Have Some Perspective

While high school juniors and seniors are in full-on panic mode because the college application and acceptance process is hitting the fan in earnest for both groups of students, I’m hopeful everyone can manage to remember that college is not a life or death situation. Every adult involved in the life of an upperclassman tends to make it seem as though it is, but I promise you it’s not.

Breathe, people, and read this post in the NY Times education blog, Mom U. Regular columnist, Caren Osten Gerzberg, had her daughter write the post. Nicole is a high school junior and makes some excellent points with regard to the college admissions process and how it relates to the grand scheme of things.

Seriously, you are a single, unimportant speck in the universe. No one actually gives a rat’s ass which institution of higher learning chooses you for matriculation. And in ten years, neither will you. Perspective is a priceless tool.

Further Reading:

Community College vs. University
College Comparison Tool
Awesome Parent
The Coolest College Application Essay Ever
How To (Not) Screw Up the College Apps
Avoiding Six Common College Application Slip-Ups
College Admissions Testing: For and Against
Taking Your Personality Into Account When Making Major Decisions
Media Frenzy Around High Pressure College Admissions
College Admissions—Looking Good Only On Paper

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

NY Times Blog Series on Community College

Kay M. McClenney, whose day job involves being the director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, is a contributing writer for the NY Times blog, The Choice, which focuses on college admissions advice. Dr. McClenney just posted part 5 of a week-long series answering readers’ questions about community college.

Guidance Office Posts:

Answers About Community Colleges, Part 1
Answers About Community Colleges, Part 2
Answers on Community Colleges, Part 3
Answers on Community Colleges, Part 4
Answers on Community College, Part 5

Further Reading:

Too Much Enrollment, Not Enough Funding
The Community College Guide
Community College Before the Four-Year School
Community College vs. University

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

“Rethinking Admissions”

It is hard to write while doing the Happy Dance. Or, it would be if I were a dancing girl. Which I’m not. I’m pretty much only graceful in the water, so I’ve never felt compelled to express myself in a River-Dancing-ish manner. I am dancing on the inside though, and this is not only more conducive to typing, it also avoids getting me into trouble with the Grace and Coordination Police.

Many smart, powers-that-be types in the realm of higher education are having an open-to-the-public conference on April 15th and 16th, 2009 to discuss building a better College Admissions mousetrap. It’s been somewhat biased and lacking over the past few decades or more, and it would be grand if they could make it a little spiffier.

One of the items on the agenda is standardized testing and the good, the bad, and the ugly wrenches it throws into the college admissions works. See? Happy Dance. Progress, forward thinking, and not putting everyone into boxes—all good stuff.

On April 15 and 16, 2009, Wake Forest University will host top admissions officers and leading researchers from Berkeley, Duke, Harvard, Ohio State, Princeton, Texas, Virginia, Yale and other universities along with the director of data research for U.S. News & World Report for the Rethinking Admissions conference. Participants will present papers and discuss the latest research on standardized testing, diversity, creativity, college ratings and how to evaluate success in college. The two-day event will be followed by a public lecture on April 21, featuring Robert Sternberg, Dean of Tufts University, who will report on Tuft’s experiment with essay questions as predictors of success in college.

Further Reading:

Beyond the SAT: Rethinking Admissions
The Impact of Dropping the SAT

Previous Posts:

College Admissions Testing: For and Against
“College Panel Calls for Less Focus on SATs”
The SAT Is Not Good
Wake Forest University Drops SAT Requirement
An Excellent Argument for Abolishing the SAT
The Newly Unfabulous SAT
Awesome Parent
Testing Season Begins

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Beware the College Rankings Machine

The National Review Online has an illuminating article up pointing out the illogicality (and foolishness) of putting too much faith in the warped college rankings system. I’ve said about all I can say (using professional language) about the rankings, so I’ll hold back and let Frederick M. Hess and Thomas Gift from NRO speak wisely (and way more professionally) instead:

Some of the schools with higher rankings may truly have improved, but the most significant factor is that two of the Barron’s criteria — high-school grades and percentage of applicants accepted — don’t mean what they did a decade ago. Grade inflation, and students’ applying to more schools than they used to, have juiced the numbers to make students look more qualified and schools more selective.

Grade inflation, dubbed “high schools’ skeleton in the closet” by Lehigh University education professor Perry Zirkel, has been a creeping phenomenon for two decades.

Also, whereas college-bound students used to limit applications to a few top choices, it is not unusual for students today to apply to many more. UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute has reported that the percentage of high-school seniors who applied to four or more colleges increased by more than a quarter from 1996 to 2006 and now stands at over 60 percent….. when students in general submit more applications, colleges in general get to reject more applicants — making schools across the board more “selective” by the Barron’s criteria.

And that is why trusting the evil genius rankings machine is a mistake. Be aware of who’s in charge and make decisions accordingly.

Previous Posts, Venting Language Included:

Acceptance
College Rankings
Unigo.com
New System for Ranking Colleges

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image source

College Admissions Testing: For and Against

Today’s USA Today has a big College Admissions Testing throwdown in the Op-Ed section. The USA Today folks are for keeping the testing around until there’s a better way to measure the rigor of high school coursework from one school to the next (an ‘A’ in a tough course at a tough school is different than an ‘A’ in an easy course at a less intense school). Although I’m not in agreement with them, they do make some good points and I respect that they were man enough to admit that the SAT and the ACT are “notoriously poor predictors of success.”

Jesse Mermell, the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest.org) writes the opposing Op-Ed, and argues beautifully for chucking standardized admissions testing. Mermell agrees with the NACAC’s findings:

NACAC is right. Test-optional admissions clearly works well. More than 775 accredited, bachelor degree granting institutions already do not use SAT or ACT scores to make decisions about all or many applicants (see the list at http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional). They have found that de-emphasizing test results yields better qualified and more diverse student bodies.

Test-optional colleges and universities look at a variety of factors, including the rigor of an applicant’s high school curriculum, the track record of students from the same school, leadership, community service and personal circumstances. Trained professionals perform a comprehensive review of each admissions portfolio. They weigh multiple sources of evidence, not just how well students fill in bubbles on a Saturday morning.

I won’t re-spew my stance on the subject as I think I’ve over-explained myself already.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

“College Panel Calls For Less Focus On SATs”

It’s like a month of miracles! (The pessimist in me is concerned that a good month now will mean we’re all doomed come election month.)

First the Unigo.com thing, and now this. I’m too involved with doing my happy dance (similar to the Snoopy dance, only it’s much more cerebral when I do it) to write intelligently about the NACAC’s ass-kicking report on the backward-thinking, wretched evilness that is the use of standardized test scores as a means to measure high school students’ intelligence, aptitude, and whether they are deserving of admission to a particular college or university.

I’ve written several times about my intense hatred and disdain for the test prep industry, the misuse of standardized tests, and the high-pressure hoops high school students are forced to jump through (in an accelerated, advanced, and gifted manner) by their parents and the college admissions process.

The following are my favorite bits from the NY Times article about the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and the commission they put together to research the effectiveness/worth of using the SAT and the ACT as sorting hats in the college admissions game.

The commission’s report, the culmination of a yearlong study led by William R. Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard, comes amid growing concerns that the frenzy over standardized college admissions tests is misshaping secondary education and feeding a billion-dollar test-prep industry that encourages students to try to game the tests.

“It would be much better for the country,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said in an interview, “to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT.”

Mr. Fitzsimmons’s group, which was convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, also expresses concerns “that test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment.” The report calls on admissions officials to be aware of such differences and to ensure that differences not related to a student’s ability to succeed academically be “mitigated in the admission process.”

“Society likes to think that the SAT measures people’s ability or merit,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said. “But no one in college admissions who visits the range of secondary schools we visit, and goes to the communities we visit — where you see the contrast between opportunities and fancy suburbs and some of the high schools that aren’t so fancy — can come away thinking that standardized tests can be a measure of someone’s true worth or ability.”

Thank you! This is what I’ve been yammering on about for years. The tests began as equalizers and have been transmogrified into exactly the thing they were designed to plow through. They used to be a way for the financially challenged kid from the non-college-educated family to show he had what it took to attend college. Now the college admissions process is back to being a money game, and the kids with the most financial backing tend to win.

And lest you think I’ve been doling out such vast quantities of ill will for the SAT and the ACT and their effed-up circus of college admissions pain because I blew it on said tests, let me reassure you that is not the case. I did nothing to prepare for either test and kicked ass on both of them because: (a) I’m white; (b) English is my first language; (c) my family are all educated bookworms; and (d) I went to public school, which, as far as I can tell, is the best training ground for excelling in the standardized test arena.

Previous Posts in Which I Express My Disdain:

College Admissions—Looking Good Only On Paper
Private College Counselors
Inequality In College Admissions
Media Frenzy Around High Pressure College Admissions
Acceptance
Testing Season Begins
Awesome Parent
Wake Forest University Drops SAT Requirement
The Newly Unfabulous SAT
The SAT Is Not Good
An Excellent Argument For Abolishing the SAT

Posted by Alexa Harrington