Eric Hoover is the best writer about college admissions out there, and if you haven’t read his classic piece on what college admissions is really all about, you have something to do today.
That’s why I was surprised when I finished his most recent piece on the need for more transparency in college admissions. You should read this for yourself, but here’s my summary:
- Yes, it would be helpful for college admissions to be easier to understand.
- But there’s more to college admissions than grades and test scores.
- And if we’re more transparent, we may get fewer applications.
I’m not disappointed with Eric’s writing; I’m disappointed with what the colleges had to say. My response:
- Sure, it would be great if college admissions were easier to understand—but can that really be done? If not, making it seem easy to understand is a bad idea, since it gives a false impression of what it really is.
- Admissions has always been about more than test scores and grades, but can some of those other factors still be quantified? Can the intangibles be described in, you know, sentences?
- Popular colleges admit less than 5 percent of their applicants, so they have lots of students to choose from. Why would fewer applicants be a problem?
And then, of course, the real problem hit me, in two parts.
Popular colleges run admissions offices like Parisian restaurants It’s a standard TV sitcom script. A new chic restaurant opens up, and everyone wants to get in, but it’s so popular, few can. Rumors abound of ways to bypass the months-long waitlist, raising the visibility and popularity of the place. If you succeed, you discover they are charging more than the meal is really worth, and you have a sense that, for better or worse, the folks running the restaurant kind of like the fact they have this reputation for being limited, since that makes them more popular.
Go back and read that last paragraph, and tell me which parts don’t apply to college admissions. Lower admit rates mean more media and social media coverage, so they take a nuclear-arms-race approach to encourage students to apply. This leads to stories about demonstrated interest, what applicants do with their summers, how many startups they have before 12th grade, and being the child of an alum or a US senator. More media, more popularity.
Tuition is set at an artificially high price that garners more media attention. Few families actually pay this, but listing the actual price would make the college seem pedestrian. It also gives parents of admitted students a false sense of relief when they get an aid package that knocks the price down from $75,000 to $50,000, as if the average family of four can actually afford that—but since this is such a good deal from the original price, it seems like a bargain, and off they go to Studentloanville and PLUSland.
If you’re wondering what any of this has to do with students and learning, or where the college considers the appropriateness of the match between the student’s needs, goals, and abilities and what the college has to offer, welcome to the club. These things are certainly part of the admissions process, but they get short shrift when admissions is discussed.
Which leads to the second part of my aha moment:
Popular colleges don’t want to be more transparent because that might risk their place in the college pecking order, another concept that has absolutely nothing to do with the well-being of students.
Now there’s an Eric Hoover piece I can’t wait to read.
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