Are we overdue for a new college admissions paradigm? An article last week in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” asked whether requiring recommendation letters is fair or even outdated, given that public school counselors are overwhelmed by both counseling loads and the variety of other duties dumped in their laps. As a result many may not get to know their students, even as their independent school counterparts spend hours crafting letters that put their students in the best light.
The question about recommendation letters follows two other recent reports in which NACAC was a partner. The more recent of the two, released in conjunction with the non-profit group Just Equations, questioned whether colleges put too much emphasis on Calculus in evaluating applicants’ math preparation and capabilities. A future ECA blog post will look at the issues raised by that report as well as some collateral questions. Prior to that report, NACAC had partnered with NASFAA (National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators) on a report funded by the Lumina Foundation, “Toward a More Equitable Future for Postsecondary Access,” looking at ways in which the admissions and financial aid processes might promote more equity.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech had a section built around the phrase “100 years later,” referring to racial opportunity a century after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Should we rethink college admission “100 years later”? The admissions process we have today had its genesis nearly a century ago.
Jerome Karabel’s The Chosen, a history of admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and a fascinating scholarly read, details how holistic admission and conventions like essays, activities, and recommendation letters came about in the 1920s, turning admission to college from a purely academic enterprise to more resemble applying to a country club. Karabel concludes that all of those changes arose as a way to limit the percentage of Jewish students at elite colleges.
The world, and especially the world of higher education, are very different than they were a century ago. Yes, colleges have moved from admitting the “best student” to the “best graduate” to the “best class,” but do various pieces of the admission processes serve students and society as well as they serve institutions?
I think it is interesting that NACAC has partnered on the two reports. Under the capable leadership of CEO Angel Perez, the association is searching for its niche or “brand” now that it is no longer allowed to serve as the arbiter of professional ethics. There is both opportunity and risk in that endeavor.
Back during my tenure as NACAC President, I argued that NACAC should see itself not as a membership organization for college counselors but rather as a professional organization promoting college counseling. There is certainly a legitimate role for NACAC to promote discussion about the assumptions underlying the admissions process without being prescriptive. It is one thing to raise questions about the value of calculus and another to tell member colleges that they shouldn’t value calculus.
For “Toward a More Equitable Future for Postsecondary Access” NACAC and NASFAA brought together a group of admission and financial aid thought leaders to question assumptions about practices in both areas. The report is informed by a presupposition that the college admissions process was “not fundamentally designed to promote equity” and that elements of systemic racism can be found throughout college admission.
The admission recommendations focus on Black students while the financial aid recommendations are targeted for all underserved students. They reflect two larger societal issues of concern. One is the decline in Black students enrolling in college over the decade from 2010 to 2019 from 66% to 57%. The other is government disinvestment in public higher education.
On the admission side of the house there are four areas that the report looks at–institutional selectivity, the application process, how admissions decisions are made, and staffing in admission offices. Let’s look at each briefly.
The report argues that “many of the processes and criteria associated with highly selective admission are designed to exclude, not include” and that “the fundamental inputs associated with selective admission are themselves tainted by racial inequity.” It references NACAC research that shows that “the more selective the college, the more weight is placed on added variables.” It also wonders whether students of color are disproportionately excluded by the half of colleges that don’t admit a third or more of their applicants, but doesn’t provide evidence of that.
I find the section on selectivity the least convincing part of the report. The focus on selectivity as a proxy for prestige is clearly one of the most objectionable parts of the college admission landscape, but selectivity exercises an unfair and inequitable influence on the process for all students, not just students of color. It is true that the use of Early Decision as a tool for selectivity advantages students from privileged backgrounds with access to savvy college counselors and that test-prep and the opportunity to test multiple times are inequitable, but it is also the case that many highly-selective colleges and universities craft classes with 40-50% students of color.
The second area examined by the report is the application process itself. The report argues that applying to college was “designed as a barrier to entry.” It specifically addresses application fees and the lack of equal access to college counseling resources as impediments to equity, and proposes a “student-centric” application process where a student could select a college and have his or her records shared digitally without additional action on the part of the student.
That recommendation aligns with the argument in the report’s third section that a student’s K-12 experience should be the primary factor in making admissions decisions. It recognizes that high school grades are a flawed measure, but argues that other factors are even more so. It suggests that only half of institutions that require test scores in the admissions process have done validity research on what test scores actually tell them. It also criticizes the cost of the tests, describing them as a “civil rights concern,” and points out that even the availability of fee waivers forces students to “prove that they are poor.”
The college admissions process should be a Goldilocks process, neither too easy nor too hard. Anything we ask students to do in applying should be predictive of success in college, and we should carefully evaluate the application hurdles we ask students to clear. At the same time, applying to college should encourage discernment and require sweat on the brow.
The bigger issue is access to college counseling. We have traditionally had a school-based counseling model, and that should clearly remain at the center of our efforts, but we also need to recognize that effective school-based college counseling is not available for many students. I’d like to see NACAC focus on developing new resources to provide knowledge about college and find ways to connect students with counselors through technology and social media.
The final admissions issue highlighted in the report is the need to diversify our profession so that students see themselves in the professionals they work with. The report points out that “the absence (of) Black perspectives in the admission and financial aid offices presents a tacit, unintended barrier to entry for many Black students, particularly those who are first in their family to attend college.” College admission and college counseling are professions where the most important capital is the quality of individual practitioners, and attracting and retaining outstanding professionals from a wide array of backgrounds has to be a priority.
The NACAC/NASFAA report raises important questions about rethinking what we do and why we do it. The most important, and obvious, change might be moving the admissions process from institution-centered to student-centered.