by Erica L. Meltzer | Feb 5, 2020 | Blog, College Admissions, SAT II
I was browsing through the admissions section of Inside Higher Ed recently when I came across a brief article announcing that Caltech had decided to move from requiring two SAT IIs (one math and one science) to making the exams optional. Now, over the last few years virtually every selective college—with the exception of a few engineering schools—has downgraded SAT from “required” to “recommended.” The fact that one more school is jumping on the bandwagon might not seem particularly noteworthy, just one incidence of the backlash against standardized testing.
Because the story involves Caltech in particular, however, it’s somewhat more interesting than it might at first appear. Not only because Caltech has traditionally been seen as a bastion of uncompromising rigor, but also because it’s difficult to see the move as separable from the school’s downward trajectory in the US News and World Report Ranking over the past 20 years, especially over the last decade. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | May 8, 2019 | Blog, College Admissions
Just when I thought I had a grip on how unpredictable the college admissions process has become, I was told the following story by an acquaintance whose son is a senior in a very top suburban district outside of New York City.
It sounded a bit improbable, but his mother assured me that this is actually what happened.
(more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 18, 2019 | Blog, College Admissions
I recently came across an Atlantic article by the child psychologist Erica Christakis, in which she discusses a concept she terms “adultification”—that is, the attribution of adult traits and behaviors and ways of thinking to children. On its surface, the article—which focuses on active shooter drills in elementary schools, of all things—seems very far removed from things like test prep and college admissions; however, as I read through the piece, I couldn’t help but notice a link. I think Christakis really nails this phenomenon in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere. As she writes: (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Apr 9, 2019 | Blog, College Admissions
In the social sciences, there is a principle known as Campbell’s Law, which states the following:
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
Or, said more simply, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Although selective colleges assess applicants holistically rather than according to strict numerical metrics, I think that a modified version of this rule is in fact very relevant to the admissions process. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 28, 2019 | College Admissions
One of the side effects of the Harvard Admissions lawsuit has been a greater public awareness of the Z-list, a program in which certain candidates—primarily ones whose families can afford full tuition, as well as many legacies—who don’t quite make the regular cut are given the option of entering the following year. Similar practices, involving both year- and semester-long deferrals, exist at other highly selective schools. Cornell and Brown are among the other universities also known for these schemes, but they are quietly carried out at many additional schools.
One of the primary benefits of this arrangement is that it allows colleges to lock in a certain number of full-pay students without having to include them in official freshman admission statistics, thus lowering the officially reported acceptance rate. (It does, however, have the side effect of reducing the number of spots available in the following year’s class.)
In the past, this practice has been largely associated with elite private colleges, but the other day a colleague who teaches high school happened to mention to me that, for the first time she could recall, students were only being offered spring admission at their state flagship—an excellent school although not quite elite, and one that’s making a play to hoist itself into the next tier up.
So I’m wondering: in addition to encouraging applications from far too many students who don’t stand a remotely realistic chance of admission, is deferred admission going to be the next big thing in working the rankings? (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 15, 2019 | College Admissions
Since the whole rest of the world has by now weighed in the college admissions-bribery scandal involving, among others, the children of Felicity Huffman and former Full House star Lori Loughlin (aka Aunt Becky), I’m going to throw in my two cents as well. Actually, it’s more like a dollar, but you get the point.
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, a number of extremely wealthy parents have been implicated in a scandal involving passing their children off as athletic recruits to a variety of prestigious colleges (including USC, Yale, NYU, Stanford, and Georgetown) in order to guarantee their admission. The scam also involved procuring extra time for standardized tests and then falsifying test results (either paying a third party to sit for the exam or enlisting a proctor who changed incorrect answers).
At the center of the scandal is William Singer, a college consultant in Newport Beach, CA, who bribed athletic department members in order to place students—who in many cases did not even play the sport they were supposedly being recruited for—onto the coach’s list, an act of fakery that at its most absurd involved photoshopping students’ heads onto pictures of athletes’ bodies. The various admissions offices subjected the applicants to no real scrutiny, and the ploy was only uncovered by chance, as part of an unrelated investigation. (If you’d like a complete rundown of the players involved, The Daily Intelligencer has compiled a very helpful list.)
Now, for anyone who has even a passing familiarity with how cutthroat the elite college admissions process has become, none of this should come as any surprise. Any loophole, no matter how small, will eventually be exploited by those savvy and rich enough. But aside from that, permit me some additional thoughts. (more…)
