Is The College Admissions Process Broken?

[Joan2]

That is hilarious!

[FLMom2021]

It is now my cautionary tale

[Zrt42]

@Joan2

My son has EU/US dual citizenship. We have thought extensively about him applying to universities in The Netherlands or Germany, but it doesn’t feel the best fit for him because he would have to apply for a specific major. He is a fairly strong student. 35 ACT and lots of stem APs of 4 and 5. But, he is wavering between majoring in various social or natural sciences. For that reason, I prefer a traditional American liberal arts curriculum where he wouldn’t have to choose a major during application.

I certainly appreciate the benefit of not having to chose a major during the application process.

Your son appears to be a very strong student. Are you okay with him attending any university/college in the US? If not, are the schools that interest him selective?

I ask because I am curious how you feel about your son potentially being rejected by every selective school to which he applies, and while you may see many kids with lower stats being admitted to those schools, you would never know why your son was rejected.

[blossom]

Using the logic put forward on this thread, there are lots of things that are broken right now. Cancer treatments… menopause…our volunteer armed services. The tax code. Voter registration and the primary system. gun safety laws. Environmental protection.

I could go on for an hour. I would argue that all of these impact more people and at the extremes cause more serious damage than the terrible stress experienced by a kid who ends up at u Conn because Yales admissions are opaque and anxiety inducing.

Or we could agree that in a country as big as ours, it is hard to build a system which will always be transparent fair and equitable for everyone. But if it were up to me I’d rather put resources behind some of these other broken systems vs tackling the Yale UConn conundrum. Ymmv.

[MidwestPack]

Is the college admissions process broken? For some of us, yes; for most of us, no. As a system as a whole? Unlikely. Certain aspects? Most certainly.

I would approach the analysis first from the colleges’ position: can the admissions process locally (at that college) be repeated with the same results. More specifically, if 100 random applications were given to 10 different AOs, how often would the individual AOs’ decisions be the same as the other nine? If AO 1 identified 50 applicants that should be admitted, 10 deferred, 35 denied, and 5 waitlisted, how would the other nine AO’s decisions align with those results. Further, how often would the individual decisions align on the particular applicants. And, I would even go so far as to make that easier with the decision as to which applicants would be definite “nos” and which would be “potentials for further discussion”.

If there is a great consistency in decisions across the AOs at a given school, then no, the system itself is not broken. If there is a great inconsistency, then yes, it is likely broken as the AOs themselves couldn’t agree on who should be admitted to the school.

Now this is not to suggest that AOs at different schools should come to the same conclusion - just those within the same school.

If the AOs are highly consistent in who they would admit, but the applicants are unaware of their competitiveness, then there is a communication problem. A communication problem, however, does not mean that the system is broken.

Further, if the AOs at a school can provide consistent decisions, various posters here and applicants can complain about the system being broken, but their issue is not with the system itself. They just do not like the outcome of the decision made by the AO.

My guess is that the AOs are generally consistent in their group as to those they would admit and those that they would deny. My guess is also that the colleges generally provide sufficient info as to what they are looking for in a candidate for those looking closely enough. Will some decisions appear illogical, yes, but unlikely on the whole and quite unlikely if you had access to the files.

[Joan2]

Yes, he’s had some disappointments so far. We are currently Texas residents, but our families are not from here, so we don’t have the kind of connection that many feel to their state public universities. Some friends of his were dressed in UT Austin onesies at 6 months old! He was really taken with UNC Chapel Hill because they were so welcoming to applicants who were undeclared majors. He applied EA, but was denied, which he kind of expected, but was still disappointed by. Denied EA UVA, too. I warned him that competitive flagships are really tough when you are OOS. He was admitted to UT Austin College of Liberal Arts as an environmental science major, which was very gratifying. He’s trying to gauge how easy it would be to transfer to College of Natural Sciences if he wants to be a pure chemistry b,s. major. Seems doable, but UT is so big at 40,000+ undergraduates, it intimidates him. Awaiting other OOS public universities and LACs in March.

[cy7878]

@Joan2

He was admitted to UT Austin College of Liberal Arts as an environmental science major, which was very gratifying

Congrats. S24 applied and was rejected. We’re OOS so there was no expectation he would get in. Just sucks his RD rejection came Feb1. Would have been nice to be rejected later in March, after our planned campus tour and visit to Austin. Now when we get there, I would have to preface everything by saying “had you gotten in, this is what you would have…”

[MDparent22]

True although I’d argue most of our “problems” on this board are first world problems.

[Joan2]

Yes, agreed.

[FLMom2021]

I am sure that if I could see all the admissions decisions with access to the entire profile there will be many that I disagree with.

Here’s why I am not on board with test scores or stats only. Many kids are privileged enough (including my own) where school and learning is their only real responsibility. They have educated parents and the means to go to private schools, academic camps, test prep, everything that helps them be high achievers.

Then there are kids who might not achieve quite as high but had to get there with little to no parental support, had to go to a public school filled with disadvantaged kids, had to work through high school to help the family and have anything. No special camps or awards or even awareness that those things exist.

Is students A’s 1600 and 4.0 really all that more remarkable than student B’s 1500 and 3.9? Because I am wondering what student B could achieve given different circumstances. I am not remotely suggesting giving admissions out of pity or righting a societal wrong. It’s more evaluating someone’s likelihood of being successful based on the whole picture.

[blossom]

Not just a first world problem, but something that sucks all the oxygen out of discussions on related and more important issues.

Schools have gutted gifted and talented programs. Is that a bad thing or a good thing? Well, it’s bad if your kid needs differentiated instruction at the tail end. It’s good if you’re a member of a minority group that has typically been excluded from G and T.

The salary differential for teachers has likely never been bigger. Why does a third grade language arts teacher in Tulsa make a fraction of what a third grade language arts teacher in Minneapolis makes…even once you’ve adjusted for cost of living, taxes etc?

Where is the longitudinal data on success academy, kipp, etc compared to the local public schools?

There are so many smart people on cc who care about education. But we don’t discuss these issues. We’re in a perpetual snit about the elites and their lack of transparency. Good grief!

[Aimlesscat1]

So much to unpack after just a day away:

@Chekov

What is your opinion of top STEM magnet schools (such as Thomas Jefferson), that are (or until recently were) selecting their students by exam?

I honestly mixed feelings about them. I see the point behind them but I am not convinced that equivalent results cannot be achieved with alternative approaches.

I believe that kids need a peer group that is sufficient for them to progress at an appropriate pace and with sufficient rigor. But, it is important to remember that they are kids not machines and that there is a good enough bar that can be achieved without creating the stressful high pressure environment that TJ and schools like it seem to become. I do not believe that environments such as TJ are required for gifted kids to reach their potential.

@Chekov

If a test-based close rejection at (let’s say) Harvard came with a near-guaranteed admission at (let’s say) Cornell (with a similar effect continuing all the way down), this web site would likely not have existed.

That would require the ability to stack rank schools in a manner that isn’t possible or that the schools would desire or accept. All schools are different, they have different cultures, missions, and strengths/weaknesses across majors just as starting points.

@Chekov

But that would also require, among other things, a closer look at athletes and legacies, and nobody wants that.

Why would it require a closer look at these things? Are you implying that private institutions shouldn’t be able to operate as they see fit within the law and in alignment with how they see their place in the world? ALDC spots don’t prevent any school from using a test to admit NARPs.

@Chekov

I agree every kid should be challenged to the level of their ability.

The problem is, those top kids might have few peers in their own schools.

It can be a very lonely experience.

In public schools “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”

@Chekov

I believe the current admissions system at the most academically selective American institutions is not optimized for classroom rigor.

Is that actually the primary goal of the most selective American institutions (CalTech and maybe a couple of others excepted)? I do not believe that it is based on their own statements of purpose.

@Chekov

In my opinion, the selection process at the most academically elite institutions should be designed to produce the most academically elite class.

That might be true if their mission was to be the most academically elite institutions. In my reading of things they see themselves as elite institutions of learning with academics as a key but not the sole component of what they strive to develop in the betterment of their goals.

@roycroftmom

The presence of opacity elsewhere, like the presence of racism, doesn’t excuse it also occuring in college admissions.

Opacity creates stress because because it makes it hard to know if people are focused on what has the most impact for an application. It is nothing like racism and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. There is no need to make any excuses for it, it is part of the system.

There is never going to be a checkbox list for application evaluation that provides certainty because what is looked for will vary each cycle based in institutional needs and priorities.

@Mwfan1921

While some schools’ admissions processes are not transparent, people can choose not to play in that sandbox. Especially if they don’t like or want uncertainty or stress.

It does not mean the process is necessarily broken if some of the most popular schools have non-transparent and/or holistic admissions processes.

Exactly, and for the tiny number of schools that this discussion is focused on people need to determine for themselves if they even want to put in the work needed to “qualify” for the game per se. There are many outstanding options for those who don’t want to put themselves through it all.

[Zrt42]

@FLMom2021

had to go to a public school filled with disadvantaged kids, had to work through high school to help the family and have anything.

@FLMom2021

student B’s 1500 and 3.9

I have yet to hear of a FG/LI student like this who didn’t get a great scholarship to a selective school. Have you?

[Aimlesscat1]

@tamagotchi

And the US has about 10x the number of high school graduates each year, I believe? Just imagine if the top university in the US had the same size in proportion to the population, with room for 460,000 undergrads… the admission process would probably look quite different.

Quick back of the envelope would be something like:

UofT, McGill, and UBC totals about 120,000 undergraduate seats for a population of 38M people.

If you consider them the Ivy+ schools of Canada you would need roughly 1.1Million seats in the Ivy+ to have the same seat to population ratio in the US.

[lettiriggi]

This makes my list of “all time favorite posts” on CC.

(Drat. Now I’m going to spend the rest of the day running through the thesaurus in my head: The Illustrious Gatsby. The Magnificent Gatsby. The Exceptional Gatsby…)

[Aimlesscat1]

@roycroftmom

That is the crux of our difference. I prefer a system which does not require savvy parents or tremendous high school support, which the majority of teenagers do not have.

Do you believe that a test based approach would provide such a system? I doubt that it would, people would just be substituting cramming and studying for whatever is happening now without addressing the current economic inequities of our k-12 system.

Also, for anyone who wants a test based system what is the acceptable confidence interval that we end up with the “most deserving” students at the end? The chance of a single test correctly identifying the best 2,000 applicants for Harvard out of 60,000 applicants is effectively zero so is it really better than the current system?

[Aimlesscat1]

@FLMom2021

I had a student write an essay for Gatsby and used AI. He ran it through a program that changes synonyms to avoid plagiarism detection. It changed the word Great every single time. The Remarkable Gatsby. The Unparalleled Gatsby.

Priceless!

[trops]

the best post in this long thread

[cy7878]

@FLMom2021

I had a student write an essay for Gatsby and used AI. He ran it through a program that changes synonyms to avoid plagiarism detection. It changed the word Great every single time. The Remarkable Gatsby. The Unparalleled Gatsby.

So is this kid choosing Harvard or Yale?

[blossom]

Vulcan, this is hilarious:

“I agree every kid should be challenged to the level of their ability.”

You live in a different world than I do! There are parents who explicitly do NOT want their kids challenged. They take the kids out of school a week before vacation starts because Disney is cheaper then. They pick the kids up an hour before dismissal because soccer practice in an adjoining town has a “more demanding” coach. They let the kids sleep in to avoid a math test because the kid spent the weekend at a tennis tournament instead of studying math. They show up at school board meetings to protest “Anne Frank” as pornographic but can’t be bothered to attend back to school nights.

I’m going to guess you don’t know many teachers or administrators! There are lots of people all over the country who do not want their kids challenged in any way unless it’s athletics!