@mohammadmohd18 - your views of the college application process is pretty off, some responses below:
“They benefit both the student and the college. The college gets higher yield rates, and the student gets their application looked at sooner before all the hooked applicants applying RD to all the Ivies (although a lot of those hooked applicants do indeed apply early). If you don’t want to deal with finishing your application sooner, it’s simple: don’t apply early. They don’t shove it down your throat. It’s entirely voluntary.”
It has been shown that early decision benefits the colleges since students are locked in, meaning less choice which is always bad for the consumer. Then you have less flexibility for financial aid. And since early decision or action for that matter means you have to know about the process, when to submit scores, recommendations etc., it advantages higher income school districts that have GCs with knowledge on how to do this. And since ED acceptance rates can be a lot higher than RD, more students are going ED without knowing the risks.
“The college admissions process may be stressful, and expensive, and terrifying. But it works just fine.”
How can something that’s stressful, expensive and terrifying (not to mention more suicides) be working fine? Shouldn’t any process, anywhere seek to reduce stress, pressure and costs?
“The reason kids are applying to so many colleges is not because it’s difficult to get into college: it’s because it’s so darn easy to apply to an amalgam of colleges.”
I agree with you there, the common app is probably the second worst thing to happen to admissions after US News rankings. I would urge making the common app just for basic info so a student doesn’t have to fill out the same things over again, but each college would have its own app for essays and other info. I would require one essay to be handwritten and sent in, but that’s the old school person in me.
“Yes, getting into elite colleges is difficult. Who knew? Do you expect the colleges to discard the hooks and take students solely on GPA and test scores? That would create the most vapid class of grade-grabbers the college would have ever seen. “Hooks” are the reason those colleges accept those kids: because they think they can do something in the world once they graduate. Not to mention, making the admissions process entirely numbers-based would severely disadvantage poor applicants who can’t afford private tutors for their harder classes and to get a perfect ACT score. Top colleges can assemble multiple classes of valedictorians and grade-grubbers out of the hordes of “average excellent” students that apply–but they don’t, and for good reason.”
these are the people with hooks:
recruitable athletes, they go college to get drafted and to make a lot of money, while most ncaa athletes don't go pro, as the commercial says, football and basketball players are keen on millions of dollars, not really to do something in the world (note making money is not in itself bad)
legacies - they get to the elites because of money and graduate to make more money - not to change the world or disrupt the healthcare industry
first gen and URMs - these are only cases when hooks make some sense, but you assume that none of them can have good academics, because that would imply they're grade grubbers which goes against your world view.
And for all your talk about not taking these grade gubbers, most of the students at the ivies, stanford, MIT, et al are exactly that… If the average UW GPA is a 3.9, with act of 32 and sat of 1500, that’s a lot of grade grubbers at those schools.
@OHMomof2 so the supplemental essays are sent in after the first part of the app is submitted. It can give you the false impression that you’re done, but yet you haven not yet submitted the second part. It’s been a year since I helped my student, so someone else here may be able to clarify further.
Two things stand out to me above. I don’t know how anyone can say ED benefits students on the whole. It is solely for the benefit of universities looking to juice their yields. And people do it for the reason that there are a lot more people who want spots at elite universities than there are spots available. My real argument for the current system is that most “solutions” I’ve seen don’t really address that basic point. The two closest are randomly choosing from the 5-10x as many qualified applicants as spots, but it is human nature to not want to make things a lottery even when they are effectively close to it. The second is to make standardized tests a lot harder so there is not so much compression near the top, but the hooks all have reasons from the universities point of view - they want a broader range of experiences than just the best test takers. The funniest part to me is the insistence that for some reason private universities should be required to do what’s best for some specific person or group, not what they think is best for themselves. If they make lots of wrong choices, then someone else should take over as most elite over time.
@mohammadmohd18 I disagree with your assertion that admission by GPA and test scores “would create the most vapid class of grade-grabbers the college would have ever seen”.
That’s how it’s done in most countries and I would argue you’d have to prove your assertion about each one. McGill does this and it is still a top-50 international university. In France, students prepare for years for entrance exams (“prepa”). It makes for a pretty objective standard that doesn’t subtract from the education quality.
Of course, it also depends on the character of the Uni. If you want to go to Oxbridge, with its writing-intensive tutorial method, you need to evaluate applicants differently, more personally. I think the unis in the US act like they’re different when it’s really to hide subjectivity, luck, and various quotas (from “legacy” students to diversity).
Standardized tests don’t level the playing field, but rather benefit the kids of means who can pay to take review classes. So --do away with them and alleviate a lot of stress. I think you only need a transcript, list of ECs and student essay where student explains why they want to attend the school and what they will bring to the community and what do they think they uniquely bring.
Don’t need rec letters. The UC’s recently started to reinstate them, but for many years didn’t require them. The recs should all be positive anyway, so that’s not something to help ADCOMS make choices. I think a guidance dept letter could be helpful to identify any particular challenges, strengths or weaknesses to students.
You don’t need therefore, standardized tests, rec letters or a myriad of supplemental essays, or interviews or info sessions/tours all accompaied by high fees. The universities make plenty of money in endowments, alumni donations and tuition, so all apps should be free. And simple. The supplemental essays really gotta go–way too much stress, not necessary.
I do not have something to do with the admissions process professionally to be able to use your words as constructive criticism. And I apologize if I sounded abrasive by picking apart each of your arguments; however, quoting each of those fragments of text made it easier for me to put up my own arguments.
I will say again that technical issues with CB are the exception and not the rule, although that must have been very frustrating for you, and it’s good that your troubles are over. As for the admissions process resulting in top students not getting into top colleges, that’s both true and false. It’s true because very qualified valedictorians and non-profit-starters and all-around amazing students get rejected from Ivies and top 10 or 20 schools all the time. However, those top students will have applied to excellent schools that constitute “matches,” and will likely get a lot of merit aid and it’ll all be for the better. Would it be an ideal scenario if every top student got into every top school? Yes, of course! But acceptance rates are so incredibly low for the reason that so many top students are applying to those top colleges, and top colleges simply don’t have the space. That is a fact of life, and even if The Common App were scrapped and a beautiful, inexpensive, and relatively comfortable process were put in place, people would still get rejected from top colleges all the time. The poison would just be honeyed.
The demand for entry into top colleges far exceeds the supply. That’s why top students don’t get into top colleges. That’s an entirely different discussion from the faults of the college application process. That’s a discussion about the educational system in general.
I agree with you about standardized tests needing to be made harder to reduce compression. However, since there is so much compression and GPA and test scores don’t matter as much at top colleges, ED is necessary and useful. It obviously helps the colleges way more than the students, but it does help the students. If they really want to go to a selective college and they ED to it, their chances are that much greater. There are plenty of drawbacks to ED, of course. Colleges up their yield while students face not having as firm a grip on exactly how much financial aid they’ll get if admitted, which is hard in and of itself. But looking at it objectively, ED increases your chances of admission in a crowded application process, shows your interest, and offers the hope that you’ll be done with the admissions process by second semester, so you can try to enjoy the rest of high school.
Is it wrong that students may be forced to ED to a school they may not be totally in love with out of fear of not gaining admission to any school but their safety? Yes, definitely. But that’s a criticism of the US educational system as a whole and its cutthroat admissions process, and not of The Common App or CB or ACT (but there’s plenty to criticize there).
In a lot of countries, the standardized tests are more difficult than our SAT and ACT (China, S. Korea, Poland, Japan, Finland, Germany, etc.). As such, the admissions process is less holistic and more numbers-based which definitely results in top students snagging spots at top colleges. In the US, because the SAT/ACT are gentler tests, there’s a lot of compression at the top, as turtle17 said. As such, the process is an unpredictable crapshoot.
My assertion that admission based on numbers would create a “vapid class of grade-grabbers” was a little bit hyperbolic :), I’ll admit. But until we have harder standardized tests (or levels of a standardized test that get progressively harder, so that the top levels include calculus, calculus-based physics, hard sciences, and more intense literature), admission based almost entirely on numbers in the US would eviscerate the incentive to engage in extracurricular activities and start clubs/non-profits/what have you. After all, if getting into HYPSM and the like was based entirely on numbers, you had better believe that kids would give up more of their time to maintaining a perfect GPA and getting a 36 on the ACT (although the real go-getters would still do ECs).
I think you might have contradicted yourself here. If knowledge about the ED process gives higher income school districts an advantage, then you have to agree that applying ED does advantage you (else the richer kids wouldn’t get a benefit). The ED process definitely gives you less flexibility for financial aid, but there are NPCs to help you get an estimate. Those can be inaccurate though, especially if your parents have a business or are divorced–for that reason, if you aren’t sure how much FA you’ll be getting at the college you’re thinking of EDing to, then don’t apply ED! Again, it’s voluntary. ED surely helps those with money and those in the know–that’s a fact. And it may indeed be wrong to have an ED process that people in the middle-class “donut-hole” (too rich for FA, too poor to pay full COA) don’t benefit from, but the fact is that ED does benefit those who use it. It doesn’t benefit those who can’t, and that is a flaw that should be fixed. Your argument that having knowledge about the admissions process is necessary is very valid, but that should be expanded to include the entire process, not ED: knowing how to apply to college, and what type of aid you’re eligible for, is knowledge that everyone should have so that they can benefit from applying early. The real crime here is poor funding for schools in poor districts resulting in poorly-paid, overworked GCs who don’t bother with telling you about the ED/EA process–not the process itself.
Again, knowledge is the issue, not the process.
The college application process is more streamlined than it’s ever been, thanks to the internet and the CA. Actually gaining admission is the hard part. The reason the process is so stressful is that there’s so much compression at the top score-wise, that when two kids of the same race and background with perfect GPAs, high ACT scores, and an interest in political science both apply to the same school, AOs have to choose between them for lack of space (I wish race wasn’t a factor but that’s another discussion). The flaw is with the supply of elite colleges (or you might say the relevant supply, because there are plenty of amazing colleges that students don’t see because they don’t come up too high on the USNWR list) and the prevalence of high test scores. Make the tests harder and you’ll be able to pick out the extremely over-qualified kids from the over-qualified. As it stands today, way more high-stats kids want admission to Ivies than there are seats in Ivies. And that’s a problem that needs to be fixed. But the process itself is fine. And I’ll add that the stress of the process is somewhat self-inflicted, because students think the world is over if they don’t get into a prestigious college, and peer pressure/parental pressure is real as well (I can personally attest to that).
That would make the process even more complicated, which goes against your argument that the process needs to be refined. i think, however, that The Common App needs to institute a lower cap for the number of colleges kids can apply to. That way, kids will have to choose colleges they’ve actually researched and like, and not just C&P’d from the USNWR list. The process itself is streamlined and accessible.
My opinion of the college admissions process hardly constitutes my world view. I never assumed that none of first gens and URMs had good academics–I’d rather you not project ideas onto me. URM status and first gen status are hooks, however, as you and I both allow. People with these hooks but with poor academics do not get into top colleges. It definitely helps, though.
I’ve clarified above what I meant about my grade-grabber comment. I’ll do so again. Yes, obviously top colleges have high-stats kids. But because standardized tests in the US result in high compression of smart kids at the top, making the process entirely numbers-based would make the process at tippy-top schools entirely random and even more unpredictable than it is now. It would result in a long line of valedictorians with perfect GPAs and scores that would be randomly selected for admission, because there would be no way to differentiate them. How do you decide between two kids with perfect stats if that’s the only criterion for admission? You either make the tests harder to separate out the geniuses from the really smart kids, use other criteria, or both.
@preppedparent, I just saw your most recent post. Typing the above was a little tiring, so suffice it to say that standardized tests are necessary, because we need a standardized measure of proficiency. Should we change our standardized tests and make them harder? I’m of that opinion. But we shouldn’t deign to remove them.
The “student essay” is already part of a lot of colleges’ supplementals. Transcripts alone are not an accurate reflection of students’ abilities, which is why standardized tests are necessary.
I should note that while I think making the tests harder is one way to deal with the oversupply of applicants to high profile schools, I’m not personally in favor of it. What I was aiming to say is either you have holistic admissions or you make the tests harder. Or you can make it a lottery (which is what removing anything except grades would do). I’d also like to agree that the process itself is easier than it used to be. The stress is higher, but in agreement with above that is because there are too many students chasing too few spots at famous places.
Unlike some posters here, my experience with people and places with much more test based systems is I’m glad the US doesn’t do that. If nothing else, it helps provide variety in the world. And if you think this system has stress, talk to people who took one test that would determine their future. Typically no retesting, no balancing scores with anything else you’ve done.
@turtle17 I agree. I’m glad we aren’t a one-test-determines-your-future type educational system.
@preppedparent If the student really wanted to apply to that school, he/she would be able to write one or two more supplemental essays. In the end, those supplementals may help him/her get into that college.
@mohammadmohd18 You’ve obviously thought about this a lot. I’ve enjoyed the debate you sparked.
I agree that the SAT is too narrow, never took or got my kids to take, the ACT. But both of them studied for SAT and did very well on them. I should note that they were both in the French system, prepping for the BAC exams the whole time they were in high school - a better, more comprehensive test than SAT. To get admitted to her British Uni (i.e. meet her conditional offer), she had to score at a specified level on the BAC. That being said, I’ve read that the SAT is an accurate predictor of undergraduate performance.
Cambridge, Oxford, top French universities etc are also very successful, each in their own way, and most with more nationalized curricula, tests. etc. Obviously it works well for some people in some places (although I’m not sure why Rhodes scholars which are allocated by country have anything to do with it).
At the same time HYPS et al. are fantastically successful with their holistic admissions. What I don’t understand is why people seem to think HYPS et al should overhaul their highly successful model because they personally prefer a different model which has been successful elsewhere. Heck even within the US tippy tops there are variations in the role of stats vs holistic, e.g. compare Chicago with Stanford.
