"It has been twenty years since I began my career in college admissions and I am finally seeing a shift in the process which benefits our kids. It’s been a long time coming—a hard-fought battle between student advocates and the powerful Ivory Towers that have continually raised the bar for certain groups of students they deemed too commonplace in their applicant pool.
These are the five biggest trends in college admissions which show a definite shift in power from the colleges to students:" …
Most of these seem to be relevant mainly to highly selective colleges and students in elite high schools.
A typical student in a typical high school who will attend a community college or moderately selective local university that admits by formula (of GPA/rank/tests) is not affected by these trends. Indeed, some of these trends (such as starting to think about college earlier, may be disadvantageous for students outside the elite high schools.
In addition to agreeing with the poster above, a more cynical reading of these trends is that they nearly all are a move to more subjective evaluations, with two advantages to those doing this. One is the subjectivity makes it easier withstand any court scrutiny that might be coming, and the second is it helps grow the need for a large cadre of admissions officers. As an example, every time I read “impact” I think that there is almost no way to check whether any claimed impact is really the case, or to compare one impact to another. The idea that emphasizing impact will enable HS students to pursue their dreams instead of chasing whatever impact is supposed to mean to admissions seems either clueless or ludicrous to me.
Interesting that the article directly contradicts those here that say “recommended” subject tests actually mean “required,” unless you’re low income and can’t afford them.
This echoes some of what was being said last yr:
https://youtu.be/eLJCHWn2yAs
And https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/making-caring-common-in-college-admissions/3197142.html
Quote from the article:
“This has led students to take as many Advanced Placement courses as they can fit into their schedule, sometimes leaving them with no lunch period and hours of homework each night. Growing research suggests that schools offering the AP curriculum are only teaching to the test, the AP exams at the end of the year.”
I have never heard a single top school who expects applicants to take as many AP’s as they can. That is simply a lie. They have consistently expressed interest in students who have taken a rigorous program, including some AP’s if they are available, but they have also consistently told students that taking a very large number of AP’s will not impress them.
They have also told parents and students consistently that it is much better to take a more modest number of AP’s do well at them, and be able to submit a well-rounded application overall.
“And even the elite colleges who have held Subject Tests as the ultimate differentiator between a good student and a superior student are toning down this requirement.”…" This is a positive sign for students who believe they have something extraordinary to offer to colleges beyond their test scores."
I agree with this, as stated. It is better for the student with something extraordinary to offer. However, there is an unfortunate side effect.
Over time, I have been talking with the parent of a low income applicant. The kid is a good student with a solid gpa (~3.8). She is interested in pre-med and has expressed strong interest in schools like Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell.
I suggested that there are many other schools that offer excellent pre-med programs, but they persisted in their focus on top schools. I then encouraged the parent that to improve her daughters chances to get admitted to a top school, she should take a few AP courses during high school (English, biology, chemistry and math would have been ideal) and also take a couple of subject tests in her favorite subjects.
The parent replied that her daughter is not doing that because the Stanford website says that neither is required, and that not doing them will not be held against her. That is technically true, but this student has nothing extraordinary to offer that I can discern. The student is a white female and her EC’s are that she volunteers for special olympics and is a cheerleader. She has no national or state level achievements.
She is now a senior with no AP’s or Subject tests. Her family just returned from driving her around the entire country to visit Stanford, Cornell, Harvard and Princeton. Her mother says that the high school guidance counselor thinks she has “an excellent chance” to be admitted to these schools.
They do not understand that without any extraordinary achievement, her chances of success are very small because there is no apparent reason for a top school to actively choose this student out of the applicant stack. Their lack of understanding the process, and poor advice from the high school guidance counselor have, in all probability, failed this student.
Making matters worse, the parents have decided to limit her to only 5 applications. They see no reason to apply to more schools because the applications are expensive and the guidance counselor who told them that she has “an excellent chance” to be accepted to these schools, so she thinks it is a waste of time and money.
I suspect that even if she were, on a long shot, admitted to one of these schools for pre-med, that at this point, while she may have the ability to compete effectively, she is far behind the level of knowledge her peers would be starting from, and does not have even a remote understanding of the level of workload that would ensue.
I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of working with her counselor to choose a safety school or two that she would be happy to attend, but I am not sure what they will actually do.
Watching this upcoming train wreck unfold has been very frustrating.
@Muchtolearn Would the student qualify for free apps because of low income status? Sounds like she really needs so safeties.
@suzyq7 I think they could get free apps. I told the mother that they could probably apply to many schools for free, just by asking and I encouraged her to do it. I am not sure what she will do. She may be too proud to ask for it.
I also strongly suggested that they use one application for a public EA or rolling admissions school that she likes, so that hopefully they can get an acceptance to some place early in order to reduce stress (and hopefully sidestep a potential disaster.)
The problem in this situation is that the mom and student latched on to the most optimistic meaning of the high school GC telling them that the daughter has “an excellent chance,” of getting into Stanford. They can not understand why I am concerned because they don’t know what they don’t know. I did manage to nudge the mom away from her initial plan of only applying to Stanford because, “She has pretty much decided that is where she wants to go.” The mom finally acquiesced to let her daughter apply to 5 schools, “Just in case.”
This experience has really emphasized to me just how confusing the competitive admissions process is for a typical family with no prior exposure to it. Not only is it confusing, but there is a lot of bad advice out there, and parents and students in that situation are entirely at the mercy of the quality of their high school GC. Some GC’s are amazing, but others are incompetent.
@turtle17 I could not agree with you more. Education is getting dumbed down constantly: just look at recent headlines stating that more students than ever are getting A’s yet SAT scores continue to fall. The SAT is getting watered down because students needs to do well on these tests and the SAT was losing to many customers to the ACT because it is easier. The diversity police are fast at work trying to find ways around a inevitable ruling on affirmative action.
@Center What prove do you have that the ACT is “easier” than the SAT?
My recollection of the Stanford visit was that the admissions talk started with the line “No one in this room will be admitted to Stanford” or something like it, with a strong emphasis on just what the really low acceptance rate means. Others aren’t that different I think. If that didn’t do it with this family, I’m not sure what will.
I also agree a side effect of minimizing subject tests and the like is to increase the number of people thinking I have all I need to get in to elite school X, where all I need means mostly I am really passionate about me and going there. This side effect is obvious, so I think the universities know it. The decision they’ve made is that it is a price worth paying to have less data sitting in admissions files telling them which students actually accomplished the most academically, and thus making it easier to make whatever holistic choices they want.
The AP thing is bogus because many of the elite schools have “class rank” as “very important” on the CDS and brag about the 95% of the enrolled class being in the top 10% of their high school. Well, at least in D18’s large public HS, you aren’t going to be in the top 10% of the class by the end of your junior year unless you have taken 6-8 AP classes and have a 4.0 UW GPA.
@droppedit: That’s a ton of A’s. And a ton of kids taking a ton of AP’s.
Does most of the student body take 6-8 AP’s and most students in AP classes get A’s?
@PurpleTitan – I don’t know how many AP classes the kids take. D has talked about the high end kids taking AP classes during the summer and online during the school year to boost their GPAs so that they’re in the top 10%. There are around 700 kids in the senior class and D18 is at 13% with 4 APs and a 4.0 UW. The 2016 class average ACT was 25. I imagine that avg has gone up for the class of 2018. There are a couple of kids in 10th grade taking GaTech calculus!
My kids went to a highly regarded boarding school with rigorous academics. Zero APs offered. Colleges don’t care as long as they know the coursework is rigorous. Even 5 years ago, the college counselors at the high school were telling parents not to worry about APs (as some had their kids self-study and take the tests anyway). You don’t need to play that game and I hope public schools will move away from the AP race. It’s just a money making enterprise for college board and creates unnecessary stress for students, IMO.
Is that supposed to be a joke?
I went to a public magnet that has never taught AP classes (though plenty of students still take AP tests).
It tends to do well in placement in to Ivies/equivalents (among the top 50 HS’s in the country even when ranking by a percentage of the graduating class, and that ranking is dominated by small elite private prep/boarding schools).
^ BTW, the average ACT score there is now 32, so 50th percentile students tend to do at least decently in college admissions.
Far more people get perfect ACT scores than perfect SAT scores. The number of perfect ACT scores has increased dramatically over the past 10-15 years, while the number of perfect SAT scores has remained relatively flat. The ACT clearly made the decision to target a distribution with more high scores.