I will try to dig up the study. But the one I read suggests that the “vast” majority of transferred majors are NOT in fact affiliated- closely or otherwise.
Kids aren’t transferring out of Mechanical Engineering into EE or CS. They’re transferring out of ME into a generic “business” program, construction management, econ, finance, etc. They aren’t leaving nursing for other allied health majors- they’re heading for Elementary Ed or something in the school of arts and sciences.
A kid who hits a speed bump with the math or science component in engineering isn’t pondering, “perhaps I’d rather be a physics major”. They are heading for the exits to find a less intensive math discipline. Which makes sense. A kid who can’t handle the nursing curriculum isn’t wondering “perhaps getting a doctorate in physical therapy is more my speed”.
I’m sure you know the kids IRL who have no great love (or even interest) in marketing, supply chain, etc. who end up there when they sit down with their advisor and try to figure out how to graduate more or less on time, with a transcript which is more or less acceptable, with the fewest number of “hard core” classes required.
I certainly do. Especially the ones who discover that the stats class they struggled through as a freshman “counts” in the business program! Hey- a C is a win if you need to get the heck out of engineering ASAP!
School-specific apps: Because the idea of having to figure out a separate application mechanism for each school, and (for students at Naviance and Scoir schools) potentially having to gather and separately submit materials that would otherwise be handled behind the scenes by the counselor, is a huge hassle and major deterrent. That’s why schools that join Common App frequently see a significant jump in app volume, including Rutgers this year. Students could presumably apply through the Rutgers website last year, and the year before that, and the year before that - but obviously many are only willing to do so via Common App.
Coalition: I would certainly prefer that Coalition also reduced its limit from 20, and to the extent that Common App reduced and Coalition didn’t, it would likely make Coalition marginally more popular. But even so, for students at Naviance schools, applying via Coalition is more time-consuming and complicated than applying via Common App. And students wishing to use both to increase the maximum number would then be managing, and asking counselors to assist with managing, two different systems with different procedures. It can be done, and a certain number of dedicated students (or students with dedicated counselors/advisors/parents) will still jump through these hoops and apply to 20+ schools. But far fewer than today IMO, and even fewer over time as the admissions landscape normalizes and becomes more predictable than today’s system.
I think I played in that orchestra, and it was awful!
(It was the orchestra for non-music majors. It was filled with wonderfully smart people. Not with great musicians. It was so bad I quit.)
Does anyone else remember that pre-2020 not only did kids submit their SAT scores, they had to submit SAT subject matter tests?
This thought popped into my head today. Our HS has sent decreasing numbers to the most highly rejectives in recent years. And I think it might be related to those subject matter tests.
How it worked at our high school was that starting freshman year, you took the science SAT at the end of each year. Math 2 SAT after Algebra 2. (I don’t remember the english social studies options because D22 was a STEM girl.) That way when you applied for college you could pick and choose the most applicable/best scores. D22 had taken and scored very well on the Physics SAT after freshman year, despite having gotten Bs in the class. By the end of sophomore year the College Board stopped offering the tests.
Back in the day, if you were applying Engineering you had to give the Math 2 and Physics SAT scores. Colleges had a lot of insight into a student’s subject knowledge and readiness from these standardized tests. An AO could look at the B and the SAT subject score and put the grade into context. When College Board dropped the subject matter SATs all of that insight was gone. Also gone was the advantage given to students at a school that had the foresight to have its freshman taking tests only selective colleges cared about.
I thought of this because you referenced a biology test for kids that wanted to study biology. And that was the system in place at the most elite schools through 2019.
Edited to add: This also leveled the playing field between schools that offered the AP and other curricula. There are 3 semesters worth of physics that can be taught in high school (hence the different AP curricula). The subject matter test covered all 3 and it had the old school SAT rule that you were punished for guessing. So you had to know your stuff and also know what you didn’t know. D22 took the test after her school’s (nonAP) freshman physics. An AO could compare that to a kid that took an AP curricula elsewhere.
My kids’ school also limited the # of APs the student could take because there simply wasn’t room in the classes for all the kids to take all these APs, but it was also, as others implied, to allow the students who had taken certain prior classes and achieved certain grades to be allowed to take specific APs, to increase the likelihood many of those students would get 4s and 5s and it looks good on the school profile.
In some other countries, tracking for career directions can begin in middle school age range, where students are placed into different high schools focusing in different career directions (e.g. university-bound versus trades-bound). While the high schools can optimize their curricula for the given career direction (instead of trying to do everything merely adequately), the early tracking likely result in more students placed in what is eventually found to be not the best track for them, since information about the student’s interests and abilities is more incomplete at middle school age than later.
The common US practice at many colleges and universities for many majors where one can delay choosing a major until second year in college does not seem to be the norm in many other countries, where high school students apply to a specific major at the university (even for liberal arts majors). The latter is sometimes seen in the US when the specific major at the college or university is filled to capacity and/or it has a very structured curriculum that must be started from the first semester in college (nursing typically has both characteristics).
Yes, holistic admissions or admissions where there is substantial subjectively graded input (e.g. essays and recommendations) can look “arbitrary” or “random” to those outside the admissions office.
However, some colleges using stats-only admissions are less transparent than they can (and should) be.
The SAT subject tests had long been in decline, and were discontinued in January 2021. I remember that it used to be that some colleges required them (then known as Achievement tests), but more recently, they were “recommended” by relatively few colleges (“recommended” commonly being interpreted as “required if you were in a relatively advantaged situation like most applicants to those colleges”).
No…I’m trying to remember exactly. It was a year later than what the “advanced” kids in public school were doing. I remember asking a math teacher about it and being told there was no standard for what was pre-algebra vs Algebra I vs Algebra II. Their school chose depth over breadth.
An example of arbitrary: What is one to make of the UC admisssion factor, the location of the applicant’s high school and/or home? Merely a preference for geographic representation from across the state? Or a preference for those CA residents who do not attend high school out of state but whose high school is in state? Or a preference for a residence in a low-income town, even if one is not themselves low-income? I expect different AOs use any of the above or more. All of it justified by the criteria.
Right, there is literally no standardization. Kids can have 5 classes with free periods built in or 8 classes with 10 min for lunch. They can have grading that allows late work to be turned in without penalty until the end of the period or they can get a zero for assignments turned in a day late. There could be cheating rampant with maybe a phone call home or detention but no real consequences. Or cheating could result in having it go on your record. The “holistic” review is supposedly meant to take that into consideration but they also compare kids to other kids in the same school so it ends up a crapshoot based on your school and pool you’re coming from. And with schools getting 95k applications I’d be surprised if they’re even reviewing all the applications let alone holistically.
If different AOs within an admissions office are using different criteria that’s a serious issue with how that office is run. I haven’t heard of this happening though. My understanding is that institutional priorities are set by or communicated to the admissions office, and they then figure out what criteria to use to identify applicants that meet those priorities. I don’t believe individual AOs make up their own rules.
Now, assuming they all follow the same criteria within an admissions office, us not knowing from the outside what those are makes the process non-transparent but not arbitrary.
I don’t believe students need to go to highly competitive schools. My oldest turned down more competitive schools because what was deemed a safety was just a better fit and offered the program and minor he wanted.
This was in response to the idea that the “less deserving” kids were getting admitted to selective schools and it was a problem in some way. The statistics that the freshman retention rates are pretty high prove otherwise. As does the fact that the graduates are getting good jobs.
Yes, my understanding is that the UCs use information about your neighborhood and high school as a proxy for those other factors they aren’t allowed to use in the admissions decision.
Our (very liberal) city in CA does a similar thing when allocating spots in the elementary and middle school lottery. They can’t use information about families’ ethnicity and income directly, but they can average this data over all families on each city block, and then use a family’s address as a positive or negative admissions factor.
