In the field of highly selective admission to colleges and
universities in the US, there are some open secrets that people in the field
know, but that not enough students and parents hear. Most of these have to do
with numbers. By numbers I mean things like rank in class, standardized test
scores, and the chances of being accepted.
The US News and
some other places that rank schools use various sets of numbers to determine
how selective a school is in admission and these are used as a part of the
formula to rank schools. One of the
easiest ways to show the world that a school is selective is to boost the
number of applications. The more applications that flow in the more this will
show up as “very highly selective” in the rankings. Since most of the highly
selective colleges and universities have not increased the size of their
incoming classes by any dramatic number, the increase in applications means
that the percentage of students getting accepted must drop. For the schools themselves, this is good news.
For the students applying, however, this means that getting in to schools with
under a 30% acceptance rate is a long shot at best. Most of the Ivies and other
top schools have under a 10% acceptance rate. These schools (and virtually
every college and university) however, still continue to spend significant sums
to recruit students from all over the US and all over the globe. In addition, schools now use a much more
sophisticated set of tools to reach out to students to encourage them to apply.
While the schools at the top of the rankings get most of the
press, the schools below them are doing as much or more (given budget
constraints) to encourage students to apply. Moving up in the rankings
increases prestige and creates a feedback loop in which students tend to apply
to schools with high rankings. To give you some idea how this all works I will
quote from a recent article on the dramatic move of Northeastern up in the
rankings. The entire story is eye-opening; it focuses largely on how the school
and its leadership gamed the ranking system in order to improve its standing:
Because schools reap
benefits from a high spot on U.S.
News’s list, he says, it makes sense for them to continue to throw money
at the metrics. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, for instance, to lure
students with high GPAs and SAT scores, private four-year schools increased
spending on merit-based aid from $1.6 billion to $4.6 billion. Studies show
that for every 10 merit-based scholarships, there are four fewer need-based
scholarships. That’s because schools often base merit on test scores, and
students from lower-income families generally don’t test as well, largely
because they spend less on tutors and SAT prep. Tuitions rise to help
universities keep pace, further reducing middle-class access to a top-flight
education.
In an apparent effort
to score rankings points by lowering the percentage of accepted students, NU’s
admissions department received a mandate: Increase applications at home and
abroad. Northeastern’s new science and engineering complex, colorful Adirondack
chairs throughout campus, and star faculty members like Michael Dukakis are all
intended to advance reputation and lure top students. “They poured a ton of
money into admission recruiting,” says a former NU admissions officer. “We had
amazing amounts of latitude to travel overseas. We worked really hard, and we
traveled like crazy.”
There were other
tricks, as well. In 2009, NU stopped requiring SAT scores from students
attending international high schools. By removing a barrier to foreign
students, who typically score lower if they take the SATs at all, NU boosted
its application numbers without jeopardizing its overall testing average. Those
foreign students, ineligible for federal aid, also tend to pay full freight.
Since 2006, the percentage of international undergraduates has jumped from just
under 5 to nearly 17.
Last year,
Northeastern received its highest number of applications, almost 50,000 for
2,800 spots. That’s nearly five times more than in 1990. Enrolled students were
more qualified than ever before, with average SAT scores up 22 points from the
previous year.
I don’t know of any other school that has this kind of what
some would call “success” in the rankings game. While Northeastern is at the
end of the bell curve for schools moving up in the rankings by gaming the
system and diagnosing the analytics that are used by US News, they are anything
but alone in trying to move up the ladder. Many schools have at least one and
some have teams who are tasked with analyzing ways for the schools to move up
in the rankings. Most in the admission world know this, but a lot on the
outside don’t know how pervasive it is and how it leads to things that effect
a student’s chance of getting in.
A number of schools in the past several years have done more than just gaming. They have altered the numbers they submitted to US News,
often by leaving out groups of students whose testing or some other rubric
would negatively impact their rankings. The effort that schools make to rise in the rankings comes
in part from pressure on schools (by the governing boards, by the President and
others) to compete with their peer schools: “The rankings are one of the main
ways that alumni and trustees keep track of their school's progress and they
are an indicator of the status society attaches to their degrees.”
It’s a bit like college sports. Schools want to beat their
rivals. And like college sports there are some bad things going on at many
schools. Many in education know that the data schools submit has been massaged, at
the very least, but some of the data get the equivalent of steroids to help
enhance performance. No one really knows how many schools fudge numbers but
surveys indicate the administration thinks many schools (themselves excepted).
Some argue that the gaming efforts take away from the
legitimate academic mission of the school. For example, if schools design
classes to come in under the “under 20 group” that gets tallied for the US
News, then they may do so by creating a significant number of smaller classes
of this size and one or two huge classes that cover the same material. While
the example I have just cited falls, to me at least, under the sketchy approach
to education, the more important part of the rating game has to do with
marketing.
Many students, at earlier and earlier ages, receive contact
from colleges and universities. This contact comes in many forms, from glossy
brochures to emails to tweets and everything in between. All of this attention
may be flattering and may convince a student or her family that the school
wants the student to enroll. After all,
the words on the emails and letters and other sources are positive and
encourage the student to apply. Who would not feel wooed?
But wooing and following through on a long term (or at least
4 year) commitment often don’t go together. In fact, for those schools at the
top of the rankings, they rarely do. It’s true that some students get into
great schools and turn them down, but the ones who suffer most often are
students who have done well in virtually every measurable way, but still end up
with the equivalent of a Dear John letter: “We regret to inform you that our
admission committee has decided not to offer you a place in our incoming
class.” There are tears and “whys” and “it isn’t fairs” echoing across the
globe in the month of March. A number of people who have experience helping
students or in the field of admission see that spending great sums of money,
manpower, and effort to get more and more applications is anything but useful
for the students and, to a large degree, for the academic quality of the student
body. Lynn O’Shaunessey tells it like she sees it on her blog:
Encouraging
Pointless Applications
A big culprit in this
phenomenon is the schools themselves. The institutions work hard to encourage
students to apply to produce their fear-inducing rejection figures.
Many elite schools
strive to attract as large an applicant pool as they can by encouraging
students who have ZERO chance of getting admitted to their institutions to send
in applications.
I can’t emphasize
enough that if your child gets literature from an elite school, it means
N-O-T-H-I-N-G. It certainly doesn’t indicate that he or she has better odds of
getting into the institution.
You can’t sit down on
a couch with a bag of potato chips without eating most of the bag. You hate
yourself for it, but you can’t resist. And that’s how it is for elite schools
that tease students for purposes of their own self-aggrandizement.
Pleasing U.S. News
The intent of this
craven practice is to burnish their images, impress families, please college
presidents and boards of trustees and, of course, curry favor with U.S. News & World kingmakers.
U.S. News gives brownie points to schools that reject more students. Higher
rejection rates also help a school’s bond ratings.
One of the legends in admission, Fred Hargadon, says what
many say behind closed doors in the world of admission who have been around for
a while. The increase in applications does little to improve the overall
quality of the class: “Fred Hargadon, former dean of admissions at Princeton and
Stanford, doubts that more and more applicants make for a stronger class.
"I couldn't pick a better class out of 30,000 applicants than out of
15,000," he says. "I'd just end up rejecting multiples of the same kid."”
A glance at the numbers and the offers extended at the ivies
may make converts of many who thought that increasing numbers increased
quality.
- Brown University —
30,291 applicants (2,619 accepted)
- Columbia
University — 32,967 applicants (2,291 accepted)
- Cornell
University — 43,041 applicants (6,025 accepted)
- Dartmouth
College — 19,235 applicants (2,220 accepted)
- Harvard
University — 34,295 applicants (2,023 accepted)
- University
of Pennsylvania — 35,788 applicants (3,551 accepted)
- Princeton
University — 26,607 applicants (1,939 accepted)
- Yale University — 30,922 applicants (1,935 accepted)
The materials sent to many students underscore how great the
education at the school will be for each student. There is precious little
information sent out from the most selective schools about how incredibly hard
it is to get in. It is not in the school’s best interest to discourage
applicants and so they tend to send materials to many students whose chances of
admission are slim at best. The number of applications filed to selective
schools has soared. Part of this is due to the way schools now can use all
sorts of data and all sorts of resources to find names and addresses and email
to reach out to students. Some schools have changed the name of the person who
leads the admission process from the Dean of Admission to the Director of Enrollment Management. The name speaks loudly: the
focus for these schools is on making sure the numbers work. This might mean
getting enough students to fill beds, or enough students who can pay, or getting
students who are at the top of the applicant pool from around the world.
Enrollment managers are supposed to use data and marketing and effective
recruitment strategies to meet the institutional priorities set forth by the
leaders of the schools. Boards have become much more proactive in telling
universities how to run the school and they want to see results. Demonstrating
to the boards that applications have soared, SAT scores have risen, and
selectivity is up will earn both praise and a raise. Trying to demonstrate that
students have unique voices, backgrounds and interests sounds good but these characteristics aren’t
quantifiable. This means that fighting for a student whose numbers might not be
great can be more difficult than it was before the rankings existed.
The rise in applications also has another significant effect
on the evaluation process:
“Given the number of
applicants to colleges and businesses today, it is virtually impossible to make
viable distinctions based on the limited data spectra generated by resumes,
GPAs, cover letters, SAT/ACT scores, professional references and personal
recommendations that all tend to look and read the same. While technologies
such as the Common Ap and online job boards have widened the entry funnel, the
lack of investment to strengthen the backend review processes has overwhelmed
the system resulting in a tangible loss of quality evaluations.”
While schools have invested a great many resources into marketing
and increasing applications, not nearly enough has been spent in increasing the
size and scope of those reading applications; I have mentioned this before: Despite the humanist narrative that is often
told in information sessions at selective schools in which, once upon a time,
great amounts of time and effort were put forth in the evaluation process of
individual applications, the math doesn't add up. What does this mean? If an
admission officer has to evaluate 25-50 applications a day (and this is fairly
standard at selective schools) how much time can one devote to each applicant?
Let's say that the officer needs to evaluate 30 applicants a day (and this is a
fairly low number). How long would this take? If the admission officer is
focused and devotes 15 minutes to each application then the answer is 7.5
hours.
Of course, an
admission officer is doing more each day than reading applications. There are
emails, and meetings, and a whole host of other duties an individual admission
officer might have. Any time devoted to other than reading or eating will
extend the day well beyond 8 hours. And this is typical. Reading season is long
and arduous, but admission people learn, early on, to make quick reads. For
those applicants who do not have the numeric rubrics and are not in a special
recruiting group, 15 minutes is often a luxury. In other words, all the hours
of classes, tests, test prep, essay writing, activities and much else is
evaluated in the time it takes to watch the latest Daft Punk video on YouTube.
If this sounds cruel it is not meant to be, just informative. People make more
important decisions in even quicker blinks of the eye than this. Resumes do not take nearly as long to evaluate.
There are a number of other factors that go into making the
numbers game even more complicated for the typical student who has done
exceptionally well in and out of the classroom that I have addressed
previously: geography, economic class, and special category students.
I hope that by this point I have convinced you that the
landscape of selective admission contains many large obstacles that most in the
world do not know that much about. I may also have convinced you that colleges
and universities are losing their ethical and education mission in pursuit of
rankings and higher numbers. Now it is time to try to show why this narrative
as set forth in only one part of a much more complicated story.
Imagine. This is your third school you have visited in 2 days. The
car ride has been filled with conversations about APs, testing, essays and lots
more. In between there are tense silences too with everyone plugged in to a
device listening to their own music. You arrive at the information session and
an admission officer welcomes you and then at some point talks about admission:
X is one of the most
selective schools in the world. We pride ourselves on having some of the
strongest students in the world enter our campus each year. Are you good enough
to be one of these students? Here is what you will need. You should have a
boatload of AP classes starting from grade 9 or 10; you should have virtually
all A's; you should have testing that is above at least 700 on each of the
sections of the SAT (above 750 would be better). You should have a record of
significant accomplishments in and out of school. You should have recognition
from State, National or International competitions. You should have essays that
demonstrate your voice is unique. You should have recommendations that say you
are among the best students ever from your school and you have the potential to
be a Nobel winner or the founder of a billion dollar start up, or a Wall Street
Tycoon. You should have done significant service that has changed lives. You
should be able to speak comfortably to all kinds of people alone or in an
interview or in front of a group like this with well over 100 people intently
listening to your wisdom.
How would you feel after listening to this? If you are one
of the chosen few who has fulfilled most of the rubrics set forth you should be
feeling pretty good, but in a room of a hundred this might come to about 3
people. The vast majority of those in the room will leave thinking "I
don’t have a chance and should look elsewhere". If admission officers at
highly selective school put forth the numbers and stats and expectations in
this way many fewer applicants would try to apply. My question is whether this
is beneficial to the students and parents? Will this tough love approach save
needless heartache in March and April?
Imagine instead you have arrived at the school and the
admission officer says something like this:
X is one of the most
selective schools in the world. It is hard to get in, no doubt about it. But
you should know that we are in the business of trying to create a class of
students who have different backgrounds, talents, and lived experiences. We
expect you to have done well, in and out of class, and we expect that most of
you will present strong testing and a record of involvement that predicts you will
be a success academically, socially, and in your activism. We don’t have cut
off scores, we don’t have quotas, and we look at the individual applicant. We
pride ourselves on our holistic approach to admission and if you like what you
see and hear today we encourage you to apply.
How would you feel after hearing this? Would you be
encouraged to apply? I think many would. Is it wrong of the admission officer to
avoid the harsh stats in order to encourage students to apply? Some, if not many,
might vote that this merely encourages applications from students whose chances
of admission are slim to none. And I would agree with those who would say this.
But, and this is an important but, I would still encourage
schools to give speech number 2 over number 1. Why? It isn’t that I want
schools to continue to get more applications. I agree with Hargadon and others
that there are more than enough great students to choose from with 15,000
applications instead of 30,000. The reason I would argue for number two is that
there is a likelihood that in any group of people there is an outlier. By
outlier I mean a student who does not fit the typical description of a student
who gets into a very highly selective school. It might be a first generation
student who has had to work multiple jobs to help the support the family and as
a result the course load he or she takes might be a bit light. Low-income
students typically have lower testing too, but that does not mean they aren’t
smart and could not do very well at a selective school. Or there could be a
star athlete in the audience whose numbers are low but whose prowess on the
playing field will help win the homecoming game. Or it could be a student whose
essay demonstrates a way of viewing the world will change those around her. Or
it could be a student from an under-represented group whose scores might not be
astronomically high but who nevertheless has all the numbers that predict
success. His or her background and experience will add to the conversations in
and out of class. I could go on for quite some time about the possible
exceptions to the stats that apply to the vast majority of applications.
In essence, what I am arguing for is for schools to ignore
the utilitarian approach. If highly selective schools wanted to provide the
most useful information for the greatest number of applicants they would
emphasize just how hard it is to get in. But in doing so they would miss reaching out to the few outliers who will get in because schools want to have them as a part
of their class. Steven Pinker, a genius scientist at Harvard, has written
recently that Harvard and others should give a test and forget everything else
when it comes to admission. I think and have written that he is wrong about this.
I do think schools should try to reach to students who
aren’t a part of the typical admit group. The most selective schools often have
the best financial aid packages so they can enroll these students and support
their education so these students graduate without debt. The schools provide a social
good by admitting these students, but it comes at the cost, so to speak, of giving the cold hard truth to
many others.
The last point I want to address are the clichés that many
use to talk about getting into highly selective schools. It’s random, it’s a
crapshoot, it’s unfair, and it’s a black box. No it isn’t. The other cliché
that gets thrown around from the admission side is that it is an art rather
than a science and that too needs some revision. Schools are numbers oriented
in lots of ways. There are de facto limits with respect to how many students from
a given place, school or country a college or university will take. There are
some academic thresholds that exist for most of the students who apply. But not
all. The process, by becoming increasingly based on numbers, may make it true
that it is heading toward the science end of the spectrum of big data. But it's
not there yet and won’t get there unless Pinker and others have their way. There
is room at schools for the atypical student, just not a lot of room. But that
does not mean students still should not try if they do have something that will
stand out in ways that go beyond the numbers.
The most important things that often gets left out of
discussions about admission offices: who are they representing? Admission officers can be
passionate advocates for student of all kinds, but at the end of the day they
work for a university. The university has its own institutional priorities. It may
be they want to increase the number of STEM students. This will alter the
chances of admission for many students. Or it may be they want to increase the
percentage of low income students (in some cases, for cash strapped
schools, they may need to lower the percentage of needy students), or it may be they want to make sure they have a nationally
ranked athletic team. They might want all of these things. The institutional
priorities determine the way applicants will be evaluated. While schools will
not be as forthcoming as they should about these priorities some of the ones I have
listed here are often a part of the mission of most selective schools. Their
approach is calculated, vetted and highly scrutinized. For some, the take way
from this is that admission is not fair. Of course it isn't. Life isn’t either.
But it is not completely unfair by any stretch. Admission officers clock
innumerable hours trying to pick the best students, but best is defined by the school. Best is vague and can be defined lots of ways. Should there be a great deal more transparency on the part of
schools to release data that would help most families? Absolutely, but they
should not put this in every brochure or email they sent out to students who
may be one who fits in to their mission.
Like most things in life, admission is anything but perfect
and could be improved. Families and students should also do more research to
get beyond the raw numbers listed on profiles and in rankings. My last piece of
advice for finding out the inside story is to suggest that everyone watch a
YouTube video by Brian Wright. His TEDx talk on why no student deserves a place
at a highly selective school should make some people look at the admission
process with a new set of eyes and expectations.
No comments:
Post a Comment