this year looked substantially different from that of previous years. The New York Times reported that MIT does not know whether fewer Black and Latino students had applied this year because they didn’t ask applicants about their race. MIT is certainly not unique in that approach, as collecting that information would have opened colleges to charges that they were continuing their efforts to craft a class with a certain look despite the Court prohibition on doing so.

But there is another issue that is glossed over in the MIT materials that deserves scrutiny.  Two years ago, MIT returned to requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores, a move that has been followed this spring by other highly-selective universities.  A common theme in their announcements has been the argument that internal institutional research proves that standardized test scores serve as an aid to achieving diversity, but if there is clear evidence supporting that, I’ve missed it.

A footnote in Schmill’s blog post states that the reinstatement of the testing requirement played no role in MIT’s decline in diversity. But compared with all the rich discussion about diversity, there is little detail about how the reinstitution of the test requirement impacted the admission process, other than the assertion that it “helped us identify objectively well-qualified students who lacked other opportunities to demonstrate their preparation,” resulting in the university admitting its most racially and ethnically diverse class ever last year, the first year of the return of testing.

That may serve as prima facie evidence that the reinstatement of required testing did not contribute to this year’s decline, but it’s not that simple.  The weight and influence of test scores in a holistic admission review without the ability to consider factors such as race and ethnicity is far more pronounced, and more dangerous.

Interpreting test scores requires context.  As an admission officer I may have more confidence in a student with a 1500 SAT than one with a 1300, but it makes a difference if the higher score reflects multiple times taking the test or thousands of dollars spent in test prep.  That doesn’t even begin to get into inequalities in family income and high school quality. Without that context it is easy to assign test scores a false precision and see them as some sort of objective measure of ability.

There are also some broader philosophical questions about the role of test scores.  Are test scores a tool of identification (who belongs in the pool), or a tool for selection? Should they be used to identify who is qualified, or who is more qualified? Is a student with a 1530 SAT a better, more deserving candidate than one with a 1470, and is a student with a projected GPA of 3.9 more deserving than one with a projected 3.3?

There are two other things in the MIT materials that caught my attention.  In another blog footnote, Schmill states that “we cannot reliably predict academic success at MIT without relying on standardized testing.” I wondered about that. How did MIT predict academic success during the years when it was test-optional? Was there less academic success during that period? In his email response to that question Schmill observed that MIT didn’t admit anyone without some sort of testing, using Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate scores for students who didn’t submit SAT or ACT scores.  I wonder how the more liberal scoring of AP exams and the changes in format for the SAT and ACT would impact that. 

In a different footnote, Schmill points out that none of the quantitative measures used by MIT predict any difference in academic outcomes between the Classes of 2027 and 2028, but states that there may be “qualitative” differences. I asked him what those qualitative differences might be, and he answered that the decline in diversity numbers presents not just a quantitative difference for an institution like MIT, but a qualitative difference.

I am grateful to MIT for publishing the blog post. The interplay between testing and diversity is mysterious and controversial, and it’s an important conversation for both our profession and our society.  I’m also sensitive that dealing with these issues is far more complicated when you are charged with helping an institution like MIT achieve a complex number of institutional imperatives. 

The ultimate question is how we should feel about the decline. Is the change in the diversity numbers a good thing? That is a much harder question to answer. Not surprisingly, Edward Blum from SFFA sees the change as a positive course correction to the policies that led to the lawsuit in the first place.  But for many of us, an elite admissions process that produces substantially less diversity seems neither “fairer” nor in the nation’s best interest.

Recruiting Priorities

It has been just over a year since the Supreme Court decision in the cases filed by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. In that year we have a much clearer view about the direction of the Court–its disregard for ethical standards that guide other jurists and public servants, its lack of concern about public trust and the appearance of impropriety, its willingness to abandon the concepts of precedent and “settled law,” and its definition of “originalism” that is, well, original. 

As Eric Hoover pointed out in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, it is far less clear how the Supreme Court decision has changed the admission landscape.  That is not surprising.  Until we have finished a complete cycle we won’t have enough information to know how admission offices have coped with reading applications without awareness of race in individual applications or the ability to sculpt the class at the end of the process.

There is another factor, of course.  The impact of the Supreme Court ruling has been put on the back burner by a more immediate crisis. In 2019 our attention was on the Operation Varsity Blues scandal, but a year later the issues arising from the Covid pandemic turned OVB into a distant and vague memory. The FAFSA fiasco has had the same effect this year.

We may be starting to see how some colleges are changing policies and practices against the backdrop of the court decision. Recently a loyal ECA reader forwarded me an email she had just received from a highly-selective college.  The email reported that the admission office had conducted an audit of its admission visit programming and would be making some changes for the coming year.

One is abolishing the three-day fly-in program the institution has used to bring prospective students, many of them from diverse backgrounds, to its rural campus.  It intends to replace that program with increased opportunities for school and CBO counselors to visit the campus and expanded travel assistance for accepted applicants from low-income backgrounds to attend the yield open house in April.

There were two other statements in the email that caught the counselor’s attention–and mine as well.

The first promised that counselors would receive “consistent outreach” throughout the year.  Describing outreach as “consistent” would seem to be a low bar, as it describes a wide spectrum of possible responses.  I am not accusing the university in question of planning to do this, but providing no outreach whatsoever would technically qualify as “consistent.”  We have certainly seen a number of colleges, especially those that are most selective, abolish the counselor call to discuss the applicant pool in the name of “equity.”  There were clearly equity issues present in that practice, but it is also possible to define the equity justification as “treat everyone equally badly.”

The more newsworthy nugget was that the institution’s fall and spring travel will “prioritize” CBOs, Title 1 schools, and “feeder school connections.”  That’s an interesting combination, and a more interesting message.

First of all, colleges have a right, and perhaps even an obligation, to determine what is the most efficient and effective use of their resources for recruitment purposes. The experience of Covid, when many schools were virtual and many college campuses closed to visits, forced admission offices to be creative in how they interacted with prospective students. That inevitably led to discussions about whether traditional tools like high school visits are as effective or necessary as they once were.  At one level that is all that the email is communicating.

At the same time, the decision to prioritize CBOs, Title 1 schools, and feeder schools can be read as shifting the institution’s focus on diversity and family connections from the admission process itself to recruitment. The Supreme Court decision outlawed racial preferences in the selection process to achieve a certain mix of students, and one consequence of that decision was renewed scrutiny on legacy preferences.  The court did not speak to preferences in recruiting.  

The term “affirmative action” has encompassed two different paradigms in the past.  One of those involves expanding the pipeline of talent by broadening outreach.  The other is giving advantage in the selection process for underrepresented and desired groups. The court cases involving affirmative action in college admission, dating back to the 1978 Bakke case, have always been about the latter. 

The attention to CBOs and Title 1 schools is about the former, and makes sense from both a pragmatic and an ethical perspective.  Community-based organizations play an increasingly important college counseling role as school counselors are burdened with duties that prevent them from assisting students with the college process. CBOs provide an entree to a group of students that higher education hasn’t effectively reached in the past.  We need colleges, and especially selective colleges, to provide leadership and public service by adopting and supporting CBOs and schools they have historically overlooked.

The outlier here is the focus on “feeder school connections.” Recruiting priority for feeder schools is not the same thing as admission preference for legacy applicants, but what they have in common is that they benefit groups who are already members of the club or college family.  Neither group expands the college’s outreach.

The definition of “feeder school” is a school that consistently and regularly sends students to a college.  They feed the college, but do they also need to be fed? Are they like Seymour, the plant from “Little Shop of Horrors,” screaming “Feed me!”? Do they require special care and attention from an admission office? I certainly hope that it is not the feeder schools pressuring the admission office for special attention.

The answers to those questions depend on what you think the point of school visits is as part of a recruitment strategy.  Is it about expanding outreach or nurturing existing relationships (it can certainly be both)? Should colleges do school visits to expand their outreach and visibility into new markets, or is it important to visit schools where the college is already known and popular? And what about schools that don’t fall into either category? Are they not important? How does a school become a feeder school if it is starved for attention?

There obviously aren’t easy or right answers, but how and whom we choose to recruit sends a clear message about institutional values. Priorities matter. Prioritizing CBOs and Title 1 schools in recruitment makes sense. Prioritizing feeder school connections may not pass the smell test. 

The College Board is Going to Rescue the FAFSA, But Can It Rescue Itself?

The U.S. Department of Education is turning to two executives at the College Board to fix the problems that have plagued the launch of the “simplified” Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a launch that turned out to be anything but simple. College Board President Jeremy Singer will be the new FAFSA czar (his official title seems to be FAFSA executive adviser). He will be joined by Jeff Olson, the CB’s Chief Information Officer, who has overseen the Bluebook technology that has allowed for a transition to a digital SAT.

The announcement has received mixed reviews. Singer and Olson are high-profile, respected names providing confidence that the Office of Student Federal Aid is serious about addressing the issues that continue to frustrate students, counselors, and financial aid professionals.  

At the same time many in the financial aid community have concerns about the College Board’s new role and influence because it is the owner of the College Scholarship Service Profile, a competitor to the FAFSA.  That creates concerns about actual or potential conflict of interest, since neither Singer nor Olson is actually leaving the College Board or their lucrative compensation but will rather be on loan to the Department of Education.  

The word “loan” implies a payback.  What does the College Board get in return? The same experience and expertise that make Singer and Olson ideal mechanics of the new FAFSA also give them the ability to understand its inner workings in a way that strengthens the market for the CSS Profile. How will they navigate their roles as government contractors versus their roles as employees of the College Board? None of us will be surprised that a College Board spokesperson declined to comment when asked about conflicts of interest by Inside Higher Ed.

I’ve been trying to envision how this arrangement might work, and I realize that the scenarios in my head come from television shows and movies. One has Singer and Olson ripping off their jackets and ties to reveal Superman-like costumes, emblazoned with the College Board acorn (trademark included) in place of the “S.”  In the other they are secret agents in an early Bond movie, with David Coleman as M outlining their mission, except that Coleman for some reason morphs into criminal mastermind Ernst Blofeld holding a cat. 

In my opinion there is a far more compelling reason to be concerned about the hirings than the potential conflict of interest.  How can the College Board expect to fix the FAFSA when it doesn’t seem to be able to fix its own problems delivering its signature product, the SAT?

Recently there has been considerable discussion about the difficulty students in certain areas of the country have had being able to take the SAT in June or for the upcoming August administration.  A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times written by a student living in the San Francisco Bay area indicated that the nearest available test center for August was 400 miles away, and compared registering for the SAT in the Bay Area to scoring tickets for a Taylor Swift concert. The student and his family ended up flying to Dallas to take the test. Several posts from counselors on the NACAC HiveMind also exhibited frustration with the limited number of test spaces and how quickly they filled up as soon as they were made available.

The College Board has what is referred to in other industries as a supply-chain issue.  It has difficulty getting its product to customers, and that’s a sign of a business in danger. It also seems absurd that major metropolitan areas like the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest near Seattle are “testing deserts.”  Given that the challenge with the FAFSA is making it accessible to those who need it, how does hiring two executives from the College Board inspire confidence that they have what it takes to rescue the FAFSA when the SAT availability issues persist?

That may be unfair to Singer and Olson.  The CB is a large organization (perhaps even “too big to fail”) with a number of silos (admission testing, Advanced Placement, CSS), and perhaps problems in one area do not suggest problems across the board.  But the problems in test delivery are not new, but rather rooted in the College Board’s business model.

That model has always relied on high schools doing the work of administering the SAT by serving as test centers. The College Board collects the money, and the schools do the work.  The SAT Suite of Assessments page on the College Board website argues that schools becoming test centers provide students with “familiar surroundings and easy access” and foster “a college-going culture.” They also foster a test-taking culture.

At some point the College Board moved from relying on the kindness of strangers to expecting the kindness of strangers.  Over the past few years it has pushed for school-based testing administered during the school day.  A presentation at the NACAC Conference in Baltimore last fall reported that 65 percent of testing is now school-based.  

There are a couple of issues with school-based testing, but the primary one is the presumption that high schools are agents of the College Board and that administering the SAT is a legitimate part of the high school curriculum rather than an add-on.  Schools and school counselors have probably fed this assumption through the years by administering the PSAT and AP exams in school, but we don’t exist to relieve the College Board of its responsibility to make its products available to customers.  The time has come to re-think the business model.

The College Board’s supply-chain issues have surfaced at a time when a number of elite colleges and universities have returned to requiring applicants to submit test scores. Those institutions share the blame for the mess.  Adding the requirement without taking responsibility for how students will fulfill the requirement constitutes what is called in government an unfunded mandate.  From an ethical standpoint, if I impose a requirement I should provide the means to satisfy the requirement. If test scores are essential parts of admission review for elite colleges, those colleges and universities should become or sponsor test centers.

That’s a justice issue, but it’s also an equity issue.  Wealthy families can afford to drive hundreds of miles and stay in a hotel or fly out-of-state to take the SAT.  And yet the “diamonds in the rough” from less privileged economic backgrounds, the very students that elite colleges claim are identified by and benefit from test scores, don’t have that luxury. Do we really want another admission practice that advantages the already-privileged? 

I hope the College Board executives can fix the problems with the FAFSA.  I’d feel more confident about that if the CB would fix its own problems first.     

A Financial Aid Portal, or Isn't It Ironic?

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed on July 15, 2024)

Inside Higher Ed recently reported on a survey conducted by the enrollment management consulting firm Ellucian on how college choice is impacted by a student’s financial aid experience. Ellucian surveyed 1,500 students, 58 percent of them working adult students and the remaining 42 percent traditional-age students.

According to the survey, 76 percent of those responding indicated that where they enrolled was impacted by their financial aid award.  But the size of the award was only part of their decision-making process.  They were also focused on the quality of their interactions with institutions.

Twenty-two percent indicated that they would be inclined to change their college choice if it took longer than two weeks to process the financial aid paperwork. That increases to 73 percent after more than four weeks and 92 percent after more than eight weeks.  Forty-four percent of the respondents also indicated that they would most likely hang up after being on hold with a financial aid office for fifteen minutes. 

Laura Ipsen, Ellucian’s CEO, told Inside Higher Ed that “‘It’s not just ‘Am I going to get the financial aid I need?’” She also pointed out, “The report showed that students are also basing their decisions on ‘What’s my digital experience with this institution?’”

She may very well be right, but that conclusion should be taken with a grain of salt.  It’s self-serving, because Ellucian happens to be in the digital experience business (it owns Banner).

Still, as someone focused on the intersection between ethics and college admission, there was one statistic in the Ellucian survey that got my attention.  Forty-four percent of respondents indicated that they would switch their top college choice if offered an additional $5,000 in aid from another college.

Whether and to what degree net price should be a factor in college choice is not a new issue. Back in the early 1990s, a group of elite colleges known as the Overlap Group compared and adjusted financial aid packages for individual applicants applying to multiple institutions within the group.  Their argument was that students should decide between institutions without being influenced by differing financial aid packages. That view was not shared by the antitrust division of the U.S.Department of Justice, which saw the Overlap Group as engaging in price-fixing and restricting competition.

More recently, the Justice Department sued (and settled with) the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), which agreed in 2019 to alter its Code of Ethics and Professional Practices (CEPP) to delete a section prohibiting poaching, or attempting to recruit students committed to another college, after the May 1 “National College Decision Day.” Sweetening an existing financial aid offer or offering a new scholarship is the most common practice used to initiate poaching.  

I was a member of the task force that developed the CEPP, and the rationale for the prohibition was protecting students from predatory practices by colleges.  The Justice Department saw things differently, interpreting NACAC as interfering with institutions’ ability to compete, and by extension preventing families from paying less for higher education.

I have spent most of my professional life believing that, in a perfect world, choosing a college shouldn’t be first and foremost an economic decision.  But we don’t live in a perfect world, and my view on that issue may be softening.

In ethics, there is an inherent tension between what is ideal and what is practical.  Ethics is normative, about how we should act, but any ethical principle that isn’t pragmatic is worthless.

Back in the 1990s, the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice (the SPGP, a precursor to the CEPP) required members to practice need-blind admission.  That encompassed two different pieces.  One was making admission decisions without consideration of financial need, and the other was meeting the full need of admitted applicants.  There came a point where a number of member institutions argued that they could no longer do both of those, and the SPGP was amended after a contentious debate.

Are we at a similar inflection point when it comes to offering additional scholarships and financial aid to entice students to switch enrollment?  That practice doesn’t pass the smell test, but we are entering a new paradigm for both applicants and colleges.  We know that the cost of higher education is a huge issue for families, especially those for whom the biggest impediment to going to college is financial, and if the Ellucian survey is even close to accurate, nearly 50 percent of students are open to changing their first-choice college  for as little as $5,000 in additional aid.  At the same time, this year’s FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) fiasco has placed many tuition-driven colleges in existential jeopardy.

I’m not arguing that this is a good idea, but I am wondering if there is a way to match students needing (or at least wanting) additional financial aid with colleges willing to provide it without college admission deteriorating (further) into the Wild West. 

From an ethical standpoint, it makes a difference who initiates a scholarship offer or request.  It is kosher for the family of a prospective student to inquire about additional aid, especially if the student is already an applicant. For a college to make an unsolicited scholarship offer is more questionable.

If there is a growing population of students willing to change their first-choice college for an additional $5,000 and a growing cohort of colleges needing and willing to accommodate them, perhaps we need a mechanism to bring them together. And, as it turns out, there is a model in place, albeit an imperfect one.

Perhaps we need to establish a financial aid portal along the lines of the athletic transfer portal currently in use to match athletes looking to transfer with college coaches looking for an infusion of new talent. Families desiring to signify their willingness to switch college allegiances in exchange for additional aid could register with the portal, giving colleges a chance to reach out to students who have initiated the process.

There are obviously some details to be worked out, and I’m happy to leave those to others.  How might we prevent this from deteriorating into an arms race of desperation? Would $5,000 be the threshold or could families register for higher amounts? Should the original college choice have the ability to match any offers?

The biggest issue, of course, is the irony of adopting the athletic transfer portal as a model. It may not compare with rain on your wedding day or a free ride when you’ve already paid, and it falls short of Steve Buscemi’s definition of irony in the movie Con Air, “a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.” But establishing a financial aid portal to prevent college admission from turning into the Wild West modeled after a process that has turned intercollegiate athletics into its own Wild West would be the ultimate example of “Define Irony.”  

The Other 21 Percent

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed on June 17, 2024)

We will be hearing a lot about polls this year in conjunction with the presidential election. We’ll hear far less discussion about whether covering elections like horse races is a good idea, or whether the votes cast by those who live in one of the three to five “battleground” states should count more than everyone else’s.

I am a skeptic, and perhaps even a cynic, when it comes to polls and survey results. I have never been contacted by a pollster, nor known anyone who has, and I’m not sure I would be forthcoming about my opinions.  I suspect I’m not alone. The polling industry underpredicted Donald Trump’s election performance in 2016 and overpredicted the Republican “red wave” that never materialized in 2022.

That doesn’t mean I’m not fascinated by some of the nuggets that can be found in survey results. For many years I taught a class in public speaking, and I always began the course by referencing a famous survey on things people fear. The survey dated back to the 1970s, and I always cautioned my students that some of the things that might appear on a list today–things like climate change, global pandemic, and threats to American democracy– were not in anyone’s consciousness when the survey was done. The number one fear in the survey was public speaking, and in fact the survey results indicated that by a two-to-one margin people were more fearful of speaking in public than of dying. That always seemed a bit extreme.

There was one answer in that survey that always baffled my students and made them wonder about those being surveyed. One of the fourteen answers, receiving something like five percent of the vote, was “escalators.” That always led to a discussion about how escalators are probably more dangerous than they appear. 

I had my own “escalators moment” the other week when I looked at the results of a recent survey conducted by the Associated Press in conjunction with the University of Chicago’s NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The survey examined attitudes on public policy issues, especially those related to education, of a group of 1,068 AAPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander) adults.

The survey results for the most part contain few surprises. The attitudes of the AAPI adults surveyed don’t vary significantly from those of the population at large, and party affiliation tends to explain differences on specific issues. Compared to the general public, the AAPI respondents are more likely to see parental income and the community one grows up in as “integral” factors contributing to individual success. About half of AAPI adults viewed state and federal governments as having a large responsibility for the financing of higher education.

My focus is on college admissions, and as a result I was particularly interested in what the survey said about the use of various admissions criteria.  It asked the following question: “Do you think it is fair, unfair, or neither fair nor unfair for colleges and universities to make decisions about admitting students based on the following factors?”

Here are the results:

Factor: % Very/ % Neither Fair % Somewhat/Very

Somewhat Fair Nor Fair Unfair

High School Grades 79 15 5

Standardized Test Scores. 65 19 14

Hardship or Adversity 45 30 23

Athletic Ability 24 32 42

Ability to Pay 23 28 48

First Generation 19 27 54

Race and Ethnicity 18 27 53

Legacy Status 9 20 69

At first glance there is nothing surprising in the relative rankings for those criteria, but there was one survey result that captured my attention.  79 percent of  those surveyed considered high school grades either very fair or somewhat fair as an admissions factor.  That’s four out of five, which seems impressive until you think about it.  Why isn’t the percentage higher? Where are the other 21 percent? 

The “four out of five” statistic is similar to one used in a 1970s ad for Trident sugarless chewing gum, where the claim was that “four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.” In both that ad and the AAPI survey, what is significant is not what is said, but what is left unsaid. Why would one out of five dentists think that gum with sugar in it is just as good for you as sugarless gum, and why would 21 percent of survey respondents be less than enthusiastic about high school grades as a criteria for college admission?  

Perhaps the most interesting statistic is that five percent of the survey respondents view the consideration of high school grades to be somewhat or very unfair.  There is no such thing as perfect admissions criteria, and rampant grade inflation and the challenges of educating and evaluating students post-pandemic certainly make high school grades less reliable than once upon a time, but if high school grades are unfair, what would you substitute for them? Test scores were never intended to take the place of academic performance in high school, but rather to provide a standardized context for students coming from very different academic backgrounds and experiences. As the survey results suggest, other possible criteria are far less appealing.

Going to college is first and foremost going to school, and it would seem that, even if imperfect, the best predictor of future success as a college student is a student’s past record as a student.  That’s true even for those who prefer to avoid polls, escalators, and sugarless gum.

A Year Unlike Any Other

Will anyone mourn the end of the 2023-2024 admission cycle, if in fact it ever ends?  The sportscaster Jim Nantz loves to describe the Masters golf tournament as a “tradition unlike any other.” For colleges this year has been a year unlike any other.

That, of course, begins with the fiasco (fiasco is probably not a strong enough description) surrounding the rollout of a new version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The problems with the FAFSA proved once again that things advertised as “new and improved” are rarely both.

We know that financial aid professionals continue to be stretched thin and stressed out from having to process the new FAFSA Student Aid Index under a time crunch. We know that admission offices at tuition-driven institutions are trying to meet budget goals without full information for applicants requiring financial aid to attend college, and that deposits are running behind at a number of places.  

We also know that there are a number of colleges whose very existence is in jeopardy. Ten days ago the University of the Arts in Philadelphia announced without warning that it would close, joining other colleges including venerable places like Birmingham Southern in Alabama, founded in 1856, and Wells College in Upstate New York, which dates back to 1868. I previously wrote about Birmingham Southern, which since closing on May 31 has become the answer to a trivia question.  Its baseball team made the College World Series for Division 3 (including eliminating my alma mater), meaning that its baseball team outlived the institution.

Wealthy, elite colleges and universities that don’t have to worry about making their classes have had their own issues this spring in the form of student unrest and protests arising from the situation in Israel and Gaza.  I talked with an admission dean friend earlier this year who talked about his staff members being hesitant to come into the office because of demonstrators taking over campus spaces located next to the campus welcome center, and I know counselors who report that some Jewish parents will not allow their children to consider certain elite universities where they perceive that there is a strong streak of anti-Semitism.  

The undercurrent of hate in the protests is troubling and hard to fathom. Is this another consequence of the impact of COVID on this generation of students’ educational experience during high school and college? I have certainly observed an increased emotional fragility in my students since 2020, perhaps a sign that COVID impacted their emotional development far more than their educational development. Do students have an inability to deal with moral complexity? Is the selective admissions process a contributing factor? That’s a discussion for another time. 

While the issues on the college side of the profession have received the most attention, college counselors in schools face new challenges in advising students. The immediate focus this past year has been in trying to support students facing problems in filing the FAFSA, but there are also counseling challenges posed by the changing landscape of higher education.  For example, there are an increasing number of universities that admit applicants but not for the main campus they applied for.  Northeastern University’s satellite campus in Oakland (what used to be Mills College) may be located in the northeastern part of the San Francisco bay area, but isn’t exactly what students hoping to attend Northeastern are expecting. Penn State satellite campuses like Hazleton and Ogontz (today Abington) are not the same as Happy Valley. 

While college closures have received the most attention, there are a number of other institutions that are eliminating jobs and programs. On May 30 the University of Lynchburg in Virginia announced that it was cutting 40 staff positions effective immediately, including five of nine VP positions, and also phasing out twelve undergraduate programs and five graduate programs. Brandeis is cutting 60 positions, and Delta State in Mississippi plans to eliminate 21 of 61 academic programs, including English, history, and chemistry.

Those retrenchments in academic offerings and staffing have immediate and real consequences for the students and employees impacted, but they also impact college counselors. Trying to help students find the right college fit now requires knowledge about the financial health and viability of colleges in a way it hasn’t.  That’s challenging because the information tends to be closely guarded by struggling colleges and universities.

Last fall I met with a senior who was seriously considering depositing at a small college where his credentials would have placed him among the top students. There is certainly an argument to be made for going to that kind of situation.  In many ways the college was a perfect fit.  It was located geographically close to property owned by his family in a place he loves and may want to settle permanently.  He would receive a significant merit scholarship, would be able to play a sport in college, and had made a connection with a professor in his area of interest who might serve as a mentor for him academically.

I wanted to have a conversation on two fronts.  I supported his reasons for being interested in the college, but worried about whether he would be challenged academically, and encouraged him to spend several days on campus attending classes and seeing how he fit academically with the students there. I also wondered about how stable the place was financially, but my research didn’t reveal any issues.  He ended up picking a different place that was a good fit for him in different ways.

Good college counseling requires knowing your students, knowing the right questions to ask, and knowing what’s happening at colleges.  That’s more challenging than ever before in a time of social and financial unrest, a year unlike any other.  Let’s hope that what we’ve encountered this year isn’t the new normal.

Diversity Without Affirmative Action

Back in March the New York Times published an interactive piece entitled, “Can You Create a Diverse College Class Without Affirmative Action?”  The article, by Aatish Bhatia and Emily Badger, examined a study conducted by Stanford researchers Sean Reardon and Demetra Kalogrides to determine whether alternatives to race-based admissions preferences could increase diversity at elite colleges and universities.

Reardon and Kalogrides ran simulations for four scenarios to calculate how each would impact the racial composition of a class, the percentage of low-income students, and the average SAT score.  Utilizing real-life academic and demographic information from the high school class of 2013, they developed models for an institution with a five percent admit rate, where 500 of 10,000 applicants would be admitted.   

Scenario one involved giving students from low-income backgrounds a boost equivalent to 150 points on the SAT. The second scenario added a second, 150-point boost for students coming from high-poverty high schools.  Scenario three was based on finding “outliers,” students who outperform their peers from similar backgrounds. Dartmouth used the outlier theory as one rationale for its return to requiring test scores. The final scenario involved expanding the applicant pool by identifying qualified students who aren’t applying to elite colleges. The authors of the study report report that scenario four produces the biggest shift toward low-income students, with Hispanic students benefiting the most.

So how did each scenario impact the composition of the projected entering class?

Scenario % Black/Hispanic % Low Income Avg. SAT

One 13 10 1390

Two 18 11 1380

Three 25 17 1340

Four 32 23 1320

The models above demonstrate the complex relationship that different levers have on the composition of a desired class.  Making progress in one area carries with it a cost in another. Hoping to increase the percentage of diverse and low-income students will probably lower the average SAT score of a class.  Admission offices have to decide which institutional priority takes precedence.

ECA is always interested in underlying assumptions, and there are several in this study worth examining..  

The researchers state that they “use SAT scores as a simplified measure of academic merit.”  I wonder if that holds up to scrutiny.

Clearly one appeal of SAT scores as a metric is that they are simple, a way to categorize a student in four digits. I have questioned before whether we measure what we value, or value what is easily measured.

But are SAT scores a measure of academic merit?  I have never found SAT scores to be random.  With rare exceptions my good students scored well and weaker students didn’t. But does a strong test score indicate “academic merit” or the ability to test well?  

The “academic merit” arguments hearken back to a century ago when testing was seen as an objective way of measuring human potential. Today we know how flawed and even ignorant that was, with subtle ties to the eugenics movement. Even David Coleman would have a hard time making the argument today that SAT scores measure “academic merit.” An individual’s score is influenced by the environment he or she grows up in, both at home and at school. In addition, the ability of wealthy families to pay for test prep and multiple test administrations means that identical scores don’t mean the same thing.  SAT scores may be simple, but not a measure of academic merit.

The Stanford study makes an important distinction between race and income.  It states that, “Income is a relatively weak proxy for race in admissions. A preference for lower incomes produces just that: students with lower incomes, not necessarily a much larger share of Black or Hispanic students.” It points out that one criticism of race-based admission preferences was that the Black and Hispanic students admitted under those policies were “overwhelmingly middle- and upper-income students.” Of course the elephant in the room is that admitting more low-income students carries with it the obligation to provide more financial-aid resources. 

The boost given by the researchers to low-income students (150 points on the SAT in scenario one and 300 points for students from high-poverty schools in scenario two) would seem to come into conflict with the “diamond in the rough” theory advanced by some of the Ivy League institutions that have reinstated their test score requirement. The argument is that the SAT identifies students who would otherwise be overlooked as applicants for the nation’s elite colleges.  

But how many diamonds in the rough are out there? According to the 2022 annual report for the SAT “Suite of Assessments,” one percent of African-American test takers scored above 1400 on the SAT, or about 2000 students nationally. For test takers self-identifying as Hispanic, it was two percent, or approximately 8000 nationally.  Those numbers aren’t broken down by income, but it’s a very small pool even if everyone in it is from a low-income background, and that’s likely not the case. So does the SAT serve to find diamonds in the rough, or do students from low-income backgrounds and schools require a significant boost because their test scores are an impediment to admission?

That leads to the biggest flaw in the Reardon/Kalogrides study. They begin with a desired result, a certain composition of the class, and then attempt to reverse engineer the admissions process to produce the desired outcome. Is that any different from what highly-selective/rejective colleges did with regard to race and other factors in “shaping” a class? Probably not. Critics of race-based affirmative action were convinced that colleges were putting a thumb on the scale to achieve a certain level of diversity.

If I were an admissions dean, charged with helping my institution achieve a variety of strategic goals through the admissions process, I’d be tempted to do the same thing.  But admitting a class rather than admitting students as individuals serves institutions much better than it does students. Every applicant deserves equal consideration, and that doesn’t happen in an admissions process that is reverse engineered to produce a previously desired outcome.  Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion in the Harvard/UNC cases finds that race can be taken into account as part of the evaluation of an individual’s qualifications, whereas setting goals to achieve certain levels of diversity within the entire class is impermissible.

There are certainly challenges to that approach. How does a college or university handle a situation where its diversity numbers drop precipitously from year-to-year?

Perhaps the most interesting idea in the Stanford study is that the ultimate solution is expanding outreach and identifying students we are now missing.  That’s a huge challenge at any time, but especially this year when the FAFSA rollout fiasco has challenged colleges’ ability to enroll their classes for this fall.  We may agree that higher education has an obligation to serve the public interest and not just institutional interest, but according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it’s hard to worry about self-actualization when you are worried about where your next meal is coming from. When you are on a flight and the emergency oxygen masks drop down, you are supposed to first put on your own mask. 

There is, however, a group of colleges that do have the opportunity to make a difference. That, of course, is the group of “elite” colleges and universities that admit a minuscule percentage of applicants, the kinds of places that receive the vast majority of attention from media outlets like the New York Times.  We need that group of colleges to step up and lead with a sustained commitment to do pro bono work long before students enter high school. It also requires from all of us a more sustained effort to identify the qualities, both academic and non-academic, that lead to success.  It won’t be easy, but the things in life that are most valuable aren’t easy. 

NACAC Publishes New Edition of Fundamentals of College Admission Counseling

You may have seen that NACAC has just published the Sixth Edition of its textbook for graduate students and practicing counselors, Fundamentals of College Admission Counseling.  The new edition is authored by 39 NACAC members and co-edited by Dr. Beth Gilfillan, Associate Professor of School Counseling at Northeastern Illinois University and the 2023 Illinois School Counselor Educator of the Year, and Dr. Christopher Tremblay, the Executive Director of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan as well as editor-in-chief for AACRAO’s College and University Journal. Both of the co-editors have previously contributed chapters to earlier editions of Fundamentals. 

I have received my copy of the book, and it’s an impressive resource. Given that one of the hallmarks of ethics is truthfulness and transparency, I must admit that I have done little more than browse through it at this point.

I am fully aware of one chapter, because I had the honor of writing Chapter Two, Ethical Practices.  Beth reached out to me when the book was being planned to see if I might be interested in applying to write that chapter, and I jumped (no pun intended) at the opportunity. She indicated that she has been an ECA reader both as a practicing school counselor and as a counselor educator.

I notice that my chapter is one of the shorter ones in the book.  I hope that doesn’t mean there’s less substance, but my goal was to provide an overview of ethical theory, how ethical practice is essential to our understanding of college admission counseling as a profession, and to identify some of the ethical principles that should guide our work and the ethical dilemmas we may encounter as we serve students, families, and our schools.  Those who read this blog regularly will recognize a number of the themes.

The Sixth Edition of Fundamentals of College Admission Counseling can be ordered through NACAC:

https://www.nacacnet.org/fundamentals-of-college-admission-counseling-sixth-edition/#toc_Now_available

What An "A" Means

Last week the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on a topic that is fundamental to education, but is discussed either hesitantly or not at all.  The article, by Beckie Supiano, asked sixteen educators, some from the college side and others from the high school side, to weigh in on what an A grade means or should mean.

I was one of the sixteen and told Beckie that it was an inspired topic.  That wasn’t surprising, because a few years back she interviewed me for an article she and Eric Hoover did on what fairness in college admission looks like.  Both of those articles capture my love for philosophical discussions that defy a simple answer. 

Very few topics in education are more contentious than grades, with the possible exception of homework.  Decisions about grading impact every classroom teacher, every student, every class, and every school or college.  

Grades also impact the college admissions process.  It can certainly be argued that one of the factors influencing places like Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Cal Tech, and UT-Austin to return to requiring test scores is that grade inflation has made A’s on student transcripts ubiquitous.  The currency of selective admission is that the rarer any talent or quality (or grade), the more valuable it is–and vice versa. A’s aren’t as impressive when everyone has them.

I am far from convinced that adding test scores to the admission equation actually helps locate the “diamond in the rough” and produces a more diverse student body, but I get that having test scores as an additional data point is useful is distinguishing among applications with similar grades. Whether the addition of test scores leads to better decisions or just easier decisions is a different question.

There are two approaches to grading that parallel two approaches to admission.  There is the formulaic approach, where the final grade is objective and totally driven by numbers.  The other is holistic.  As a classroom teacher I have always fallen into the holistic category.  My ultimate question is assigning grades has been “What does this student deserve?” The holistic approach can be criticized as subjective, but assigning a grade for a piece of work or a course is an exercise in professional judgment.

So what does (or should) an A mean?  A tempting answer is that, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, you know A work when you see it. My answer to the Chronicle was that as a classroom teacher of philosophy at the college level and public speaking at the high school level I have always believed that a B should be relatively easy to get, assuming that a student makes an honest effort and meets the minimal expectations of the course.  A’s should be rarer and harder to obtain, representing depth of understanding and a different level of insight.

That train may have already left the station.  Nearly 80 percent of the grades awarded at Yale during 2022-23 were either A or A-, and Yale is not an outlier on that front.  The question is whether students admitted in an environment where only five percent of applicants are successful have a right to expect A’s based solely on their ability to be admitted.  And what happens to those students when they begin to make grades lower than A for the first time? 

Those questions are particularly relevant as we work with students whose academic and emotional growth were impacted by the Covid pandemic.  During the pandemic many schools were generous with grades in recognition of all that students were dealing with, including hours in front of screens trying to do school.  We have seen a fragility in many of those students. As they encounter less-forgiving grading standards, does that contribute to the increase we are seeing in student mental health concerns?

It is important for faculty members to have discussions about grading philosophy and what grades mean.  That doesn’t mean that every teacher or course need to be on the same page.  At my school any student who doesn’t receive an A for Glee Club is doing something wrong, and that’s okay. What you don’t want is a perception that two instructors teaching the same course have wildly different grades.  Our English Department annually did a table-reading exercise to ensure that there was rough agreement in grading essays.

Schools also need to ensure that there is alignment in grading.  Several years ago the daughter of a colleague was making straight A’s in regular-level courses, but was told she couldn’t take honors-level courses.  That seemed wrong to me, even if it is the case that the expectations in regular-level courses are different.  Either the student should have been given the opportunity to see what she could do at the honors level or she shouldn’t have been getting straight A’s in regular courses.

I just attended a conference where the subject of school profiles came up.  The college folks at the session complained that too many high school profiles don’t contain information about grading scales or grade distributions.  A friend who has just moved back to the college side of the desk told me that he has read 40-50 applications in the past couple of days, and none of the school profiles contained context about grade distributions.  A counselor friend remarked that her school and many others were hesitant, and perhaps embarrassed, to reveal just how many A’s they were giving out. 

There are two other consequences of the number of A grades we see today. One is that they have rendered moot a classic question about college admission, Is it better to get an A in a regular-level course or a B in an Honors or Advanced Placement course? My students used to chuckle grudgingly at my attempt at humor, which was that they wanted students to take the Honors/AP course–and get the A. Today that’s no longer a joke.

The other is the extinction of the “gentleman’s C.”  It’s now the gentleman’s A-.

Birmingham-Southern

One of my college counseling friends just returned from a Road Scholar excursion to places where some of the most monumental events in American history took place. She traveled to Atlanta, Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham, all important locales in the Civil Rights movement.  She found the trip powerfully moving and inspirational, and perhaps even a little miraculous when it stopped raining for the first time all day at the very moment she crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

My friend’s trip to Birmingham made me think back to my last visit there, just as memorable if not as inspirational.  My daughter’s first job after graduating from college was at a Birmingham non-profit, and so I drove down with her to help her get settled. (It worked out perfectly because NACAC wanted me to speak at an event in D.C. the next day and paid for my flight.) 

Driving west from Atlanta on I-20, maybe an hour from Birmingham, I suddenly noticed a huge, majestic bird fly out of the woods on the right side of the interstate. It was on a flight path that put it directly on a collision course with our car. I was certain it would pull up and clear the vehicle–until it didn’t.  When we arrived in Birmingham my daughter’s gray RAV-4 sported some new purple splotches in a couple of spots.

I thought about Birmingham last week for a couple of other reasons.

The first was the beginning of March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament.  I have always been a college basketball fan, and the first two days of the tournament are two of my favorite days of the whole year.  As a new retiree, this year I could sit (in the spirit of full disclosure, I probably did more lying) on the couch watching games to my heart’s content. 

Watching college basketball is less enjoyable now that the transfer portal has essentially turned into free agency. I have a former player currently playing at his fourth college in four years (after having originally committed to a fifth). He’s a good student, but I wonder about the quality of his college experience.

I always find myself rooting for the underdogs, and this year one of the popular choices for an upset was Samford, located in Birmingham (actually Homewood, a suburb of Birmingham). (The University of Alabama-Birmingham also made the tournament.) Samford was a popular upset choice because of its unique style of play, termed “Bucky Ball” after its coach, involving frenetic full-court pressing. Samford ended up losing its first-round game against traditional blue-blood Kansas after coming back from a 21-point deficit, and might have won but for a questionable foul call late in the game.

Birmingham has been even more on my mind since learning that Birmingham-Southern College will be closing at the end of the school year after having been in existence since 1856.  The cause of death was failure to secure a $30 million loan from the state of Alabama to stay afloat, but the reality is that the venerable liberal-arts college has been seriously and chronically ill for some time.

None of my students have attended Birmingham-Southern, but I have been aware of it for more than fifty years, before I went to college myself. My minister was from a prominent Alabama family and was a B-SC alum. Birmingham-Southern also happens to be the alma mater of former U.S. Senator Howell Heflin and comedian Pat Buttram, best known for his portrayal of Mr. Haney on the 1960s sitcom Green Acres.

Last week’s announcement was sad. I feel for the students, faculty, and staff who have had their lives upended by the closure as well as the alumni who will lose connection to an important part of their past.  It is one thing to know that Birmingham-Southern is endangered and quite another to receive the stark news that it is closing in two months.

There is also some irony in the announcement having come during March Madness, because one of the things that initially put Birmingham-Southern in some financial jeopardy was seeking Division One glory. B-SC had been a basketball powerhouse in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), winning two national championships during the 1990s, and like a number of smaller schools decided to make the jump to NCAA Division One in hopes of increasing name recognition and revenue through making the “Big Dance.” Birmingham-Southern never made the tournament during its four-year run in Division One, but had on-court success, winning nearly two-thirds of its games. In doing so it accumulated $6 million in debt.

It is hard to know whether Birmingham-Southern was a victim of bad decision-making or bad luck. It tried many of the strategies that other institutions have used to increase enrollment, but none of them worked. After moving back to Division 3 for athletics, it added football, a lever many small colleges have used to increase enrollment, particularly male enrollment. It went into further debt to upgrade and beautify the campus and add programs. It tried the tuition reset route, cutting its sticker price in half in 2017. Despite all of those efforts, enrollment dropped 37 percent since 2009, and its endowment declined by 23 percent.

What are the lessons from Birmingham-Southern’s demise? The obvious one ( command of the obvious is my specialty) is that colleges and universities are first and foremost businesses. I have certainly been guilty of criticizing higher education for acting too much like an industry, but colleges are businesses with employees and payrolls, and when they don’t have enough customers, they go out of business. That can happen even to places like Birmingham-Southern with track records of nearly 170 years and that are reputable enough to have earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

Birmingham-Southern also serves as a cautionary tale for small, tuition-driven, liberal-arts colleges. They are what Jeff Selingo refers to as “buyers,” in that they have to offer significant tuition discounts to make their class.  

Overspending on financial-aid was another of the factors that put Birmingham-Southern into financial crisis. I worry that small colleges dependent on tuition revenue will be particularly impacted this spring by the FAFSA roll-out crisis.

Peter Pitts, a retired admissions officer at Monmouth College in Illinois, calls himself “the Small College guy.” He has done considerable internet research into small colleges and recently published a book that serves as a directory to some good places that aren’t as well known as they should be. The title is “333 Awesome Small Colleges (that just might save you money!)” and it’s available through Amazon.  I’m glad to see a book that joins Loren Pope’s “Colleges That Change Lives” in giving attention to this group of schools, but of course Birmingham-Southern is featured in both.

Small colleges are an endangered species. Many of them are located in rural areas, and many have historically been focused on the humanities and sciences. Neither of those are particularly valued or desired in today’s marketplace. 

And that’s unfortunate. The small residential college is both the backbone of American higher education and America’s foremost contribution to higher education.  

I am far from unbiased, because I am a product of one of those colleges, but I worry that Birmingham-Southern may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine. I hope that’s not the case. I also hope that all of us will keep everyone in the Birmingham-Southern family in our thoughts and prayers as they grieve and deal with their unfortunate loss.

A Follow Up on Yale's Test-Flexible Policy

After the last post ECA reader Cigus Vanni reached out to me about my comments regarding Yale’s new test-flexible policy, which gives applicants the option of submitting AP or IB scores in place of SAT or ACT scores.  I stated that I thought those tests were better measures of what students had learned. Cigus didn’t disagree, but pointed out a couple of things I hadn’t considered. One is that the new policy may accelerate the AP arms race, leading students to take more exams. He also wondered how a student’s decision about which AP exam scores to report might be read. Will students disadvantage themselves by submitting nothing but math and computer science scores rather than scores for a broader spectrum of subjects?

Cigus’s other point was even more profound.  It is great to make reporting IB exam scores an option, but ultimately meaningless because students don’t take IB exams until the end of their senior year, after the admissions process has already played out.  Cigus commented, “Someone did not think this through,” and I plead guilty, but I don’t think I’m alone. Cigus said that he had reached out to the Yale admissions office but hadn’t received a reply. I told him it was probably in the mail, but also advised him not to hold his breath.

In any case, after our interaction Cigus decided to post on the NACAC Hivemind, and it generated quite a reaction of support. I’m glad to have teed him up. 

Et Tu, Yale and Brown (and UT- Austin)?

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed on March 18, 2024)

The train leaving the test-optional station has added several new cars. Yale University, Brown University, and the University of Texas at Austin have all joined Dartmouth College in announcing that they will return to requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores, ending the test-optional policies they put in place back in 2020 when the pandemic prevented students from taking standardized tests.

At first glance, the decisions made by each institution seem to be similar, and the conspiracy theorists among us may find or imagine collusion. All three argue that test scores are valuable, perhaps even the most valuable, predictors of academic success, more so than a student’s high school transcript in an age of rampant grade inflation. All assert, without necessarily providing evidence, that requiring standardized testing produces a more diverse student body and actually benefits students from disadvantaged backgrounds and high schools (in Texas’s case, by helping identify students “who might benefit most from the university’s student success programs”). Give Yale credit for acknowledging that conclusion is counterintuitive.

For each of the three institutions there is a broader context to ending their test-optional policies.

Yale is introducing what it calls “test-flexible” admission. It will require test scores, but is broadening the scores a student can submit beyond SAT and ACT scores to include Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate scores as well.

I have mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I think AP and IB scores are better measures of what a student has actually learned than are SAT and ACT scores. On the other, I worry that a proliferation of testing policies will confuse students and counselors. We already have too many institution-specific procedures for submitting grades and recommendations, and we seem headed for the same thing with regard to testing. We now have test-required, test-optional, test-flexible, and test-blind/test-free (and there may be others I have missed).

Brown’s decision regarding testing was one of several recommendations made by an ad hoc committee appointed by President Christina H. Paxson. The university also reinforced its commitment to early decision and will continue to study preferences for legacies and children of employees, two cohorts that together make up 9-10 percent of the Brown student body. Those two things are related. Brown acknowledges that the ED pool is less diverse than its regular applicant pool, with a higher percentage of legacies. 

The executive summary of the internal Brown study (the report itself has not been made available to the public) states that “early decision has proven to be a powerful tool for shaping the composition of Brown’s student body.” There is no question that is true, but the example cited is the QuestBridge process that matches low-income applicants with colleges. That example seems disingenuous. The QuestBridge process may happen at the same time as early decision, but it isn’t truly a function of early decision. The majority of students admitted in early decision do not resemble the students brought to Brown through QuestBridge.

The Brown report does contain one of the best acronyms I have encountered, HUG. According to a footnote HUG stands for students from “historically underrepresented groups,” defined as “American Indian, Alaska Native, African American or Black, Hispanic or Latinx, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.” It is possible that HUG is a widely-used acronym and that I don’t get out as much as I should, but I want to give a hug to whoever came up with it.

The end of test-optional at UT-Austin is one of six significant changes to the admissions process announced by the university last week. Those changes include the introduction of both early action and a wait list, modification of the required essay and a reduction in the number of short answer responses from three to two, and a “narrowed scope” for letters of recommendation.

It is the last of these that I find interesting, and perhaps troubling. The university will now encourage applicants to seek letters of recommendation from outside their high schools. The explanation is that this change “reduces the burden of this work on high school teachers and counselors and allows university staff to better leverage other materials.”

It’s certainly nice to know that UT-Austin is concerned about the burden on teachers and counselors, but I have to believe that there is more to this than concern for our well-being. There is certainly room to debate the role that recommendation letters play in the admissions process and how equitable they are, but the point of recommendation letters is (or should be) to provide insight into a student’s academic record and potential, to place the transcript in context. Can recommenders outside a school setting speak to that? As a counselor friend wondered, have they actually read any recommendations written by non-school recommenders? I am also unclear about what “better leverage other materials” really means.  

Moving beyond each institution’s justification for returning to requiring test scores, there are several broader questions and assumptions deserving scrutiny.

The first is whether test scores actually significantly improve the ability of admission officers to predict applicants’ success or rather give them confidence in their own judgments. The Brown committee’s executive summary suggests that a lack of scores for students from underserved high schools and communities “may mean that admissions officers hesitate to admit them.” 

I have asked before if we measure what we value or value what we can measure. Do test scores measure something important and valuable, or does their value lie in the precision (perhaps false precision) that they offer? Several years ago I had a student who was a Division One football prospect. The college he wanted to attend showed little interest until after its archrival had offered a scholarship. It needed the validation from another coach to trust its own evaluation. I wonder if test scores offer a similar source of validation for admission officers.

That relates to a second question. Has not having test scores for all applicants during the past four years resulted in worse decisions at the Ivies and similar institutions? Has there been a higher percentage of admits who turned out to be unable to do the work? None of the institutions returning to requiring test scores has provided evidence that there have been more admission misses in a test-optional environment (and I wouldn’t expect them to admit that), but that’s worth knowing.

That leads to a philosophical question or assumption that I haven’t seen discussed. What is the goal of the admissions process? The UT-Austin announcement describes test scores as a “proven differentiator that is in each student’s and the university’s best interests,” while Yale’s dean of undergraduate admissions Jeremiah Quinlan stated that students with higher scores are likely to have higher Yale GPAs.

But is that the point? At best, SAT and ACT scores are meant to help predict freshman year GPA. They don’t claim to predict success throughout or beyond college.  

UT-Austin reports that students who submitted test scores had a GPA that was 0.86 points higher in their first semester on campus than the GPA for test withholders, while a recent study of students attending Ivy-Plus colleges from Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights research group reported that students with SAT scores of 1600 have freshman GPAs 0.43 points higher than students with identical grades but SAT scores of 1200. That same study finds that students who don’t report test scores have college GPAs equivalent to those who earn a SAT score of 1307, ignoring the fact that there is no such thing as an individual SAT score of 1307 (it would be either 1300 or 1310). 

Obviously, colleges and universities want to admit candidates who will be successful, but is a student with a freshman year GPA of 3.9 a better or more deserving candidate than one with a 3.4 GPA? Should elite colleges and universities look to admit those who will earn the best grades, or those who benefit the most from the educational opportunity to attend an elite college? Should test scores be used to identify who is qualified for admission or to select among qualified candidates? I would argue that the proper use is the former.

Most or all of the coverage and discussion of the recent announcements will focus on whether this is the beginning of the end for the test-optional movement (it isn’t). It is the broader questions that are far more important. I hope they won’t get left at the station.

Dartmouth Reinstates Testing Requirement

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” on February 19, 2024)

Earlier this month, Dartmouth announced that it will reinstate its requirement that applicants submit test scores beginning with the next admissions cycle. The announcement gives all of us in the college admissions world something to obsess over besides the FAFSA disaster.

It is too early to know how significant Dartmouth’s move is. Is standardized testing about to make a comeback in college admission, and will other highly rejective colleges and universities follow Dartmouth’s lead?  Is this the canary in the coal mine for test-optional admission? Is this a skirmish in the college admission culture war over testing, or will it expand into a major battle? 

How you feel about this development probably depends on two things. One is your attitude toward standardized testing. The other is your favorite movie metaphor. Is this the triumphant return and resurrection of an exiled heroic protagonist? Or is the testing industry more akin to the villain in a suspense or horror film who, just when you think that all has ended well and the closing credits are about to appear, turns out not to be dead after all?

Or is the answer one you might find on SAT/ACT multiple choice/guess questions, “None of the above”? When MIT reinstated its testing requirement a couple of years ago, it turned out to be a decision by a single institution rather than the beginning of a movement. That may be true in this case as well. As of this point, no other institution has followed Dartmouth’s lead. 

Dartmouth’s decision came after internal research commissioned by the college’s new president, Sian Leah Beilock, and conducted by four Dartmouth professors, three economists and an educational sociologist. They conclude that “SAT and ACT scores are highly predictive of academic performance at Dartmouth” and that “test scores better position Admissions to identify high-achieving less-advantaged applicants and high-achieving applicants who attend high schools for which Dartmouth has less information to interpret the transcripts.” They also conclude that under a test-optional policy “many high-achieving less-advantaged applicants choose not to submit scores even when doing so would…benefit their application.”

I applaud Dartmouth for making its decision based on data. I know, respect, and trust Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin, and I have been told that President Beilock is a rising star in the world of higher education. 

At the same time, I suspect that many academics are more enamored by testing than those in the admissions and counseling world. The Dartmouth professors cite several other studies on the influence of test scores to bolster their conclusions, but, as with much academic research, you can probably find studies that support whatever position you already hold.

The appeal of test scores is that they provide an additional data point at a time when grade inflation makes it more challenging to draw conclusions from a student’s transcript. The danger lies in assigning test scores a false precision and failing to consider them in context.

The concept of “contextualized texting,” considering test scores within the context of the student’s high school, is the most interesting part of the Dartmouth research and announcement. One of the conclusions of the research is that students from under-resourced high schools who score above the 75th percentile within their high school cohort are well-prepared to succeed at Dartmouth. The announcement states that “A score that falls below our class mean but several hundred points above the mean at the student’s school is ‘high’ and, as such, it has value as one factor among many in our holistic assessment.”

I find that intriguing, but am unclear about exactly what it means. Colleges like Dartmouth exist in rarified air when it comes to their applicant pools. The Dartmouth report talks about students with SAT scores in the 1400-1450 range from under-represented backgrounds and schools who may be hesitant to report scores in a test-optional environment, but I wonder how many of those students are out there. The report suggests that in each Dartmouth applicant pool there are “hundreds” of “less-advantaged” students with scores in the 1400 range who choose not to report them, but that seems high to me. 

The more interesting case is the student from an inner city or rural high school with a score of 1200-1250 where the high school mean is 950 or 1000. Does a score like that indicate that the student is likely to be successful at Dartmouth? And is the test score a better indicator than the student’s performance and strength of schedule?

The Dartmouth professors’ report suggests that the answer is yes, although it focuses on a higher range of scores. It concludes that test scores alone explain 22 percent of the variance in first-year grades at Dartmouth, whereas SAT combined with GPA explains 25 percent.  High school GPA alone explains 9 percent.

The potential flaw in that conclusion is that there is far more to reading a transcript than the GPA alone. The question is whether admission officers have time to do that in a landscape where there are dramatic increases in applications without a comparable increase in application readers. In such an environment GPA can become a shortcut, and so can test scores. 

There is no question that scores should be interpreted in context. We know that identical test scores don’t mean the same thing when one student spends thousands for test prep and takes the test five times and another takes it once or twice without access to coaching. We also know that test scores have a correlation with family income and parent education level. I would hope that admissions offices are already considering not just testing, but all parts of a student’s application, in context. 

The importance of context is one of several larger issues arising from Dartmouth’s decisions. Another is the “diamonds in the rough” hypothesis, the belief that standardized testing can identify students with ability to excel in college who would otherwise be overlooked. That is a common argument raised in op-eds about the value of test scores, many of which read suspiciously like College Board talking points. But is the “diamond in the rough” a myth or a reality? I’d like to see research that resolves that question.

Unless all colleges reinstate the testing requirement, one consequence of requiring testing is likely to be a decrease in application numbers. As long as bond-rating agencies use application numbers and admit rate as metrics, a decrease in applications may outweigh any benefit from having test scores. The Ivies and near-Ivies may not see any impact from requiring testing, but will students rebel against applying to other colleges that aren’t test-optional? 

The announcement from Dartmouth states that “Contrary to what some have perceived, standardized testing allows us to admit a broader and more diverse range of students”; it further describes the conclusion as “unexpected, thought-provoking, and encouraging.” Of course increasing diversity and access have also been cited as justifications for test-optional policies. Those are important and laudable goals, but I don’t think that decisions about testing should be made based on that consideration. The real question is whether test scores are predictive and add value to admission decisions, and whether that is true for all applicants or not.

I have never believed that test scores are meaningless, but I also don’t believe they should be worshiped. At best, test scores should be part of a balanced admission process in the same way that sugary cereals like Count Chocula are part of a balanced breakfast. In both cases the balance comes from everything else. 

Virginia State Senate Passes Bill to Abolish Legacy Preference

Last week, the Senate of my home state, Virginia, voted unanimously to prohibit public colleges and universities in the Commonwealth from giving preferential treatment to applicants related to alumni or donors. A similar bill is working its way through Virginia’s House of Delegates. 

The legislation would make Virginia the second state, after Colorado, to ban legacy preferences. Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) have introduced similar legislation in Congress.

Unanimous agreement on any bill is rare in today’s polarized political climate, perhaps even suspicious. With some legislation there is more than meets the eye. In this case there might be less.

Legacy preferences have come into scrutiny in the wake of the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial preferences in the case involving Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill. That is a good thing. I have previously described legacy preferences as a kind of transfer of property, similar to country club membership being passed on to the next generation, a characterization subsequently quoted in a New York Times editorial. 

Legacy preferences are far less defensible than racial preferences. That explains the unanimous vote. One can certainly question racial preferences, but they were devised for a laudable goal, intended to redress past discrimination by increasing access to previously underrepresented groups. In contrast, legacy preferences serve to protect privilege. What public official, even those who have benefitted from legacy preference themselves, is going to defend the practice?

Giving preference to legacy applicants is questionable for any college or university, but the practice is particularly pernicious at public universities, which are supposed to serve all the residents of their state. I say this recognizing that cuts in state funding for higher education have led many flagship public universities to seek out-of-state students as a means of bringing in revenue.

So the bill has a worthy purpose. I find myself wondering, however, especially in light of the unanimous vote, whether it is nothing more than feel-good political theater.

Both legacy preferences and racial preferences impact a small number of institutions. At the vast majority of colleges and universities, any applicant judged qualified for admission is admitted. It is only at a certain level of selectivity where admission becomes zero-sum, where admitting one applicant means that another qualified applicant loses a slot.  

A report in December from the National Center for Education Sciences reported that 578 institutions consider legacy status in the admissions process, but only about ten percent of those admit fewer than 25 percent of their applicants. At most colleges giving preference to legacy applicants does not disadvantage other applicants.

In Virginia there are only three public universities potentially selective enough for legacy preferences to have significant impact in admission. One of those, Virginia Tech, announced last fall that it would no longer consider legacy status in its admission process.

That leaves William & Mary and the University of Virginia, the two most selective publics in the Commonwealth, both considered to be “public Ivies.” In the wake of the Supreme Court decision on race-based admission and the subsequent scrutiny on legacy admission, U.Va. removed legacy status as a box to be checked on its application, but did add an essay allowing applicants to write about a “personal or historic” connection with the university and how that may have influenced them. 

William & Mary released a statement that its competitive admissions process includes consideration of “indicators of an individual’s propensity to enroll.” Legacy status is one of those factors, as is seeking an interview or visiting campus. That suggests that W&M sees legacy status as a potential measure of demonstrated interest.

During my nearly 40 years as a college counselor, those two schools have been among the most popular choices for my students, and I have never seen legacy status provide a huge boost at either of them. U.Va. has always considered out-of-state legacy applicants as if they were in-state students, but I have never seen a “bump” for in-state legacies. At one point there was a process at U.Va. for political cases and students with connections that operated outside the admissions office, but I don’t see any evidence that it continues today. If legacy applicants receive any consideration at either place, it is at the margins.

The hidden issue, of course, is the “preferences for me, but not for thee” mindset. At one private college I’m aware of, alumni would complain about the college admitting risky applicants (which it did a great job successfully educating), only to want to make an exception for weak applicants from their own families or friends’ children. I also remember hearing about a powerful state legislator who threatened to cut one university’s state funding if it didn’t admit a weak but connected applicant who happened to be a constituent. 

Will the same legislators who unanimously voted to outlaw legacy preferences practice what they preach and no longer exercise political clout by advocating for politically-connected applicants? That may be the real legacy that needs to be abolished. 

Jim Jump Interviewed for "College Uncovered" Podcast

ECA author Jim Jump was among those interviewed for the most recent episode of the “College Uncovered” podcast. The podcast is co-produced by WGBH public radio in Boston and the Hechinger Report. The episode, “The Enrollment Industrial Complex,” talks about the growth and influence of the enrollment management industry on college admission.

Here’s the link to the podcast:

https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/college-uncovered

FAFSA Fiasco

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” on January 17, 2024)

On December 31, hundreds of thousands descended upon Times Square, and up to a billion people tuned in virtually, to watch the ball drop signifying the end of 2023 and celebrating the start of 2024. On the same day, thousands of other Americans watched without celebrating a different dropping of the ball as the long-awaited soft launch of the new, simpler FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) turned out to be more soft than launch.

The rollout of the new FAFSA actually began the previous day, on December 30, but many students and families who tried to access the FAFSA via the StudentAid.gov website were greeted by messages that the site was unavailable, thanking them for their patience. 

I tried to access the site on January 2, but was placed into a waiting room because traffic was busier than usual. I was able to get in the following day. At that point all indications were that the FAFSA would be available for short periods each day while application rates were monitored and bugs fixed. Last Monday the Department of Education issued a press release announcing that more than one million students had successfully submitted the FAFSA and that the form is now available 24/7.

I have often told students and parents that all of us process things on two different levels, one intellectual and the other emotional. The FAFSA launch is no different.

On an intellectual level, none of us should have been surprised by the ugliness of the rollout. There have been indications for months that it would be neither smooth nor pretty. The Congressionally-mandated changes in the FAFSA and the methodology for evaluating eligibility for federal student aid are long overdue, in some cases overturning fifty years of government policy.

It is one thing to understand that intellectually, and another to deal with it on an emotional level. I found myself irritated to be repeatedly placed on hold, and my ability to access the FAFSA does not even affect my future. 

One of my pet peeves is phone systems where I am assured how valued a customer I am while I wait minutes for a human being to answer the phone. Having to listen to elevator music while on hold doesn’t help. We obviously have different definitions of “valued.” Rather than thanking people for their patience, StudentAid.gov should have asked for their forgiveness.

But enough about the problems. Obviously the difficulties with the FAFSA rollout have created consternation among both students and their families and those of us in the profession. The financial aid process this spring will not be easy.  

We can acknowledge that it will be a challenge and at the same time see it as an opportunity. Character is revealed during challenging times, and this is an opportunity for all of us to band together to, in the words of NASA flight director Gene Kranz in the movie Apollo 13, “work the problem.” To borrow another quote from Kranz (or Ed Harris, who played him in the movie), “Failure is not an option.”

First of all, we should remember  this is in some sense a return to the old timeline for completing the FAFSA. The schedule this year is what was once the norm. Prior to 2016, when the date for submitting the 2017-18 was moved to October 1, students and their families could not complete the FAFSA until January 1. We’re actually better off today because under the old timeline families had to wait for end of year tax information, whereas now they can use tax information from two years prior. We’ve become spoiled by the new system.

Trying to simplify the financial aid process is a worthy and important goal, and the new FAFSA is a step in the right direction. Whereas last year families needed to answer more than 100 questions to complete the FAFSA, now some applicants will have to answer fewer than 20. The new need analysis formula will “tax” less income for parents and students, with parents able to protect 20 percent more income and students 35 percent more. Having tax information downloaded to the FAFSA directly from the Internal Revenue Service for all applicants is the right move.

I am less certain about other changes. Is changing the name of what used to be the Student Aid Report to the FAFSA Submission Summary an improvement? Similarly, will the Student Aid Index (SAI) be better than the Expected Family Contribution (EFC)? 

I particularly wonder about the end of the allowance for families with more than one child in college. That change affects federal aid, but unless I’m missing something (always a possibility) colleges still have the ability to factor multiple children in college as they formulate aid offers using non-federal aid dollars. I hope they’ll be sensitive to how the change affects those families.

Moving forward, the most pressing need is for colleges and school counselors to work together to educate families about completing the FAFSA, especially for our students who need financial aid to make going to college a reality. I have been encouraged by the number of emails I have seen from colleges trying to provide information and resources.

I’d also like to see the Department of Education ease the verification process for this cycle. The delay in releasing the FAFSA has created a potential bottleneck, and a verification moratorium would remove another impediment to getting past the slow rollout.

Depending on how the spring goes, admissions offices may need to be prepared and flexible to extend deposit deadlines for students who haven’t received financial aid packages from all the colleges to which they applied. Students deserve the opportunity to make their college choice with full information. We like to talk about the admissions process being student-driven. This is a chance for us to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Finally, let’s make sure we show appreciation and gratitude to the financial aid professionals who are on the front lines bearing the brunt of the delays and the new process. They face uncertainty as to how fast the FAFSA information will be available to institutions, and their spring will be stressful as they try to get packages pulled together. Think of them as first responders. They deserve our patience, sympathy, and empathy.

Simplifying the FAFSA is a good first step, but it’s not enough.  It’s time for all colleges to be transparent about costs and adopt a common way to report financial aid offers. NACAC, NASFAA (National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators), and eight other educational associations have joined together in the College Cost Transparency Initiative, and more than 360 colleges have agreed to make their financial aid letters more transparent. It’s time for us to find common ethical ground in the way we treat students by adopting both common language and reporting when it comes to financial aid.

"Luckocracy"

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider on December 11, 2023)

I always love it when I find a new word or phrase that better captures a concept that I’ve been thinking about. I always hate it when it’s a word or phrase I wish I had been smart enough to come up with myself.

So it was several years ago when Akil Bello talked about colleges as being highly “rejective” rather than highly selective. That seems to me a spot-on way to express a guiding principle that drives admission for a certain group of colleges. At those places, rejectivity is not just descriptive but also aspirational. A worldview that sees college admission as only about prestige, and that “the harder a college to get in, the better it must be,” is widely and uncritically accepted by the public and promulgated by the media, and motivates colleges to strive to be rejective.

Just before Thanksgiving I discovered a new term that appropriately captures another important concept. Jessi Streib, a sociologist at Duke, recently wrote a book titled “The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College.” Her thesis is that for college graduates entering the job market, meritocracy gives way to what Streib refers to as the “luckocracy.”

I have been thinking about the concept of “luckocracy,” and I think it has application not only to the job search but also the college search. That is particularly true for students applying to colleges and universities where “rejectivity” is a strategic goal and a reality.

There is an on-going debate within the college admissions world about whether the admission process is, or should be, a meritocracy. That debate encompasses a subdebate about whether merit is real, or merely a code word for privilege. Is meritocracy really “privilegeocracy”?

I think there is such a thing as merit. I’m not sure I can give a good definition, but like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart with regard to pornography, I know it when I see it. (It’s just not as easy to find on the internet.) It is also the case, however, that many of the things identified as merit are either covertly or even overtly measures of privilege.

I wonder if we do students (and the public) a disservice when we talk about college admission being a meritocracy. In a meritocracy those who are unsuccessful may come to question their self-worth and merit, and in the selective/rejective admission process there are far more students who possess merit and deserve admission than will actually receive admission offers. I worry about the messages we send those students.

I worry even more about those who are successful in the elite college admission process. I worry that they don’t feel gratitude for the opportunity they receive and empathy for their classmates who are not as fortunate, but rather feel hubris and a sense of entitlement. They didn’t get in because they were fortunate or lucky, but because they were better, more meritorious. That message doesn’t serve them or our society well.

My very first article about college admission, published back in 1988, argued that selective admission is ultimately a problem in distributive justice, where the objective is to allocate a scarce resource fairly. My solution was a form of random selection among those applicants deemed qualified for admission.

The response was interesting. Some thought it must be satire, the college admission equivalent of Jonathan Swift’s A “Modest Proposal.” Others were incensed that I dared suggest that the ability to sculpt or engineer a class should be removed from admissions offices. I was told by admission friends that my name was being taken in vain in admissions offices across the country.

The most interesting response, however, came from students applying to the Ivies and other highly-rejective colleges and universities. They opposed the use of random selection because they didn’t want to gain admission through a lottery, through luck, but rather wanted to believe that they were admitted because they were better than those not admitted.

The idea of college admission as a meritocracy encourages that sense of superiority. That’s where the concept of “luckocracy” comes in. Thinking of selective admission as a luckocracy promotes humility, an appreciation that we may not get what we deserve, not deserve what we get.

One of the central principles of ethics is that individuals shouldn’t be held morally responsible for things over which they have no control. You don’t choose the color of your hair or the color of your skin, so you shouldn’t be rewarded or penalized for those. None of us are responsible for the family or country we are born in. That is a matter of luck, not merit. Many of the components of any individual’s success in the college admissions process have a strong correlation to the circumstances of one’s birth. Luckocracy recognizes that front and center. Meritocracy does not.

It is important to recognize that meritocracy and luckocracy are concepts that can co-exist. Any individual’s success in life is a function of merit and drive, but also of luck and good fortune.  

As we head into the season of helping our students deal with early decision and early action results, I hope we can find the appropriate balance between merit and luck. Whether they want to hear it or not, students and parents need to understand that admission may be a meritocracy, bu itt is definitely a luckocracy.

How Selective College Admission Explains the College Football Playoffs (and Vice Versa)

This past weekend the four semifinalists for college football’s national championship, the College Football Playoff (CFP) were selected. If you are wondering why the CFP is not named for a corporate sponsor, it’s because it has thirteen of them. Lucky 13!  Michigan will meet Alabama in one semifinal game on New Year’s Day, and Washington will face Texas in the other.

The selections were not without controversy.  Florida State, best known as the home of the tomahawk chop cheer but also the champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, was left out of the field despite an undefeated regular season, largely because its star quarterback is injured and out for the season. It was the first time that an undefeated championship team from one of college football’s Power Five conferences has not been selected, and that prompted cries of unfairness from wounded and disappointed Seminole fans and other observers.

This month is not only the holiday season and the season for bowl games and the CFP, but also the season when a significant number of students will receive decisions on Early Decision and Early Action applications.  Just like college football teams, some will receive good news and some will receive disappointment.

All of us who work in college admissions and college counseling are prone to find connections to other professions or areas of life. Or perhaps that’s just me. But there seem to be some similarities between the CFP and the selective college admissions process.

Could the selective college admission process serve as a metaphor (or is it analogy) for the College Football Playoff? Or is it the other way around? Inquiring ECA readers may not care or want to know, but here goes anyway.

I have never been reluctant to demonstrate my command of the obvious. The simplest connection between the CFP and selective admission is that both involve colleges.

CFP resembles selective admission in that there are not enough spots available for all the deserving candidates. Someone is going to be left out. In both cases selection is made by an admissions committee through a process that is holistic rather than formulaic, mysterious rather than transparent.

One of the debates about CFP selections is whether the committee should be selecting the best candidates or the most deserving candidates. There is a similar philosophical debate within selective admission. Should the admissions process be about rewarding past success or predicting future success? 

In football the argument for Florida State is that its record this year is spotless. The argument against Florida State is that it may not be one of the best teams at the moment or during the playoffs. Should that matter, especially when it is related to something that is not their fault, a season-ending injury to their star quarterback? From an ethical standpoint we shouldn’t be punished for things we have not chosen or over which we have no control.  

Balancing strength of schedule and performance is always an issue in the selective college process, and it was a consideration in picking the playoff teams as well. Florida State had a better record but a weaker strength of schedule than Alabama. Much of Alabama’s strength of schedule is tied to its required courses (its conference slate in the Southeastern Conference, or SEC, generally considered the top conference). But Alabama also chose to take easy elective courses in Middle Tennessee, South Florida, and Chattanooga in order to pad its resume. Those might be considered the college football scheduling equivalent of basket-weaving (not that there is anything wrong with basket weaving or any of those football teams). Should that be held against them?

There are other similarities between the CFP and selective college admission that raise the kinds of issues and difficult considerations that admission committees must work through. 

In Michigan you have the student with the stellar record but also a suspension for cheating. Should that call into question their credentials or disqualify them as a candidate?

Alabama jumped over Florida State to earn the last admission spot despite an early blemish on its transcript and inconsistent performance. Did it, and should it, get additional consideration because it comes from the SEC, a traditional and important “feeder school” for the CFP? 

Georgia failed one final exam after having had the best transcript for the past three years. It was at the top of the accept pile right up until the time that final decisions were released. Should its overall body of work outweigh the results of one assessment?

Then there’s the case of Liberty University, the highest-ranked non-Power 5 conference team and the champion of Conference USA. Liberty also finished the season unbeaten, and will be rewarded with a New Year’s Day bowl game against Oregon. Liberty is also unbeaten, and yet no one has argued that it should be included in the CFP. The selective college equivalent is how an admissions committee should evaluate a candidate with a stellar record but a weaker schedule from a weaker school. None of the Power Five conference teams want to schedule Liberty in football and lose, so should their weaker schedule be held against them.

Finally, there’s the fairness issue. We talk a lot about equity as a guiding principle in college admission, but can either the College Football Playoffs or the selective admissions process be truly fair and equitable? Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and may look different in Tallahassee, Florida than in places like Seattle, Austin, Ann Arbor, and Tuscaloosa where the home teams weren’t excluded. College football fans would do well to consider the wisdom of legendary Harvard admission dean Bill Fitzsimmons, who I have heard say, “The selective admissions process is rational, but not necessarily fair.”

Let the games, both football and admission, begin. As as you celebrate the holidays, whether Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or even Festivus, remember the words of Tiny Tim (the Dickens character, not the 1960s ukelele-playing novelty singer), “May God bless us, every one.” 

3-for-1 > 2-for-1

“Life in Pieces” was a sitcom that appeared on CBS from 2015 until 2019. It starred Diane Wiest and James Brolin as the matriarch and patriarch of an extended family, and what made it different from other sitcoms was that each episode consisted of three separate vignettes.

Think of this as a blog post in pieces. Instead of focusing on a single topic, this edition of ECA will offer brief updates and commentaries on three recent stories in the news.

Item #1: U.S. News recalculates the ranks for 213 schools.

In case you missed it, on October 27 U.S. News and World Report announced corrected ranks for 213 colleges and universities for the 2024 edition of the rankings published five weeks before.

The revisions impacted each of U.S. News’s ten ranking categories:

National Universities National Liberal Arts Colleges

Regional Universities–North Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–North

Regional Universities–South Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–South

Regional Universities–Midwest Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–Midwest

Regional Universities–West Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–West

The revamped rankings impacted institutions in all but two states (Delaware and South Dakota) plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Marianas Islands. More colleges from Puerto Rico (23) were affected than for any other geographic area. If you didn’t know that Puerto Rico had as many as 23 colleges and universities, join the club. 

Most of the changes occurred lower in the rankings, with the most prominent institutions involved being Colorado College, which moved from 29th to 33rd among National Liberal Arts Colleges, and the Rhode Island School of Design, which moved from first to fourth in the Regional Universities (North) category. 

What led to the changes? U.S. News blamed the mistakes on what it called an “anomaly in the code” it uses to produce the rankings. ECA reached out to U.S. News’s rankings guru, Bob Morse, to request more insight about the anomaly. To his credit he responded almost immediately, but he also declined to provide more detail. I’m sure the code is proprietary.

U.S. News deserves praise for voluntarily and transparently disclosing the anomaly, but there is a larger issue here (ECA readers know how much we love larger issues). Should we really care? Publishing the changes promotes one of the flawed assumptions underlying college rankings, the false precision. Does it really matter if Colorado College is ranked 33rd rather than 29th? It may matter to people at Colorado College, but is CC any less impressive an institution because U.S. News ranks it four places lower? I’d suggest not. 

Item #2: Vanderbilt reaches settlement in financial aid lawsuit.

Last week Vanderbilt became the second university to agree to a settlement in a lawsuit filed last year against 17 universities charging that they were colluding with regard to financial aid policies and packaging. The terms of the Vanderbilt settlement have not been announced, but the University of Chicago previously settled for $13.5 million.  

All of the colleges cited in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, were formerly members of the 568 Presidents Group. That group, now defunct, was named for a section of a federal statute that allowed colleges and universities to collaborate on financial aid policies as long as they practice need-blind admission. The exemption allowing collaboration expired in September of 2022.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged that the universities were not completely need-blind in their financial aid practices. The argument was that the colleges and universities named give admission advantages to legacies and full-pay applicants, meaning that they are not truly and purely need-blind. 

The universities have claimed that they have done nothing untoward, but just as with some of the federal and state election interference cases, every time one defendant settles we must wonder how fast others will follow. Stay tuned.

Item #3: ACT goes BOGO.

Loyal ECA reader Sue Rexford reached out a couple of weeks ago with a suggested topic for this blog. She had received an email from ACT around Halloween with what was described both as “a spellbinding 2-for-1 opportunity!” and a “BOO-GO” offer, complete with ghost emoji (👻).

The email trumpeted a new offer made by ACT whereby students who registered for the December 9 administration of the test would receive a free retest in 2024. That’s the first time I’ve seen that kind of “if you order now” offer made by the testing industry.

It’s not totally clear why the offer appeared when it did. Was ACT hoping that all of us would substitute 2-for-1 ACT registration coupons for candy on Halloween? And would that constitute a trick or a treat? 

The more likely answer, of course, is that it was trying to stimulate business right before the deadline. The BOGO (“Buy one, get one free”) approach is common in other businesses, and is usually associated with trying to incentivize potential customers to purchase the product in question. That incentive usually suggests that business is not as vigorous or robust as desired. This may be one more sign of just how much the test-optional movement has hurt the bottom line of the testing industry.

ACT states in the email that “This second chance can be key to maximizing their superscore, enhancing college applications, and unlocking scholarship opportunities.” I’d probably make the same claims if I was writing advertising copy for the 2-for-1 offer, but as a consumer I can’t say that it would convince me to go immediately to act.org to take advantage of the offer.

The bigger question is whether we want college admission testing, or, for that matter, any part of the college admissions process, to resemble or be advertised like products such as ginsu knives or Ronco products like the veg-o-matic or Mr. Microphone. Do we need the College Board or the ACT doing late night infomercials? And will we soon see the “test-o-matic”?

That’s it for this edition of Ethical College Admissions. 3-for-1 is always > 2-for-1.   

My Last Rec Letter

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed on November 6, 2023)

I have always urged high school seniors and their parents to live in the moment, to enjoy the senior year and even the college admissions process. Rather than worry about the big game against the archrival, enjoy being part of a rivalry that is special.  Rather than worry about grades, enjoy your classes and classmates. Rather than worry about college admission, enjoy the chance to make decisions about your future.

That’s easier said than done. Human beings seem programmed to focus on the future (or, once we reach a certain age, the past). A character in Thornton Wilder’s iconic American play Our Town asks if any humans realize what they are experiencing while living. The answer is that poets and saints might, to some extent. Most of us are neither poets nor saints.

I have been trying to live in the moment this fall as I go through my final college counseling season. I’m trying to be cognizant of some of my “lasts” as I experience them. One of those occurred last week. 

A couple of weeks back I wrote what I believe was the last college recommendation letter I will ever write. That’s hard to fathom. For nearly 40 years each fall has been organized around and consumed by application deadlines and the need to write a recommendation for each of my seniors. I may not have enough distance to have perspective, but forgive me as I take a moment to reflect on the counselor recommendation letter. 

When I was first hired as a college counselor, there was a lot of talk about “The Letter,” as if it was the college admissions equivalent of a Talmudic text. The ability to write seemed more important than the ability to counsel kids properly. I have long been skeptical that my letters are read with anywhere near the time and care I devote to writing them, but I have always felt that the rec letter is my opportunity to make a case for a student. 

That’s not always easy. I have never written a negative letter–that’s not my job. As our mothers might advise us, “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing.” But some letters are challenging to write. It’s hard to make chicken salad without chicken.

Every recommendation tells a story. There is the story of accomplishment, the story of growth, the story of adversity overcome, or the story of potential. Obviously some of those stories are easier to tell than others. 

Every counselor has a personal regimen for getting recs done. I have always envied those who are able to get their letters done during the summer, but I’ve never been able to do it. Some counselors work on multiple letters at the same time, but I’ve focused on cranking one out at a time. Some of us get up early or stay up late to carve out the time and creative energy needed to write. There were plenty of Halloweens when I took my children trick-or-treating and returned home to write one last rec letter for November 1.

I wish I were as disciplined and organized in other parts of my life as I was when writing my rec letters. In recent years I have tried to write one a day, and two years ago I wrote a recommendation letter every day for 40 days straight. That’s not quite on par with the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness, but it’s close.

Years ago I received a phone call from the director of admissions at a large public university in the Southeast. One of my students with a very weak transcript had applied, but he said that my recommendation letter made him think he should give the student a chance. He closed the conversation by asking if I had ever considered becoming a creative writer.

That is not to say that rec letters are fiction, but they are an art form. The recommendation is part legal brief, laying out evidence and making the case for a student’s acceptance. It is part character sketch. And if the student’s transcript serves as primary text, the recommendation serves the same function as footnotes do in scholarly books, providing explanation and context. 

There is an ongoing debate about how long recommendations should be. The consensus seems to be one page, but I’ve always had trouble being that succinct. Most of my letters run a page and a half. A counselor friend used to brag about all of her letters being one page, but then admitted that she had accomplished that only by using narrow margins and seven-point font. 

I’ve also been too much of a dinosaur to adopt the bullet-point format for letters. What I have tried to do is front-load my letters so that the essence of the letter is in the opening paragraph, with the rest of the letter providing support for the main thesis. (By the way, given the recent tragedy in Lewiston, Maine and the larger issue of gun violence, I wonder if we should retire the term “bullet point.” If that makes me “woke”--a term I hate and also want to retire– I can live with that.)

Recommendation letters have a lot in common with advertising. In both cases your goal is making the strongest claim possible without compromising the truth or your integrity. Language is important, because I have always believed that recommendations are read negatively. If you don’t say something, it’s probably because you can’t.

If you mention that a student is “diligent,” is that a sign that the student is less than brilliant? I remember hearing a counselor say that a college reported that two of her students weren’t admitted because she described them as “reserved.” That’s unfortunate and wrong, reflecting a conscious or unconscious bias against introverts.

Recommendation writing offers the opportunity for the creative turn of phrase. Many years ago a professor at Lehigh University developed what he termed as the Lexicon of Inconspicuously Ambiguous Recommendations (yes, the acronym is LIAR).

The lexicon was oriented toward job recommendations rather than college recommendations, and his point was what you don’t say may be more meaningful than what you say. If you say “You will be fortunate to get this person to work for you,” is the important missing information that “no one else has been able to get them to work”?

The college admissions equivalent might be “I would place this student in a class by himself.” Is that figurative or literal? A signal that the student deserves high praise or that the student deserves solitary confinement?

In the past year or so there have been some suggestions that the college recommendation is outdated. Certainly it is a convention that had its origins a century ago at a time when college admission was neither particularly selective nor concerned with equity. At a time when we recognize that not every applicant has the benefit of a counselor who knows them or has the time to write thoughtful letters, is it time to rethink the recommendation letter as an application staple? 

At the same time, rec letters may become more important in a landscape where grade inflation calls transcripts into question and standardized test scores are optional. But the notion of needing a recommendation letter makes applying to college seem like applying to a private club. Whatever the future of recommendations, we need to get away from that.   

I always found great satisfaction in finishing a letter and feeling like I had captured my students and told their stories. Now, having finished  a run of close to 2000 recommendations over the course of my career, I feel similar satisfaction. Or maybe just relief.