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| The Fortune Teller |
Below is a great post to be found on Forbes.com. The lies described are certainly moral quandaries. But once you finish the post, there is a comment I hope you will read and then decide to post comment after that.
Does the 4th lie deserve a rightful place at the table with these 3?
And there are some other big whoppers that are not on the list. Yet. In the coming weeks, I will put forward my choices for what may end up as a top 10. Or 20. Time will tell.
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The Three Biggest Lies in College Admission
“The check is in the mail. I gave at the office. And …”
There are too many bad jokes that begin, “The three biggest lies are…”
What is happening in college admission, however, is no joke. Three big lies are gaining traction with families as they embark on this year’s tougher-than-ever college admission sweepstakes. Believing some of these lies will cost families money. Others can make the difference between an acceptance and a rejection.
There are three big lies making the rounds:
- Standardized test (SAT and ACT) scores are less and less important.
- Asking for financial aid won’t have an impact on the admission decision; and
- There is a level playing field in college admissions.
Lie #1: Standardized Tests are Less and Less Important
Today, colleges are relying on standardized test scores when making admissions decisions to a far larger degree than they have in years. One reason is that the number of applications at most top colleges is soaring. That’s not because there are more 18 year-olds graduating from high school. It is because more kids are each applying to more colleges. And with little increase in the size of admission staffs at most colleges, schools are using SAT and ACT scores to make a fast, easy cut of the applicant pool. Of course, no college is going to admit this. Colleges love a big applicant pool; not just to craft a more attractive class, but to show the ranking services just how selective they are. (In the perverse rankings world, more rejections equal a higher ranking.) Instead, colleges are using several forms of numbers subterfuge to obfuscate what is really going on.
The Three Card Monte Test Score Range – Almost every college publishes the range of SAT scores that kids in the last entering class achieved. The schools call this the 25th to 75th percentile range. In other words, 50% of last year’s entering class had scores within this range.
So if a kid sees a school’s 25th-75th range as 1280 to 1430, the student might reasonable think that their 1300 SAT score gives them a fair shot at admission. Wrong. In reality, the bottom 25% (below 1280) is reserved for the school’s “special interests”: athletes, students of color, development (big donors.) “To have a real shot,” says Muska “you really have to be at the upper end of that range.”
For example, Vanderbilt reports its 25-75 SAT range as 1380 – 1550. In reality, most of its unhooked admittees had SAT scores above 1500.
Score choice and SuperScore – Score Choice refers to your sending your highest scores – from among the several times you took the SAT or ACT – to a college. SuperScore refers to the school considering just your highest score. Most colleges explain their policy on their website. Unfortunately, students aren’t the only ones who benefit from these beneficent policies; the colleges do too. Colleges like to report higher test scores for a very simple reason: it raises their ranking!
Test Optional Doesn’t Always Mean Test Optional – A number of very good colleges have a “test optional” policy. For kids who have good grades but test-anxiety, that can be a real blessing. Unfortunately, for athletes applying to NESCAC (“Little Ivy” schools like Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury) and Patriot league schools, that option doesn’t really exist. The athletic scholarship rules of those conferences require the colleges to report test scores.
The Magic 700 – At the very selective colleges and universities, there is a very scary reality: if you don’t have a 700/700 score, you’re just not getting on the table – unless you have a very special hook. The 680/690 kid is a dime-a-dozen.
Cheating Goes Both Ways – In the last year headlines have screamed “Cheating Scandal!” not only in Nassau county and at New York’s Stuyvesant High School, but at colleges. Both Claremont-McKenna and Emory admitted to playing with test scores in order to make them look better in the rankings.
Standardized test scores are just as important on the money side.
For example, Vanderbilt reports its 25-75 SAT range as 1380 – 1550. In reality, most of its unhooked admittees had SAT scores above 1500.
Score choice and SuperScore – Score Choice refers to your sending your highest scores – from among the several times you took the SAT or ACT – to a college. SuperScore refers to the school considering just your highest score. Most colleges explain their policy on their website. Unfortunately, students aren’t the only ones who benefit from these beneficent policies; the colleges do too. Colleges like to report higher test scores for a very simple reason: it raises their ranking!
Test Optional Doesn’t Always Mean Test Optional – A number of very good colleges have a “test optional” policy. For kids who have good grades but test-anxiety, that can be a real blessing. Unfortunately, for athletes applying to NESCAC (“Little Ivy” schools like Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury) and Patriot league schools, that option doesn’t really exist. The athletic scholarship rules of those conferences require the colleges to report test scores.
Are test-optional colleges adopting a kindler-gentler approach to admissions? No, they’re chasing rankings. Think about it. When a school declares SAT scores optional, which students report their scores? Only students with high test scores. This boosts the avg. SAT scores at the college and the school. It's pretty simple,” notes Ian Welham, a college-funding specialist with Complete College Planning Solutions in Springfield, NJ. “If you want more money, increase your test scores. Regardless of what the college tour guide or the glitzy brochure says, the kid with the 800 in math will get the money over the kid with straight A’s.”
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| The hustler |
Lie #2: Asking for financial Aid Won’t Affect the Admissions Decision
Ah, for the good old days – the days before the most recent Lehman-inspired stock market crash. Back then, when a college said it was “need blind” it probably was need blind. That meant admission decisions were made without the admissions staff knowing whether the kid was applying for financial aid.
Today, more and more college admission officers want – and need – to know whether the kid can pay full-freight. And if there is a choice between two virtually-identical applicants – one who needs financial aid and one who doesn’t – the fat envelope is going to go to the kid who can pay full tuition.
Some very good schools – such as Wesleyan – are coming forward and admitting that they can’t afford to be 100% need-blind. “More than a handful of schools are not being honest however,” states Muska. “So kudos to them. Families need this transparency from colleges.”
Similarly, some of the most selective colleges are quietly moving away from their “no loans” financial aid policy. Pre-2007 many of the nation’s wealthiest and most selective colleges said that they would eliminate loans from the financial aid packages they gave students. Today, there is a family income level that must be met before a no-loan financial aid package is offered.
Cornell University recently announced that no-loan financial aid would only be available to families earning under $60,000 a year. Similarly, Dartmouth and Williams announced that their no-loan policy would be limited to students at the lowest end of the income-distribution scale.
There is good news, however, for families that can afford to pay full tuition – and especially out-of-state tuitions. Acceptance rates at top state universities for out-of-state applicants reached an all-time high last year. And the number of foreign students accepted at many colleges has doubled or tripled in the last four years. Because they too pay top-dollar.
But not all well-heeled parents are willing to write the big checks. Welham, the college-funding adviser, reports a trend he’s seeing among his clients. “There used to be a certain percentage of parents who told us, ‘I want my kid to get into the best name school, I don’t care what it costs.’ Now, take a family with 3-4 kids. Even upper-income families are balking at paying $750,000 to $1 million for college. Instead, they’re telling us, ‘Show us some options where we don’t pay sticker price.’”
Lie #3 – It’s a Level Playing Field
“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.” — Let’s go back to the foreign student situation. It should be no surprise that many foreign students applying to American colleges have very high SAT scores. Colleges love that. Unfortunately, a shockingly large number of Chinese applicants also lie about their English abilities and academic transcripts. And colleges are pretending they don’t know this. That combination of high Scores and full tuition are simply too enticing to ignore.
Colleges want the well-rounded class, not the well-rounded kid – The worst-kept secret of college admission is that colleges are looking for the well-rounded class, not the well-rounded kid. They want some real scholars for every department; some superb athletes; some great musicians and actors; a few rich kids whose parents can build a library wing; and some legacies to keep the alumni happy. The applicant who is attractive but not really special in any one category is going to have a much tougher time getting in.
Early decision really does improve one’s chances – but you better be in the ballpark. If you look at the admission rates at selective colleges, a kid has a much better chance of getting in via early decision than through the regular admission pool. But there are two caveats to that overall pronouncement:
“Many of the early decision slots are reserved for kids the school really wants for athletic or other recruiting purposes, “ explains Muska. “Top athletic prospects – particularly at schools like the Ivy League and NESCAC schools which do not offer athletic scholarships – are told by the coaches to apply early. Second, the early decision applicant pool typically has higher grades and SAT scores than the regular pool. There is a self-limiting element to who is applying early. Which means: if a school is a “reach” for a student, the student should not apply early. His odds of getting rejected are greater than if he applied early – the early decision applicant pool is simply better-credentialed.
A last truism: it is often said that there is a collegefor everyone. That is certainly true. What is more elusive – but equally true – is that there is a right-fit college for everyone. But most kids and their parents never find that school because they are too caught-up in trying to get into the “best” school rather than the right school. “The average student takes 5.6 years to graduate, according to the latest figures. That’s a lot of poor fits,” says Welham. “If your child attends a $50,000/year college and takes an extra year and a half to get out, that’s a $75,000 mistake.”
“The sad part,” adds Muska, “is that most such expensive mistakes can be avoided. Instead of relying on magazine rankings – which reflect the subjectivity of the editors couched in often-meaningless statistical inputs — or on a single visit to a college that can be colored by a backwards-walking student tour guide, students really should spend a night on campus. Sure it’s tough and expensive to arrange such trips. But it is a hell of a lot cheaper than a poor fit.”
Steve Cohen is co-author, with Mike Muska, of Getting In!
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Parke Muth
There is, to me at least, another lie that is much more important than the 3 you have listed.
Currently there are over 700,000 international students in the US. Colleges and universities are at this very moment jetting to the four corners of the world to enroll the best and brightest from around the world. These students provide much needed skills and, perhaps more importantly, much needed cash as they pay full freight at virtually every school in the US.
On the other hand, there are only 35,000 work visas issued each year to international applicants. It does not take a mathematician to see we are, at the very least, misleading those students who come here to study and then pursue the American Dream. Instead of letting these students fill open positions at Google (Americans are not interested in majoring in math and science fields to the degree needed to fill these jobs), or become the next Shahid khan, we are sending them back home.
There they may have the same jobs that would have been in the US off-shored to them or they may not find employment at all and so have wasted $250,000 dollars. In either case, the US loses. Without people to fill jobs, the US slows its economy. Sending people back home jobless increases the level of anger and frustration at the US. They feel cheated. And I think they have a right to feel this way. No one is telling them the chances of staying in the US grow smaller by the year. While the percentage of international students being offered places at schools skyrockets, the number of spaces for jobs has not. One bit. And so I think it fair to say schools are looking at money and the bottom line ahead of the interests of the international students and parents.
Therefore, if they go abroad, admission officers should include information about the bleak chances of any opportunity to stay in what was once a place that welcomed people to contribute to the fabric of our society.
An international PhD student at IU, Bloomington, Julide Etem, has just completed a documentary film on just this topic. In fact it was mentioned in Forbes last week. it will be premiered at the Virginia Film Festival in early November.
Here is the link to the trailer. Anyone who cares about the future economic growth of the US should watch it. And admission officers might think about showing it to all the international students they are showering with glossy brochures and promises of great things to come in their future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHy76CSGF1c
Parke Muth
Currently there are over 700,000 international students in the US. Colleges and universities are at this very moment jetting to the four corners of the world to enroll the best and brightest from around the world. These students provide much needed skills and, perhaps more importantly, much needed cash as they pay full freight at virtually every school in the US.
On the other hand, there are only 35,000 work visas issued each year to international applicants. It does not take a mathematician to see we are, at the very least, misleading those students who come here to study and then pursue the American Dream. Instead of letting these students fill open positions at Google (Americans are not interested in majoring in math and science fields to the degree needed to fill these jobs), or become the next Shahid khan, we are sending them back home.
There they may have the same jobs that would have been in the US off-shored to them or they may not find employment at all and so have wasted $250,000 dollars. In either case, the US loses. Without people to fill jobs, the US slows its economy. Sending people back home jobless increases the level of anger and frustration at the US. They feel cheated. And I think they have a right to feel this way. No one is telling them the chances of staying in the US grow smaller by the year. While the percentage of international students being offered places at schools skyrockets, the number of spaces for jobs has not. One bit. And so I think it fair to say schools are looking at money and the bottom line ahead of the interests of the international students and parents.
Therefore, if they go abroad, admission officers should include information about the bleak chances of any opportunity to stay in what was once a place that welcomed people to contribute to the fabric of our society.
An international PhD student at IU, Bloomington, Julide Etem, has just completed a documentary film on just this topic. In fact it was mentioned in Forbes last week. it will be premiered at the Virginia Film Festival in early November.
Here is the link to the trailer. Anyone who cares about the future economic growth of the US should watch it. And admission officers might think about showing it to all the international students they are showering with glossy brochures and promises of great things to come in their future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHy76CSGF1c
Parke Muth
Great work on the blog! Experts Communication is the leading Customer Services.
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