college admissions

Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Turning the Tide: Can admissions reforms redefine achievement?

Julie Renee Posselt, University of Michigan

Individualism makes America unhealthy and unequal, and college admissions offices have the power to do something about it. So argues a short but important report, Turning the Tide, released last week by the Making Caring Common (MCC) Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

College admissions offices send messages to students about what society values. To change the message that individual achievement matters most, the report recommends admissions practices that balance intellectual and ethical engagement. It advises strategies for assessing community service and diversity experiences. Ultimately, it wants to redefine achievement to reduce pressure on students and improve access for low-income students.

Is this report part of a sea change in higher education?

As a professor whose research examines merit and diversity in academic gatekeeping, I think the answer to this question is a clear yes.

The question is, will their recommendations work?

The report is on the right track

For years, guidance and college counselors have prodded students to apply to colleges with the right fit, not just the best ranking. And educators have pushed to align preferences in admissions offices with higher education’s public mission.

In 2003, Harvard law professor Lani Guinier proposed that admissions consider both academic and democratic merit. She argued that if colleges’ mission includes preparing leaders for an increasingly diverse democracy, then admissions should reward potential for such leadership.

How to recognize and measure that leadership potential, like other so-called noncognitive factors, is still up for debate. But MCC’s call to consider “authentic” experiences with diversity and “ethical engagement” fits with a more democratic notion of merit.

Admissions officers strive for holistic review. But does it work?
COD Newsroom, CC BY

Around the country, educators are huddling to develop, test and refine models of holistic review that honor students’ diverse strengths. Administrators and faculty are hungry for strategies that will help their student bodies reflect the country’s demographic diversity.

There’s a spirit of experimentation in admissions today that the strategies in Turning the Tide can support.

Here are my concerns

I applaud MCC’s initiative and support their goals in principle. However, I have at least three concerns with their recommendations:

First, it’s not clear that they align with evaluation practices in admissions offices.

MCC wants to deemphasize AP courses, for example, but this won’t be a powerful lever for change. The 2014 State of College Admissions report of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) documents that since 2002, no more than 10 percent of college admissions offices treat AP/IB scores as a major factor in their decisions.

Second, the strategies it will take to enroll more low-income students in selective colleges are not the same ones needed to reduce achievement pressure.

Everyone worries about the lack of transparency in college admissions, but concerns about pressure are largely coming out of upper-middle-class and wealthy families.

In many low-income high schools, where the real college access problem is, the concern is obtaining access to rigorous coursework and college preparation generally.

Third, even in systems that tend toward greater equity, the wealthy usually find ways to protect their privilege.

One way they do so, sociologists have shown, is by investing their resources in keeping up with the changing terms of access to high-status social institutions, including educational ones.

Participation in focused test preparation is one example, although scholars debate its benefits.

Or take my college-frenzied city of Ann Arbor: Less than three months after 80 selective colleges announced they would develop a shared online application with a digital portfolio, the city’s community education provider started offering US$49 workshops titled “How to Apply to Elite Universities.”

It is telling that they marketed the workshops to parents, not teens.

The fact is that “ethical engagement” could easily become the next dimension of merit through which privileged families preserve their competitive advantage.

Redefining ‘good colleges’

The final recommendation of Turning the Tide – broadening students’ ideas about what makes a good college – is perhaps the most important and difficult one.

Parents, employers, and graduate programs also need to take a broader view on college pedigree if they want to persuade students to do so.

Parents need to know how mixed the research record is (see here, here and here) on the link between selective college attendance and later earnings. They need to know that going to a selective college doesn’t necessarily lead to greater life and job satisfaction, even if colleges market themselves that way.

Looking to how graduate programs judge what makes a good college, my own research has revealed how faculty in top-ranked graduate programs think about college affiliations when admitting Ph.D. students. I interviewed 68 professors across 10 programs and observed admissions meetings in six of them.

Often faculty have a hard time trusting grad school applicants from institutions without strong reputations.
University of Pennsylvania Libraries, CC BY-NC-ND

Faculty routinely assessed college GPA based on the perceived quality of the institution where grades had been earned. They felt this enabled them to distinguish among the many applicants with high grades.

Across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, professors in every program described being “impressed,” “excited” and “dazzled” by affiliations with the Ivy League, as one might expect.

Beyond a belief in the superiority of their training, professors admitted being drawn into the cultural mystique surrounding elite higher education. A few noted that students from elite institutions were “presocialized” or “confident enough” for programs like their own.

One waxed eloquent about the brilliance of his own undergraduate peers at Yale, while others assumed that students who had survived the gauntlet of elite undergraduate admissions must truly be “better.”

They also looked favorably on less prestigious institutions with respected undergraduate programs in their discipline. They admitted to me or revealed in committee that they had a hard time trusting applicants from unfamiliar institutions and ones with mediocre reputations.

Like the messages that parents send their children, how professors read college affiliations in graduate admissions sends messages to young people about what makes a good college.

MCC is right that updating admissions is a great strategy for cultural change. Admissions priorities subtly coerce adolescent behavior. A growing number of families organize their children’s time and very lives to put them on a trajectory that (they think) will land them in college.

But to really alter the messages about achievement that students hear, change shouldn’t be limited to the admissions office. Parents, employers and those of us who work in education also need to lead by example.

University of Michigan doctoral student Kristen Glasener contributed to this article.

The Conversation

Julie Renee Posselt, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of Michigan

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, Matthew Lynch

Will the Coalition for College Success be good for low-income students?

A guest column by Carol Barash, PhD

Just about everyone agrees that the Common Application, whose founding mission in 1975 was to simplify and streamline college admissions and level the playing field, has made US college admissions more centralized, but not simpler. The massive tech failure of the new version of the online Common App in 2013 pushed various groups to explore other options.

When the Coalition for College Success presented its new plan to transform the college admissions gateway at NACAC, there were naysayers in many camps. The Common App’s virtual monopoly, however flawed, patched over a quagmire of inconsistencies that admissions stakeholders are reluctant to give up or to thoroughly think through: one size fits all vs. holistic admissions criteria; admissions favoring the few who can afford to pay for college vs. a level playing field; where students get in vs. what they can afford among them.

These vital discussions around our admissions gateway are part of a much larger rethinking of the role of and pathways through higher education in the 21st century. In that larger context, there are three big ideas in the Coalition’s model that offer fundamental improvements for low-income students:

The portfolio model

This shift in admissions criteria from one standard (transcripts, test scores, diploma) to a “portfolio” model that includes all aspects of coursework, career exploration and community engagement is the most significant change. The Coalition shifted, almost immediately, from calling this a “portfolio” to a “locker,” but the shift is nonetheless substantial and helpful for all students, and especially low-income students from under-resourced schools:

  • Using the International Baccalaureate model, students reflect on their work each year.

  • They develop summative work around their core learning as is common in many European high schools.

  • Students will be able to document real learning outside of school, including summer programs, online courses, work, internships and community service.

  • They will be able to build a collection of materials–coursework, self-assessments, videos, their own blogs and articles–that more broadly reflect what they have learned and where they are going.

Many schools encourage student reflection and self-assessment throughout high school, as a valid and positive aspect of students’ overall academic record. And as there are more and more opportunities for learning separate from traditional schools, this new model provides a framework to capture pre-college learning in all its forms.

Financial transparency and college completion

To be in the Coalition, private colleges must meet a student’s “demonstrated financial need” and commit to 70% graduation rate for all students in  six years or less; public universities must commit to low in-state tuition and offer need-based financial aid.

In a critical article in the Washington Post, Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president of enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, argued that some private college members of the Coalition are among the worst in admitting low-income students, and several of the public university members have very poor graduation rates: “It is one of the dirty secrets of higher education that the most selective and prestigious private universities carry far less share of the load when it comes to enrolling low-income students, especially in light of the enormous wealth they collectively hold.”

But if students are admitted to college without the financial aid or courses and support services to graduate, it doesn’t help them much in the long run. So, yes, the Coalition’s bar is high–aspirational even for many Coalition members–but the basic promise that college must be both affordable and completable for all students is the most significant of the Coalition’s foundational assumptions and one we should all embrace, hard as it may be to implement.

Admissions officers serving as college advisors

The Coalition’s third big idea–that college and university admission officers will step into the breach left by too few college counselors in most public high schools–is another bold step in a good direction. Most people in admissions love high school students; many of them were first-generation students themselves. The more time they spend in local high schools–as teachers, counselors and mentors–the better, so long as they remember that the point of education is not just getting into college, but learning how to learn, innovate and solve problems.

I would argue that the Coalition’s shifts are a solid start in the right direction, but it will take much bolder collective action to change the game of college–to make it both affordable and completable. This is especially true for low-income students. Until there is one fair and shared system for all–one that serves students and families rather than colleges and consultants–let’s extend the Coalition’s bold promises and figure out ways to get more colleges on board.

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Dr. Carol Barash, founder and CEO of Story2 and author of Write Out Loud, has been building digital communications tools for over 20 years, and through Story2 teaches the art and science of storytelling to expand college access and career readiness. Have questions about storytelling, college admissions, and life choices? Ask her anything on Twitter @carolbarash.

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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

While rethinking admissions process, consider creativity

James C. Kaufman, University of Connecticut

The Turning the Tide report released last week by the Harvard Graduate School of Education has colleges and universities across the country taking a hard look at what many believe is a deeply flawed admissions process.

A number of colleges have already been reexamining their admissions process. In September last year, more than 80 leading colleges and universities announced the formation of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, so as to make changes in the admissions process and diversify student bodies.

The new report characterizes the message being sent by colleges to high schools “as simply valuing their achievements, not their responsibility for others and their communities.” It asks college admissions officers to take the following three primary steps to improve the admissions process so that it is fairer and inculcates a concern for others:

  • promote more meaningful contributions through community service and other engagement for the public good
  • assess how students engage and contribute to family as well as community across race, culture and class
  • redefine achievement in ways that level the playing field for economically diverse students and reduce excessive achievement pressure.

However, what often gets left out of admission criteria is a student’s creativity. As a creativity researcher, I have studied many aspects of creativity that reinforce the idea that creativity is a valuable and necessary attribute for students in the 21st century.

Why measure creativity?

Creativity can be seen at all levels – from young children to geniuses. Creativity can help us discover new things, from the next generation of smartphones to new ways of recycling our trash.

It enables us to make art, tell stories, design buildings, test hypotheses and try new recipes. Indeed, creative people have been found to be more likely to succeed in business and be happier in life.

There is a growing volume of research that shows putting greater emphasis on creativity assessments in the college application process could provide a more holistic impression of students’ potential. Right now, we look only at a narrow range of abilities, which means that we over-reward people with certain strengths and penalize people with other strengths.

SAT is a better predictor of success for white students.
Dennis S. Hurd, CC BY-NC-ND

Studies have shown that the most widely used standardized performance tests for college admission, the SAT, is a better predictor of college success for white students than African-American and Hispanic-American students.

However, creativity assessments are more likely to be gender- and ethnically neutral, thereby avoiding the potential for bias.

A study we conducted recently on more than 600 college applicants compared applicants’ performance on a series of online tests assessing various forms of creativity to application data, which included SAT scores, class rank and college admission interview scores.

We found that traditional admissions measures (SAT scores and GPA) were only weakly related to the creativity measures. Further, people with high creative self-efficacy (i.e., people who think they are creative) did slightly worse on some admission tests.

We are continuing to capture data about students over the course of their college careers to assess whether including creativity tests with traditional admissions measures can better predict student outcomes such as retention, college success and graduation rates.

Assessing creativity makes a difference

We do understand that assessing students’ creativity would not be easy. But that is not to say it is impossible.

As part of the admissions process, students could be asked about how they would solve world problems or what their dream job would be or how they would spend lottery winnings; these responses could then be rated for their creativity by admission officers or trained raters. Many studies have shown that this is a reliable and valid way of measuring creativity, although it can be resource-intensive.

Students participate in creative teamwork. Can creativity be measured?
Creative Sustainability, CC BY-SA

Some universities may ask such questions in current admissions, but most do not actually score answers for creativity. In fact, being creative on admissions essays can actually hurt students.

If there are concerns about adding too much stress on students during applications, schools could use a portfolio approach in which students could simply upload a poem, drawing, movie, invention or science experiment that they have already produced.

The fact is that using creativity as a criterion in admissions has been done before. At one point, Cornell University Professor of Human Development Robert Sternberg and colleagues included creativity and practical intelligence as an optional part of college admissions at Tufts University. What Sternberg and colleagues found was that students enjoyed the application process more and the average SAT score of all applicants increased from previous years.

In an equally important outcome, differences on these new measures showed reduced or no ethnic differences, and minority admissions increased.

Such results are typical in creativity studies. Whereas many standardized or intelligence tests show ethnic, cultural or gender differences, creativity measures tend to produce no differences – everyone has the same potential to be creative.

Creativity is more important than ever as college and universities try to both emphasize diversity in their student population and seek future innovators in science, technology, engineering and math, otherwise known as the STEM fields. Including creativity helps accomplish both goals.

If early impressions of the Turning the Tide report are any indication, we could be heading into a pivotal time for college admissions. Such changes should not be limited to the scope of this landmark report. We need to be creative.

The Conversation

James C. Kaufman, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Connecticut

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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