I've officially entered the double digit category, with this being my tenth NACAC conference. Each year has brought new experiences and this one is sure to be one of the most memorable yet.
As you may already be aware, NACAC is currently going through a very serious and intense DOJ investigation. The future of our organization and the landscape of college admissions is very much on the brink of some potentially major changes. I've gone through my own thoughts and feelings as I process this conflict between ethics and law and if I'm being honest I'm still grappling with how I feel. With my role as a delegate representing NY State (and my lack of personal legal representation) I'm not looking to turn this post into a rambling laundry list of what those feelings are. What I will share is this link to Jon Boeckenstadt's blog where he has shared some of his own predictions for the future of NACAC without a mandatory code of ethics. Saturday will be an eventful day, to say the least.
Today was already eventful though in its own right. I spent the morning visiting University of Louisville, a public urban school with about 12,000 undergraduate students. This compact campus doesn't feel overwhelming, despite the enrollment size. University of Louisville is an example of a school that I'm talking about when I say that students can attend schools outside of New York for the price of a SUNY. With a total cost of attendance around $37,000, over half of Eleanor Roosevelt's senior class would qualify for merit based scholarships. A 30 ACT/1360 SAT and a 90 GPA yields an automatic minimum of $12,000 in merit aid per year. Guess what school is now $25,000? And there are additional scholarships available, including application based avenues that go up to full tuition. Students in a similar academic range are also eligible to apply to the honors program, a great way to make a larger school more personal and rigorous. I also saw a meaningfully diverse campus-- with notable inclusion efforts for both students of color and LGBTQ+ students.
Next, I attended the NACAC opening keynote by Randi Zuckerberg. Again, in the spirit of not turning this into a rambling laundry list of my thoughts and feelings I'll just summarize by saying that the general consensus on her remarks were that they largely missed the mark. This keynote was a missed opportunity to present the membership with what could have been some really interesting and relevant topics (perhaps, I don't know, something about antitrust law?). I'm hopeful that this will be motivation to do better in the future.
For the first educational session, I attended a presentation called "Profiles, Grade Distributions, and Recommendations -- oh my!" -- a look into what high schools and colleges have found to be most important to communicate in applications. This is the time of year that I'm always revising our class profile and this session helped to remind me of a few tweaks to consider making.
Tomorrow is another long day - excited to keep great conversations going!
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