do admission officers review students whom they accepted into their schools later on to see how they’re performing at college?
I doubt it. As soon as May 1 rolls around they start working on the next year’so application season. Some that reach out and make a personal connection with a particular applicant might enjoy hearing from one once in a while once they are a student.
Like do they look over how they’re performing at college by checking grades and everything
Nope.
or do they even revisit students’ application files
Years ago, I know that at one grad school, they did. Claimed they could predict with high confidence, based on undergraduate institution, major. GPA, test scores, etc. how well any accepted student would do in their program. But I didn’t get the sense that they did it to guide admissions.
I think that if there was were a lot of negative feedback from profs about a class in general that they might revisit on a high level but that normally, they just push on to the next year.
@gardenstategal what so they revisited accepted students’ application files again when selecting new applicants?
@gardenstategal I don’t get what you mean… what do you mean by a class and profs?
No, not to select new students but to understand how an applicant’s background would correlate with academic success at the school.
By class, I mean entire matriculation class. Profs means professors. If there were widespread concerns about the level of student preparation, I suspect admissions would get that feedback.
The job of admissions officers is done once the class is assembled.
Yes, they can get feedback on students they’re interested in learning about. It can figure in the next class decisions. Eg, that students from this hs consistently do well, that students from a challenged hs are nonetheless well prepared, or that a sibling of an applicant is doing well. Depends. They aren’t checking grades or gpa.
My wife was an AO years ago, and yes, they sometimes did, but more just from a curiosity standpoint or because a student kept in touch or otherwise was notable. Keep in mind that other departments in administration will be tracking retention, grades, etc., so that information on a global class-level would always be at the AO’s fingertips to reflect on “how they did” with a given class of admits. I would also imagine that from time-to-time someone in admissions or elsewhere will go back and do particularized research, e.g., how have our Native American students fared since we increased our recruiting efforts, or the like, but those would be specialized and discreet inquiries.
I believe the work I mentioned above was used in part to make sure certain types of students were supported to succeed. (I.e., the student with a humanities degree and no math classes in the previous 3 years had to attend a special, pre-orientation math class and had a special section of first semester quantitative classes with an extra session each week in an effort to ensure they were not so lost at the outset that they’d fall hopelessly behind.)
Most schools are invested in making their stud succeed.
You mean as a form of data assessment or just on an individual basis? They don’t where I work. We track transfers (and their starting institutions) relative to native students, but not high schools. It would be interesting, actually.
Institutional research presumably does on an aggregate level, and the results may be used for future admission policy changes.
For example, the success rate of students with a particular attribute relative to others without, but with similar academic credentials and other characteristics, could lead the college to decide whether such attribute should be considered in admission or how.
I agree with @ucbalumnus – periodically there will be some discussion about quality of students, or students that are not succeeding, and they will try to look for correlations with admission-level data (or as is sometimes said … why did the `admission mistakes’ happen). But given everything else going on in a University, this isn’t frequent. Moreover, my guess is that most problematic cases as related to how a student transitions into the college (e.g. becomes a party-animal or becomes depressed), as opposed to any admission time attributes.
I have seen the specific comments about an individual or two, used in admissions input. “His brother is a junior and doing well.” Or, citing others from that hs, in various contexts. This is different than what Institutional Research folks may do.
Not at a person by person level, but I do think some colleges evaluate for patterns of success at their colleges compared to certain admission qualifications.
@osuprof Oh, so admission officers do get to know about those “problematic cases”?
@osuprof @ucbalumnus @PetraMC @BooBooBear @gardenstategal @NorthernMom61
OK I’m just a little bit worried I’m badly representing my HS here at college because I got in as an applicant with a strong “spike” in Econ with As in AP Econs, awards from competitions, letter of rec from my econ teacher highlighting my academic excellence in econ but I think I may be failing an introductory econ class my first semester here at college cos I got bored and didn’t study for it. I did change the grading basis to Pass/Not passes so it won’t impact on my GPA but I feel bad because my HS guidance counselor always told us to do well in first semester at college because adcom will look at our grades and evaluate admitted students’ HS and each school’s GPA credibility and credibility in general.
I’m not failing all my classes though; I’m taking three courses this semester and only in econ am I failing - otherwise, I think I’m performing above average.
So my question is, would my econ grade reflect poorly of my high school? I’m the first one from my HS to get into the school I’m going right now so I’m especially worried