Do AdComms Track Matriculants Through Their College Years?

<p>I'm wondering if Admissions Committees watch the kids they admitted through the years to see if their initial judgment was correct. It might be interesting for them to know if, for example, kids from a certain high school are always successful, or if kids who said something specific on their essay really meant it, or if the kid they admitted 'cause he played the tuba stuck with it during his college years, or if the kid who indicated he wanted to major in Bulgarian Intermural Sports stuck with it.</p>

<p>Anybody know??</p>

<p>The Admissions departments are SO overworked recently I doubt they have time to follow up!!!!</p>

<p>I believe that Harvard tracks kids at least through their freshman year by checking in with the dorm proctors. However, there is no obligation for students to continue with an E.C. that they wrote about on their application.</p>

<p>I know that for at least one Ivy, they decide how many kids from my Alma Mater get in every year based on how previous years admits have done- regardless of the general applicant pool. So yes, they do.</p>

<p>Arbiter213, how do you know that? Is it urban legend, or is it true??</p>

<p>DD's and DS's adcoms couldn't possibly be keeping track of them. In both cases, the adcom that dealt with our kids left the university before the kid matriculated.</p>

<p>An admissions officer from said college stated such.</p>

<p>Uh, no --- no chance.</p>

<p>I should specify that all they care about when tracking is performance via grades. Nothing else.</p>

<p>At my LAC, the adcom who interviewed me remembered me and would check in periodically. I gave tours, so was around the admissions office once in awhile, and she'd just ask how things were going, or congratulate me if she'd heard about something I'd done. Nothing formal or fancy, but a nice reminder of why I chose a small school :)</p>

<p>This particular adcom kept up with a number of students in my class, mainly because we were the first class she ever "let in" and she left the school the same year that we graduated. Like I said, though, just personal interest and friendliness...nothing formal.</p>

<p>My friend in admissions says that she loosely tracks kids over the next few years when she runs into professors on campus and asks about how some kids are doing. She also hears feedback from the student health center and the discipline committee. She says there are a few kids every year that she tracks more closely, usually where there was a controversy about the admit decision and she's looking for future guidance about similar situations.</p>

<p>I would think the AdComms would be interested in some longitudinal data to validate or invalidate their original decisions.</p>

<p>But I'm a numbers person; I like data.</p>

<p>I mean, suppose you're the AdComm at Big Flagship State University. Don't you want to know whether the 20 kids from Little County High School do better than, worse than, or the same as the 30 kids from Big City High School with identical scores and GPAs?</p>

<p>With all the focus on GPAs and scores, I'd think someone would want to correlate them with performance during college.</p>

<p>If I were a statistician, I'd take the project on myself. Dissertation topic, anyone?</p>

<p>VeryHappy, great thread!</p>

<p>What I wish someone would study would be high school peers' perceptions of which seniors have the necessary "stuff" to go to an Ivy League school vs. who actually gets admitted. I'd be interested in seeing to what extent kids and adcoms agree on who's the "real thing". In the cases where the kids don't think a particular student is Ivy-material, it would be fun to see how that student ends up perfoming on campus.</p>

<p>Sometimes, adcoms see qualities peers don't, and sometimes peers see what adcoms don't.</p>

<p>When i worked at a small liberal arts college, absolutely. In fact, it was one of the major satisfactions of the job, watching young people you'd met as prospective students blossom, mature, and succeed on campus. And it was upsetting when students struggled. Now sometimes I see the names of women in the alumni magazine and read about their accomplishments, and I can remember meeting them at their high school!</p>

<p>At a bigger university, that's a tougher thing. But schools do the kind of work that VeryHappy mentioned in post #12. This research tends to be on more of an aggregate level, seeing how their freshmen grades are overall, or in certain gateway courses. Such reports don't generally track individuals, but rather groups of students, like all those who came in with a certain high school GPA, or who came in without any calculus (for example).</p>

<p>The University of Michigan does run reports on students by high school and reports first-year grades back to high school principals. This is part of a state reporting requirement. </p>

<p>The Omaha World Herald did a great report (on a similar basis) a few years back, on students at the University of Nebraska. They found that graduates from certain school districts tended to do well at the University (gradewise). They did follow-up in the districts and talked to teachers and principals, and also talked to students who reflected on the transition from high school to college. It was interesting. Some of the high schools whose students did so well were surprising--small towns with not a lot of fancy extras.</p>

<p>Hoedown, that's very interesting. It's good to know there's real data that's being analyzed. I would think it could help improve high schools, if someone took it seriously.</p>

<p>Thanks, TheGFG. BTW, your son and mine are at the same school. Mine's an '11; I think yours is a '10.</p>

<p>We run the report being mentioned above. We get a book each summer that lists every student (not just the first years) at the University by high school.</p>

<p>Aside from the obvious uses, it's very helpful when preparing for the travel season. We might email a few alumni of the high schools we're visiting to get an update on them or to see if they would be a contact for the students we'll be seeing at their school. I think students and counselors like to get those updates.</p>

<p>On the personal side, it's pretty easy to keep in touch with the students who do ambassador-type activities with the office, but I don't go searching for kids if they aren't involved in that way. The average student probably receives their offer letter and forgets about the admission office. It's always nice when one of them takes a moment to come back and say hello.</p>

<p>A quick story...a few years ago, a student I admitted while working at another school showed up in my office at UVa. Turns out he was starting classes at UVa Law and remembered hearing that I was here. He's kept in touch since then and I really enjoy hearing from him.</p>

<p>In addition to the reports mentioned in posts #16 and 14, colleges track the number of students from particular hs who w/d for academic reasons.</p>

<p>Dean J, thanks for the information. </p>

<p>Do you know if anyone tries to correlate, say, SAT scores with performance in college? I would think the CollegeBoard might be interested. OTOH, maybe not.</p>

<p>There have been studies that correlate high school GPAs and SAT scores with performance during the first year of college, and actually, my senior thesis has to do with the correlation between high school performance and performance as a college senior.</p>

<p>And your findings are . . . . ??</p>