Almost every fall, I’d pull up the first college application I received, look at the details the college wanted me to provide on the secondary school report, and think, what on Earth does any of this have to do with the student who’s applying to college?
You’re dubious? Let’s go for a ride.
Class rank Since the college has the student’s GPA, and I’ve given (or will soon give them) the GPA scale we use, it isn’t all that hard to figure out how well the student has done in school. Why then does it matter how well they’ve done in school compared to other students?
I used to think this was just true at the small school where I worked. But since the difference between an A and an A- affects rank at big schools as well, I can’t help but wonder what class rank says about students in any high school. Many schools have gotten rid of class rank as a result of this. All schools should follow.
GPA Some high schools do not list a GPA because many of them don’t issue grades. I get it—they don’t want the shorthand of a grading system to get in the way of understanding who the student is, and the qualities they bring to learning.
That argument works for me parwith class rank, but not as much with GPA. I don’t grade on a curve, so student learning isn’t evaluated based on who else knows what—it’s based on what the student knows about a defined body of content. If all grading occurred that way, I think the old 1-4 GPA scale would work well. As it is, GPAs are a bit of a mess, and I salute colleges who have the unhappy task of trying to make sense of them.
Student discipline report I worked at a private boarding school, one that happened to be on the same campus as a graduate school. One of our 11th graders was looking out his dorm window when some graduate school coeds came by after curfew, and invited him to a party. Out the window he hops, and off he goes, missing bed check. Since the colleges he applied to asked about discipline in general, they were told.
Colleges don’t want to know about this stuff—and if they do, I hope it’s to give the lad a medal of some kind for taking initiative to live life to the fullest. Understanding many discipline issues are more severe, colleges should still refine this question to ask if the student was disciplined as a result of putting another person at harm. Two days off for a graffiti violation shouldn’t really keep anyone out of college.
Behavioral checkboxes From leadership to academic curiosity, most college applications have about 18 character qualities they’d like counselors to evaluate on a checklist. Arguably a good shorthand way to summarize the student.
The problem? Again, the checkboxes ask the counselor to compare the student to other students, not to an absolute standard—and the comparison is for all students the counselor has ever worked with. Not only does this defeat the purpose (what does it say when the student is the most honest in a group of ne’er-do-wells?), it also makes it pretty hard to answer (can a student really show diligence in a way that makes them one of the top students I’ve ever worked with?) Since the counselor letter is supposed to address this anyway, how about if colleges read that to understand what they’re getting in this student, and decide if they have something to offer?
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