Looks like College Board is getting rid of their Landscape tool. I had heard on college podcasts that this was a useful tool for admissions counselors to gain context about students. Seems like it will make it harder for students from less well-resourced schools.
1 Like
Well, College Board is a not for profit organization. As such, I expect they receive federal funding. And without wishing to be political, they probably had to do this or lose federal funding due to certain directives.
Another way to make things more difficult for certain groups of people. Note, I didn’t read the NYtimes article as I don’t have access, but I am guessing it says something similar to what I suspect. I did read CB’s statement.
4 Likes
Here’s a gift link
Edited to add, I see the original link from @beefeater is also a gift link 
1 Like
That’s pretty much the summary of the article:
“After the Trump administration criticized the use of what it called “racial proxies,” the group behind the SAT shut down a way for universities to identify promising applicants from disadvantaged communities.”
and from the body of the article:
“Landscape had been under review by an anti-affirmative-action group, Students for Fair Admissions, whose lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill resulted in the Supreme Court ruling. The decision by the College Board to withdraw the tool seemed very likely to be related to the defensive posture that many schools are adopting in response to the conservative assault against the use of race in college admissions.”
1 Like
I have mixed feelings. I LIKED the idea. I DID NOT LIKE that a student or parent couldn’t see their own landscape assessment and DID NOT LIKE that schools were very cagey about if and how they used it.
5 Likes
How so?
Colleges did not list it on their website or talk about it in information sessions. At 2 information sessions in 2023 (wash u and u mich) I asked the admissions rep and was given the answer that yes we use it. The normally chatty reps got very quiet and redirected the conversation.
1 Like
I agree. When I heard about Landscape, I did a deep dive to see if I could find my daughter’s HS’s Landscape profile and was unsuccessful. Why was it so secretive?
2 Likes
Because the information was intended for use by educational institutions.
I’m in two minds about the alleged secrecy of the tool and the right for colleges to use the tool. Airlines don’t tell the public about the tools they use right now to jack up prices for single travelers. All kinds of businesses don’t disclose how they learn about their buyers. We can choose not to buy if we don’t like the price, or if we don’t like what they don’t tell us.
Colleges are still businesses at the end of the day. They have to ensure their survival. An instate kid applying to Michigan perhaps has a right to know how U Mich is making admissions decisions, but an OOS applicant? Why? There are plenty of other colleges to apply to. It’s not like a student from NY has to get into U Michigan, or else they have no other college option.
I don’t see anything wrong with Landscape, but it’s gone now. I am sure colleges will still find a way to get diversity if they seek it. It’s really the students in those underfunded schools who are losing out.
5 Likes
I don’t/didn’t care for the secrecy of Landscape the way I don’t care for anything that makes admissions less predictable than it otherwise might be. There is heavy use of mathematical modeling in admissions, either in-house or through external enrollment management consultants. Those models are proprietary trade secrets. Price is a separate issue, though that too would be a concern for many. It’s the black box of holistic admissions that isn’t so black for those managing the variables. If the data were known, families would form college lists accordingly, which would naturally dampen application volume.
3 Likes
I’m also pretty confident holistic review colleges that want to think about admissions in this sort of contextual way will continue to do so.
I also understand why people did not like the lack of complete transparency around Landscap.
But on the other hand, I found myself occasionally pointing people to the public materials available about Landscape as a way of at least getting an idea of what contextual review can look like in practice.
So to me this feels like a further step away from transparency. But I understand why it happened, so oh well.
1 Like
If I were in charge of everything–well, that would be terrible. But one of the things I would be doing in this space is working toward a sort of Net Price Calculator but for Initial Review.
Basically, colleges would be required to provide an automated Initial Review of an application, using the automated tools they are already using (or soon will be). The output would not be any sort of guarantee of admissions (or rejection), but could be something as simple as “deemed competitive” or “deemed not competitive”. The understanding would be that just being deemed competitive only meant you would get a serious human review. Deemed not competitive would mean at most you would get a quick look human review, but absent exceptional circumstances you would not get a serious human review.
I actually think if this was forced on colleges, they wouldn’t really mind after long, or not most of them. Obviously it would cut down on uncompetitive applications they have to wade through, but it could also increase applications among certain sorts of potential applicants who may not realize they actually are competitive.
Anyway, this is just a thought experiment, no one is likely to go for this (not soon, anyway). But point is I agree with you that since we know all this is happening behind the scenes, at a certain point it seems like giving prospective applicants a chance to see how that might apply to them before actually applying could be a good idea.
3 Likes
The same lack of transparency for Landscape also applies to holistic review generally. Of course that means that lots of students and parents will complain about it, because they have no idea why they or their kid was rejected, or they believe they know why even if their believed reason is implausible.