UW admits--where do they actually enroll?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Wisconsin
21

<p>

</p>

<p>Agreed. UW’s top students–the ones it should be reaching out for and calling high achievers–should be like the average, even above average, Ivy admit. I’m not saying UW can match the consistency of quality seen at the Ivies.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>The pdf shown is comparing the yield of high achievers with the yield of admits. Their definition of a high achiever is 30+ ACT. If this is just shorthand, then why was the data divided in such a way? Is the pdf supposed to be a shorthand data summary of the “real” study that is yet to come?</p>

<p>Look, either this data is useless and simply satisfies curiousity, or its useful. If you think it’s useful, then explain to me what the yields/college choices of WI residents scoring above a 30 on the ACT tells us. If we all agree it’s useless but interesting, then great.</p>

22

<p>Let me put this another way: 64% of the supposed high achievers chose OOS publics or privates. Are you suggesting that 64% of WI students who got over a 30 on the ACT were accepted into a full need college or given full merit scholarships covering their entire need? Or are these high achievers unusually over-representing families with no financial need?</p>

<p>There are many things that a high ACT score could be measuring besides academic achievement or potential. They include anacademically supporting environment and wealth. </p>

<p>Is UW trying to increase the yield of wealthy students living in privileged, nurturing environments?</p>

23

<p>You misread the data for one. 56% of high achieving instaters did go to UW vs 63% overall for instate. So 44% went to other schools. I don’t find that very troubling as the best students will always have more choices. That’s why your enrolled data is nearly always significantly lower than the admitted although some schools try to hide that and just report admitted so they look better to the unsophisticated. A gap but a small one. As you know it takes more than just a 30 ACT to get into UW. But discussing all the parameters would muddy the issue so much you could not draw any conclusions. I would assume that the UW analysts have enough overall data to feel comfortable using the 30 ACT metric. </p>

<p>I just saw a report today that UW increased grant aid to instaters by 100% from 2008 to 2010 with help from the Madison Initiative and other funds. With other non UW instate programs just kinking in such as the Morgridge scholarships for any resident going to any state U the ability to keep the best instate should improve over the near term. </p>

<p>I have no data on income and ACT scores but other studies have shown a clear connection with higher income to higher test scores. And yes, they also are working to improve merit aid that would go to such people. One way they are doing that right now is to improve the coordination of the many department scholarships with admissions. At UW nearly every dept has it’s own scholarship money. Together these are 100’s of scholarships not going through the uW fin aid system.</p>

24

<p>

</p>

<p>Thanks for catching that. I meant that 64% went instate (there were 8% that chose a different UW system school) so 36% would have had their financial needs met significantly enough to prefer a non-UW school. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Exactly. Why would you use a test whose performance measures correlate strongly with income to determine high achievers? Now, it’s definitely possible that high income students are simply higher achievers on average. But why play that game? </p>

<p>There’s a confounding variable: wealth. We don’t know if higher income test takers do better on the ACT because the test favors them or if they’re simply high achievers. </p>

<p>There’s plenty of other confounding variables. We shouldn’t be using such a test to measure achievement when we could simply browse extracurriculars and recommendations to see tangible achievements. Since we don’t have the time for extensive browsing, lets simply use the admit decisions of top universities in the nation as a quick, objective measure that such achievement exists.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Yeah, that’s the problem. We’re about to give aid to top ACT scorers when we have no idea what the ACT is measuring. Is it measuring the vocabulary skills most commonly possessed by affluent students? Because that sounds to me a lot like simply measuring affluence. </p>

<p>Like I said, a 3.4, 31 ACT, mediocre EC, no diversity student is not desirable. He or she does not deserve merit aid. Yet the provost office seems to be singling out such students and labeling them as “high achievers.” </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Yes! I agree. You need more than an ACT score to get into UW. Which candidates had to have more going for them outside of ACT scores: the guy with the 34 ACT or the guy with the 26 ACT? There’s no reason to expect that high ACT scorers had stellar applications all around. It could very well be that their above average ACT scores let their otherwise average application into the door. We don’t know. </p>

<p>If it takes more than an ACT score to get in, why doesn’t it take more than an ACT score to be labeled a high achiever?</p>

<p>There’s a good reason it takes more than a 30 ACT to get into UW Madison. Using the ACT as a measure of high achievement is baseless and ignores the much larger picture of what a stellar candidate really is. The UW Madison should be recruiting stellar candidates, and ACT scores aren’t going to find those candidates.</p>

25

<p>“Who the hell cares if the 3.4 GPA, 31 ACT, mediocre EC student chose Case Western over UW? He/she was barely an admit at either college.”</p>

<p>“As you know it takes more than just a 30 ACT to get into UW.”</p>

<p>Really? According to the study 92.4 percent of Wisconsin residents who scored a 30 or more on the ACT were admitted, and according to the old “Admissions Expectations” chart the only applicants in this group who face an uphill battle getting admitted are those with high school GPAs below 3.1 (and even there the admit rate is 30 percent). There aren’t a whole lot of “bare admits” at UW with 31s on the ACT.</p>

26

<p>To paraphrase Churchill, I suspect that the SAT/ACT tests are the worst measure of college potential available – except for all the others. </p>

<p>I also think your belief that “elite” schools know the secret formula is hugely misguided. From my observation, the essential purpose of the legions of admissions officers poring over the applications at those schools is marketing – they all want the selected few to feel special. In truth, those schools, once they take their development cases and fill their various quotas, could take the remaining tens of thousands of apps, apply some very basic quantitative trimming, throw the remaining thousands of apps in a bag and have mischievous monkeys pick the winners out, and would end up with classes that would not look or perform in a significantly different way than the classes selected by the light of the full moon by the admissions high priests. But who would want to go to Ivy U (or to pay for it) if that’s all there was to it? It would destroy the luxury brand cachet.</p>

27

<p>

</p>

<p>Excellent. So you agree with me that there are plenty of 30+ ACT scorers who are not well rounded and UW should not focus on them as high achievers when deciding what type of financial/merit aid to provide students or when comparing the yields of various sects of the student body. If the ACT is your claim to fame, then you are not a student that a top 30 college should be chasing.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>What kind of top student wants to go to UW Madison when “top students” are all the oafs who scored 30 or more on their ACT. </p>

<p>If the admissions game is all a marketing ploy, then it’s pretty bad PR to pick high achievers based on one stat…Doesn’t sound like you’re making them feel special at all.</p>

<p>Either way, we lose the top students: either because of poor marketing or because we’re not identifying top students. Although, I certainly don’t agree with you that admissions is just marketing. </p>

<p>Suppose admits at Harvard were randomly selected. You don’t lose the top professors and lecturers just because your undergrad admissions policy is odd–nor do you lose the student body that already exists. Top talent attracts top talent. Do you really think the pool of students applying would drop significantly in quality? There’s way too many top students. </p>

<p>There’s no reason for Harvard to take such risks, but PR alone is not a good reason to spend the money it takes to run an admissions office. Harvard would still attract top talent without the supposed marketing scheme.</p>

28

<p>Presuming that only the “oafs” who score over 30 will go to UW is just ridiculous. Most of them will have all the grades, APs and ECs you would expect to find and not that many will be from the high test score low GPA category. Even then being smart but not getting great grades in HS is not uncommon among the more creative and interesting types. They know HS is just stupid and grinding for high grades in HS is not something they are interested in doing. We all knew the type. I was that type. </p>

<p>UW spends quite a bit of time reviewing applications, reading essays and all that–it is not purely admissions by the numbers. They look for interesting and unusual talents. I think you have no clue as to how it really works. The one thing UW has always been a little frightended over was being considered elitist. That word is pretty much toxic in Wisconsin due to cultural and historic reasons. So going out of their way to go after very elite level students was not really a priority–if they came fine, if not fine. That has changed under Biddy Martin but there is still resistance at many levels. She even mentioned it in one of her recent speeched–I’ll see if I can find the quote. Its the same reason the Honors program does not have a special dorm or many perks–afraid to be called elitist. I now serve on the board of advisors for the Honors Program and I am trying to change that but when I brought it up at the last meeting people were very reluctant to embrace making the program more “elite” and special. It’s the Midwest “everyone is above average” ethic.</p>

29

<p>It may not be admissions by numbers across the board but at the 30+ ACT stage it’s certainly close to it. That 92.4 percent of students who applied to UW with a 30 or more were accepted confirms this. You have to have pretty mediocre grades to not get accepted with a 30.</p>

30

<p>I think if you read Martin’s end of year statement carefully you will feel she is very much on top of making the UW more attractive to the best students.</p>

<p>That chart is out of date and this year’s admissions were the most competitive ever. And as more offers were accepted they had zero admits from the waitlist. </p>

<p>[Chancellor</a> Biddy Martin: 2010-year-end-letter](<a href=“http://www.chancellor.wisc.edu/2010-year-end-letter.html]Chancellor”>http://www.chancellor.wisc.edu/2010-year-end-letter.html)</p>

31

<p>

</p>

<p>Here’s what I don’t get: You assume there’s a pretty high correlation between ACT score of admitted students and other factors that make a student desirable (GPA, ECs, good interviews, etc.,).</p>

<p>Instead of making this assumption, why not just see what the actual results were when all these factors were considered. I.e. why not identify UW high achievers as top 20 admits.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>So do you think we should be actively trying to increase the yields of students with low GPA, poor ECs, but high ACT scores because they might be creative? I disagree. I think most such students are just lazy. Even if most creative people also fall into this category, there are far more lazy people than creative people. You can’t start recruiting everyone from this category just because a few of them may be extraordinary.</p>

<p>Note that “low,” “poor,” and “high” are relative to the UW student body–not relative to the population. That’s our benchmark, correct? We are recruiting for UW Madison, not for the US.</p>

32

<p>Barrons the 92.4 acceptance rate for applicants with a 30 or better isn’t from the chart that the UW has discontinued (only one year ago incidentally) – it’s from the report itself, which you’ve already acknowledged is “current.”</p>

<p>Sure, this was a competitive year, but the raw numbers for admitted students didn’t change much. Nothing suggests that decent students who apply to UW with a 30 or more on the SAT are suddenly encountering significant resistence from the admissions committee.</p>

33

<p>And justtotalk, what on earth are you talking about? A college can only have access to so much data. Identify top twenty admits? A school can ask a student who turned it down what school the student elected to go to, but now you’re proposing that a student identify every other school that he or she was accepted to? Sounds like a bit much.</p>

34

<p>One database. All admit decisions entered in. Access available only to accredited universities. Student opts in by checking a box on the common app. Decisions not viewable until regular decisions pass.</p>

<p>Student didn’t do any work. It’s no different that giving up your right to view teacher recommendations. Most applicants do this every year.</p>

<p>I don’t know if this would be considered collusion. But it doesn’t sound complicated to the average Joe like myself.</p>

35

<p>Not even sure that would be legal (at a certain point the antitrust laws prevent colleges from exchanging information), but even if it were legal there’s the added administrative cost involved in entering all the data. And for what end, exactly? There comes a point where proxies such as test scores are good enough. There’s no such thing as perfect information – or the need for it. Not to mention that not everyone agrees with your premise that the best students are necessarily those admitted to the top 20. As MilwDad rightly observed, when it comes to the top 20 admission has as much do to with the whims of the adcoms than anything resembling merit. Harvard itself has said that it could easily replace an entire entering class with another group of students selected from the same applicant pool that is just as strong. You’re splitting hairs.</p>

<p>Oh, and barrons, I’m not sure you’re right on this being the most competitive year ever for UW. From what I see 2008 was (52.7 admit rate versus 55 percent this year).</p>

36

<p>

</p>

<p>If it’s good enough to identify the students we should be enticing, then it’s good enough to identify the students we should be admitting. You’re essentially increasing the proportion of such students by trying to increase their yields.</p>

<p>Higher yield from 30+ ACT scorers ultimately means less admits for other students. I consider that a big deal, because I don’t think UW should disregard other criteria in favor of ACT scores.</p>

37

<p>Higher ACT scores should only be used to identify high achievers all else equal. I argue that it’s much easier for high ACT scorers to enter UW, so all else is not equal.</p>

38

<p>According to my adcom reps the quality of applicants has gotten much stronger over the last few years–the old if it’s harder to get into it must be good is starting to work in UW’s favor. I also think the new chancellor and her programs has gotten very good press compared to some of the bad press a few years earlier. Instead of reading baout top profs leaving there were big articles about how they are hiring when most people are not. The average ACT/SAT went up as the same year (2009) acceptance rate went up over the prior year.</p>

<p>Here’s another good quote I looking for from Bidday Martin in an article last month.</p>

<p>"She says UW should remain “competitive on a world stage” by charging median tuition but supplement it with effective fund-raising and need-based financial support. Looking ahead, she says she will continue a process well under way to boost UW-Madison’s reputation here and nationally, a story that needs more telling in part because of “people’s commitment to humility” here in Wisconsin.</p>

<p>[Madison360:</a> Two years in, UW?s Martin is many things, including careful](<a href=“http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/madison_360/article_f5d21413-fbf5-55d7-935c-f6274d56a102.html]Madison360:”>http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/madison_360/article_f5d21413-fbf5-55d7-935c-f6274d56a102.html)</p>

39

<p>You are attacking the straw man of entrants who are admitted only because of their ACT score. There are few such admits at Wisconsin or any other top university, as Barrons has said. </p>

<p>I certainly wouldn’t dispute that UW could find ways to do a better job of both identifying and attracting “top” students, however you want to define them (indeed, I have expressed my own irritation in the past over some foolish bureaucratic decisions we have encountered), but among my acquaintances alone I know many such students who are already highly attracted to UW because of its bargain tuition and its exceptional academic programs. Any great student who chooses UW will find educational opportunities available to him or her that are in the first rank of American higher education – even if they don’t get a snooty window decal out of it, and even if occasionally they will be cruelly distracted from their studies by the sheer fun of being a college student in Madison.</p>

40

<p>

</p>

<p>It’s not a straw man argument. </p>

<p>Suppose you simplify the admissions process at UW for a second and pretend it’s based on a point system. If an applicant gains 100 points, they’re in. Suppose you can get a max of 25 points for ACT, 25 points for GPA, 25 points for ECs, 25 points for essays and recommendations, and 50 other points based on many factors–state residency, first generation student, overcoming difficult childhood, diversity factor etc.</p>

<p>So you’ve got all your admits. They’re the ones that scored 100+. Now you’re going to take these admits and say that the ones who got 20+ points on the ACT (out of 25) are the high achievers? And that we should increase their yield if possible?</p>

<p>Why are they better than the other admits that got over 100 points? Shouldn’t you be trying to get the students who had the most overall amount of points–out of 150? All we really know is that the students who had really high ACT scores needed less points from other factors. Everything else is an assumed correlation between the different factors. </p>

<p>I don’t think this point based system is so far off the real admissions process. It’s well known that Michigan had such a point system not long ago.</p>

<p>We should be laughing at this definition of high achievement.</p>