Rethinking College Admisisons
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2012-02-02/rethinking-college-admisisons
With colleges boasting record numbers of applications and students bemoaning record levels of stress, some say the college admissions process is out of control. A new report by a group of admissions officers suggests that schools join forces to relieve the arms race for students. Kojo explores the escalating competition in college admissions today.
Guests
Sharon Alston
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Enrollment, American University
Shannon Gundy
Director of Undergraduate Admissions, University of Maryland
Lloyd Thacker
Director, The Education Conservancy
Comments
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Can your panelists comment on the number of non-traditional students applying to colleges these days? How do applications from non-traditional students figure in to the selection process? By non-traditional, I am thinking older students who never finished college and have families or prior careers and/or who are trying to go back to school for a career change.
How important are extracurricular or community service activities as a consideration in college admissions? Is quality better than quantity? Is participation in at least two sports throughout high school taken into account as developing skills such as time management and teamwork outside the classroom?
My son is a Sr at Oakton HS. He applied to 12 schools, including UVA, Clemson, JMU, VT, Davidson, UCLA, Berkeley, UC San Diego, U of Michigan, and W &M, UNC Chapel Hill, Cornell. He has been accepted to all of his "early" schools 5/5, and is receiving lots of offers, including scholarship money from UCLA and Berkeley! My daughter went to UVA, is now at JH Medical school, and will be doing her residency in Pediatrics at either Harvard or UPenn. My kids rock! You would not know it as they are both so humble.
Am in a similar situation to Sharon (or was it Shannon). I have been in admissions in dc area for 25 years and have my oldest applying to colleges this season. Amazing in that I feel that experience is not a factor in the process ultimately. My daughter applied to 10 schools (most with the common application) and is very well qualified - but none of the applications were early decision or early action and so we sit and wait for April 1....
As for the common application....there are still unique essays required by most schools.
two points
1. i went to REED, a school in the forefront of schools who has always refused to take part in the ranking. REED benefits from this for all of the reasons the panelists stated but also it keeps students at REED continuing to go to REED not based on glorified rankings which are inflated but students via many avenues find out for themselves what the school like. one good way is to have alumni interview applicants.
2. schools need to work harder at helping poor kids apply. I was very poor and like the caller stated, I too made it work but we are the exception. Schools need to get out there and find students who are overlooked. its not good enough to visit the respective high schools. ask them what they need to make a choice.
My son wants to study Music Industry. Only 3 schools in Virginia offer it, so he applied to 2 of them and also to another school with a strong arts program. He was accepted to one school already and that school offered him $4,000 a year towards tuition. It is not his first choice, but because his grades are not super high, he may not get into his first choice. We are very pleased that he is very open to this school. He will not hear from the other 2 schools until April. I think some kids apply to too many schools, and also are completely clueless about how much money it will cost. We had a long conversation with him about expenses before the application process started which helped him get REAL about how to approach college!
I would like someone to explain why the ranking system is any good at all. Everyone seems to assume that it is a given, and what we have to do is avoid its harm. As far as I'm concerned it has nothing to do with education. It was invented by a magazine to boost its own sales, and it has hijacked the US education system. The data collected is based on self report, and I think educational institutions should boycott it. I solute the colleges that already have done so (forgot which ones). Harvard and Yale should take the lead in this boycott. They are up there anyway by reputation; whether they are ranked #1 or #2 does not matter one bit. I'm speaking as someone who has a PhD from Harvard and currently teaching at a university with a rapidly rising ranking. So this is not about sour grapes.
Thank you!
Re Kira Plagge comment above: Good point. I admire Reed for refusing to take part in the ranking system.
I am a psychotherapist in Chevy Chase who works with adolescents, many of whom will be applying or currently are applying to college. The process for many creates extreme anxiety and stress. I often work with them to feel calmer about the process, but it is hard as there is so much competition to get in and enormous competition within the schools. I wonder how to help them from a systemic level; I call the counselors at their schools (with their permission of course), we call their parents into sessions, at times refer for medication, but all in all the process consistently remains difficult for many. What can we do to create a paradigm shift?
Deena Kotlewski