Behind the Curtain of College Admissions...

NPR produces a lot of really wonderful pieces on the college application process.  If you haven't noticed, they are one of my favorite go to resources for college information.  I wasn't surprised to see an article recently about whether the college process is fair for applicants.  

Read the article titled, "Behind the Curtain of College Admissions, Fairness May Not Be Priority No. 1," here.

There are a lot of very open and honest things being discussed in this article, including the fact that the college admissions process is not fair.  Frankly, I don't feel that it has to be at the private college level.  Every institution has their priorities, and those change from year to year, and sometimes even day to day during committee sessions.  Colleges are looking to fill their campuses full of individuals that will add to classroom discussions and community actions - having an entire freshman class of trumpet players or biology majors or white kids doesn't necessarily add dimension to a class.  

I know!  I know!  I'm saying things that are difficult to hear but I will defer to the article for clarity, "institutions choose based on what their institutional needs are, and they're not necessarily going to be fair to every individual, because they can't pick every individual."

When a student comes into my office and they want to know how to "get in" or they want to know why they didn't get it, it's really, really hard to give them an exact answer.  There are so many qualified applicants that so many amazing kids will be left out.  Should every qualified kid get a spot at their dream college?  Um, maybe...but it just doesn't work that way.  

I'm sure that there are many kids who think they should get into Harvard based on the fact that they have good grades, good scores, leadership roles, and they have worked hard.  In fact, I'm certain that almost every Valedictorian at almost every high school in the US thinks they should have a shot at Harvard but, frankly, Harvard doesn't have that many seats.  It's just the luck of the draw.  

Is Harvard the only place these students can be truly happy?  Absolutely, not!  There are so many wonderful colleges and universities out there to get excited about.  Honestly, I think that parents (and before you say anything, yes, I am a parent) and students should understand that their happiness doesn’t rest solely on a rankings list.  They can be happy at schools outside of their “reach schools” list.  As parents and counselors and teachers, we just have to remind them that they are more than a number and their happiness is not defined by what did or did not happen in an admissions committee room.    

College Ratings Systems

I don't make it a secret that I'm opposed to college and university rankings lists.  One article that I hold to be sacred in the argument against ranking colleges and universities is a 2011 article from the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell called, "The Order of Things: What College Rankings Really Tell Us." I think this article does an excellent job explaining why a "One Size Fits All" list doesn't actually lead a student to choose the best fit college for them.

I talk about ranking a lot in my job.  I live in Asia and counsel Asian students.  I have found that the high achieving, test driven culture in Korea jumps at the opportunity to rank things.  I have found two reasons for this:

1)  This is a culture of numbers, of ranking its students numerically to see who is the best.  In the public schools, earned grades are not necessarily given out.  Instead, the student's transcript actually reflects the grade earned in relation to the other students in the same class.  For example, the A+ (or numeric equivalent of that) can only be achieved by one person - the person who got the best score - and the grades are given from there.  You could have gotten almost every question on the test correct and received a low grade because lots of other students also did well.  This system also translates to the national university entrance exam.  Students with the top scores go to the top colleges.  There is no holistic review.  It's simply about the score on this one exam.  Many of my current students have told me that they left the Korean public school system because students didn't care about their everyday activities in school.  They only cared about the test.   

2) Most people in Korea attend college in Korea but there are many Korean students who are now receiving their college and graduate school educations in North America and Europe.  If these students return to Korea after graduation, prospective employers don't really know about the reputation of colleges in these far away countries.  Because of this, they turn to a simple rankings list in order to decide if a prospective employee received a good education or not.

Regardless of how I feel about rankings lists, I need to acknowledge their place in my role as a college counselor in Asia.  Still, in reading a recent New York Times article titled "Colleges Rattled As Obama Seeks Ratings System," I can't help but think of my students.  Obama is seeking to creating a rating system of colleges and universities in the United States in order to better inform students about what they will get for their tuition dollar.  This is in response to higher tuition rates and the government's need to know that the billions spent each year on financial aid are going toward helping and not hurting students.

I have mixed feelings about Obama's plan.  One one side, I do think that college has become far too expensive.  My son is five years old and I simply can't imagine how much college will cost when he is ready to go in thirteen years (or how I will pay for it!).  I think that colleges and universities should be examining ways to stop tuition inflation in order to make college a more affordable entity.  On the other side, Obama is simply looking for an easy answer to a difficult problem.  How will yet another one size fits all list really tell the whole story of what a college can give to its students?

I'm interested in hearing what you think!  Please leave a comment!