Today is the closing day of the NACAC conference. I attended three sessions today and will leave in about an hour and a half for a tour of University of Denver.
My first session today was called "Beyond Admission" and it was a look at how the College Board SAT data is used by colleges in phases other than just the 'admit' portion of the enrollment cycle. Before admission, come steps like identifying potential applicants and recruiting them. After admission, come steps like getting them to deposit (aka yield), placing them in classes, and making sure they graduate. I was curious to know a little more about the business of buying and selling student names and information (in case you weren't aware, that is how schools get the names of many of the students they market to). Unfortunately, little detail was given about how that process works (or how much it costs). Instead, we heard a bright and shiny review of how the SAT can be used in many other aspects of the college process other than just whether to admit or deny. I think one of the most telling portions of this session was a slide projected by the College Board showing the different score bands of students and a corresponding bar graph with their retention rate year to year in college leading ultimately to graduation. As the score bands went higher, the percent of students retained got higher. The presenter made the comment that this graph was evidence of the SAT having predictive value for retention and graduation. In my opinion though, this use of "data" is a gross overestimation by the College Board in the value of their exam. I would argue that it isn't the ability to score highly on the SAT that has a relationship to the ability to stick with and finish college. To say that overlooks (as one of my fine colleagues pointed out) the fact that, for example, a student with an 800 total score on three sections isn't being admitted to the same school as the student with a 2200. To suggest that they were EVER on a level playing field in terms of likelihood of retention or graduation is pretty absurd. What about socioeconomic status being predictive? Parent education level? Amount of loans a student is asked to take out? Quality of support on campus?
Why does the practice of the SAT being used for other parts of the enrollment cycle exist? From the prospective of the colleges, they find that buying names from the College Board and using those names as a way to fill their pipeline to identify eventual admits and hopefully eventual graduates is a good use of their dollars. Another element to this session, from the presenting colleges, defended the use of a 'wide brush' when choosing which names to buy, since they need to cast a wide net in order to catch those diamonds in the rough that may not have been reached otherwise. I would counter that to say that it isn't a wide brush being used, it is a paint-roller, with students far outside a school's profile often being added to the mailing list and marketed to when the school knows good and well the chance of admission is minimal. I would urge schools (and the College Board) to encourage stronger ethical guidelines in terms of marketing to students that are so far below the traditional admissible range. The panel also made the interesting suggestion that juniors taking the SAT should use their four free score reports to send scores to colleges they like as a way to show demonstrated interest. I can't say I love this idea, but if schools are using that as a way to see who is most interested, I feel obligated to share that on the blog. As you can see, I could go on and on about my observations from this session and what it means for this industry. I guess I'll close with the comment that I found it telling that none of the presenters mentioned the other side of this coin that, in addition to using SAT scores to identify students that may have been overlooked, the far more common scenario is that marketing from College Board Search name buys serves to inflate the applicant pool, allow for more students to be denied, result in a lower selectivity rate, and mean higher rankings and happier trustees. The admissions arms race is real and don't let any glossy brochure make you forget it.
The next session I attended was "Best Practices for Working with the Press to Advance Public Understanding of College Admission." Let me first say, I was motivated to go to this session after a particularly inane question from a member of the press (at a national newspaper) from the affirmative action session the other day. I also thought that as someone that blogs about college admissions, I should hear what the presenters had to say. The session consisted of journalists and authors who contribute to the national conversation about college admission. My main takeaways were that more journalists covering this topic need to either have backgrounds in the field or be open to learning the nuances before writing. There was also the idea that the public must be reminded that members of the press are just like colleges - they are not all created equal. Some are, by nature, going to be sensationalizing and stirring up a panic and others will aim to be factual, fair, and have the goal of making readers informed consumers. During the Q&A, I found the comments made by Duke University to ring true, which were that any time a college is speaking to a member of the press they must assume that every sentence they utter can be quoted without the sentence before it and after it. This is a unique challenge, but is certainly an ongoing conversation about how to best educate the public about college admissions and what language and journalistic techniques can best do that.
My final session for the day was "The Model Minority Myth: The Reality of Asian College Applicants in the 21st Century." This session delved into the challenges faced by the Asian community in the college process and beyond. The session first pointed out that Asians comprise about 5.8% of the population of the United States. Especially for those of us coming from the five boroughs, I think we would find this surprising. Asians also recently past Latino/Hispanic as the largest racial group immigrating to the United States. The myth is that Asian students are smarter than and better test takers than other racial groups. When it comes to the admission process, a challenge for Asian students is that there are 24 different ethnic groups withing the box checked "Asian" on the Common App. There are some groups that have a profile much closer to the stereotype and others that are drastically different. The question was raised, if a stereotype is a good stereotype (like, for example, Asians are smart) is that really such a bad thing? But the argument is yes, it is bad, because the reality for Asians is quite different. Context is very important, particularly for colleges, so they can understand if other identity groups (like being low income or first generation American or a certain ethnicity) may actually play a larger role in that student's identity. There is a term, the bamboo ceiling, which refers to the fact that despite being the most educated race statistically, only 0.3% of corporate employees are Asian. If stereotypes are used, one may not realize this disparity. Unfortunately, I came to this session specifically to hear from the college admission side and hear how schools are (or are not) falling prey to the model minority myth. But, the presenter from the college side was not able to attend the session, so I wasn't able to learn about that perspective. The suggestions from the panel encouraged disaggregation of the Asian data, separating out the different Asian ethnic groups and allowing for society to see more of the nuances within the very diverse Asian community.
I have to sign off now to head up to the University of Denver, but the final day of sessions leave me feeling tired but thankful to be able to attend this conference every year. As a counselor that works as "an office of one" (no secretary, no assistant, no other college counselors on staff) the ability to come to this conference and be surrounded by 5,000 other people that are as excited about post secondary education as I am is unparallelled. I re-energizes me for the year ahead and reminds me of how fortunate I am to love my job.
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