I think it is a stretch to say that most high scoring kids did significant prep - there is no way of knowing that. It wasn’t the case in my household. I think tests have the most utility when it comes to predicting success/persistence in STEM fields. Kids coming in without a strong grounding in math are likely to struggle - especially at schools like MIT. I am not as sold on the predictive nature of the SAT when it comes to the humanities. Is a kid getting a 650 really going to be less successful as an English major than a kid scoring a 780? That is just my .02. Mileage may vary.
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No, this is not what I am seeing here. Rather than a single high stakes exam, Yale is permitting a choice of how to satisfy the testing requirement: sat, act, ap, or IB. With regard to the sat and act, superscoring is permitted. While important, it’s not one and done and live with the results. As to ap and IB, they do expect to see all scores whether you submit the act or sat. Perhaps that is high stakes, but it is also part of the larger holistic assessment.
I did find it interesting on their statement re ap and IB scores in that a negative inference WOULD be drawn if you did not submit all scores for courses taken. This is in contrast to prior statements about test optional in which Amos repeatedly stated that no inference would be made about test scores if not submitted.
I understand learning loss and challenges in assessing preparedness without testing, but this is a little funny to me. Granted, my kids are at an elite private school, but I look at the stuff they are doing, the conversations they are having, the depth and amount of work, I’m like “Wow!” I was definitely not doing that when I was that age. And FWIW I went to an Ivy so it’s not like I was slacking.
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Ditto, but I also think that both things might be true. Strong students and many students coming out of strong schools (both private and public) are remarkably better prepared for college than 30-40 years ago while more “kids these days” might be less prepared than before.
To be clear, I am using might in these sentences because I don’t know for sure. For example, just to use math courses because I don’t think the level/content has changed much over the years, I am pretty sure that there are more students who are reaching courses like Cal BC as 10th and 11th graders than many years ago. However just because that number has grown, I don’t necessarily think it means that math preparation over the entire population of tenth and eleventh graders is significantly higher than before. The gap (preCovid) might have just become bigger between the students who have been accelerated and those who have been left behind. And there may be more upper middle class and wealth families seeking academic enrichment outside of school now.
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@MITChris thank you so much for your insight here. If only everyone who needed to was reading your posts… Sigh…
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Thanks! I sometimes use discussions on CC to work out stuff I might want to say canonically on the blogs, but also, there is sometimes stuff I wouldn’t say on the blogs because it would be too public a platform. Granted, this is totally public, and there is an inherent contradiction in those terms. This is the poster’s paradox, and why I will eventually fly too close to the sun (because of posting).
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Well, stay close to the sun. We like you flying high!
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I would tend to agree with this. There certainly seem to be more students coming out of HS with more advanced classes, especially in math and sciences. I don’t necessarily think that those kids are inherently smarter, just that a lot of their education was accelerated vs “kids in the day.” At the same time with grade inflation, it bunches a lot of students of varying capabilities towards the upper part of the distribution. The group of college admits with a “3.5+” GPA may in fact include many kids who might have been less than “3.0” students “in the day”, and that may be what is being observed and remarked upon.
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College professor at a top SLAC for 20 years (!). I wouldn’t say at all that kids are smarter or not but there is definitely a difference in motivation, grit, and attentiveness, grossly averaged across all students. I would say that that this is largely a COVID-induced issue. Also, this is why anecdata is so problematic- as the years go on, I’m aging too, so my students respond differently to me, perhaps - so a faculty member saying that to @MITChris isnt super helpful. I don’t know that we have any data but I will say that levels of anxiety and depression have increased dramatically in 20 years so that could be a factor as well.
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College administrations/profs settle back on the “old ways” and “old metrics”. But, the world has changed exponentially for this generation of soon-to-be “college students”. They have access to a trillion data points and resources for problem-solving that were unheard of just ten years ago. Plus they are deluged with the craziness of social media. Kids nowadays see the future much more differently than we did at their age and behave accordingly. So not only do college curriculums have to change but so do the methodology for admission selection.
Why? It seems like the key skills-bright, critical thinking, good writing, literate and numerate-are the same as always.
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Yes, the kind of stuff I see as an advisor is pretty clearly, IMHO, executive functioning / psychosocial development stuff — probably related to all of the disruptions of the pandemic — much more than, like, less ability qua ability.
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While I have less contact with college students than posters who are current professors, what I have seen in recent years is an explosion in the number of very bright kids who seem to be suffering from the same set of mental health struggles that I used to observe mostly in bright kids who felt that they did not belong in PWI and affluent academic settings. For example, loneliness, imposter syndrome, fear of failure leading to paralysis, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and difficulty managing lack of structure/independence. I think that twenty years ago, I noticed primarily FGLI kids and kids of color whose academic work was compromised by such issues. Now (based on reports from my kids’ friends as well as my own observations), those issues seem more widespread. In fact, they are widespread enough that there are more support systems in place to help students deal with these issues on college campuses. Also perhaps some high school teachers and college professors have changed their teaching practices to accommodate the kids who are struggling in these ways. I find the current acknowledgment of such struggles interesting because it seemed to me that 20+ years ago when those struggles were mostly experienced by brilliant but marginalized/non-traditional students, it was more acceptable to allow them to flunk out on the theory that they did not belong in those institutions in the first place or they were too underprepared to thrive.
My very cynical take is that mental health issues are seen as more of a crisis now that they are cropping up in full-pay families. I only half-believe this statement since I don’t like to be cynical, but I do think school administrations become more concerned when larger groups of students are floundering and unable to keep up with their workload.
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Actually, I have a slightly different perspective-people have always assumed that FGLI students would have mental and emotional challenges given their adverse circumstances; when privileged students without adverse environments began exhibiting even higher rates of mental illness than the poor, alarm bells went off.
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EXACTLY. I have never, ever had so many kids distracted in class even when we go tech free - my D24 came to one of my classes with her friends to check it out and even tho my students knew that there were visiting students who could see their screens, they still multitasked. Students don’t know how to take notes, pay attention, and focus. Basic executive functioning as @MITChris said. I think for some faculty who aren’t tuned in, these kinds of struggles can mask a student’s true ability.
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Regarding how it used to be heavy with FGLI students, could it be that, these days, the greater competitiveness to get into more selective colleges makes more non-FGLI students wonder “why did I get in?” or self-doubt themselves if they had legacy or other hooks, or merely had a lot of parental support in an upper middle class environment – i.e. doubting that they earned their admission as much as their classmate who had to work after school to help support their family and did not have the opportunities that parents would have had to pay for? The latter may include such things as SAT or ACT prep or extended time accommodations that are more common in the upper middle class.
Regarding how it used to be heavy with students of color, could it be that it is now more likely that White students entering college may be more likely now to encounter an unfamiliar environment with lots of students of color or that they are no longer in the majority – and that some of those students of color are the top students.
“Difficulty managing lack of structure/independence” may also be greater now when students go to residential college, due to the greater tendency for helicopter parenting now than before. High school students today often have full schedules of parentally arranged and supervised activities, in contrast to decades past with significant after-school free time mainly conditional on getting their homework done, doing well in school, and being home for dinner.
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I think the increase in mental health difficulties probably stems from a combo of all of the issues that you name (and maybe even college application stress as well). I also do think the pandemic took a very heavy toll on young people’s mental health, but I think even pre-pandemic, there may have been an increase in the number of kids who were suffering in ways that may have been unnoticed in their high schools but showed up soon after they arrived at college.
Parenting also has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
[Aside]
For private college, I will agree with you. However, many state flagships are focussing on recruiting wealthy kids from other states to offset the continuing cuts in funding. As such, many are focussing their recruitment efforts on wealthy, non-URM students from out of state, rather than “finding talent”. In colleges where OOS enrollment isn’t limited, and there are a very large proportion of OOs students, this will skew the student body to wealthy and non-URM.
[/Aside]
Another issue, regarding “fear of failure”, is that students aiming for more selective colleges find the acceptable range of high school grades to be narrowed from both increased competition (which also affected the acceptable range of SAT or ACT scores) and grade inflation. Hence, high school students aiming for more selective colleges may be under stress to achieve perfection or close to it (4.0 unweighted GPA in the hardest classes with top-end SAT and ACT scores).
Given that earning a 4.0 in college is much less common, the students used to striving for and achieving perfection in high school may find that getting their first B or even A- to be a shock, even if they do not have other grade/GPA-related pressures (e.g. pre-med, entry to a competitive major).
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