Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of blog posts reflecting on the educational pipeline by Karen Gross, former president of Southern Vermont College. She has taught students from preschool through graduate school. Her first piece was about breaking down pre-K–20 silos. Her next piece will focus on student athletics.
Every feature of the college admissions process has stirred conversation, debate, and anxiety for decades. Parents, students, school and independent counselors, high schools, and colleges and universities all become stressed, albeit for different reasons.
Worries abound about scores on standardized tests, admission decisions, where students choose to enroll, and whether the process is fair and equitable. Overlying all of these, for many families, is the difficult question of how to finance their children’s college educations.
Lots of resources exist to help families navigate the admissions process. Former college admissions officers write extensively about how students can get into the colleges of their choice. Private professionals are available for hire. Many books describe and compare colleges. Websites, too, are loaded with information, including the new U.S. Department of Education Score Card. And let’s not forget all the rankings.
Despite this sea of information, there’s a prevailing sense that the college admissions process isn’t transparent. And many aspects seem arbitrary. For example, who does and doesn’t get in to a particular college is often inexplicable, and the costs in terms of time, money, anxiety, and preparation for tests and applications appear excessive with uncertain outcomes.
Stated simply, collegiate admission appears to be an impenetrable dark box that defies logic, planning, and fundamental fairness. But things are changing.
To Test or Not to Test
A great debate has unfolded over the standardized tests used for college admissions. Let’s start with the new SAT that debuted this month. It was designed to more effectively assess what students learn in high school. However, as with any new test, it will take several testing cycles to know whether it’s having its intended effect. We don’t know how colleges will treat the new scores compared with the previous ones. (A perfect score is now 1600 v. 2400.) Meanwhile, the ACT has announced a new Pre-ACT, a counterpart product to the PSAT.
As if to answer this testing uncertainty, more colleges are saying standardized testing should be optional for applicants, although they don’t define “optional” the same way. For example, at some colleges, students electing “test optional” must write additional essays or provide other proofs of academic merit.
The test-optional trend has supporters and detractors. Supporters say eliminating scores will allow for a more holistic assessment of student quality. Such assessment may permit a wider diversity of students to access higher education, particularly at elite institutions. To be fair, the jury is still out on whether a test-optional policy will produce diversity.
Some opponents of the trend track this logic: A test-optional policy will increase the number of applications, causing the college to admit fewer students, which, in turn, will only increase the college’s selectivity quotient. Selectivity matters for earning high ratings and determining quality. A test-optional policy also ends up increasing the average scores for an institution because students who earn low scores typically don’t submit theirs. This can translate to a higher ranking for a given school.
Another issue at stake in the testing debate: Is a standardized test a quality predictor of student success?
The bottom line: To test or not to test is the new issue on the admissions table.
Crucial Changes to the FAFSA
Virtually all prospective college students complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. Although the current form is simpler than in past years, it still remains a hurdle for many families. The good news is that changes are coming.
For starters, the timeline for filing the FAFSA for students applying to college in the 2017–2018 academic year will expand and begin a few months earlier than it does now.
The new form will require families to submit income details from two years prior (rather than one year prior), allowing easier access to previously filed tax returns. However, if a family’s income falls in the two-year span, the family may lose grant monies and have a higher expected family contribution. They may need to file an appeal, which could be time-consuming and challenging.
One arguably positive change for students begins in the 2016–2017 application year. No longer will colleges be able to see every college to which a student has submitted a FAFSA. Colleges have long assumed that the form contains the list of colleges in the order of the student’s preference to attend. Some institutions offered more money to students who listed them at the top, thinking this strategy would increase their yield rate. As a result, financial aid awards were often skewed.
The final noteworthy change to the FAFSA for 2016–2017: The amount of asset protection that families receive is declining. In the past, parents could shelter some assets they saved when calculating their available income to pay for college. This approach helped them gain more financial aid. Middle-income and some higher-income families are expected to pay more under the new provision for asset protection.
The bottom line: The FAFSA changes are important and ought to get more attention.
Student Selection Meets Shifting Sands
The multistep application process of traditional college admissions is familiar to many. Here are the main parts:
- Students fill out an application, often through the online Common App or Universal App that includes one or more essays.
- They designate the institutions to receive their application and then submit it. Some students send in videos or art projects.
- Colleges and universities then receive applicants’ transcripts, test scores (ACT, SAT, and/or AP), and recommendations.
- Some colleges require interviews while others do not.
Now the sands are shifting, and I suspect it’s for two key reasons.
1. A group of elite colleges formed a nonprofit, the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, to better serve all students in the admissions process, particularly low-income students. The organization’s approach includes starting collegiate planning as early as ninth grade.
The group received criticism that their portfolio ideas were not well understood and could not be easily implemented at many high schools low-income students attend. The Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools chimed in, urging the organization to slow down the change train. So the group retrenched and will relaunch its effort in April.
2. The Harvard Graduate School of Education recently released a report on college admissions, “Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good through College Admissions.” In the report, many colleges, universities, and secondary schools endorsed the approach and desired outcomes, as described below.
“Turning the Tide” calls on colleges and universities to change what matters in the admissions process. It recommends that prospective college students show three key points in their applications and for colleges to evaluate students on these:
- Demonstration of meaningful contributions to others.
- Ethical engagement, including around issues of race, gender, and class.
- A display of achievement outside the traditional terms to help increase enrollment of and decrease stress for low-income students.
The report, which has been called the “kindness approach,” has faced criticism.
The bottom line: Whatever the criticisms are about The Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success’s methods and the recommendations in “Turning the Tide,” it’s clear that changes are coming for student selection.
Alternative Approaches to Admissions
Innovative methods for college admissions are coming to the fore. I have been somewhat intrigued by the lottery system advocated by Professor Barry Schwartz at Swarthmore College. Another author suggests that we already have a lottery, albeit disguised as a deliberative process.
But I don’t think a lottery is the right way to go. Instead, for the most selective institutions, I’d like to consider instituting a matching system similar to the one used to place medical residents. I envision a new multistage process that considers both institutional and student choices along the way.
- Elite colleges and universities would identify the criteria for students they would accept. They could be transparent in setting the lowest bar.
- Students would apply as they do now, with or without awareness of the bar.
- The institutions would rank the applicants in their pool who meet or exceed their criteria.
- The students who meet these criteria would be notified.
- The students would identify their preferences.
- An independent organization would employ a nationwide computer matching system, similar to the medical residency process. Students would be assigned slots based on an algorithm that matches their desires with those of the affected institutions. (It’s worth noting that in the medical residency program, the matching does not work for some students, and a repeat pool addresses the issue.)
Students who fall below the matching threshold would still have an opportunity to be accepted to elite schools. Colleges could reserve a number of seats at the outset, and admissions officers could conduct interviews to fill those remaining slots.
Non-elite institutions, meanwhile, can change the admissions process for the better in many ways. For one, they could require interviews. Or they could try the approach we used at Southern Vermont College when I was president. We inverted the admissions process to allow high school principals, teachers, or counselors to identify students from first-generation, low-income families who were likely to succeed in college. The Posse Foundation has developed its own complex mechanism for narrowing its pool based on criteria that identify applicants’ leadership qualities.
The bottom line: We need to think outside the box to change college admissions for the better.
My Final Bottom Line
Today, college admissions is expensive, stressful, antiquated, and engineered to reify privilege. The good news is that changes are moving forward; the bad news is that we have a way to go. In the meantime, the students applying to college in 2016–2017 will start to feel the shift with an uncertain outcome. That’s not easy — for students, parents, high schools, or colleges.
In the midst of the swirling changes, I hope educators will open themselves up to try whatever they can to encourage more students to seek post-secondary education. It opens the door to personal and professional success and instills good citizenship. Those are worthy goals for sure.