24 states now offer free community college. I wish we better utilized these schools for that purpose rather than forcing flagships to admit poorly prepared students
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But what students are given varies greatly which brings us back to inequities in K-12. I do appreciate that colleges say they will view scores in context, but with these posts I was reacting more to a perception that some people donât view the concept of âin contextâ as valid, as it was at least implied that higher scores equal greater merit.
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But they are still less prepared (unfortunately) whether you like it or not, preparation is important.
Regardless, these kids are also not inherently less deserving.
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Maybe not correlated with merit however you define that so much as preparation and ability. Personally I think that matters a lot.
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Implicit in the scores is greater homework which is meritorious. The question is whether your family, your peers see the value in it. I couldnât see the value of playing (right field) Little League and dropped out. My friendâs dad had played on the Aâs and his uncle on the Pirates. He made it to the Yankeeâs farm system. And to address this âinequityâ colleges place a premium on âFirst In Familyâ applicants.
The discussion on whether one group of students are more or less deserving than another isâŠpretty gross, actually.
To take it away from testing/test scores for a moment - Berea College in Kentucky offers basically a free education. But only to low-income students.
I donât think(?) anyone here is going to argue that somehow higher income students are being disadvantaged because Bereaâs mission and policies make it not a school their children can apply to. Just like most of us donât bemoan the inherent unfairness of Deep Springs, or any of the womenâs colleges. Not every school is for every student.
While I am not a huge cheerleader for the SAT or ACT and I disagree that it measures what some people believe it measures, I do think every school should be able to require it, or not require it as they so choose. Schools going test optional or test blind arenât disadvantaging students who do well on the test anymore than schools that require the SAT/ACT are disadvantaging students that score low. They are making their requirements clear - it is up to the applicant whether they choose to apply to any particular school, or not.
Schools are deciding their mission and focus and putting into place the policies they believe will help them find the students they are looking for to achieve their mission and focus. If you donât agree with a school requiring the SAT/ACT, donât apply there. If you donât agree with schools not requiring the SAT/ACT or actively going test blind - again the easy solution is to not apply to schools that donât work for your beliefs.
None of this requires anyone on this thread to make value judgments about the worthiness of one student over another, or to decide how schools must run their application process.
Each studentâs application is read as its own thing. The Exeter student isnât being compared to the low income public school student and neither is âtaking the otherâs spotâ. One studentâs yes doesnât prevent the other studentâs yes.
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Valid or no, the details surrounding the context adjustment the colleges use escapes the light of day and with it any critique. Thatâs my main issue with it. Misused it becomes carte blanche to admit based on the whims of the adcoms. Correctly used, it can leverage nuances of an applicantâs situation. But weâll never get to see âhow fairâ.
As a follow on to yikkblueâs idea of just letting students track into a college whose level of rigor better aligns with their testing (or other standardized metric beyond gpa)⊠I wanted to highlight three African American academics Iâve been reading trying to better understand: Jon McWhorter, Roland Fryer, and Glenn Loury. All are Ivy profs. All brilliant. But none went to Ivy for undergrad. Only one went to a T20. Rutgers, UTArlington, and Northwestern. And only the Rutgers alum (McWhorter) had a privileged upbringing; the other two had rough upbringings. [Edit: and all went to places that were appropriate for them at that time]
My experience is that academic fit is much much more important than prestige if the goal is growth, and I think the stories of these scholars reflect that as well.
So why not leverage all the useful indicators of preparedness to find the most probable fit for students? And, if those indicators arenât predictive for certain schools/majors, why not offer those pathways/schools to those lower scorers? If itâs a better fit, it could be a jackpot.
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Fit also includes financial fit.
So, if one is talking about a low income student, there isnât always an affordable option for them if they arenât accepted to a meet full need school or a school that will get the price down to a COA that the max Pell grant plus direct student loan will cover (for Class of 2024 that is $12,995 ($7,495 max Pell plus $5,500). Obviously many low income students donât qualify for max Pell, so their âbudgetâ would be lower.
That budget wonât cover room and board at many schools. It will suffice at many community colleges, but not all students live within commuting distance of a CC or have the option to live at home after college.
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I agree with your point. Somewhere, I forget if in this or another thread, Iâm in favor of raising the endowment tax from its minuscule 1.4% level. Take the returns and flip it back to FA [edit: that can be used at any school].
Iâm not a fan of giving certain schools incredible tax breaks and turning them into âPE firms w/ schools attachedâ and then letting them use those returns to eventually offer huge FAs for their very pricey tuition. Which raises their popularity⊠and makes the underserved population think that THAT is the solution out regardless of their actual academic preparedness and fit.
Removing/mitigating financial fit issues is key I agree. I just donât think going to the rich schools is the ultimate solution. [edit: you can send 2-4 students to other schools for each full ride at a rich school]
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What you imagine is never going to happen because elite schools have institutional priorities that go beyond academics. They want diversity in all its forms, they also want to keep donors happy and, of course, they need to fill out the rosters of the many athletic teams they field (athletes - mainly wealthy & white - are often admitted with significantly lower test scores/grades than the norm). Somehow all these different types of students manage to graduate successfully regardless of what their academic profile was coming in.
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They can still do what they do, itâll just cost them more (by the amount of their tax). And if it is a tax, the schools donât have to agree to it. They didnât agree to the 1.4% on their realized gains either.
The âgraduate successfullyâ concept is a really complicated and nuanced one. I donât agree with how cloudy the term is when used to determine âsuccessâ. A student majoring in âAâ that had to change to major âBâ due to grades or insufficient HS prep should only be considered a success a part of the time. Otherwise why is the standard advice for premeds âgo to the most rigorous school where you can get great gradesâ? Some people donât want to discover a new passion. They are dedicated to their original one.
Most students change their majors at least once. That is not proof of lack of success. It is a completely normal part of a college education, and I donât believe there is any information that shows test optional students changing majors any more often than test submitting majors.
Many students say they are going to college pre-med or pre-law. Exposure to new classes, new ideas and areas of study previously unknown changes the minds of many students.
I donât think Iâve seen the above advice offered as âstandardâ. The common advice Iâve seen on CC for years is that students can be successful âpre-medâ candidates from many different schools. That GPA and MCAT scores are very important in admission, as well as a host of other attributes. âMost rigorous schoolâ is never listed as part of the advice Iâve seen.
Also, most students who start off as pre-med donât continue that path and/or arenât accepted to med school. If success is measured by staying pre-med or med school acceptance - there are an awful lot of high test score failures out there. 
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Most rigorous for the student is what is meant (and yet still get great grades implies a personalized fit for rigor) If the target is to get a high gpa and great mcats, the school has to be conducive to that. Anyway, that advice is echoing what my physician circles say. And itâs general advice vs for specific specialties or for academic positions at popular med schools.
And my statement re: switching majors is inclusive of what youâre saying. Itâs just that one shouldnât consider all graduations a success. Some are some arenât. Grad rates assume all are.
(Oh and I agree re: med school admission. It was a convenient example. Perhaps engineering might have been better but Iâm sure there are others)
This seems like a narrow and distorted view.
Not sure. Perhaps narrow. I can say the same that considering all graduations being a success as being somewhat if not similarly narrow.
What are some examples of a college graduation that are not a success?
Well there was a student going to UW and didnât end up in her desired major (business). She ended up transferring to a different school and graduated there. If there was some financial limitation to leaving UW, then I think she would have been disappointed.
Other stories of CS at UW (before direct enrollment) and at UCB (L&S path to CS a few years back). Premed at UCB which resulted in a low gpa but resulted in postbaccs where they shined well over others.
The stories come from people who have a set goal. Others may differ as you say but certainly that is not everyone.
Can I ask why you feel grad rates capture success? Examples of schools where no one is unhappy with their majors they got bumped into due to competition or performance?
But note that some majors or paths in college are capacity constrained, so that, out of all students who are well prepared, many or most will be weeded out. Examples include needing a 3.9 college GPA to advance to the clinical phase of a non-direct admit BSN program, or the competitiveness of applying to medical school. At some colleges, popular majors like CS, engineering majors, and/or business are subject to highly competitive secondary admission.
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How is this a failure?
How was this a failure?
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I agree. I am of the belief that the filtering level or intensity is different at different institutions.