"That" Counselor

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” on March 7, 2022)

Could that be me?  Am I “that” guidance counselor?

I had that thought last week upon reading Michele Norris’s opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled “The maddeningly limited vision of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s guidance counselor.”  The column talks about the Supreme Court nominee’s belief that her high school guidance counselor urged her to “lower her sights” when she wanted to attend Harvard.  

The column goes on to say that Post columnist Jonathan Capehart had done a follow-up survey on Twitter and found lots of successful professionals who all felt they had “that” guidance counselor. It also references Michele Obama recalling her high school guidance counselor suggesting that she rethink her plan to follow her older brother to Princeton.

I did not serve as college counselor to either of them (although, sadly, I may be old enough to have done so). That doesn’t keep the sentiments expressed in the column from stinging.  They are a gut punch to our profession.  Counseling is above all about helping students make decisions about their future, and that is a noble calling, one damaged and perhaps even destroyed by the allegations against “that” counselor.  The perceptions from Jackson and others referenced in Norris’s column should lead to serious self-reflection for all of us. 

I’m hoping there is another side to the story, that the truth is more nuanced than a counselor (“guidance” counselor is an antiquated term, supplanted by “school” counselor) attempting to dissuade a student from following their dreams. I have never told a student that they shouldn’t apply to a particular college.  That’s not my job. But I have also at times had a little voice in my head during conversations with students and parents, a voice that sounded exactly like Chris Tucker in Rush Hour asking Jackie Chan, “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?”  Is what I am trying to say what is being heard?

That is particularly true when having conversations about chances of admission.  As already stated, I would never tell a student they shouldn’t apply to a particular college or university, but I do believe it’s my job to help them understand the realities of the college admissions process.

Not everyone agrees that those conversations are appropriate.  My first boss believed that a counselor should never tell a student that they might not be admitted, because if it pans out it will appear that’s what the counselor wanted to happen.  I have had counseling colleagues at other schools prohibited from having conversations about admission chances. I think it’s hard to advise students effectively if that topic is off-limits, and I think that such a policy can boomerang on a school and counseling program.

That’s not to say those conversations aren’t fraught with peril.  All of us–students, parents, and counselors–process things on two different levels, one intellectual and the other emotional.  A student can understand intellectually that admission to a given college is unlikely, and yet be emotionally invested in a way they don’t recognize, such that it hurts when the predictable rejection occurs.  It is easy for students (and parents) to see college decisions as a measure of an individual’s worth, which of course they aren’t, and at those moments college counseling can become grief counseling.

I decided a long time ago that I would err on the side of more info rather than less, trying to give my students as much knowledge and context as possible.  I tell my students that they have a right to be disappointed by decisions, but I don’t want them to be shocked.  I’m also careful to make clear that I’d be glad to be wrong.

I hope that Ketanji Brown Jackson’s and Michele Obama’s guidance counselors were misunderstood, that they were guilty not of limited vision but of knowing too much.  Good college counseling is a tight-rope walk between supporting students’ dreams and making sure they have a safety net. College counselors should be trail guides, helping students plot a course, telling them what lies around the bend, and making sure they don’t miss the scenery as they navigate their personal journeys.  We should never tell a student not to take a certain path unless we know that danger lurks.

The tight-rope walk is even harder in the era of COVID.  The pandemic has affected all of us psychologically in ways we are not even aware of, and has delayed development in adolescents who have had “normal” upended for the past two years, unable to attend school in person, losing much of the social interaction that is so important, and having to live behind a mask.  All of that is hard enough for us as adults, but it’s producing far more students who are fragile.  It is our job to help them even when we ourselves are exhausted and struggling. 

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s memory of her interaction with her guidance counselor should cause all of us to think about the messages we send to students.  We need to be aware of our implicit biases, and we need to work constantly to communicate both effectively and sensitively.  The most important thing we communicate is our love for our students and our trust in them.  We are a helping profession, not a profession that hinders. The article tells us that we can do a better job.

Back in the 1960s Marlo Thomas became famous as “that girl” in the television series of the same name.  Neither she nor any of us want to be “that” counselor.

Rethinking College Admission: The NACAC/NASFAA Report

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. 

A Question About the New Digital SAT

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed's “Admissions Insider” on January 31, 2022)

Last week the College Board announced that the SAT–er, SAT (trademark) Suite of Assessments–will move to a digital format beginning next spring for international test-takers and the following spring for students in the United States.  The class of 2025 will be the first impacted by the change in the United States, with the Fall, 2023 PSAT and the Spring, 2024 SAT being the first administrations of the new test format.

The announcement was not unexpected.  Both the College Board and ACT have been hit with supply-chain issues due to COVID just as so many other industries have, with many students over the past two years unable to take the tests because both organizations are so reliant on high schools serving as test centers.  With so many students unable to test, the vast majority of colleges are test optional, and it is not clear that we will ever go back to the golden age of testing.  That becomes increasingly unlikely with the University of California system and other colleges becoming not just test-optional, but test-blind.

Both testing companies have been investigating moving to online testing for some time, with the College Board administering Advanced Placement exams online for all students in the spring of 2020 and some last spring.  One of the hangups has been test security.  At one point the College Board was talking about installing a 360-degree camera on test-takers’ devices to prevent cheating, something that raised significant concerns about privacy.  It appears that the CB has figured out the security issue without resorting to such draconian measures. 

The move to a digital format is actually not the most revolutionary aspect of the new test.  That would be the move to adaptive test questions, where for each section of the test students will answer a set of initial test questions, with their answers determining the difficulty of the questions they are then given.  That means that every student will not take the identical test.  It also helps to allay concerns about test security.

The use of adaptive testing is new as far as I know, but it is not a new concept.  More than 30 years ago a college admissions dean tied into the College Board told me that research had been done on an adaptive testing model that could deliver an accurate SAT score with as few as three questions.  It wasn’t implemented because there was fear the public wouldn’t accept it.

The new test will be longer than three questions, but also shorter than the current three-hour-plus test that can seem like an ordeal measuring stamina as much as whatever it is that the test currently attempts to measure.  The digital SAT will last two hours.  The biggest differences in content appear to be that there will be shorter reading passages and that students will be able to use a calculator for all math problems.  

It should not be a surprise that the College Board announcement hasn’t converted those who are already skeptical about the value of testing.  Several critics have described the announcement as new and improved packaging for the same old product, a kindler, gentler equivalent of what a number of politicians have referred to as “lipstick on a pig.”

There is one important question about the new test that I haven’t seen raised or answered.  Will the test be less expensive?

The current version of the SAT costs $55.  The new test, however, takes only two-thirds as much time.  It is also the case that the College Board’s overhead for administering the new test should be lower.  There won’t be printing costs, mailing costs, or the need to hire people to open and sort returned boxes of tests and answer sheets.  Shouldn’t the new testing format be accompanied by a lowering of the price for students to take the test?

I’m not holding my breath.  When the College Board moved to electronic score reporting to colleges, requiring only pressing a button rather than mailing paper reports, I don’t recall the cost for sending score reports dropping (if my memory is incorrect, it’s not the first time, and I apologize).

I commend the College Board for re-thinking delivery of the SAT.  One of the rationales for the new testing format is to reduce student stress and make testing more equitable.  If we’re really serious about that, let the College Board (and ACT) be like Jake from State Farm and give every student the Rodgers Rate or the Patrick Price to take their tests.  That will produce more equity and less stress.

The Need-Blind Antitrust Lawsuit

Justice is blind.  But are need-blind admission policies either blind or just?  

That’s one of the questions raised by a class-action lawsuit filed last week against sixteen prominent national universities in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois.  The universities include:

Brown Georgetown

Cal Tech MIT

Chicago Northwestern

Columbia Notre Dame

Cornell Penn

Dartmouth Rice

Duke Vanderbilt

Emory Yale

The universities are being targeted because of their membership in the 568 Presidents Group.  That group takes its name (or number) from a section of the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act that allows colleges that are need-blind in admission to qualify for a limited antitrust exemption that permits them to establish common principles for assessing financial need. The 568 exemption has been renewed several times by Congress, most recently in 2015 when it was extended until September 30 of this year.  Interestingly, seven of the sixteen schools targeted are not currently listed as members of the 568 Presidents Group, and eleven listed 568 members, nine of them liberal arts colleges, were not targets of the suit. 

The essence of the suit is that the named institutions are guilty of antitrust violations because many of them do not actually practice need-blind admission for all applicants but give preference to affluent applicants.  In addition, the 568 Presidents Group has developed a “consensus methodology” for evaluating a student’s financial need, which is allowed by the federal legislation, but the plaintiffs argue that the 568 group is a “cartel” that uses the methodology to fix net prices and limit the amount of aid individual applicants receive.

An interesting side note in the suit is that one of the lawyers involved is Eric Rosen, who as a federal prosecutor led the prosecution in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal cases. He is now a partner with Roche Freedman, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs, and he told Inside Higher Ed, “Varsity Blues took on the side door of admissions.  This case takes on the back door–alleging that, while conspiring together on a method for awarding financial aid, which raises net tuition prices, defendants also favor wealthy applicants in making admissions decisions.  The law does not allow them to do both.”

So does the 568 Presidents Group operate as a “price-fixing cartel,” in violation of anti-trust laws? I’m not an antitrust lawyer, and I still can’t fathom why the Department of Justice concluded that NACAC was a sinister force restricting competition through its voluntary Code of Ethics and Professional Practices (which, in the spirit of full disclosure, I helped draft), so I am not equipped to answer that question.

The 568 antitrust exemption came about as a consequence of a DOJ investigation and consent degree in the early 1990s regarding the actions of nine elite colleges known as the Overlap Group. Seven of the nine are on the 568 list found above. That group of schools was accused of restricting competition by comparing and standardizing financial aid offers.  The justification for that practice was that students shouldn’t make college choices based on cost alone.  Depending on your point of view, that position either makes perfect sense or is an excuse masking price-fixing.

The lawsuit suggests that the consensus methodology used by the 568 Presidents Group schools function as a thinly-veiled equivalent of what the Overlap Group was doing.  That certainly could be the case, but there’s no evidence in the lawsuit that proves that contention.  The closest is several quotes from financial-aid officers at places like Yale and Harvard suggesting that the consensus methodology prevents them from awarding as much aid as they can using their own institutional methodology. A 2006 Government Accountability Office study found that the antitrust exemption had not affected affordability over the first couple of years after its establishment.  I suspect that the lawyers representing the plaintiffs are hoping that discovery will provide incriminating evidence that things have changed.

Any methodology for evaluating need is a set of principles and assumptions, and every methodology has its flaws and biases.  At one time the need analysis formula penalized families for having the foresight and responsibility to save for college, which doesn’t seem right or fair.  The consensus methodology used by the 568 group incorporates the principles used by the College Board’s CSS Profile.  Could that methodology limit aid offers for some students?  It could, but can’t the same complaint be made about any methodology, including the federal methodology used in determining family contribution on the FAFSA?

From an ethical perspective, an important consideration in judging any action is intent.  It is one thing if the consensus methodology was developed in order to minimize the awarding of financial aid, and another if minimizing aid is an unanticipated consequence of the methodology.

ECA is always on the lookout for broader issues and questions, and there are several embedded in the complaint against the 568 Presidents Group.

The first is what qualifies colleges and universities as elite. Is it the quality of the education they provide or because they cater to the wealthy?

The lawsuit contains prima facie evidence that supports the latter view, that the student bodies of the defendant schools are top-heavy with students from affluent backgrounds.  All but two of the universities named have at least 10% of students from the top 1% of family incomes, with three above 20%.  All of the universities have between 58 and 74% of students from the top 20% of incomes, compared with only 3-6% from the lowest 20% and 21-36% for the middle 60% of incomes.  Those figures are shocking and embarrassing, unless you believe in a form of Calvinism where the wealthy are both smarter and better than the rest of us.

The second question is whether institutions that are private have a right to fill their student bodies with students who are from wealthy backgrounds.  Private colleges receiving federal aid have an obligation to follow federal laws, but the Supreme Court has extended considerable discretion to colleges in various cases involving race-based affirmative action to determine what mix of students fits institutional needs.  Does that apply to wealth as well as race?

That depends on whether you see higher education as an industry or as something more than that.  Clearly selective colleges and universities use the admissions process to advance strategic institutional goals, and revenue is one of those.  The lawsuit describes “enrollment management” as one of the villains in this case, and that may be a form of protest over policies and practices that are institution-centered rather than student-centered, focused on self-interest rather than the public interest.

The lawsuit claims that the 568 members are guilty of antitrust violations because they claim to be need-blind but aren’t for every admission decision, and that raises a larger question about whether need-blind admission is any longer possible for all but a few colleges with long histories and huge endowments.

Back in the early 90s, at the same time that the 568 exemption was established, the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice, the precursor to the CEPP, required colleges both to be need-blind in admission and at the same time meet a student’s full need.  A number of private colleges argued that it was fiscally impossible to do both, that in order to manage financial aid budgets they needed to be need-aware at least on the margins, and after a contentious debate in the Assembly, NACAC’s legislative body, the restrictions were loosened. At the time I argued that transparency should be the guiding ethical principle.

Since that time, a number of colleges that philosophically believe in need-blind have been forced to back away from their need-blind as their financial aid budgets have become strained.  Does that suggest that need-blind admission may be an anachronism, aspirational rather than practical?  Has the expectation that colleges be need-blind embodied in the 568 exemption become an unfunded mandate? Is it okay for colleges to be “need-peek”?

There is one issue that both sides in the case agree on.  That is that the decision to attend college should be primarily economic in nature.  The plaintiffs argue that colleges are focused on revenue and therefore advantage applicants who are affluent, but also argue that the consensus methodology provides economic disadvantage to students applying for aid.  The cost of college makes the decision at least partly financial, but should it be only about cost?  Isn’t that also a form of blindness?

Ethical Erosion

(This originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” on January 10, 2022)

When the Department of Justice ended NACAC’s ability to enforce ethical standards for the college admissions profession several years ago, there was widespread concern that the admissions world might turn into a Wild West.  That hasn’t happened yet, thanks to the vast majority of colleges that have chosen to put students’ best interests first, but I have recently heard of three practices that hint at erosion of those ethical standards.  If I wanted to be metaphorical, I might call them evidence of college admission climate change or even “variants”.

One of my students recently reported that he had been invited to apply to a university without having to pay an application fee.  On the surface there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and in fact there may be an ethical issue in colleges collecting millions of dollars in revenue from application fees.  What was interesting in this case was that the invitation came from a university with an admit rate close to 10%.

Normally waiving application fees is a strategy aimed at encouraging applications, and normally that happens when a college is worried about making its class. Obviously application numbers have become a metric of success and prestige for colleges and universities, but is there any justification for a university that is already turning away 90% of applicants waiving the application fee to incentivize students to apply? Does the university in question need more applications, or does it, like my children when they were younger, see “need” as a synonym for “want”?  And is waiving the application fee any different than Harvard sending out more than 100,000 letters several years ago encouraging students to apply when it already had one of the two lowest admit rates in the country?

What we have here might be an example of what I have previously referred to admissions “gluttony”.  There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking more applications, given the pressures placed on admission offices by presidents, boards, and bond-rating agencies.  What is wrong is encouraging students to apply when they have almost no chance of being admitted, the practice known as “recruit to reject”.  There is an implicit moral contract between colleges and applicants, with each having obligations.  Among those obligations for colleges is treating each applicant as a human being deserving of respect and consideration.  The German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that human beings should never be treated as means to an end, and “recruit to reject” does exactly that.

The second issue is an interesting take on test-optional admission.  The university in question claims to be test-optional, but also recently said that only 600 of its nearly 6000 places in the freshman class will be filled by students who haven’t submitted test scores. Apparently that change was made in the middle of the admissions cycle, because I know several counselors who had gotten different messages about testing from this institution earlier in the fall.

There is definitely a mixed message here.  The university lists TEST OPTIONAL in big letters on its website, but in smaller print describes its policy as “test flexible,” stating that “While we encourage students to submit standardized test scores, they are not required to consider admission or scholarship consideration.”  I won’t attempt to parse that sentence.

Test-optional and test-flexible are not the same thing.  Test-optional means that the decision whether or not to submit scores is the student’s.  Test-flexible means that the university wants test scores but will grant exceptions.  Test-flexible is test-optional with a wink, optional the way off-season NFL workouts are optional.

What “test flexible” means at this particular university is that students with a GPA of 3.6 or better don’t need to submit scores.  That raises the question of why test scores are relevant for some students but not others.  Are test scores more predictive for a student with a 3.59 GPA than one with a 3.60? 

The bigger issue is having a quota for students who do not submit test scores.  There was certainly circumstantial evidence last year to suggest that test-optional policies may have actually accentuated the value of good test scores, as many institutions admitted a higher percentage of submitters than non-submitters.  That, however, is a very different issue than artificially restricting the number of students you will admit without test scores.  Even worse is doing so without being transparent about it.

I wonder if more colleges will go the test-flexible route.  When COVID first hit and SAT and ACT administrations nationwide were cancelled, an admission dean friend wondered out loud whether most colleges would be able to be anything but test-optional, whether students would get to the point where they wouldn’t apply to institutions requiring test scores.  Will selective colleges be able to risk a decline in applications because of fealty to test scores?

The third issue involves incentives for students to apply Early Decision.  That is not a new issue, because even before the NACAC Code of Ethics and Professional Practice was de-fanged by the DOJ there were colleges providing incentives for Early Decision enrollees including things like preferences for housing and course registration and even guaranteed parking spots, which on some campuses might be worth their weight in gold.

A college counseling friend recently told me that one of her students had been told that applying early decision would increase the amount of financial aid the student would receive.  That’s an interesting twist. For years the common wisdom was that early decision applicants would receive a smaller package due to financial leveraging algorithms, with the college able to offer less aid to seal the deal because the student has already signified his or her intention to enroll.

I have wondered whether one of the admissions consequences of COVID would be more focus on early decision, with colleges looking to lock in as much of the freshman class as possible early.  That would explain preferential packaging for early applicants.  

Then again, applying early might also becoming more appealing to students.  A large portion of my senior class applied either Early Decision or Early Action, and I have noticed more of my students this year applying ED-2 than ever before.

I am a purist (perhaps even a dinosaur) who believes that early decision is a legitimate enrollment management tool, even if flawed by benefitting students from wealthy families who attend schools with savvy college counseling.  I also believe that early decision should be a match between student and college, freely-chosen and motivated by love.  Providing financial incentives to early decision applicants clouds the motive, and also resembles the “and if you order now” mentality found in the old Ronco commercials.  But in today’s climate, do colleges care why students enroll, as long as they enroll?

College admission has always been a balancing act between institutional interest and the public interest.  The practices outlined above may be another sign that balance is shifting. Just as worsening coastal erosion is a warning sign of climate change, ethical erosion is a warning sign for our profession.     

ECA Cited in New York Times article

The parent of one of my former students alerted me just before Christmas that ECA had been cited in an article in the New York Times. The “Your Money” article by Ron Lieber addressed Early Decision and that a student may be released from the ED commitment if a college is unable to meet the student’s financial need. The article has a link to last spring’s ECA article on “Rejectivity.”

A Tale of Two Editorials

Most of us in the college counseling world spend more time thinking about and dealing with issues related to standardized admission tests than is warranted (then again, some of us may feel that any time at all is unwarranted).  That has not lessened in the era of test-optional admission.

I have had lots of conversations this fall with students and parents about when and whether to submit test scores at test-optional colleges. My rule of thumb has been to submit scores that are at the upper end of the middle 50% range, but I have also told multiple students that I can’t guarantee that my best advice is right, that in this new test-optional landscape all of us are making it up as we go along.  Earlier this fall I had a debate, and perhaps a rare disagreement, with a colleague over whether a student should submit a composite ACT score of 34 at highly-selective colleges and universities, given that savvy and strategic students aren’t submitting anything but very high scores.

I am also finding that students and parents can’t get their heads around the concept of admission without test scores, believing that test-optional policies are temporary, even illusory.  On the day that PSAT scores were released earlier this week, I had calls from several parents anxious to find out the scores.  I resisted the temptation to tell them to relax because they don’t really matter. 

Will the elimination of test scores as an admission factor for the University of California system put to rest the frenzy over testing once and for all?  Despite how big and influential that system is, I suspect not.

NACAC publishes a twice-weekly digest of college admissions news called Today in College Admission.  The past two issues referenced editorials criticizing the University of California’s decision to abolish the use of test scores altogether, one from the Los Angeles Times and the other from the Boston Herald. I found it odd that two different newspapers would choose to editorialize so close to one another, and wondered if we are about to see a backlash to the move away from admission testing.

It was even more odd when I read the two editorials.  They were almost word for word the same.  I checked to see if the two papers are part of the same group, and apparently they aren’t.  I reached out to the editorial page editors at both publications for an explanation, but haven’t received any answers.  Shanda Ivory at NACAC shared that the articles for Today in College Admission are aggregated not by NACAC but by a company called Bulletin Media that publishes the digest.  A Bulletin Media representative stated that the publishing platform missed the similarities because the URL’s for the two editorials were different.

As a detective I resemble Inspector Clouseau more than Sherlock Holmes, and I am fully capable of adding 2+2 and getting 5, but here’s what I think happened.  The LA Times editorial was published on September 1, the Boston Herald one on September 6.  It makes perfect sense that the University of California decision would be a natural editorial topic for the LA Times.  I also noticed on the Boston Herald website that some opinion pieces are labelled “Boston Herald editorial staff” while others are labelled “editorial.”  The editorial about testing falls into the latter category.  While the Herald does not attribute the editorial to the LA Times, I am guessing that it adapted the piece from the West Coast paper.

I use the word “adapted” because the two editorials are close to, but not, identical.  The Boston Herald piece removes the LA Times conclusion early in the editorial that “UC should reconsider this policy and use at least one test as part of its admission process, though it should be free to students with a few no-cost retries.”

The two editorials also diverge in the closing paragraphs.  Here’s the LA Times version:

“One way that UC could use standardized entrance exams fairly is to calculate a test score range that would indicate a student has what it takes to succeed in college, and then rely on grades and other factors.  This is similar to how many prestigious colleges do it.

“An applicant wouldn’t get extra ‘points’ for a score beyond proficiency, which would tamp down the parental race to spend thousands on the best test tutors and endless taking of the test.  Once a student does well enough to qualify, there would be no point in trying to improve the score.

“It’s a shame that the university asked for a well-researched study of the issue by faculty and then decided to ignore their recommendations without considering the ways in which college entrance exams could be used to make better and fairer decisions about which applicants receive the coveted acceptance email.”

Here are the last two paragraphs of the Boston Herald editorial:

“While it’s true more affluent parents can afford tutors for their children and pay for multiple test-taking, entrance exams at least give students the chance to demonstrate their ability, on top of grade history, essay and letters of recommendation.  Test-taking fees should be on a sliding scale, based on financial need.

“If there’s one thing the Varsity Blues scandal has taught us, it’s that there will always be those looking to game the system and give their children massively unfair advantages.  We need more ways to level the playing field.  Entrance exams are one of them.”

So is taking another publication’s editorial content and changing it common or considered ethical?

This blog, of course, is not devoted to journalistic ethics but rather the intersection of ethics and college admission.  So let me consider a couple of issues of substance in the two editorials.

The LA Times argues that the UC system should use at least one test as part of its admissions process, but does not specify that it should be the SAT or ACT.  A report issued by a task force appointed by the UC system’s Academic Council has recommended that the University consider instituting its own admission test that is more tied to what students learn in class than either of the national tests are, but the UC recently decided that developing its own test would be too expensive and time consuming.

The pro-test argument is that sans testing, high school grades become far more important at a time when we know there is grade inflation and student-mental-health-aware generous grading as a result of COVID.  The Times editorial claims that “grade inflation is widespread at affluent high schools,” apparently referencing a 2018 study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.  

The Herald editorial concludes that entrance exams are a way to “level the playing field.”  That is a common defense of testing tied to the idea that standardized tests help identify “diamonds in the rough.”  That idea gives more credit to test scores than deserved.  Test scores may provide another metric to compare students from different high schools with similar grades, but test scores are far from unflawed as a metric.  Not only do they correlate strongly with family income, but affluent students may also have the ability to take tests multiple times and also spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars for test prep, and as a result two similar or identical scores may represent different realities. Those factors argue against leveling the playing field.

The interesting suggestion in the LA Times version of the editorial is that colleges use test scores as a benchmark or threshold of proficiency, such that if a 1200 represents the qualifying score then a 1270 or 1350 should provide no additional advantages in the admissions process.  I think that’s an interesting way to get rid of the false precision that too many people assign to SAT and ACT scores.

The Los Angeles Times may be right that the University of California is making a mistake in moving away from testing altogether, but any test should measure actual learning and readiness for college work in a way that it is not clear the SAT and ACT do.

Admission--Choice or Chance?

(This essay originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed’s Admissions Insider on November 15, 2021.)

Is admission by lottery the cure to all that ails the college admissions process?  That notion rears its head every few years, and I have been (more than once) among the voices writing about that topic.  My very first published article about college admission, in fact, was a 1988 back page essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education that argued that random selection is the fairest way to allocate scarce slots at highly-selective colleges.

A new study in the journal Educational Researcher questions whether admissions lotteries would be the panacea advocates envision.  The article, “What If We Leave It Up to Chance? Admissions Lotteries and Equitable Access at Selective Colleges,” was co-authored by Dominique Baker, a professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University, and Michael Bastedo, a professor of education at the University of Michigan.

The major takeaway from Baker and Bastedo’s research is that the use of random selection in choosing whom to admit may not result in a more fair or equitable process. They ran 1000 simulations on two cohorts of students, 1400 ninth graders from the 2009 High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) and 1275 tenth graders from the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS). They used GPA and SAT score thresholds to predict admission by lottery to either selective or moderately selective institutions (based on Barron’s selectivity categories in place at the time of each study).

Baker and Bastedo conclude that the lottery approach would negatively impact the enrollment of several groups of applicants.  Lotteries using middle 50% test score ranges would likely result in classes with a Black and LatinX population of 1-4%, and the test-score cutoffs would have to be closer to the tenth or thirteenth percentile to maintain current levels of enrollment for those two groups.  A lottery based on GPA cutoffs would disadvantage male applicants, potentially lowering male enrollment by as much as 33%.

It’s an interesting study, and my summary may not do it justice.  I’m trying to overlook the fact that their literature review does not include my contributions. But I also think the article raises some interesting questions about some larger issues and assumptions underlying the admissions process in general. 

First and foremost is the assumption that the point of using random selection or any other selection method in a selective admissions landscape is to achieve a desired result.  That is certainly the orthodox view today, where admissions offices at selective institutions “craft” their classes to achieve strategic institutional objectives ranging from revenue to diversity to athletic success.  That approach serves institutions really well.  The question is whether it serves society as well or at all.

One of the consequences of the Operation Varsity Blues scandal was a loss of public trust in the college admissions process.  There is a widespread perception that college admission as currently constituted privileges the already privileged. One of the defense arguments in the recent OVB trial was that the parents involved understood Rick Singer’s “side door” admission scheme to be business as usual.  Are those of us in the profession okay with that perception?  Should college admission be a reflection of society, or should college admission be counter-cultural?

At the heart of the loss of public trust in the admissions process is concern that the process is not fair.  We all know that fairness lies in the eyes of the beholder.  When my parents got divorced years ago both wanted a settlement that was “fair,” but had very different conceptions of fairness.

At least part of the concern about fairness is tied to the suspicion that selective colleges start with a conception of what the desired class looks like and then reverse engineer the process to achieve the result.  That undoubtedly serves institutional interest, and quite frankly I would be tempted and inclined to pursue that strategy if I was an admissions dean.  As a high school counselor, though, I ache for my students who apply to highly-selective colleges, who are superbly qualified and worthy of admission, but have no chance because they don’t contribute to achieving the desired result. 

What obligation do colleges have toward applicants who spend hours completing applications and $80 for the right to be considered?  The admissions process is an implicit contract between colleges and applicants that students will be considered on the merit of their credentials.  Obviously what constitutes merit is open for debate, but an admissions process built on achieving a desired result does not meet that obligation.

The argument for a lottery or random selection has always been about means rather than ends, about how decisions are made rather than what outcome they produce.  Selective college admission is at least partly a case study in distributive justice, in trying to allocate a scarce resource fairly or justly.  Random selection gives every single applicant judged to be qualified for admission an equal chance to receive one of the scarce spots in the class of those admitted.  Admission by lottery is also, as Baker points out in one interview about the study, “incredibly transparent.”

But what happens when a desirable means produces a less than desirable end? Are fairness and equity the same thing or competing values?  Baker and Bastedo seem to argue that they are different, arguing that admissions lotteries “do not appear to produce more-equitable outcomes.” Baker has also been quoted that “statistically fair is not automatically equitable or just.”

No one, other than the political actors behind Students for Fair Admissions who challenge race-based admissions preferences but seem unconcerned about legacy and athletic preferences, thinks taking a step backwards with regard to diversity is a good idea.  But if a lottery that gives each individual applicant an equal chance of being admitted produces a smaller pool of students in certain groups, is it the lottery that is flawed or the assumptions used to determine who is qualified to be part of the lottery?

Baker and Bastedo’s study uses SAT/ACT test scores and GPA’s at various thresholds to determine who is included in the lottery. That is understandable, because both are easy to measure and plug in for purposes of a study.  Both are short cuts.  Easy to measure is not the same thing as measuring effectively.

There has been a lot of attention paid to the predictive flaws inherent in test scores. Test scores represent performance on a three-hour test rather than four years of high school.  There is a strong correlation between test scores and family income. Two test scores, one the result of hours of test prep and the other without extensive preparation, don’t mean the same thing.  There is also, of course, the question of what exactly the SAT or ACT measure.  They certainly can’t measure essential qualities like work ethic, grit, and perseverance.

The same flaws exist with GPAs.  A grade-point average is a better measure of academic performance over a sustained period of time than test scores, but a GPA is meaningless without context.  Two identical GPAs from two different schools may mean very different things.  Grade inflation was rampant long before COVID, but the pandemic has resulted in eased grading in most schools.  The more students who have a 4.0 GPA, the harder it becomes to differentiate among students.  And use of GPA alone ignores a much better indication of readiness for college, the rigor of courses taken. 

The goal of a lottery approach is to give equal consideration to every qualified applicant.  But equal consideration doesn’t mean equal treatment.  If use of test scores disadvantages Black and LatinX applicants, then ignore test scores and focus on strength of schedule and GPA as predictive metrics.  Working at a boys school, I have always felt that junior and senior year grades, perhaps in conjunction with test scores, provides a more accurate snapshot of a boy’s readiness for college than cumulative GPA. 

Baker and Bastedo argue that lottery results could be volatile from year to year.  One year a college might have 10% diversity and then 2% the next.  I am less concerned by that than I would be with a process that always results in low diversity numbers.  One of the issues that could have gotten Harvard in trouble in its case over Asian-American admission (and could still if that case ends up before the Supreme Court) was the argument that the percentages of different racial and ethnic groups was remarkably, even incredibly, consistent from year to year.  Baker and Bastedo suggest that the only way to ensure consistent diversity would be to run a lottery within subgroups, but recognize that would be illegal.

The Baker and Bastedo study is based upon the assumption of a national lottery.  I don’t think we’re ready for that, but I have long wished that individual selective colleges and universities might engage in “counterprogramming,” choosing to make admissions decisions differently from everyone else.  For example, one might look to fill its freshman class based on the values in the Turning the Tide reports.

I’d love to see one or two institutions serve as laboratories for admission by random selection. Admission officers would save reading time by not having to make distinctions among applicants but rather just have to determine whether an individual applicant is qualified for admission.  There are also alternatives to a pure lottery.  An institution might decide to use something like the NBA draft lottery where certain applicants have multiple lottery tickets, whether for diversity reasons or reasons of academic excellence.

Are we ready for an admissions process using the “Fickle Finger of Fate”? Anyone willing to take a chance on chance? 

The Cruelest Month

In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot observed that “April is the cruelest month.”  He obviously never worked in a college counseling office.

I find myself numb and exhausted as we enter November.  I apparently survived October, although that was in question until the last minute, but wouldn’t claim to have recovered yet.

Back in my admissions days, I would wake up on Sunday mornings in the fall and my first thought would be “Shit, I have to drive to New Jersey today.” (Please excuse my French, and no disrespect intended for New Jersey--it was the thought of the drive, not the destination.)  Now each fall, when October comes, my first thought most days is “Shit, I have to write a recommendation letter today.”  At the end of September, I apologized in advance to my staff, because I know that I am tired and grumpy throughout the month of October.

Last month I wrote a recommendation letter every day, including weekends.  Once upon a time I could write multiple letters in a day, and I am in awe of all my college counseling colleagues who have that superpower, but one rec a day, except in an emergency, is all I attempt in order to maintain my energy level and focus.  I wish that I had as much discipline and organization in all parts of my life as I had last month, but it still took a toll both physically and emotionally.

My two children, both now adults, grew up with an intuitive understanding that recommendation season was different than other times of the year, that Dad was preoccupied with the need to get recs written. I remember many Halloweens when I would take the kids trick-or-treating and then come home to finish a last recommendation for November 1. But October, which I have in a previous blog post described as Rectober and which I have seen other colleagues refer to as Suck-tober, seems worse today.

That is not my imagination. Over the course of my college counseling career I have seen the application process become both accelerated and compressed.  My son was born 35 years ago in my second year as an independent school college counselor.  He was due around February 1, and the first sign of what a great kid he would be was that he waited until after the deadline to be born (I had second thoughts eight months later when he woke up crying and caused me to miss the ground ball through Bill Buckner’s legs, one of the most memorable plays in baseball history, especially for those of us cursed to be fans of the New York Mets). February 1 was still a major application deadline for which a number of my students were submitting their first application.  Today I expect my seniors to have all their applications completed before February 1, and I would panic if one was only starting the application process then.  

For the bulk of my career the fall was a series of waves, with a deadline every two weeks, with the period in December leading up to the January 1 deadline being the busiest couple of weeks of the application season.  In recent years, however, November 1 has been a tsunami as more and more institutions introduce Early Decision and Early Action options, and now October 15 isn’t far behind in application volume.  What used to be a three to four month process is now crammed into three to four weeks.  The burden of recommendation writing largely dissipates once November hits.  This year 70 of my 90 seniors applied somewhere by November 1, and I’m sure that percentage is small compared to plenty of other schools.

The question is whether it’s healthy.  It’s great for colleges, spreading out reading over a longer period.  But what about the rest of us?  I wonder if I can make it through another October like this one.  I worry even more about my seniors.  The current admissions calendar forces students to make decisions about their futures before many of them are developmentally ready.  In particular, the number of selective colleges admitting more than half their classes in Early Decision makes the decision about whether and where to apply early monumental, since deciding to use an ED chip for one institution lessens a student’s chances in regular admission at other places.  The larger question is whether college admission offices have any clue about the realities of being a high school student.

I am sure that I am not in my right mind at this time of year (ECA readers may argue that “at this time of year” is unnecessary), but I’m not sorry to see October in the rear-view mirror.  And I’m grateful for colleges that have early deadlines on November 15 or December 1.    

Varsity Blues Verdicts

The verdicts are in.  On Friday, October 8, a jury in federal court in Boston returned guilty verdicts against the first two Operation Varsity Blues defendants to go to trial.

Gamal Abdelaziz, a former casino executive with Wynn Resorts, and John Wilson, a former executive with Staples and the Gap who is now a private-equity financier, were convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud. Wilson was also found guilty of additional fraud and bribery charges and of filing a false tax return for taking a deduction for payments to coaches and the foundation run by Operation Varsity Blues mastermind Rick Singer.

On the afternoon that the verdicts were released, Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed reached out to me for comment for a story he was writing about reactions to the verdicts within higher education and the college counseling community.  It will not surprise regular readers of this blog that I was happy to do so.

There were two parts to my response.  The first, and easier, comment attempted to address the significance of the verdicts on the defendants and the legal system.

“The verdicts send an important message that ‘side doors’ and cutting in line for advantages in the admissions process are fundamentally wrong.  They also maintain confidence in the judicial system.”

I wasn’t in the courtroom for the trial, so may be missing some of the nuances of the defense presented by attorneys for the accused, but I am struggling to figure out the strategy in going to trial in the first place.  47 of the 57 parents and coaches charged in the scandal have previously pled guilty or agreed to do so, making Abdelaziz and Wilson outliers.  Every person deserves their day in court, but dating back to March 12, 2019, when the FBI indictments came out, the government’s evidence against Singer and the parents has seemed convincing and perhaps even overwhelming.

Early in his career, back when he was primarily a stand-up comedian, Steve Martin did a bit on how to be a millionaire without ever paying taxes.  Today that bit wouldn’t be as funny, because it is routine for millionaires and billionaires to legally avoid paying their fair share in taxes. 

There were two parts to Martin’s scheme.  The first was “Get a million dollars.”  The second was excuse your failure to pay taxes with two simple words, “I forgot.”

I don’t think Steve Martin served as Abdelaziz’s or Wilson’s lawyer, because news reports from the trial would have mentioned an attorney with an arrow through his head playing a banjo or claiming to be a “wild and crazy guy.”  The defense attorneys, though, seem to have taken a page out of Steve Martin’s playbook.  They claimed that their clients were victims, convinced that their payments to Singer and coaches were philanthropic donations.  But both paid Singer and his cronies to construct fake athletic profiles so their children could be admitted as recruited walk-on athletes in sports the children did not play, or at least did not play at a level that would qualify them to play in college, so how clueless were they really?

Abdelaziz was accused of paying Singer $300,000 to get his daughter into the University of Southern California as a basketball recruit, ignoring the fact that she did not make her high school team.  Wilson supposedly paid Singer $200,000 for his son to be designated as a water polo recruit for USC, half of which ended up at the university, and then contacted Singer about having his twin daughters admitted to Harvard and Stanford as ostensible sailing recruits.  For both parents there are traces of Steve Martin’s “I forgot” defense, whether it be “I forgot that my child doesn’t play that sport” or “I forgot that bribery is against the law.”  Thankfully the jurors did not buy the Steve Martin defense.

But what about the other defendant?  A New York Times  article on the verdicts argued that “the college admissions system was also on trial.”  The second part of my response to Scott Jaschik focused on that issue.

“What the verdicts don’t do is resolve the issue of whether colleges were innocent victims of Rick Singer and the Operation Varsity Blues parents or were ‘unindicted co-conspirators.”

So were the scandal and the trial indictments of the college admissions process?  The easy answer is no.  The fraud was perpetrated by a corrupt con man masquerading as an independent college consultant, parents willing to go to any lengths to obtain admission to an “elite” college for their children, and coaches willing to trade slots on their teams for some easy money.  There were no admissions officers caught up in the shenanigans. (It is also the case that no admissions officers uncovered the fraud.)

On a more global level, the answer is not as clear.  While the extent and particulars of Singer’s scheme were shocking, no one was surprised to learn of the concept of the “side door” reserved for wealthy families.

But is that a college admissions issue, a higher education issue, or a societal issue?  Colleges use the admissions process to achieve institutional goals and priorities, and like it or not, one of those goals is revenue.  Higher education is a business, and colleges are looking for individuals with the ability to pay the sticker price or with the resources to be a development prospect (whether donations tied to or in the hopes of admission qualify as philanthropy is a discussion for another time).

Is advantage for the wealthy unique to higher education or part of a larger societal issue?  Even if we know that the wealthy cut in line for all kinds of societal perks, should admission to college be different, given higher education’s aspiration to be a pipeline to access and opportunity?  Those questions triggered the final part of my response to Scott Jaschik.

“We know that the wealthy bring all kinds of advantages to the admissions process just as they do in many areas of life.  Should the college admissions process accept that as a fact of life?  Should it provide further advantage to the already privileged?  Or should admission to college be counter-cultural, guided by principles of equity and fairness?  What will we learn from the scandal?”

What, indeed?

Does U.S. News Trust But Not Verify?

(Originally Published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” September 20, 2021

Ronald Reagan famously used the phrase “Trust, but verify” to describe his posture toward discussing nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union. 

His use of that phrase was brilliant on a couple of levels.  Talking about trusting an adversary was on one level an expression of good faith, but adding verification made it clear that any idealism was also tempered with a dose of realism.  The additional genius of the phrase as applied to the Soviets was that it was adapted from a Russian proverb, “Doveryai, no proveryai.”

The Operation Varsity Blues scandal trial currently taking place serves as a reminder of the fine line between trust and verification in college admission.  Colleges trust applicants to be honest and truthful in what they list on their application.  While we wouldn’t want that to change, Operation Varsity Blues serves as a cautionary tale.  The widespread fraud, including constructing elaborate and false athletic resumes for sports the students involved didn’t even play, was not uncovered by admission offices.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice…

The trial is not the only “ripped from today’s headlines” story that provides a test case for the interplay of trust and verification.  Last week U.S. News and World Report published its annual “America’s Best Colleges” rankings.  I have since received numerous emails from colleges trumpeting their ranking, and my local newspaper has published its annual story highlighting small changes in local institutional rankings as if they signified major news. 

This year there was considerable speculation about how U.S. News would treat test scores in its rankings recipe, given the rise of test-optional policies during the last admissions cycle.  U.S. News resisted calls to remove consideration of test scores from the formula. Colleges receive “full credit” for test scores if 50% of entrants reported scores (the figure had previously been 75%).  Colleges where fewer than 50% of entrants submitted scores received a “discount” of 15% in the impact of scores on its ranking.  According to U.S. News, that affected 4% of institutions.

The focus on how many places Wossamotta U. (alma mater of Bullwinkle J. Moose) may have moved up or down in the rankings, and the attention given to minor changes in U.S. News’ methodology, may be obscuring a more important issue.

Over the weekend I was doing research on the relationship between admissions selectivity (rejectivity may be the better term) and prestige, thinking about how number of applications and admit rate drive institutional behavior.  In the course of the research I stumbled upon a U.S. News list of the Top 100 colleges with the lowest acceptance rates according to the 2022 rankings..

That list included eight institutions identified as having admit rates below 20% that I found surprising.  Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky was listed as having a 7% admit rate, making it seemingly as selective as MIT and Yale.  The other surprises include the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (13%); the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, Limestone University in South Carolina, and Ottawa University in Kansas, all at 14%; Wiley College in Texas and Bacone College in Oklahoma (15%); and Texas Wesleyan University (19%).  

As already stated, I was surprised by, and perhaps even suspicious of, those numbers.  All are regional institutions that serve a valuable role in the landscape of higher education, but it seems odd that they would be as selective as the national universities and liberal arts colleges that populate the U.S. News list. 

Eight or nine years ago I recall some colleges doing creative accounting to lower their admit rate, counting inquiries as applications. At that time one college corrected data regarding applications received and students admitted that resulted in changing its admit rate from 27.4 to 89.1.  That institution explained the discrepancy as “counting in a different way.” U.S News subsequently moved that college into the “Unranked” category. For the record, I wish U.S. News would place all colleges and universities in the Unranked category.

I was intrigued by the reported low admit rates for those eight schools, and decided to follow up by comparing the U.S. News data with the data for each school on the Common Data Set (a collaborative initiative jointly sponsored by the College Board, U.S. News, and Peterson’s) and IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System), an arm of the National Center for Education Statistics that is part of the U.S. Department of Education.  Any institution receiving federal aid is required to report data in a number of areas, and I assume there are significant consequences for reporting false information.

It will probably nor surprise readers that I found discrepancies between what U.S. News is showing and what was reported to IPEDS, for there would no reason to write about this if all the data squared.  With a couple of exceptions, the IPEDS reporting for each college varies significantly from what U.S. News shows.

According to the IPEDS data for 2019-20, Alice Lloyd’s admit rate is 28%, not 7%.  Limestone’s is 51% rather than 14%, Bacone’s is 72% rather than 15%, Texas Wesleyan’s is 42%, not 19%, and the University of Science and Arts in Oklahoma is 36% rather than 13%.  Wiley College is listed in IPEDS as being open enrollment.  That’s quite an accomplishment, an open enrollment institution with a 15% admit rate.

There are two outliers among the outliers, both of whom share an interesting characteristic.  Ottawa University in Kansas actually shows up on the U.S. News Top 100 list twice, once at 14% and once at 24%.  Ottawa has an online component as well as satellite campuses in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Surprise, Arizona.  The main campus reports an admit rate of 15% but a yield rate of 66%.

The College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri, a conservative Christian institution that brands itself as “Work Hard U,” has a similar interesting statistical anomaly.  Its reported admit rate on IPEDS is 10%, actually lower than credited by U.S. News, but it also reports a yield of 91%.  I’m by no means a statistical expert, but that extremely low admit rate and extremely high yield rate suggest they have a different kind of admissions process than most other institutions.

I contacted U.S. News to see if there is an explanation for the discrepancies.  A spokesperson responded by pointing out that “acceptance rate is not part of the methodology,” and also added this note about U.S. News’s approach to quality assurance.

“For quality assurance, rankings data that schools reported to U.S. News were algorithmically compared with previous years' submissions to flag large change statistical outliers. Respondents were required to review, possibly revise and verify any flagged data to submit their surveys. For the third year in a row, they were also instructed to have a top academic official sign off on the accuracy of the data. Schools that declined to do this step could still be ranked but display a footnote on their U.S. News profile on usnews.com.

After submitting, U.S. News assessed the veracity of data submitted on a factor-by-factor level and contacted select schools to confirm or revise data. Schools that did not respond or were unable to confirm their data's accuracy may have had the data in question unpublished and unused in the calculations.”

If I am reading that correctly, U.S. News uses an algorithm that flags large changes in data from year to year, and then has institutions revise data as needed.  But what about data that doesn’t change dramatically? Does U.S. News attempt to verify all the information submitted (which would obviously be a huge job) or does it operate on an honor system, trusting that institutions will answer truthfully?

The larger issue here is not whether acceptance rate is part of the ranking methodology, but why the U.S. News data doesn’t match the IPEDS data.  Is the admit data an anomaly, or is there other questionable data U.S. News uses in its ranking methodology? Where is the line between trust and verification? And should we trust rankings based on data that is self-reported and unverified?

The College Counselor as Hollywood Agent

(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider” September 7, 2021)

I counsel my students that the college search isn’t ultimately about college admission. The college process is part of a larger journey of self-discovery, where the objective is to discern who you are and what your unique purpose is. 

It’s taken a long time, perhaps too long, but I’ve finally figured out my own raison d’etre. I’m determined to spend the rest of my days trying to de-mythologize the college admissions process.  “De-mythologize” might be the wrong verb, because the beliefs and assumptions I want to investigate, clarify, and stamp out aren’t myths per se, but closer to urban legends.  Like urban legends, they are plausible, but never happen to anyone you know. 

I prefer to call them “Suburban Legends.”  They are the “truths” about college admission that are shared as gospel in the grocery store, on the sidelines of games, and at any social gathering where parents of high school juniors and seniors congregate.  They are believed and propagated by people who are educated and affluent.  Some of them may be true, but many aren’t.

A recent New York Times article included a classic Suburban Legend.  The article wasn’t about college admission but rather about the efforts of independent schools in New York City to address their histories as privileged and predominantly white institutions. Many have adopted antiracist policies and language, and the article shows why the debate over critical race theory has become so politicized.  Schools trying to do the right thing in becoming more diverse and inclusive and helping students and parents come to grips with the vestiges of systemic racism must navigate dangerous waters. On one shore is the Scylla of right-wing legislators trying to score cheap political points, and on the other the Charybdis of diversity consultants arguing, in an example from the Times article, that “individualism, worship of the written word, and objectivity” are tools of white supremacy.

What caught my attention, though, was a sentence in the middle of the article.  “A letter or call from the counselor at a top private school can work wonders with college admissions offices.”

The notion of the college counselor as Hollywood agent, cutting deals for students, is a popular trope.  Jacques Steinberg, then a New York Times reporter, used the relationship between a high school college counselor and a Wesleyan University admissions officer as a narrative device in his 2002 book, The Gatekeepers. In an article titled “Fenced In By Delusions,” adolescent psychologist Michael Thompson describes the “relationship delusion,” whereby independent school parents believe, or at least hope, that schools have “special” relationships with certain colleges whereby their child’s counselor can facilitate admission by picking up the phone and calling a buddy in the admissions office.

But is it true?  Can college counselors at independent schools “work wonders,” tipping the scales of justice, or at least admission?

The answer, in my experience, is no.  I’ve been a college counselor for nearly 40 years, and if I have that superpower, I’m not aware of it. 

When I started in the college counseling profession it was common for independent schools to talk about college “placement,” implying that schools “placed” students at various colleges.  I’ve never been comfortable seeing college counseling through a sales lens, and if it was ever the case that a well-placed call could influence admissions offices, that disappeared long ago.

Or has it?  In the wake of the Times article, I reached out to members of ACCIS, the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools.  In a short time I received more than 50 thoughtful and passionate responses from counselors at schools in 24 states plus the District of Columbia.

The consensus of the group was that the Times article misrepresented the influence that independent school college counselors have.  The advocacy call has largely disappeared, especially at the nation’s most competitive colleges. 

Early in my career, it was common to have a call with admissions officers at institutions where my school regularly sent applicants before decisions were finalized.  It was a discussion, not a negotiation, but I had the ability to ask for a second look at candidates on the bubble.  Occasionally a decision would be changed from deny to wait list or wait list to accept.

Gradually the nature of counselor calls changed to a reporting function, providing context on the applicant pool that helped us explain decisions to students and parents.  At some institutions those calls more resembled infomercials, with the message often sounding like “We’re so excited that we could reject so many of your students.”

Today many institutions won’t have conversations at all, not sharing decisions with counselors until after the students have received them. The rationale is equity.  Is it fair to have calls with counselors from some schools when we can’t have calls with all schools?  As an ethical principle that makes sense.  The unanticipated consequence (or maybe it is anticipated) is an erosion of the collaboration across the desk that has allowed college admission counseling to claim to be a profession.  I worry that college admission offices and high school counselors are no longer part of one profession but exist on a dual track.

While there is an overwhelming sense from the ACCIS respondents that the kind of influence suggested by the New York Times is fiction, there is also nagging suspicion or even paranoia that some prominent schools and counselors may retain that influence.  Several counselors wondered if there is a secret society most of us aren’t privy to where schools and colleges make deals using the college admissions equivalent of the Bat Phone or the White House-Kremlin hot line.  Do schools in Boston, New York, DC, and Los Angeles have relationships with colleges that are off limits to the rest of us?

If they do, no one is admitting to it.  I received responses from college counselors at two different prominent independent schools in New York City, both of whom were distressed by the implications in the Times article.  One described the counseling team reacting to the article with “a mixture of sadness and open hostility,” while the other commented, “If my school’s communications department wouldn’t blow a gasket I would write a letter to the NYT to tell them that what they wrote is BS.”

That second comment provides insight into where the belief that independent school college counselors are like Hollywood agents originates.  It comes not from college counseling offices, but from the marketing arm of many schools.  Clearly one of the reasons parents choose independent schools is for a perceived benefit in the college admissions process.  A few years ago a colleague attended an open house for the parents of kindergarten applicants.  Those parents leafed through the packet of information casually, until they got to the college list, which they perused in depth.

Should schools promise either explicitly or subtly that the school and its counselors can provide access and advantage in the college admissions process?  Of course not.  Today the advantage that independent schools provide is an excellent education and a college counseling program that helps families navigate a process that is confusing and stress-inducing.  That kind of support is worth its weight in gold, or at least tuition dollars.  Schools should be trumpeting process, not results.

It’s time to retire the college counselor as Hollywood agent trope.  I’d suggest replacing it with the idea that college counselors are trail guides. At a time when the college admissions world increasingly resembles the Wild West, that’s an appropriate metaphor. We help students and parents plot a course through dangerous and uncertain terrain, anticipate what’s around the bend, and make sure they don’t miss the scenery. 

Now if only the New York Times and other media outlets would promote that view of college counseling.

A Voter's Guide to the NACAC Annual Member Vote

I have been described as a “college admissions geek,” and the fact that I choose to see that as a compliment probably serves as confirmation.  I may be a geek in other ways as well, but I am most certainly not a by-laws geek (you may choose to disagree after reading this post).

One of my first National Association for College Admission Counseling conferences was in Los Angeles in the early 1990s.  I was young and dutiful, and so I went to the membership meeting on Saturday afternoon even when friends were planning to drive out to Malibu.  There were a large number of by-law changes to be voted on, so when the board member presenting them said, “I will now read the by-laws changes one by one,” a voice inside my head said, “I’m out of here.”  Malibu was lovely.

Last week voting opened for the NACAC’s first online annual member vote.  For the first time all eligible NACAC members will be able to vote for two Board Directors and the President-elect.  Previously the officers were elected by the Assembly, NACAC’s legislative body. 

The vote also includes 17 proposed amendments to NACAC’s by-laws.  Yes, that’s a lot of by-law changes.  Last week rather than go to Malibu I listened to NACAC’s webinar explaining the vote and read about the proposed by-laws changes on the organization’s website.  I found myself wishing that someone would put together a “voter’s guide” explaining the proposed changes for those of us who aren’t by-laws geeks.

Why not ECA? What follows is an attempt to explain the choices that NACAC voters have.  It will lay out what’s on the ballot and consider the larger issues this blog always looks for, even when there aren’t any.  What this voter’s guide won’t do is tell anyone how to vote.  I trust ECA readers to think for themselves and make wise choices.

The most entertaining thing about the NACAC webinar was watching the closed captioning service translation of what was being said.  It butchered several names, including my close friend Jane Phone Ash (NACAC Past President), translated by-laws as “buyer walks,” by-law amendments as “buy little moments,” and ad-hocs as “that walks.” It also interpreted NASFAA (National Association of Student Aid Administrators) as NASCAR.

What was most interesting, though, was the closed-captioning translation of NACAC.  NACAC was mentioned 30 times during the webinar, and translated as NACAC not a single time.  There were multiple interpretations of NACAC as NASDAQ (9 times), Mac (5 times), neck (4 times), and NACA (close, but no cigar—3 times).  There were also individual instances where NACAC was translated as knock, magic, neck x, NASA, backpack, and cactus.  I don’t know exactly how closed-captioning services are hired, but if you are a national organization doing a webinar with closed captioning, perhaps you should make sure that the captioners know how to spell your name.

Five of the seventeen proposed by-law changes are language changes tied to the change a year ago in NACAC’s membership model.  That change removed the need for member institutions to have a “principal representative” and replaced it with “primary contact.”  The primary contact can be a clerical person rather than an admission or counseling professional.  

            Article III         Membership, Section 6

            Article VIII      Affiliate Presidents Council, Section 3

            Article IX         The Assembly, Section 5

            Article X          Board of Directors, Section 3

            Article XI         Board of Directors Eligibility, Nomination, and Election Process,

Sections 1 and 3

In addition, Article VII, Affiliated Associations, Section 3a, having to do with the procedures for establishing new affiliates, now establishes that ten of the 20 required voting NACAC members necessary to establish a new affiliate must be admission or college counseling professionals.  That is driven by the language change to “primary contact,” which doesn’t have to be a professional.

Since we are looking at larger issues in addition to describing the specific proposed by-law changes, a comment about that membership model.  At a fundamental level, it has worked amazingly well for NACAC, with the organization’s membership growing by 50% in a year, making NACAC parallel the application increases experienced by some of its most exclusive, elite member colleges.  The larger a professional organization, the more clout it presumably has.  The other side of the coin is that the bigger any organization becomes, the less common ground there may be within the membership.  I worry about an increasing divide within our profession on a number of fronts, not least between the admission and counseling sides of the desk.  I hope that NACAC will stand for something besides being large.

I also found myself bothered by a statement in the rationale for Article III above.  Whereas “principle representatives” were charged with ensuring the accountability and compliance of their institutions, the rationale for the change states that “with the switch to best practices (within NACAC’s Guide to Ethical Practice in College Admission), no members should be monitoring compliance for their institution.”  I get the point, but shouldn’t every NACAC member be monitoring compliance for their institution, even if we don’t necessarily have the power to enforce compliance?  Each of us has an obligation as a member of this profession to be an advocate for student-centered, ethical admission practices.

The proposed change to Article X, Board of Directors, Section 2a, is to change the title of President to Chair of the Board.  The rationale is to “provide more clarity” and “align NACAC with peer organizations,” but this is probably part of a larger strategic move to establish Angel Perez, NACAC’s CEO, as the face of the organization.  Angel was an inspired choice for the job, bringing experience as an admission dean on the front lines, and he should be the face of NACAC, but the elected President of NACAC has historically been more than leader of the Board of Directors.  The NACAC President represents the membership and the profession (I am clearly not objective, having served in that role).  The worry here is whether NACAC will become a more staff-centric, “inside the Beltway” professional organization.  I certainly don’t believe that is the intent.

That same concern is raised by some of the other by-law changes having to do with committees.  During my tenure on the Board, a decade ago, there was discussion about whether standing committees were still effective, or whether the future of organizational governance would be short term ad hoc committees appointed to tackle specific issues, an approach that would allow the organization to be more nimble.  NACAC had abolished most of its standing committees previously, and currently has four ad hocs at work. The ad hoc model is promising, but it is too early to know how effective it will be.

The new proposed by-laws abolish NACAC’s three remaining standing committees, Admission Practices, Governance and Nominating, and Finance.  AP and G&N will become “special” committees, and the Finance Committee is being “sunset,” a lovely euphemism that I may want to appropriate for my obituary.

            Article XV     Committees, Section 1c        Removes G&N as a Standing Committee

Article XI       Board of Directors Eligibility, Nomination, and Election Process

                                                Removes reference to G&N as Standing Committee

Article XIII    Officers, Section 5     Removes reference to immediate Past President

serving on G&N

            Article XV     Committees, Section 1a        Removes AP as Standing Committee

            Article XV     Committees, Section 1b        “Sunsets” Finance Committee

            Article XIII    Officers, Section 2d  Changes President to Chair of the Board and

makes reference to ad hoc committees

            Article XIII    Officer, Section 2f     Removes President as ex-officio of Standing

Committees (because there are none)

            Article XIX    Chief Executive Officer        Removes CEO as ex-officio for Standing

Committees

            Article XV     Committees, Section 2          Gives Board power to create committees

            Article XV     Committees, Section 3          Removes description of Standing

Committee membership

The broader issue here is how NACAC will develop a governance structure that empowers and grows leadership among the membership.  It is great to give the membership a voice in electing officers, but even more important is having a hand in guiding the work of the association.  382 NACAC members volunteered for the approximately 80 spots on the four recently-named ad hoc committees, and that makes it clear that members want an opportunity to serve the association and the profession.

I wish these by-law changes were part of a larger blueprint for governance beyond the Board and staff.  The Assembly, NACAC’s legislative body, has had its two biggest tasks, electing officers and voting on changes to the ethics code, taken away, so what is the plan for the future of that body?  I have been part of intense, invigorating discussions as an Assembly delegate, and I have seen other years when there is little business or reason to meet.  What is the Goldilocks solution that will make the Assembly meaningful and relevant?

The standing committee model had its flaws.  There was no consistency in the charge or amount of work among the various committees, and the seven-person limit and the rule against more than one committee member from any affiliate meant that sometimes the best candidates couldn’t get appointed. But having a three-year term gave committee members insight and experience confronting the issues facing NACAC.  I hope the ad hoc committees provide the same opportunity.  Does a committee with twenty members allow and encourage the kind of camaraderie and discussion required to deal with serious issues that a committee of seven does?

I’m not sure how I feel about the “sunsetting” of the Finance Committee.  The rationale given was that the committee’s work duplicates the work of the Board’s Performance Committee and outside auditors.  That may be the case, but ending the Finance Committee means that no NACAC members beyond the Board have an eye on the Association’s finances.

NACAC has been through several tumultuous years.  The Department of Justice investigation into NACAC’s mandatory ethical standards threatened the Association’s existence and removed its signature raison d’etre.  Then COVID caused a dramatic financial loss from the national conference and the National College Fairs program that for years has been NACAC’s major source of revenue.  The organization has been forced to reduce staff at the same time that a new leadership team has come aboard.

I worry that some of these by-law changes, even if right, may be rushed.  NACAC has always been a deliberate organization, and that is both a strength and a weakness.  Perhaps these changes need to be expedited, but the Board has not met in person a single time during the past year. My experience with virtual meetings is that it is difficult to develop the kind of rapport and trust needed to read the room and make sure that all voices are heard, especially those hesitant to express reservations about a particular decision.

I have always believed that NACAC is the best hope for our profession, and I continue to believe that.  I am excited about Angel Perez’s leadership as the organization carves a new path.  I hope that NACAC will remain true to its history and have a governance model that is transparent and decentralized rather than adopt a model that concentrates all power and decision making in the Board and staff.  I wish I had a better sense for what that will look like moving forward.

The opportunity to vote will continue through September 15.  I applaud NACAC for expanding the vote at the same time that so many cynical politicians are trying to suppress the votes of anyone they think won’t support their radical policy positions.  Voting is a right, but also a privilege.  Don’t waste yours.

And in this election, it’s okay to provide food and water to your fellow NACAC members as they are waiting to vote.

ECA Goes on Holiday

The Ethical College Admissions blog will (or at least plans to) go on holiday for the remainder of the summer.  We need a break, and so do you.

When I started this blog nearly ten (!) years ago, my practice was to shut down during the summer months on the assumption that there is little college admissions news and even fewer readers interested in devoting summer vacation to reading about admission issues.  During the three years that I wrote a weekly column for Inside Higher Ed,  though, I discovered that there was more than enough material to write about, including major issues such as a branch of the University of Texas revoking scholarships it had promised to students from Nepal and the University of California-Irvine rescinding acceptances to 500 students because it had overenrolled.

In the event of breaking news, ECA will return with commentary, but otherwise it will resume at the beginning of the new school year.

Thanks for reading Ethical College Admissions and practicing ethical college admissions.

"Athlete-Students": Amateurism, Academics, and Advancement

(Originally published in the July 12, 2021 issue of Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider”)

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has had an interesting couple of weeks in its struggle to maintain control over the business of intercollegiate athletics.  On June 30 the NCAA announced an interim “waiver” allowing student-athletes to be compensated for the use of their names, images, and likenesses (NILs), including social media platforms.  That probably wasn’t coincidence, because on July 1 new laws went into effect in multiple states making compensation for NILs permissible.  The NCAA waiver will remain in effect until a more permanent NCAA rule or federal legislation is passed.

Earlier in June the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston et al that the NCAA may not prohibit student-athletes from receiving payments or benefits that are “education-related.”  That includes things like scholarships for graduate school after an athlete’s eligibility has run out and paid internships.

Some pundits have interpreted the opinion from Justice Neil Gorsuch as opening the door for college athletes to be compensated beyond the athletic scholarships they already receive.  The Alston decision, though, is narrowly-tailored, applying only to a small group of education-related benefits.  Justice Gorsuch’s opinion gives the NCAA latitude in defining what is and is not educational.  He makes it clear that the association would be within its rights to prohibit member institutions from awarding student-athletes Lamborghinis as a means of getting to class, and also recognizes that paid internships provide an opportunity for abuse.

The long-term danger to the NCAA emanating from the Alston case lies not in the opinion from Gorsuch but rather from a concurring opinion written by Justice Neil Kavanaugh.  Kavanaugh seemed to open the door for a broader consideration of possible antitrust issues emanating from the NCAA’s monopsony over college sports. 

Kavanaugh states that “the NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”  The NCAA controls the market for student athletes, and its compensation rules result in student athletes being paid at a below-market rate.  Kavanaugh sees that as “price-fixing labor,” which he describes as “a textbook antitrust problem.”

Kavanaugh’s opinion also raises some of the questions that make payment of college athletes a complicated proposition.  He asks, “How would paying greater compensation to student athletes affect non-revenue-raising sports?  Could student athletes in some sports but not others receive compensation?  How would any compensation regime comply with Title IX?  If paying student athletes requires something like a salary cap in some sports in order to preserve competitive balance, how would that cap be administered?  And given that there are now about 180,000 Division I student athletes, what is a financially sustaining way of fairly compensating some or all of those student athletes?”

I happen to think those are great questions, but ECA readers are all too aware that I am fonder of and better at posing questions than I am at providing answers.  But both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch ignore, probably intentionally, an essential “elephant in the room” question.  Has the time come to rethink what intercollegiate sports represent, especially when it comes to big-time football and basketball?

The NCAA’s defense of its position is based on preserving what it calls the “revered tradition of amateurism” as the foundation of college sports.  That phrase is taken from a 1984 Supreme Court case, NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, which dealt with the NCAA’s control of television revenues. The NCAA even seems to argue that amateurism is part of its brand, distinguishing college sports from the professional version, and an NCAA press release about the NIL waiver emphasized that the new policy does not conflict with the NCAA prohibition of “pay for play.”

But did the “revered tradition of amateurism” ever exist?  The opinion by Justice Gorsuch points out that “American colleges and universities have had a complicated relationship with sports and money” dating back to the very first intercollegiate athletic competition, a boat race on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee in 1852 pitting teams from Harvard and Yale.  Long before Poulan/WeedEater sponsored the Independence Bowl, in fact long before the advent of college football itself, the regatta on Lake Winnipesaukee was sponsored by a railroad executive promoting train travel to the lake.  He offered the “student-athletes” an all-expenses-paid vacation with lavish perks, including unlimited alcohol.

Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh’s opinions dismiss the NCAA’s contention that the references to amateurism and student-athlete compensation in NCAA v. Board of Regents serve as any kind of precedent for the issues facing college athletics today.  But even if 1984 was a time of Orwellian purity in college sports, with the NCAA as Big Brother, the landscape has shifted dramatically since.

In 1984 the NCAA basketball tournament had not yet been trademarked as “March Madness,” and national champions in football were determined by voters rather than players.  ESPN was five years old, just emerging from the days when it relied on sports like Team Rodeo and Australian Rules Football for its content. The era of super-conferences had not arrived, meaning that the Atlantic Coast Conference had nine members and the Southwest Conference still existed.

What all those developments have in common is that they have brought more money into the world of college sports.  The only sector not profiting handsomely is the talent, the athletes producing the labor and the product.

The focus on amateurism and payment of student-athletes has precluded an equally important question.  Is it time to rethink the “student” in “student-athlete”?

At the very least it may be time to reverse the order to “athlete-student.”  For many college athletes, maybe most, the commitment to athletics is the driving force in their college experience.  Both in and out of season, athletes’ schedules are built around training and practices, with classes fit in to ensure eligibility.  Even when athlete-students are getting college degrees, are they getting college educations?  Will managing their NILs and personal brands cut into athletic time or study time?

Nothing reveals the myth of the student-athlete more than the NCAA transfer portal.  It may be a helpful tool bringing transparency to the transfer process, but it’s become a form of free agency for college athletes. The athlete-students in the portal aren’t looking for a college to attend, but rather a team to play for.  The number of athletes entering the portal is frightening, with close to 1700 basketball players as of a month ago, enough to fill the rosters of nearly one-third of the colleges playing Division One basketball.

The more fundamental question is whether intercollegiate athletics should be considered part of the educational mission of higher education or part of the advancement arm of the university.  The compensation packages provided to coaches and athletic administrators dwarf the salaries for almost any other employee, including presidents. We may want to consider coaches as educators, but the language and behavior exhibited by many coaches in their interactions with players would never be permitted for any other faculty or staff member.

I have always believed that athletics have educational value and that the playing field is its own classroom.  But it is hard to square educational ideals with the reality of big-time sports.  Athletic programs long ago became powerful avenues for marketing and institutional branding, and there is too much money at stake for that genie to return to the bottle.

I generally believe in evolutionary rather than revolutionary change, but I think big-time college athletics needs revolutionary change.  Modest payments to college athletes and reversing “student” and “athlete” is evolutionary.  What would be revolutionary, and honest, would be to hire and pay college athletes, at least those for whom college serves as an apprenticeship for a pro sports career, as employees of a university’s marketing or advancement offices, with the opportunity to take classes as a benefit. I’ll leave the details for others.

I don’t claim that my modest proposal will end all that is wrong with college athletics, just the hypocrisy.

Ready or Not, Here They Come

I have always preached that the college search and application processes shouldn’t be just about admission to college but also readiness for college.  In a perfect world the process of applying to college would test the very qualities required to be a successful college student—independence, self-knowledge, organization, maturity, and persistence.

We don’t live in a perfect world, of course, but graduates in the class of 2021 have lived through a world during the past sixteen months that has been even more flawed than normal.  They have lived during their final three semesters of high school through a time of global pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and attacks on the U.S. Capitol and democracy itself. 

That doesn’t count the upheaval in their education.  The fortunate ones have experienced school in person complicated by masks and social distancing, but many students haven’t had a true school experience for more than a year.  Virtual learning and Zoom meetings are exhausting, and we won’t know for several years just how much academic learning and progress has been lost, much less the emotional toll of what we’ve lived through.

How ready are they for college?  And how ready are colleges for them?

Recently long-time ECA reader and London correspondent Anne Richardson raised some important questions and concerns for college faculty and student life professionals.  She described it as a “rant”; I see it as on the money.

Anne wrote, “I am really hoping that all of these institutions are thinking carefully about how to deal with the Class of 2021 when they arrive on campus next fall.  It is a class that has been out of traditional classrooms for months.  The students have been away from friends and isolated in many ways.  They are all over the place academically, and many are disillusioned about education.  This may be the most diverse group ever to set foot on campuses in every sense of the word.  What kinds of support will all of these students need (and they will need support in multiple ways), and how are residential life and faculty preparing?”

Anne might actually be understating the issue.  It’s not just an issue impacting new college freshmen.

Last fall I was part of a debate with several colleagues about which college students were going to be most adversely impacted by the pandemic.  Was it seniors, who were going to miss the sense of completion and closure to the college journey that the senior year should bring, and who are entering a workforce with diminished employment opportunities for recent college graduates? 

Or did college freshmen, who entered a campus environment that was either virtual or isolated by COVID restrictions, have the greater challenge?  The freshmen didn’t have anything to compare their college experience with, but in a very real sense they haven’t had a true orientation or on-boarding to campus culture.  As disruptive as the academic part of their education has been, their ability to experience the social side of college, the connection with both students and faculty, has been even more disrupted. 

We have certainly seen it at the secondary level.  I have had several conversations with families of students who changed schools this past year who never felt like they connected with classmates outside of class in an environment where sports and clubs were diminished or shut down entirely.  I’m not sure it’s anyone’s fault, because schools were challenged just to be open safely, but in retrospect I’m not sure that the schools recognized the special challenges faced by new students during a time of COVID restrictions. 

I have to believe that the same is true of the students who entered colleges in the fall of 2020.  Is it coincidence that a larger number of my 2020 graduates seemed to think about transferring, with many of them referencing a perception that the grass was greener at colleges and universities other than the ones they had chosen?  Whatever the answer, colleges need to be prepared to deal with more significant academic, social, and emotional issues not only with first-time freshmen, but with returning students as well.  In a sense there are two full classes of “new” students on most college campuses who will be transitioning to the college experience.

It’s also not a short-term issue.  Back in April I was asked to serve as moderator of the closing session at the Potomac and Chesapeake Association for College Admission Counseling virtual conference.  Our assigned topic was “Getting Back to Normal or Planning for a New Reality?”  One of the panelists, a counselor at an urban public school, made the point that the legacy of COVID will impact students for at least several years going forward.  The impact was not just on high school seniors but on younger students as well.  Their development and preparation for college was also thrown off track, and they will bring a different set of issues, both academic and mental health, with them for several years to come.  That’s not even to speculate on what kinds of impacts there have been on students currently in elementary school.

How ready are colleges for these students?  A colleague who has been on a number of Zoom calls with colleges recently and has asked that exact questions hasn’t gotten the sense that many college campuses have thought about it more than superficially.  I’m sure it’s the last thing colleges want to think about when they are already dealing with lost revenue during the pandemic and also have to worry about their own campus-wide staff exhaustion and mental health.  And, of course, we don’t have a good handle on what the issues are and in what ways they will manifest themselves.

But ready or not, here they come. Our students will enter and return to college with significant academic and personal issues that will need to be addressed.  We all want access to educational opportunity, but that access is hollow without opportunity and tools for success.

Lexington Without Concord

(Originally published in the June 14, 2021 edition of Inside Higher Ed’s Admissions insider)

Lexington, Virginia is a small town of about 7000 residents located in the Shenandoah Valley where Interstates 81 and 64 diverge.  Lexington is usually described with adjectives like “charming” and “quaint,” and it appears on any list of the best small towns in Virginia.

Lexington is also a college town, home to not one but two venerable institutions, Washington & Lee University and Virginia Military Institute.  Last week both colleges made news.

On Friday W&L announced that it would retain its name after a year-long deliberative process within the university community.  The name change discussion arose following the national reckoning last summer ignited by the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.  The protests over needless killings of black citizens during police stops for minor offenses evolved to calls for removing monuments honoring Confederate figures, with the most prominent being Robert E. Lee.  Washington & Lee, where Lee served as President for five years following the Civil War, may be the ultimate monument to Lee.  

Three days before the Washington & Lee announcement, a special investigative team from the law firm Barnes and Thornburg LLP released its final report into the climate and culture at VMI, especially with regard to race and gender.  The investigation was ordered last fall by state leaders including Governor Ralph Northam, an alumnus of the Institute, following an article in the Washington Post alleging an ingrained culture hostile to both women and students of color.

I have followed both stories with more than casual interest.  My students regularly attend both colleges, and I have been thinking about respected friends in both admission offices.  Admission loosely translates as “to the mission,” but admission offices have to market not only an institution’s mission or aspirations, but also its unique personality and campus culture, both strengths and flaws.  Both W&L and VMI are steeped in a proud history, and both have to come to grips with those histories at a time when social norms and attitudes are changing dramatically.

For Washington & Lee that history is captured in its name.  The university’s association with both George Washington and Robert E. Lee is not honorary but “specific,” according to the Board of Trustees’ “Message to the Community” posted on June 4.  What had been Liberty Hall Academy was renamed for Washington in 1796 after he made a financial gift that enabled its survival.  Lee’s name was added in 1870 after his death while serving as President, credited with “saving and transforming the school after the devastation of the Civil War.”

W&L has reveled in its association with Lee ever since, but how should it respond in a time when he has become a divisive figure? Earlier this year the faculty voted 188-51 to change the name, whereas alumni tended to oppose the change.  The Board voted 22-6 to keep the name, but removed Lee’s name from the chapel and decided to physically separate its main auditorium from the Lee family crypt (Lee is buried at W&L, as is his horse, Traveller). It also committed the university to expand its diversity and inclusion initiatives while expressing regret over “the university’s past veneration of the Confederacy and its role in perpetuating ‘The Lost Cause’ myths that sustained racism.” That didn’t satisfy critics, including a faculty member who on Twitter accused the Board of being “more afraid of being called woke than racist.”

Is that criticism fair? Confederate “heroes” are overrepresented when it comes to statues and namings, providing a counterpoint to the adage that history is written by winners.  I didn’t grow up in the South, so I don’t get the worship and veneration of figures like Lee, but the attempt to turn Lee into a 19th century Mike Flynn seems false.  Can we acknowledge our history, even the ugly warts, without celebrating it? Must we obliterate any mention of figures like Lee, or can we judge them in context?

If any place has a legitimate reason to retain Lee in its name, it’s W&L.  I recognize that my perspective is clouded by the fact that I am a white male, and that others see the issue differently.  In a time where there is political and cultural division, I struggle to find a rational middle ground, even as I know there are critics who argue that rationality is a form of white supremacy.  I’m sorry, but I’m not willing to concede that point. 

My real question is whether W&L’s decision to hold onto the Lee name may hurt its ability to attract the diverse applicants required to be the national liberal-arts college it aspires and deserves to be.  Washington & Lee has an opportunity, fraught with danger, to take Lee’s emphasis on civility (captured in its “speaking tradition”) and honor and to build on those values with a 21st century commitment to being a college that is traditional but also diverse, inclusive, and forward-looking. Is retaining Lee’s name an impediment to that?  

Washington & Lee’s neighbor, Virginia Military Institute, is dealing with its own challenges with regard to its past and its resistance to change.  Founded in 1839, VMI is the nation’s oldest state-supported military college, and it has a proud history of producing citizen soldiers and leaders.  Its graduates possess a loyalty perhaps unmatched by any other college, and it provides needed diversity within the landscape of American higher education.

The external review of VMI’s culture and climate came about after a Washington Post article reported that black cadets find themselves in an environment where not only is there continuing veneration of the Institute’s Confederate history but also racial insensitivity that extends to racial slurs and even references to lynching.  Other articles alleged differential treatment of minority students by VMI’s single-sanction honor system.

The Barnes and Thornburg report begins by describing VMI as traditionally “run by white men, for white men.”  It describes a culture resistant to changing practices and traditions that lack sensitivity to minority and female students.  It also finds that neither the Honor System nor the “Rat Line,” VMI’s two most distinctive and beloved traditions, are responsible for any of the racial or gender issues on Post, VMI’s name for its campus.

The report tells a story that is far more nuanced than the newspaper articles suggest.

Like W&L, VMI’s culture is closely tied to its association with a major Confederate figure. Stonewall Jackson, the legendary Confederate general who died from friendly fire at the Battle of Chancellorsville (and whose arm is buried in a different location from the rest of him), was a professor at VMI, a charismatic figure who inspired loyalty from followers who were willing to overlook the fact that he was probably more than a little crazy (fortunately that would never happen today).  Until recently fourth class students were required to salute a statue of Jackson.  The Corps of Keydets also fought and lost ten members in the Battle of New Market, and until recently VMI students took the Cadet Oath on that battlefield.

The report alludes to a more fundamental issue that’s not unique to VMI but found on many campuses, a debate about the essence of an institution.  Nearly twenty years ago I served on a three-person team charged with evaluating VMI’s admissions and financial aid offices.  It was fascinating to spend three days on Post, and our report concluded that VMI needed to work hard to overcome unique challenges in recruiting both women and underrepresented minorities.

One of the interesting things we learned was that everyone at VMI had a clear vision of what the essence of the Institute was.  The only problem was that those visions, while clear, didn’t coincide.  The military people asserted that VMI was first and foremost a military school, the faculty believed that VMI was primarily an academic institution, and the athletic administrators and coaches argued that VMI had made a primary commitment to be a Division One athletic school.  

The Barnes and Thornburg report suggests that identity crisis still exists and plays into the culture issues that have brought attention to VMI.  The report suggests that the real tension at VMI is between athletes and non-athletes.  Non-athletes believe that athletes don’t buy into the full VMI experience and resent that they are excused from many of the disagreeable parts of the experience.  Where this crosses into race is a tendency among many associated with VMI to believe that all minority students at VMI are athletes.

The issues facing both colleges make Lexington, Virginia a front line in the culture wars. Washington & Lee and VMI are laboratories in the search to translate and adapt programs that have worked successfully in one era into a different era.  Are their core values timeless or relics of the past?

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  But what about those who can’t let go of the past and those who want to erase the past?

Should College Lists Be Published or Perish?

I have been a pain this spring (my colleagues would probably say “more of a pain” is the more accurate description, and might specify a part of the anatomy as well).  I would like to think that I am generally easy to get along with, but I recognize that I also have an annoying streak of righteous indignation. 

My cause this spring has been shutting down the tradition of publishing a list of the colleges being attended by each of our seniors.  I know that other schools settled this a long time ago and will consider me a troglodyte for only litigating it now, but publishing the college list has long been an accepted cultural norm at my school, including a Commencement program insert and publication in the school magazine during the summer.  At a school that venerates tradition and traditions, change is never uncomplicated.

If students or parents have been bothered by publishing the college, I am not aware of it. That has made my questioning of the appropriateness of publishing a list seem like tilting at windmills, solving a problem that no one else thinks even exists.

Of course, “accepted,” or even “acceptable,” is not the same thing as “right.”  That distinction spotlights one of the foremost challenges in trying to live ethically on a daily basis, deciding which battles to fight and when. It is easy to take a stand when public opinion is with you and little moral courage is required, and much harder when a consensus isn’t present that a problem even exists.  There can be a fine line between “moral crusader” and “nut.”  Into which category I fall depends on your perspective.

The last few weeks of any school year bring a variety of requests from across campus wanting information on where members of the senior class are going to college.  The student newspaper wants to publish the college list in its last issue.  Members of the Alumni Board want to write personal letters to the graduates welcoming them into the alumni body, and having the student’s college selection will make the letter even more personal.  Lower school teachers are curious about how the little boys they taught years ago turned out..

I think the interest among various constituencies in the college list is for the most part legitimate.  A school like the one where I work is a family, and there is genuine interest, care, and concern for the other members of the extended family.  Preparing our students for college, both for admission and even more for success once in college, is a key part of our mission, and knowing that we have succeeded with a senior class is a point of pride for the entire school community.

The issue for me is not whether it is legitimate for members of the school community to ask for the information, but whether it is appropriate for the college counseling office to provide information about where individual students are going to college.  The college search process is intensely personal, and news about the outcome of that process should be the student’s to share, not my office’s.

Like many other ethical principles, that’s easier said than done.  In Homage to Clio the poet W.H. Auden pointed out that it is much easier to promise “I will love you forever” than it is to promise “I will love you next Tuesday.”  Similarly, it is one thing to make a moral pronouncement that the College Counseling Office will not release information about the college choices of individual seniors and another thing to refuse to tell a colleague where one of their students is going to college.  I’m not as pure nor as principled as I might claim or wish to be.

It was easy to wean the student newspaper away from dependence annually on a list provided by my office, pointing out that student journalists should practice the craft of reporting by gathering the information about college choices from the seniors themselves. (I did agree to serve as Deep Throat for my student Woodwards and Bernsteins, confirming or denying the information they had gathered.)  I told the Alumni Office that I had no objection to them having the information, but suggested that they should contact each soon-to-be alum to request his information.  I am more accommodating with individual colleagues who are asking about the college plans of a particular student.

No Commencement insert with each boy’s college choices was published, and the school publications will include only an aggregate list with only the colleges attended and the number of students attending each.

But is that any better?  A recent article by New York Times “Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber cautions against putting too much stock in published college lists of any kind.  Lieber describes such lists as being “as closely watched as the homecoming score and the police blotter,” and says that, “With each passing year, these lists become ever more misleading.”

Why misleading? Because highly-selective (or to use the more avant garde term, “highly-rejective”) colleges use the admissions process not to reward deserving students, but rather to craft a class that helps meet institutional priorities. In the rarified air where 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 superbly-qualified applicants are admitted, an individual applicant gets an acceptance letter  because they are “hooked” (recruited athlete, connected family, underrepresented diversity) or are just plain lucky.  Where they attend high school is no longer a hook if it ever was.

So is it wrong for schools to publish a list of where graduates are attending college?  Like so many other questions related to college admission (and ethics, for that matter), the answer is “It depends.”

At a basic level the list of colleges being attended by graduates is a report of factual information.  Of course it is rarely that alone, because it usually serves a marketing or advertising function as well.  My school generally runs a full-page ad in the local newspaper each spring around graduation, a practice in response to a similar ad produced by our sister school.  Are we celebrating our seniors, marketing the school, or both?

Whatever the intent, that practice can backfire and send unintended messages.  Several years ago our admissions and marketing offices, which oversee production of the ad, produced an ad featuring college pennants. The pennants did not represent a cross-section of senior choices, but rather the “name” colleges being attended by some of our graduates.  That can lead people to believe that only name colleges are important and valued.  Two hours after the ad appeared I had an email from a senior parent wanting to know why his son’s choice was on the list.  I told him that the ad did not come from the College Counseling Office and that we value and celebrate every student’s college choice.

The publishing of some kind of college list is probably not going away, because the public wants that information.  Some years ago when a colleague of mine had a son applying to kindergarten, he attended the admissions open house.  During the presentation he observed prospective parents casually leafing through the packet of information—until they came to the college list.

I think our job as educators is telling parents not just what they want to know, but what they need to know.  Any published college list should prominently feature the disclaimer, “Your results may vary.” 

More importantly, schools should emphasize not college placement but college counseling.  The real secret sauce of any good school is not its college results but its ability to help students and parents navigate a process that is confusing at best and irrational at worst.  Good college counseling is worth its weight in gold—or at least more than any of us are being paid.     

Wait Lists, Poaching, Extension Etiquette

On the first day of May I sent my children a text message, “May Day!!! May Day!!!”  My daughter responded, “Such a dad joke.” And indeed it was.

For some in the college admissions world May 1 can be May Day, a day for celebration, for dancing around the Maypole to celebrate the fertility of the admissions cycle or holding a Soviet-bloc military parade to show off institutional enrollment strength.  (Where does one rent parade missiles and tanks these days?)

For other institutions that haven’t “made” their class, the proper response to May Day might be to issue a “May Day!!!” distress call, as May 1 becomes a day not for celebration but rather a day of reckoning or even panic. We know that the idea of May 1 as an “end” to the admissions cycle has always been a convention, a useful fiction, and with COVID having knocked the admissions process off its moorings, even the most optimistic of us expected that the “process” will extend longer in 2021 than in previous years.

There has been a lot of speculation that colleges would keep longer wait lists this spring and make more frequent use of them.  A recent article in Inside Higher Ed reported on a survey of high school seniors conducted by Art & Science Group that indicated that 20 percent were on at least one wait list, and I have heard of a major state university with a wait list numbering 15,000, or twice the size of its entering class a year ago.  I have also seen more colleges adopt some sort of guaranteed transfer option at a specific institution or a program like Verto.

For all the talk about wait lists, I have seen or heard very little actual wait list movement thus far this spring.  There are the usual suspects for whom the wait list is an intentional part of their enrollment management strategy, who might admit 10-20% of the freshman class annually using the wait list as a kind of “Early Decision 3,” but otherwise, very little wait list action for being in the second full week of May. 

It is certainly possible that I’ve just missed it—it wouldn’t be the first time.  But I also wonder if we are seeing a subtle shift in the admissions landscape with regard to wait lists. Will one of the fault lines between rich and poor institutions become the ability to even have a wait list?

The assumption has always been that once colleges at the top of the food chain begin going to their wait lists, there will be a ripple effect, perhaps even an enrollment pandemic, with colleges infected with “May melt” as students leave to upgrade to reach schools accepting them off wait lists.  That assumption is grounded in the belief that college choice is first and foremost about prestige and brand.

I wouldn’t bet against that proposition, even as I don’t want to accept it, but recently saw an interesting trend with my own students.  Right after May 1 my local newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, did a front-page story on the fact that the most competitive public universities in Virginia have significantly larger wait lists this year.  The reporter asked if I could connect him with a couple of  wait-listed students. 

Three responded that they would prefer not to be interviewed.  All of them said that they are happy with their choice, and that while they might consider a wait list offer, they wouldn’t leap to change.  One talked about feeling exhausted after a trying school year and wanting to be settled with the decision.  Perhaps the prevailing wisdom about students jumping at wait list offers will hold up, but this year has affected all of us in ways we don’t fully understand, and we shouldn’t assume that the old norms will hold in a world that is different.  

My students’ responses have perhaps more significance for colleges that don’t have the luxury of going to a wait list now that May 1 is past.  Before we had a pandemic to worry about, the raging issue in the admissions world was whether we would see a dramatic increase in post-May 1 poaching in the wake of the demise of NACAC’s mandatory ethical standards after the DOJ investigation.  I was about to say I haven’t seen that, but just now a senior stopped by to ask if it was normal to be offered an extra $10,000 in scholarship money.

I wonder if my students’ hesitancy to talking with the reporter about wait lists, and particularly the reflection on feeling exhausted, serves as a cautionary tale for colleges who hope to induce second thoughts or buyers’ remorse among students who have already deposited at another college.  How many students and parents can be bought by additional scholarship dollars or perks like guaranteed parking places or preference in course registration?  Can incentives change the mind of someone who has decided and is ready to move on?

The other issue is how to let the public know that a college is still open, perhaps even very open, for business.  The most common means of spreading the word that applications are welcome is what used to be called the NACAC Space Availability Survey.  Like a number of other NACAC services and programs, it has been rebranded, and is now the College Openings Update: Options for Qualified Students.  It is only a matter of time until that becomes an acronym, COUOQS. 

NACAC produced that survey earlier than normal this year, and as of this morning there are nearly 400 colleges on the list.  I can imagine that adding your institution’s name to that list is a strategic dilemma for many enrollment managers.  Do you look desperate, and given the principle of transparency, is there anything wrong with looking desperate when you are in fact desperate?  In the interest of fairness, I would also point out that what most of us really need is a list of options for unqualified students.

Over the past few weeks I have received several communications from colleges announcing that they are extending their application deadlines.  Those announcements raise some interesting questions.  Who is the target audience?  Are there students just getting around to applying for the fall now?  And why set deadlines at all?  Setting an application deadline is generally a good idea unless the deadline passes and you haven’t reached your goal.  There are plenty of students and parents who take deadlines seriously and won’t apply even if they have interest, assuming it’s too late.  Once a deadline comes and goes, the one who is dead could very well be the one who created the deadline.

Is there an etiquette to extending deadlines?  I’ve noticed several guiding principles.

The first is “It’s not me, it’s you.” You never admit that you are extending your deadline because you need applications.  Perhaps that doesn’t need to be said, because students and parents are relatively savvy, or at least suspicious that you are not extending out of the goodness of your heart.  Nevertheless, deadline extensions are always positioned as done out of concern for students rather than the institution.

The second principle is tying the deadline extension to some item in the news.  If you need to extend your deadline, hope for a volcano eruption in Iceland, a typhoon in Bora Bora, or panic over gasoline shortages caused by pipeline cyberattacks.  Even if students live thousands of miles away or have no geographical knowledge of where those places are, you can justify the extension based on the fact that the event impacts students in some way.  Of course COVID provides a legitimate cover for any change, even a change of deadline, both this year and probably for the next couple.

Stepping back from my feeble attempts at humor (“Such a dad joke”), I hope all of us feel empathy for our admissions colleagues for whom May is in no way an end to the admissions cycle.  May all of us survive COVID--and the admission challenges posed by COVID.

Rejectivity

(Originally published in the May 3, 2021 edition of Inside Higher Ed’s “Admissions Insider”

I have a new favorite college admissions-themed adjective—“highly-rejective,” as in “highly-rejective colleges.”  I was first introduced to the term by friend and ECA reader Mike Oligmueller several weeks ago, and it was apparently first coined by Akil Bello on Twitter back on March 12.  Last month a post by Jon Boeckenstedt for his excellent Higher Ed Data Stories blog was titled “The Highly Rejective Colleges.”

“Highly-rejective” is obviously a play on “highly-selective,” but is it more than that?  Are “rejective” and “selective” synonyms, different attitudes reflecting the same truth? Are they opposite sides of the same coin, such that a college is selective if you happen to get in and rejective if you don’t? Selective certainly sounds more affirming and less cold, but is that a good thing?

Will 2021 come to be known as the year of highly-rejective admission?  The group of colleges and universities labelled by sobriquets ranging from “highly-selective” to “hyper-selective” to “elite” have had record-low admit rates this year, with Harvard bottoming the list at 3.5%.  But does a low admit rate equal “highly-rejective”? What if many of those not admitted are not denied admission but rather Wait Listed? Does that make a college “highly-Wait List-ive”?

The more interesting question is whether 2021’s highly-rejective numbers are a product of COVID.  Any attempt to analyze or provide context for this admissions cycle is at best an incomplete first draft of history, but it certainly appears that the chasm has widened between rich and poor institutions, or what Jeff Selingo calls “buyers” (poor) and “sellers” (rich).  The most popular institutions have thrived, but there are many good and venerable colleges struggling to make their class and maybe struggling for survival.

The popular narrative is that test-optional policies have emboldened students to apply to places they wouldn’t have had they been required to submit SAT or ACT scores.  I wonder if the test-optional explanation is sufficient. Is the increase in highly-rejective admission a short term by-product of COVID, or has COVID merely accelerated and accentuated a trend that has played out over the course of my career?

Over the past thirty years the number of colleges and universities that qualify as “highly-rejective” has proliferated.  In 1992 there were 20 colleges that admitted fewer than one-third of applicants, according to data provided in that year’s U.S. News “America’s Best Colleges” guide; today there are 75-80.  There were 2 colleges that admitted fewer than 20%, and today that number is closer to 40. 

So what is responsible for the change?  Are there far more students graduating from high school and going to college?  Are students applying to more colleges because it is easier to do so, thanks to innovations like the Common Application?  Or is the increase in “highly-rejective” colleges a product of the influence of college rankings?

One factor is the evolution of college admission into a sophisticated business. The move to a business orientation brings with it not only enhanced use of marketing techniques and data analytics, but also acceptance of the adage that if you are not moving ahead, you are falling behind. One of the easiest ways to demonstrate progress is to increase the number of applicants and decrease the admit rate.

To borrow a phrase made popular by late-night TV advertising, “But Wait, There’s More.”  There is a deeper issue here, a fundamental clash of world-views about the essence of the college search and higher education itself.  Is college about brand or experience, and is college choice about prestige or fit?

Selectivity has always been closely aligned with the quest for prestige, believing (or at least wanting us to believe) that the harder a college is to get in, the better it must be.  That view is explained by Marxist theory, with the Marx in this case being Groucho.  Groucho Marx never wanted to be a member of a club that would have someone like him as a member. That, my friends, is the rationale for selective admission.  The assumption is that the less likely it is that a place will have you as a member (offer admission), the more desirable it becomes.

At some point low admit rates changed from being a by-product of success to a metric of success, and ultimately became the goal of the admissions process itself.  For colleges and universities wanting to swim with the sharks, a key part of institutional brand today involves worshipping at the altar of “rejectivity.”

My computer’s version of Microsoft Office does not recognize rejectivity as a word, but in fact the term is associated with psychologist Eric Erickson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development.  For Erickson rejectivity refers to a sense of stagnation and a lack of meaning in one’s actions that may occur between the ages of 25 and 64.

In a college admission context the gospel of rejectivity is an antidote to an institutional sense of stagnation.  Highly-rejective colleges derive meaning and status from their ability to turn away more applicants, and the belief in rejectivity explains college admissions conventions from “recruit to reject” to the use of Early Decision as a tool to lock up a large portion of the entering class, making “regular” admission much more competitive.

But has rejectivity gotten out of hand?  Several years ago New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, who recently announced that he will be leaving the Times staff for an endowed professorship at highly-rejective Duke University, wrote a tongue-in-cheek column where he claimed that Stanford would be admitting not a single student for that admissions cycle.  Today we might call that perfect rejectivity.  The premise for that column doesn’t seem quite as funny today as when it was published.

Thirty years ago, the lowest admit rate for any college was 17%.  Has the increased rejectivity produced a better college admissions process?  Colleges are continually pushed to be more rejective by Boards, rankings, and even bond-rating agencies.  But does a 95% rejection rate produce better classes than an 83% rejection rate, or does it increase the sense among the public that the system is rigged?  College admission depends on public confidence and trust in our process and our profession.  That confidence and trust have already been threatened by the shenanigans of wealthy parents in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal.  Does excessive fealty to the gospel of rejectivity pose a greater threat?

I don’t have an answer, but as a college counselor I struggle with my responsibility to students and parents. Good college counseling requires a Wallenda-like balancing act between supporting students’ dreams and making sure they understand the reality they face.  It would be unethical for me to discourage students from applying to certain schools, but is it ethical to encourage them to apply to schools where their chances are almost non-existent?  How do I avoid feeding the beast of rejectivity?

Can we band together to “Reject Rejectivity,” or at least put it on a Wait List?