On September 21–22, 2016, the inaugural Institute on Character and Admission brought together 55 educators in Columbus, Ohio, to discuss noncognitive factors in the college admission process. Attendees included: admission deans from leading colleges (e.g., Amherst, Pomona, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, MIT), representatives from the testing organizations (College Board; ACT; ETS, The Enrollment Management Association), leading reformers (Angela Duckworth; Rick Weissbourd; Bill Hiss), college counselors, and school leaders.
The meeting featured presentations by Duckworth, Weissbourd, representatives of the testing organizations, and admission deans. Of special interest to independent schools is a new Character Skills Assessment (CSA) from The Enrollment Management Association (formerly SSATB), led by Jinghua Liu. Liu reported that psychometricians and independent school educators have developed the CSA for use in independent school admission. The CSA is being field-tested by 35 schools during the current academic year.
At the meeting, intense discussion across different educational levels and roles highlighted three important developments:
• College admission staffs are using various rubrics to assess character attributes.
• The testing organizations and others are doing important research to establish the validity and reliability of assessments.
• Colleges, schools, and testing organizations recognize the importance of working together to attain the institute’s common purpose.
Building on shared goals, the participants agreed on an agenda to improve the way youth are selected for college and beyond, including: signaling the importance of character attributes to internal and external audiences; seeking consistent and reliable data on applicant character strengths; and developing a common conceptual framework for use by admission offices in assessing candidates.
Participants also agreed to continue the institute through an annual meeting and subgroups working on specific tasks, including surveying admission office practices, creating a clearinghouse of successful practices, developing a media campaign, and fundraising.
The institute’s work is consistent with the history of independent education. Since their founding, independent schools have addressed character attributes in their mission statements and in their practices, and conduct standards, sportsmanship, expectations of honesty, etc. are a part of this tradition. More recently, character strengths and other noncognitive attributes have defined a market niche at schools such as Riverdale Country School (New York), which has a character scorecard; and Community School (Idaho), which has a deep commitment to character growth enhanced by wilderness experiences.
Intuitively, independent educators know what the researchers have found: character strengths are a stronger predictor of success in college, work, and life than conventional measures such as SAT scores.