White's World

2011-10-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street

I think those who are focusing on individual behavior, either by the protesters on Wall Street or by those who work in the financial services industry is (mindblowingly, in my opinion....btw..I trademark that word) missing the point. We all work hard, take pride in what we do, want the best for our families and are sincere in our beliefs and behaviors. But there is a culture, clearly in evidence in our political system and in certain industries, particularly financial services, that there is a self-serving system which perpetuates things that many of us, me included, feel is wrong. We have a Supreme Court that makes a judgment, against all logic, that allows for unlimited spending in political campaigns. Much of that cash is coming from the financial services industry, allowing for a political environment that not does not seek to regulate financial services to the good of the nation and the world, but seeks to end regulations to prevent things such as the packaging of toxic securities or other high risk and questionable activities. When teachers, firefighters, police officers, veterans and the elderly are asked to sacrifice, it is frankly obscene that it is considered blasphemy in many ranks to ask those in the financial services industry to undergo any sacrifice or accountability. Virtually no one has been prosecuted for financial fraud on a scale that almost brought the world economy to their knees. Hedge fund managers are paying 15% taxes on their money while nurses are paying double that. There is a culture of the financial services industry using its vast resources in order prevent any action that would result in shared sacrifice. When all of us know of those who are out of work or losing benefits or losing their homes, it just not feel right that one industry seems so intent on using its influence on Washington to not act in the best interest of the country but in the best interests of their industry, with the mistaken notion that the two are always necessarily are the same. There is a lack of specific demands because there is a total mistrust of anyone who could carry out those demands, from the courts, to the congress, to those who have the greatest resources to affect change. There is a system we can no longer be proud of and cannot believe they will do the right or the best thing. The White House seems to have the right values but a consistent lack of spine has allowed a small group of people, many of whom seem to lack, shall we call it "sanity", control the nations policy and agenda and, in doing so, the media. One can dismiss the Occupy Wall Street protesters as a bunch of unfocused crack pots, but they are tapping into a welling sense of disappointment and disheartenment (trademark) with not only where the country is going, but where it is now.

2011-07-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

Ten easy ways to balance the budget:

1) Make all earned income, not just the first $106,800, subject to the 6.2% Social Security tax on employees and match that by 6.2% of all earned income from employers.
2) Get rid of Bush tax cuts.
3) Get rid of mortgage tax deduction on everything but the primary residence.
4) Means test the mortgage interest tax deduction, the property tax deduction and Social Security income.
6) Change tax laws to eliminate loop-holes such as hedge fund manager allowing income to be taxed as investment income.
5) Means test co-pays for Medicare for high income individuals on a sliding scale.
7) Eliminate tax breaks for oil and gas industries
8) Eliminate ethanol subsidies
9) Eliminate ability to write off depreciation on corporate luxury items such as yachts and corporate jets.
10) Tax investment income the same as earned income.

2010-12-23T17:44:00.000-08:00

In response to NY Times article: "Is going to an Elite College Worth the Cost?"

I thought this was an unfortunate article on so many fronts. The title is perhaps the most regrettable. It takes a very individual decision and reduces the decision to questions of access to power and economic returns. I would have less problem with the article if it had been titled “Is going to a better college worth it” with some exploration as the meaning of better, including prestige, but also things like value added as National Survey of Student Engagement measures. The term Elite colleges conjures up exactly the notions the readers expect, colleges that rate highly in US Lists or that are the best known, most visibly the Ivy League, Duke, Georgetown, Standford, et. al. There is a review of mostly old information, such as Dale and Krueger’s study from 1999 and one compelling study that job satisfaction decreases slightly as selectivity increases. But outside of lip service at the very end of the article on how one takes advantage of what is offered is most important, the article is a repeat of the misconception that the quality of a college is necessarily connected to its reputation, its selectivity or its prestige. The prestige of a college is more often a function of its founding year, its graduate programs or its athletic accomplishments than what is offered at the college. My daughter attends Swarthmore College and it is worth every penny we spend on it. She needs what they offer and she is a different person for having gone there than she would be if she attended a larger or less intellectual school. There was a match between what she needed and what they offered. She has immersed herself in her education and her social world in an extraordinary way. She talks about ideas and has has developed her own view of history, politics, economics,. And yes, she now reads the NY Times. Does this make Swarthmore a better or more elite college because of this? No, It makes it a better place for her. My son, a high school senior who is just as bright and intellectual, would not thrive there. He probably would thrive anywhere, but that is the real problem with this college advising….kids often benefit and grow in surprising ways.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this article is that it feeds a phenomenon that has been growing since perhaps era of the first Wall Street movie, of viewing what is an education decision as an economic and instrumental one. In times of economic stress, people are naturally more likely to let immediate economic circumstances interfere with considering long term and less measurable benefits. This is as truly unfortunate in choosing a college as it is with choosing a mate.

I understand that newspaper articles and headlines are written to sell papers. In today’s world, an article which purports to tell us whether paying for an elite college is worth it unquestionably will sell papers. Whether it is productive or responsible is another question altogether.

2010-08-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts

I just brought my daughter back to college and spent the day with her driving, unpacking, going to lunch, etc. I came away with some observations, nothing terribly stunning but interesting:

1) Despite all the political activism to save Darfur, getting colleges to divest in certain investments, etc., it seems the activism ends at inconvenience. The latest big issue is the boycott of Target and Best Buy for their political contribution to a far right candidate in Minnesota. When I asked my daughter whether she thought students would honor the boycott, she said no. "Yeah, and buy stuff like water bottles at the bookstore? They just rip you off. The students can just walk to Target and get it for half the price.
2) The irony of being connected is really striking me. My kids are always connected, BBMing, IMing, texting.....but are not really connected. They will always answer my texts, but rarely pick up the phone when I call, even though I know they always have their phones on them. In the middle of a conversation, the thumbs are moving replying to texts they get. My daughter told me how bad it was when her phone broke. She never knew what was going on and when and where people were meeting. It was like being grounded, not being able to participate in the information flow. I used to think it was great to stay so connected with so many people, but something recently made me think of this differently. I got a request for information from a parent who left her phone number but, at the end of the message, left her e-mail address. I was so relieved, because I really didn't want to talk to this person and I could just leave an e-mail. It hit me how electronic communication lacks any intimacy and is so non-threatening but also so distant.

2010-04-06T16:55:00.000-07:00

Budgets and the Schools
As a supervisor at the high school (I am the Director of Guidance) and a
resident, tax payer and one who had three children go through the school system
(one still at Watchung School), I can see both sides of many of the points in
the discussions that are going on. There has been a great deal of posturing and
polemics. What has been absent is some real discussion of the costs of all
things that are being discussed. There is no solution to the present crisis
that does not have enormous cost, to the functioning of the schools, the lives
of the teachers, the burdens on the tax payers. Every possible solution has
costs, from reducing administrative costs, to getting rid of programs, to
reducing teacher pay and/or benefits, to cutting staff.

Many may be happy that we are reducing administrative staff, both in the schools
and in central administrative. But many of these staff do things that we do not
consider "extras". There are things that need to be done, from administering
staff benefits, to organizing tests, preparing state and federal reports,
preparing budgets, taking care of purchasing, etc. All the things that need to
be done with an school system of this size. But much of what administrators do
is respond to the needs and concerns of the community, by responding to issues,
phone calls, e-mails, etc. Many of the programs that are run are organized and
run by central administration staff. Many of the responses to issues that come
from members of the community are from those who are support staff in various
administrative positions.

The same is true of staffing. Cutting staff will eventually result in larger
class size or cuts in programs and services. Cutting pay and benefits will
eventually lead to an inability to attract and retain quality staff.

It sounds fine to cut administrative staff to some, until there is no one
available to respond to your specific issue or complaint. Or it is okay to cut
programs, until that is the program that made a difference in your child's life.
Or it is okay to cut pay and benefits for staff, until that teacher who could
make a difference a your child's life leaves the profession or moves to another
district. Cuts in non-teaching staff sound fine, until there are fewer nurses,
librarians, counselors, department supervisors, classroom aids, etc. when you
really need one. I will be seeing my pay frozen (incidentally after choosing to
return to Montclair with an already significantly lower salary than I previously
had), I will lose staff in the department I run, I will be taking on many new
administrative responsibilities. My child's elementary class size has been 27
for each of the past two years, my real estate taxes will go up over $500 and I
expect fewer
resources and programs will be available.

We will all be asked to do more with less and will see many programs and
services sacrificed. But like you, I have chosen to live in Montclair and made
the important decision to work here as well. When I first took this job in
1991, I called someone who knew schools and town across the US and asked whether
I should take the job. His response was "Take the job. You will not find
another place like it." I thought that the grass would be greener elsewhere,
but its not. This is a special place with a character all its own. There is a
soul to this town that I just have not seen elsewhere. It is vital that we see
this as a shared burden and sacrifice. The financial crises was going to hit
all towns across the nation, as tax receipts and federal support fell. And now
it has. And it may last for a long time. It is necessary to realize that there
is not blame here, just circumstances and not solutions, but compromises and
costs. We as members of this
town need to be prepared to work together to do more with less and share the
increased cost and sacrifice of the horrible financial situation hitting our
nation, our state and our town.

2010-04-06T16:51:00.001-07:00

Quiet Day

I wrote to Scott Anderson about his post: " I had a similar queasiness about The Choice profiles. It turns this
things that seemed just one more part of life (back in the dark ages
when I applied to college) to this life or death obsession. Yes, it
details the angst, pity and tragedy that this has become, and sometimes
over-deserved glee, but at the cost of feeding the beast even more!" I got to thinking it is always about perspective. When I had individual counselees, I dreaded this time of year. Sure, it would be great when kids came bounding in when they got into their dream school. I was happy because they were happy, tempered by the knowledge that this would not, in retrospect to these young people, be as big a deal as it was at the time. But the sadness of those kids who did not get into their dream school really made me feel terrible. Though I knew they would be fine, I could see how they believed at the time that something truly horrifying had occurred. Now, some people have begun asking me about how are kids did, especially the kids applying to the most competitive colleges. I had to think for a second, then I thought, I didn't really know, and, for that matter, didn't really care. Sure, I have been asking around to see if there are kids who got
waitlisted or denied everywhere and have been fielding calls from parents of kids who only got into their safety school. I, maybe smugly, think about how so many of my students have had the best college experiences when they attended their safety schools. I had two kids who went to St. Lawrence and U. Rochester who were distraught at not getting into Colgate and Bowdoin yet became these colleges biggest cheerleaders. I guess its all about expectations, and I would bet that many more kids have their safety schools widely exceed their expectations than first choices meet them. There are also so many more things in my focus now, running our second on-site college event, this one with technical schools and employers, to make sure that seniors have something to do next year who have not applied (or shouldn't) to college. I am trying to figure out how to build a master schedule with no idea how many teachers we have to work with or how I can run the
department with fewer staff. I think about the staff member I had to tell we were letting go, thinking about how this person was going to pay his mortgage or take care of his young children. I realize that our department will be judged by how many kids got into mega-selective colleges, particular the Ivies. I always think the same thing whenever someone asks me how many of our kids were going to the Ivies: Its an ATHLETIC CONFERENCE! Rutgers was in the Ivy League, but left because the athletic competition wasn't strong enough for them (that decision probably didn't work out so well for them in a PR sense).

I never had an interest in looking at colleges that were high focus when I was applying to colleges. Sure, I applied to Georgetown, but that was well pre-Patrick Ewing, and only because my uncle (a rabbi) worked there. I had no interest in going into fields like the financial services industry where I felt the lable or the contacts really mattered to me. When I told people I was going to Swarthmore (that was pre-US News Rankings), I would always have to correct them when they would say, "wasn't that an all-girls' school. No, that was Skidmore, I'd be ready to apply. But as my wife is entering the most brutal job market for teachers (she was a high school dropout who, in her late 40's, got her GED and is student teaching now to get her social studies certification), I started thinking that the way jobs are going to be had are going to be had through contacts. Then it hit me: This whole college thing that is being profiled in The Choice with these
profiles, as I read them, is not about education, but about power. Harvard, the ultimate lable, is now admitting less than 7% of its applicants. In bad economic times, for many, the best match or education (not that Harvard does not provide the best educational environment for some) can take a back seat to what is perceived as providing the most future opportunities.

I also have been thinking about my daughter's experience, also at Swarthmore (you are free to have cynical thoughts about legacies here...). She was one of those who danced around at her admission, and I had to feel happy for her because she was so happy, thinking at the end, she'd be just as happy at Middlebury or Haverford or any of the other colleges to which she was already admitted. But every time I call her or see her now, she let's me know in one way or another, how much she feels that it is the perfect place for her. I've started to think about the cynicism I feel when students are crying with joy or sadness over college admissions, and realize it is really not a good thing. I don't know, and can't know, whether this elation or feeling of tragedy is about education or power (or proof of worth to the student or good parenting to the parent). It is probably all of these, in some way or another, to many students and parents.

Its the day between Good Friday and Easter, two of the holiest of days for Christians. But to a Jew like me, it is a quiet day that doesn't have the kind of meaning of Passover or Yom Kippur. But it is an extremely important day for many, many people. That's what makes it important to me. For some, it is about the reverence and meaning of the day, for others it is about finding Easter eggs, and for most Christians, a combination of both. I guess the point is that I cannot really ever ascertain why Easter or getting into Stanford is really important to someone, I need to just respect and appreciate that it is. I just feel that what I have been reading does exacerbate the meaning of this (college admissions) into a commodity rather than an experience, in the minds of many.

2010-03-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

Correspondence, No comment needed:

To: Scott White
Subject: sorry to bother you, but ...

Does the email below — which my daughter ______________ received — seem to say that she has been accepted to _____, without actually saying it???

thanks for any insight you can give me.

E-mail:

Subject: Book your travel plans to NYC for April
Reply-To: admissions.ops@

Dear ________

Hello and greetings from _____ Undergraduate Admissions!

Last week we notified all freshman applicants of upcoming deadlines and event dates for our admissions process. Now, we write to you - and only a select group of applicants - again to remind you of our events for accepted students:

April 9-11: Events on campus for accepted students. These events are by invitation only, and RSVP instructions will be sent only to accepted applicants.

April 17-18: Events off-campus in 13 cities across the US for accepted students. These events are by invitation only, and RSVP instructions will be sent only to accepted applicants.

While your decision packet will not be mailed for another 2 weeks, it might be a good idea for you to start checking into travel plans to visit campus.

We'll be following up with more information for you as soon as our RSVP web site is open for event registration!

Me: Wow. That is one coy letter. There have always been these "likely" letters, but this really is a new tack. Interesting. It is not an "official" admissions, but a statement of what they intend to do. I would say admission is close to certain, but since this is new to me, I can only say what seems pretty obvious to me.

Scott White
swhite@montclair.k12.nj.us, snwhite123@yahoo.com
scottwhitesworld.blogspot.com
"If it's educationally sound, it's administratively feasible"

2009-11-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

A Few Thoughts on Disclosure

Here are a few things that you should be aware of:

1) The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, contains a provision in Section 4155 that requires each state to have in place, a procedure to facilitate the transfer of a student’s disciplinary records, with respect to a suspension or expulsion, when the student enrolls in another public or private elementary or secondary school. Specifically, public schools are required to provide for the transfer of these records when the student is enrolling in either a public or private elementary or secondary school; however, private schools are not subject to these requirements. The transfer of disciplinary records policy pursuant to this requirement must be consistent with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 (20 U.S.C. 1232g). Further, this federal requirement does not apply to any disciplinary records that are such transferred from a private, parochial or other nonpublic school, person, institution or other entity that provides education below the college level.

http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg54.html#sec4155

2) In my state, NJ, public high schools who receive a student from another school must request disciplinary records from the sending school within two weeks. If the student transferred from a public school, the sending school is required to send records to the receiving school. This does not need parental permission but it does require parental notification. Private schools are not required to seek disciplinary information or send it out. But public schools are required to send out disciplinary information requested by private schools.

3) If there is a health or safety emergency where the transferring student is deemed to be a threat to harm himself or others, schools are required to communicate this information without delay.

4) The action is taken by the chief school administrator or his/her designee (generally the principal or assistant/vice principal).

5) When a student is seeking to transfer to a post-secondary school, schools may (except in health or safety emergencies, where they must) send disciplinary information to where the student intends to enroll. This does not require parental (or adult student) permission, but it does require notification. Many schools have parents sign forms when they ask records to be sent to college. If the forms state that the school records sent include disciplinary records, that should be sufficient notification.

6) Parents and students have a right to view and request amendment any and all student records. This includes anything which resides in a student's permanent file (either on paper or electronically) or is sent out about the student.

7) Students (and only students, even minor students) may waive their right to access recommedation letters sent on their behalf. If students do not sign the waiver, parents do have a right to view the recommendation letter. Schools personnel, including teachers and counselors, MAY refuse to write a recommendation letter unless the waiver is signed. Ironically, even though ONLY the student, even a minor student, may waive the right of access to recommendation letters, only the parent or adult student may request access to and amendment of these records.

8) We have a few policies in place to deal with this. For one, we have all students complete the Common Application Secondary School Report Form, no matter where they are applying. Thus we have the waiver of access on file for all students. Most students are confused about whether to sign this or not, so we spend a lot of time educating students about this. We have had a few parents recently say that they did not want to have their children sign the waiver of access and wanted to see the letter of recommendation before it went out. We informed them that this would affect what we sent out (for instance, we would not include any teachers comments that come to us in confidential letters) and that we would send a separate letter stating that the recommendation was viewed by the parent and student. No one has called our bluff yet. Mostly we are successful by explaining the similarity between the college admissions process (which they do not understand) and the job application process (which they do understand).

9) The FERPA regulations only apply to schools and colleges where there is a legal relationship to the student. Thus parents and adult students do have a right to see records of the school where a student was enrolled in the past, will be enrolling in the future or is presently enrolled. They do not have a right to see records from schools where they seek to enroll unless the student has been accepted and enrolled (at most colleges, this means signing a contract and/or paying a deposit).

10) The questions on the Common Application Secondary School Report Form and many other SSR's about discipline are problematic for public schools. For one, counselors at our school are not involved in many disciplinary decisions and we do not have access to all disciplinary records. We are not generally the designees of the Chief School Administrator, the Principal or Assistant Principals are. The law places this in their hands because they have training and education in school law, something not required of counselors. Thus counselors, at least in New Jersey, are not the ones who are authorized to communicate disciplinary information. In addition, though we have a right to communicate disciplinary information without parental permission, we do need to provide notification.

11) I have tried many times, with school lawyers and administrators, to come up with a disclosure policy where we agree that we would send all suspensions and expulsions to anywhere a student seeks to enroll. The lawyers always say the same thing: that they would consider such a policy ill advised for it would tie our hands in difficult cases and open us up to possible litigation. I still remember Colleen Quint's words in a panel I did with her about ten years ago (she is the wife of Bill Hiss from Bates, and is an expert in school law) that just because sending disciplinary records is permissable by FERPA, does not mean that you will not be sued for doing so, and possibly lose. The school lawyers stated that if we had a case where we thought a student might be a danger to others, they of course would approve us transferring that information.

12) If we had a disclosure policy for students that stated that we sent out suspensions and expulsions for students, we would not be able to selectively send out this information. By doing so, we would be considered to be acting capriciously, something that would put us in jeopardy. Thus we would need to send out all suspensions during the high school years. I do not think that is desirable or workable. When you add up all the in-school suspensions and out-of school suspensions, we would need a whole new office of Disciplinary Information Dissemination to handle this.

13) The major problem, though, is in my experience, is that in the cases where we would like to send records, we almost never can. In the most agregious cases, it is rarely simple. Many kids who do some outrageous acts are not suspended. Some are placed on home instruction for psychiatric reasons pending a Child Study Team evaluation, something we are forbidden by ADA from communicating. Many times these acts occur outside of school and the student's case is not adjudicated through the justice system until after the student graduates. And even if it is adjudicated before then, convictions or minors are frequently sealed convictions.

14) Personal notes that do not reside in the student's file are not subject to FERPA regulations.

15) In the very few cases where I had concerns about a student's mental health or integrity, I have placed a call to the school or college where the student was enrolling and stated that I had concerns about the student and this should be communicated to psychological services at the school or college. I am usually only as specific as I need to be. I believe that saying that I have concerns about "integrity" or "stability" or "security" usually are sufficient. I have only done this a few times in 25 years and no one has asked for specifics. If I was pressed, I would ask the receiving school or college to send a written request for records and would present this to the administration. I realize this course of action could open me up to litigation, but this is a risk I was willing to take. I always asked for this information to not be put in writing and for it not to reside in anything that could be construed to be a student record

So, in summary,

1) Our letters of recommendation are not confidential and ARE school records which can be seen by parents or adult students. But we can refuse to write recommendation letters or communicate that they are not confidential if there is not a waiver of access.

2) We may send disciplinary information to where a student seeks to enroll, but we cannot do so selectively and we need to provide parental notification. It is best to have a written policy, something I have not been able to achieve at either of the public schools where I worked (it was never a problem at any of the 3 private schools where I worked).

3) Disclosure is always more complex than just having a policy or checking boxes. It is always messier and more complicated than it seems.

4) College representatives (Bruce, are you out there?) who state that we should send any and all disciplinary information should spend a one-year internship working at a public school and they would see how unworkable a policy this would be. Though it would be nice if we could send out disciplinary information only to the colleges that ask for it, we do not have that freedom. On either side of the desk, we often engage in platitudes that sound great in theory ("all colleges should deny all inadmissable students who apply Early Decision or Action") but are much more complicated in practice.

2009-05-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

Delay in Introduction of College Board 8th Grade Test

It was a wise choice of the College Board to delay the introduction of ReadiStep, the 8th grade version of the SAT. When is it that we decide as a country that there is simply too much testing?

In New Jersey, as in many states, there is testing every year of schooling after the 1st grade. In the junior year of high school, the state has proposed testing in virtually every subject area, rolling out tests in Biology, Algebra I and Algebra II and proposing perhaps a dozen more.

At what point do we determine that testing becomes a distraction from learning rather than an assessment of it? The College Board stated that ReadiStep is not a Pre-PSAT, but, truly, what is their legitimacy on this issue?

Since exploring for-profit business opportunities with its website collegeboard.com (the website is now not-for-profit) the organization's mission has come under scrutiny.

The College Board has rejected modular testing with a series of post-hoc arguments that fail all logic tests. They have taken the worst aspect of the ACT as their own, Score Choice, leaving one to the conclusion that they desired to dramatically increase revenue gained from sending test scores with minimal increase in costs.

So the decision to delay (and hopefully scrap) ReadiStep should be applauded by the educational community. 8th grade is way too soon to begin thinking about college admissions tests and, despite all their protestations that this was not the purpose of this test, the College Board clearly knew that would be its effect. If the College Board is looking for some new initiatives to aid students, maybe they should consider these:

1) Allow modular testing, with students re-testing on the SAT in only the section(s) they need or want to re-test.

2) Eliminate Score Choice. It only will increase the student frequency and emphasis on testing.

3) Eliminate the penalty for guessing

4) Work with the states and federal government to have one test to be used both for high school graduation and college admissions. Then maybe the educational community will stop questioning the motives of the College Board.

To date, I have had no reason to believe that any decisions the College Board has made as an organization are made for anything but business reasons. When they pretend to act as agents of the educational community rather than as a business seeking to maximize profits, they really are acting as wolves in sheep's clothing.

2009-05-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Visiting Colleges

It was fascinating visiting colleges this fall with my daughter after having visited hundreds of colleges myself as a college counselor. I read the student newspapers, looked at the graffiti in the bathrooms, the comments on the student doors. I looked throughout the lunchroom to kept a mental note of how many kids had their baseball hats on backwards or what groups of kids seemed to be sitting together. I looked to see whether trash was picked up, weeds pulled and routine repairs made. Were there buildings with water stains on the ceilings that seemed to be there for a long time? I listened carefully to the kids there…did they say “like” every other word? Could they express themselves? What did they wear? How many kids were at the gym, in the library, in the pub? I thought I had this nuanced view of the colleges I visited.
Soon after beginning each visit with my daughter to these same schools, I looked over at my daughter and saw by her expression that she had made up her mind. She was seeing many more things than I had from eyes that understood them more than I ever could…they were 17 year old eyes, not 51-year-old eyes. She could pick up, by the pocketbooks the girls carried or the brand of jeans the kids wore, some things I was blind to. She could interpret subtle differences in the language that I could never hear. She is in a culture that, as much as I try, I will never truly understand.
I was disappointed when, at one school that I thought she would love, she said immediately after the tour began that she thought the kids were snotty. Snotty, what do you mean? The tourguide seemed articulate, friendly, interesting. We hadn’t talked to a single other student. "Let’s go to the dining hall for lunch," I suggested. "No, dad, let’s leave."
At another college, we stayed overnight in the town and ended up playing ping pong in the basement of the campus center building. She met this boy who lived in the town next to ours who to my daughter seemed so normal. This college suddenly moved to the top of her list.
Being in the business, I probably went overboard trying to stay out of the process with her. She decided where to apply and I never saw any part of her applications. But I think her process was sound and thoughtful. Were her decisions overly affected by initial impressions? Of course, but they were valid. She could see things (like the kid in the Sixth Sense).
She in the end was choosing between a highly selective liberal arts college and the honors program at our state university. She was leaning toward the state university, because she had heard of the reputation of the small school (Swarthmore) was that kids were always working and she did not know how she would handle that pressure. She also knew she would have to take out loans at the smaller school and, due to a merit scholarship, would have money for graduate school if she went to the honors college.
She visited both colleges overnight and sat in on classes. she came back and said she was going to Swarthmore. “Dad," she said about the other school, "they didn’t talk in class. It was the teacher and one or two kids talking.” How could I argue with that logic? She wanted to participate in her class discussions, not just with the teacher but with the other kids in class. Without a moment's hesitation, I wrote the deposit check and mailed it in.

2009-05-01T20:08:00.000-07:00

I just read that they passed a law in CT banning 16 year-olds from owning or shooting machine guns. Really? Machine Guns? Good thing they couldn't drink until they were 21 before this, because machine guns and 16 year-olds and Mad Dog 20/20 are not a good mix!

2009-04-23T12:00:00.001-07:00

The Cost of College

Lost in much of the discussion about admissions and costs is the drastic change this year in loan rates and availability. Though loans for those who have a home and a strong credit rating (either through home equity loans or re-financing) are relatively easy to come by and rates are very low, other loans are much harder to get and the difference of rates between secured and unsecured loans is higher than I have ever seen. For instance, NJ Class loans rate were less expensive than most home equity loans and went up over 2% from last year to 7.62 percent. Unsubsidized Stafford loans are at 6.8% and plus loans are at 8.5%…when home equity loans or lines of credit can be had from 4-5%. In addition, it is getting much harder to qualify for loans with a reasonable rate of interest. This is one further impediment to access to post-secondary education for all but the well-to-do.

2009-04-23T11:56:00.001-07:00

The Future of College Admission
I hate to sound like the Chicken Little, but I think we are in for a period in college admissions over the next two years that will be unlike any other. Because admissions are on a cycle, everything is delayed somewhat. I believe that the crisis that we are seeing in housing and banking will be coming to college admissions over the next two years.

This year there will be some impact. We will see some private colleges that are not highly selective taking some relatively desperate steps to meet their expenses: canceling capital improvement projects, freezing salaries, laying off staff, taking out loans to cover operating expenses, admitting and funding students to get short-term cash infusions, selling assets (one college recently sold their art collection, for example), etc. I did admissions at a private high school which declared bankruptcy, so I certainly know what it's like to try to get cash together in a tuition driven school. These schools will have a number of simultaneous pressures: returning full-pay students seeking aid, more freshmen seeking aid, more merit or need-based aid needed to attract applicants, higher loan rates, etc.

The other trend will be record numbers of students flocking to public colleges. As parent and student college funds tank in the market meltdown and loan rates for everything but home equity loans skyrocket, more and more students will be forgoing the benefits of small, private colleges for the financial benefits of public colleges. This will be less apparent at the highly endowed and "prestigious" colleges, but even they will see the impact. Many parents and students will associate the opportunity to attend college with financial risk, sacrificing financially only on what will be perceived as a return on one's investment.

The real crisis will hit in May of 2010. College closings in the news will be as common as home foreclosures. The costs of the short term financial decisions of 2009 will come home to roost. Colleges will need to start paying back the loans and will not have the stability to get more loans. What were decisions to get short term capital in 2009, particularly dramatic increases of financial aid budgets, become huge liabilities, and the ability to raise cash quickly will become much more limited. There will be fewer assets to divest, greater need to get revenue and more and more students and parents expecting less selective private colleges to match the costs of public colleges.

I hope I am wrong, but I fear that even if we are to emerge from this recession, the trends are not good for a large number of tuition driven schools. I think that there is a long term mindset of economy, return on investment and financial security that will drive huge numbers of students to less expensive colleges or to colleges which offer large amounts of aid. This could be a crushing blow to rural or regional colleges who do not benefit from state funding and who are at the financial margins now.

2008-11-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

NY Times (11-21-08) -Decision Applications Are Up at Colleges, in Spite of the Economy

Here was my line this fall: If you do not need financial aid, this may be one of the best years to go ED. Colleges, like other institutions that have financial needs, do not like uncertainty. In this atmosphere, there is more uncertainty than ever before. Let's see, what could go wrong:

1) You admit your class, stretch your thinned financial aid as much as you can, and the ones you shorted in the least head to public colleges.
2) You don't admit enough full pay kids ED and your president says that you need to have more revenue. You are in the soup kitchen line.

And on and on.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...the biggest unstated pressure on admissions directors at private colleges is getting more "full pay kids." You have limited means to do this: need aware admissions, international admissions and ED.

So I told kids who are full pay that their odds are better than ever this year if they go ED. I don't see anything fishy at all. It's actually smart money....colleges and kids making economic decisions instead of educational ones; just like the system is designed.

2008-11-13T14:48:00.001-08:00

The Economy and College Admissions

There was a timely article on the front page of the NY Times today on:

"Tough Times Strain Colleges Rich and Poor"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/education/08college.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1226153384-wFJW2ebTcoxE37YFN4fGBA

I was pretty shocked that there was not more discussion about this at the NACAC Conference. Not that the report on testing or panels, like the one I was on, about disclosure, are not important issues, but they are far overshadowed by how ecomomic conditions are going to affect students, parents and colleges.

There are going to be some sea changes affecting students and colleges, especially if these economic conditions persist for more than one admissions cycle:

1) Public colleges, especially inexpensive ones, will be flocked with huge numbers of applications. Many will rise in ratings, due to astronomically higher selectivity. Ironically, this will coincide with substantial budget cuts which will reduce the actual quality of instruction with larger classes, program cuts and deferred maintenance. Many flagship universities will be forced to abandon their traditional mission of admitting and educating a wide range of students as many previously qualified students will be turned away. There will be more and more pressure to admit higher paying out of state students for the tuition they bring in. At many, there will be (quietly) lower admissions standards for out-of-state students, something which spark outrage when some state senator's child is denied admission when lower qualified out-of-state students are admitted.

2) What we all feared when "need aware" admissions began will start to become a reality. More and more colleges will apply different admissions standards for those applying for aid than those who do not. Need aware admissions will apply, for many, not just for those in the margins of the academic pool or those with very high need. Some extremely strong students in the pool with high need will be denied as well as some students with average need who are in the middle of the pool.
3) Many tuition driven schools will begin to falter. There will be more college closings than ever before, more mergers, more changes in missions, more questionable marketing techniques and admissions actions.

4) At private colleges, the perfect storm of fewer applications, more students needing aid and those seeking aid having higher need, dramatic devaluation of endowments, huge pressures to keep costs low, and dramatically higher costs for many goods and services will put economic pressures that will be greater than many have ever seen before. Many projects will be cancelled or deferred, priorities re-examined and cost cutting will be the mantra of college presidents.

5) Many private colleges will open their doors in the fall with empty dorm rooms, insufficient revenue to cover costs, much larger classes, and major faculty upheaval as personnel costs are brought down.

6) Public colleges will, while seeing dramatically higher demand, be slashing services. More adjuncts will be teaching classes, athletic teams will be cut, classes will be much larger, programs will be cut and everything from college radio stations to cleaning services will see smaller budgets.

Not everything will be bad for all colleges. Those with large endowments will weather the storm and even thrive as they will be able to attract and fund an ever more talented student body. Many colleges will begin to do what they should have done many years ago: order their priorities. Not all colleges can be all things to all students. Not all college can have state-of-the-art athletic, arts and science facilities. Many college will need to focus on strengthening what they do best. Many colleges will need to step out of the merit scholarship rat race in order to provide need based aid to their students. Students, like many of their parents, may have to forgo some of the amenities that they have come to expect at colleges.

From the student and parent point of view, many will have to drastically change their plans, assumptions, priorities and dreams. As a middle income parent of a high school senior (with two younger children), the prospect of saying to my child that she should apply only to colleges which are the best fit and that we will find a way to pay for it, is changing each day. More and more uncomfortable discussions of what might have to be, in response to financial realities, are taking place. At every income level, these discussion are becoming more and more common.

From the consumer end, the perfect storm of rising admissions standards and increasing costs at public colleges, less financial aid from private colleges and a drying up of credit for student loans will force many unpleasant choices in the months ahead.

I think organizations like NACAC need to be more nimble to discuss dramatic societal events like this at our conferences, in our discussion groups and in our policies. Like a sports team that has suddenly lost its top player due to injury, I think we need to more quickly and ably adjust to new realities and what they mean to our members as well as the students and parents they affect.

2008-08-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

DiscA few comments about the reporting of disciplinary infractions to colleges:

1) Just because it is permissible by FERPA, does not make it legal in every instance. For instance, some state laws are more restrictive about the release of data.

2) Something that is permissible in FERPA only means the school does not risk the loss of federal funds if one takes that action. It is NOT a protection against liability.

3) Even if it is perfectly legal, there is still a risk that a school and/or individuals at a school may be sued and may lose, particularly if there is no policy to guide what is released or the action is seen as capricious or arbitrary or inconsistent. So there are some recommendations I believe everyone should follow to keep you out of court and the poor house:

1) Have a policy that is clear, consistent and operational. There should be no question if a certain action falls under this policy. If should cover every case ("whenever a student seeks to transfer"), type of offense ("resulting in suspension or expulsion") and circumstance ("whether the offense occurred in the pre-admission or post-admission process")

2) Be consistent in the application of this policy. All exceptions should be laid out in advance ("students who entered and completed in-patient rehabilitation programs following a drug or alcohol offense.."). You put yourself in great jeopardy if you selectively enforce the disclosure of offenses.

3) Make sure the administration (headmaster, principal, superintendent) and school lawyers make the final call on any decisions both about policy and action. They likely have training in school law that you do not have. They also, through the position, have ultimate authority and responsibility.

4) Realize that hand-written notes as a response to a phone call are as admissible in court as an "official" letter. Calling a college or school and communicating information may carry substantial risk.

5) Look over the expectations on disclosure from the college end. If there is a statement that the student is expected to inform the college of infractions in the pre- or post-admissions process, you should warn the student and parent that failing to do so could put his//her admission at risk (as was the case with Gina Grant and Harvard) and that the student should be encouraged to make appropriate disclosures.

6) If you genuinely feel the student is a risk to him/herself or others, you may be at greater risk by not communicating this information to a college than doing so. It is important that you put your concerns in writing that you feel the student is a risk to himself or others and that you implore the administration to allow you to communicate this danger. FERPA makes specific mention of protecting disclosure that protects others from harm.

7) As a last resort, you may want to get administrative approval or parent approval to contact the Dean's office or office of psychological services with concerns about mental health issues without necessarily being specific about the actions that led to your concerns..losure

2008-06-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

NEW "SAT SELECT" POLICY

Let's see, what would possibly be the motive of allowing score choice but not modular SAT testing (allowing students to take each of the sections separately)? If we have score choice for the SAT I, students can take the SAT as many times as they want without colleges knowing how many times they took it. I can just hear those gears rolling at the College Board, especially the bean counters. "We can really get great profit margins by giving into the base instincts of students who are already totally obsessed with the SAT. No longer will they have to worry whether college will think they are going overboard with testing. Maybe we can get kids to take the test a dozen times starting in 9th grade. Think of the revenue stream!! And we can get kids to test, retest and retest more with the full test, even
if they just want to try to raise their math score. Brilliant! Who thought of this idea. We gotta get this guy a bonus!"

Bill Shain when he was Dean of Admissions of Vanderbilt was doing a Q and A with counselors when I was visiting. He was asked a fairly common question: Do you average scores of students? Bill answered with a pretty common response, i.e. that, no, they take the highest individual sub-scores of the tests the students submit. But, he continued, he said that they did see how many times a kid did test and, at a certain point, that information did have an affect on how they viewed the student. So I ask, is it a good thing that colleges will no longer have this information? Does it not say something about a student who has taken 8, 9, 10 SAT or ACT tests?

Let's also do a little math here, particularly statistics. In an individual retest, a score is only likely to go up (or down, for that matter) a certain amount and the more a student tests, the less likely that score is to go up significantly. If a student took a test three times, for instance, it is not likely that the score will go up significantly with a fourth testing. But if you have a very large sample, say eight or ten tests, there IS a good likelihood that one of those tests will be an outlier, that a particular test will fall on the high end of the test range. After all, no one argues that an SAT test is an exact measure of ability but an approximation, affected by many factors: whether the student happens to get more questions on topics they handle better, whether they guess better, whether they are more seasoned test takers, whether they got enough sleep, enough food, whether the testing situation is better (fewer distractions, less humidity). I could go on and on, but logic tells us that the bigger and bigger the sample, the more likely that there is one instance where the mode, the highest possible result, will occur.

So let's go to human nature. There are lots and lots of kids, I would venture in the hundreds of thousands or even millions, who go through the college admissions process each year, who spend a huge amount of psychic energy worrying about whether their scores are high enough to get into the college they want. I see it in my own household and in a huge proportion of the kids in my school. It may be much more prevalent in suburban schools like ours or urban schools, but even there you are talking about a very large number of kids. And what are these kids going to do to relieve this tension (and their parents pushing to relieve their own anxiety) with score choice: test again and again. For everyone wants the illusion of control, particularly when someone else is making a big decision about their life. So now on top of the money spent on SAT prep, independent counseling, essay coaching, etc., the folks at the College Board can join in on this largess.

Is this a bad idea?: absolutley. We should be going in the opposite direction and reducing the obsession with testing. I run the testing at my school (not so next year...yeah!), and we are eating up more and more of the school year with testing at the expense of teaching and learning. We have, including make-ups, 12 days of HSPA (our graduation test for 11th graders) testing, 12 days of Terra Nova Testing (for grades 9 and 10), 4 days of biology testing (end-of course and performance assessment), 18 days of AP testing (including the exception testing), one day of PSAT testing, seven weekend days of SAT testing. And the state is now coming up with a new Algebra II test they are rolling out next year. When is it too much?

How about
some ways to reduce testing:

*aligning state graduation testing with college admissions testing so that one test counted for both purposes and the total would be a couple of sittings.
*Allowing modular testing so students would not have to re-take testing they did not need, including writing a new essay again and again and again.
*College announcing they they WILL average the scores of test takers who take many tests.
*More colleges at the most selective range going test optional (Harvard, you were the maverick in getting rid of early plans and embracing the Common Application...ready to take the plunge?)
*Allowing, as many colleges do, other testing (AP, SAT II) to substitute for SAT or ACT testing.

The College Board gave lip service to the idea of modular testing with ad hoc arguments against it. They said it would hurt the integrity of the test, despite the fact the the subject tests are given modularly with apparently
no affect on their validity. They stated that it would cost more money for the test for they would still have the same test administration costs no matter how many sections were tested. But again, the third hour of Subject Test testing often has one or two kids in the room, but that hasn't changed the administration of this test. And do you really believe that students would end up paying more if they only took the tests they needed and wanted? They rejected modularity (and, lets get serious here, never really considered it) for two reasons: It would get them less total revenue and might doom the already shaky writing test (note how they touted the study on the usefulness of the writing test with the conclusion that it should not be optional because it gave a .01, yes .01 increase in the predictability of a college freshman GPA).

I just sent my College Board membership bill back with no check (for the second year in
a row) with an explanation that I saw no advantage to membership. Until the College Board really gets serious about bringing to the members issues like modularity of the SAT (or this new score choice option), why bother to be a member? I encourage others to do likewise. Like the College Board, we can make financial decisions too, which is exactly what this score choice decision is. Any gobbley gook about serving kids in nonsense. This is just an awful idea. If it is instituted, the average number of SAT sittings per student will soar. Who out there thinks that is a good thing...except for the College Board bean counters?

I got to read some some news reports on this new policy (nothing yet on the College Board web site that I could find) and need to comment on issues that have been brought up in the discussion:

1) A quote from the College Board: "Students were telling us the ability to have more control over their
scores would make the test experience more comfortable and less
stressful," said Laurence Bunin, senior vice president of the SAT. ". .
. We can do that without in any way diminishing the value and integrity
of the SAT." Students taking the test many more times without those receiving that information knowing it not affecting the value and integrity of the test? Really? Maybe I took a different stats course than you guys. Aren't you the ones telling us that the score is not indicative of an exact point but a range? Isn't more testing more likely to get one to the maximum of that range? And telling us that students want this is a bit disingenuous, isn't it? Students want lots of things. 1st graders would want to play video games all day and eat candy, but we don't give it to them. Our job as educators is to give students what they NEED, not what they want. We are the professionals and our job is to do want is best for students. Maybe the College Board doesn't see things this way.

2) This will clearly just exacerbate the achievement gap between the rich and the poor. Now the rich will have one more tool to cement their societal advantage and the expense of those who cannot.

3) The College Board spokeman stated that they will not allow students to submit separate highest subscores but only the highest single test result so students cannot "game the system." Really? You really believe that this new policy will not do more to encourage students to game the system? This fails all credibility tests.

4) A major point that was brought up is that this places the SAT in line with the policy of the ACT. I find it interesting that the College Board took one of the worst policies of the ACT as their own (and coincidentally one which will have the greatest potential to raise their revenues) rather than some other more sensible and useful parts of the test. Why not consider making the SAT more straightforward and achievement based, eliminate the penalty for guessing (talk about a stress reduction) and making the writing section optional? Oh, none of these will increase revenues for the College Board. Silly me.

Lastly, one has to realize that almost every college in the country takes the highest individual math and critical reading (and sometimes writing) from the different administrations of the test a student submits. So what advantage is this really to students? And what about the increased anxiety of deciding which tests to report? “Should I send the score with the highest math score even if it has my lowest reading score?” This policy has no value added to students and significant costs. It will result in much more unnecessary testing with colleges having less information to assess students.

2007-05-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

Educational Research Center of America, the Student Marketing Group, the College Bound Selection Service and the National Honor Roll: a web of deceit

Nelnet is also a recipient of the Seal of Approval. Never mind that Nelnet is also a company that is under investigation from Congress and being sued by the New York Attorney General for deceptive lending practices, including operating call centers for colleges without stating that they are Nelnet employees who only give out information on Nelnet loans (see 1) below).

Nelnet is also, since 2005, are owners of the Student Marketing Group and the National Honor Roll.

http://digital50.com/news/items/PR/2005/04/01/NYF149/student-marketing-group-and-national-honor-roll-announce-acquisition-by-nelnet.html

The Student Marketing Group gets student names from the Educational Research of America, a group that, like NRCCUA, sends surveys to high school teachers and counselors and also was a party to lawsuits and settlements from the NY Attorney General's Office as well as the Federal Trade Commission. "... named in the settlement were Lynbrook, NY-based SMG president Jan Stumacher and ECRA principal, Marian Sanjana."

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/01/ecra.shtm

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/05/ERCAcomplaint.pdf

These organizations similarly use their organizations to gain access to student names through "research" surveys, then in turn sell their information to commercial marketers and other than less savory groups.

One such group is the National Honor Roll, which pretends to be a separate entity from SMG, is actually intimately related to it and, similar to NRCCUA’s relationship to Who's Who, and provides the names to this scam organization. (see 2) below)

SMG also uses front organizations to hide its affiliations. One is the College Bound Selection Service, owned by SMG. Nowhere on the web site for CBSS do they note their affiliation with SMG but they do note that their president, Mr. Barone (no first name) was a former admissions director at Mt. Ida College and "has presented at National Association of College Admissions Counselors conferences and conducted regional seminars on "The Utilization of Direct Mail In Student Recruitment"
http://www.cbssearch.net/cbss_leadership.htm

Nelnet also owns Peterson's, a fellow recipient on the NACAC Seal of Approval and the sponsor of a past NACAC Conference Social (though they do not appear to have the legal and ethical problems of Nelnet's other subsidiaries).

1) From the Chronicle of Higher Education in March of this year: Mr. Cuomo began his investigation last November, when he sent letters to four lenders: EduCap Inc.; Education Finance Partners; the National Education Loan Network, also known as NelNet; and Sallie Mae...The New York attorney general's office later issued a statement saying its investigation of Nelnet had not ended...Nelnet did not agree to give up contracts that allow the company's representatives to answer customer-service calls to colleges' financial-aid offices...

Nelnet Staffs State Non-Profit Counseling Center

In addition to operating call centers at colleges, one student loan company helps staff a state non-profit college counseling center, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The College Planning Center of Rhode Island claims to offer free, independent advice on attending college. But the center’s employees work for a subsidiary of Nelnet and do not disclose their affiliation when answering questions on student loans. In fact, students who ask about loans are only given information about Nelnet loans (offered through the state’s student loan authority). Nelnet operates call centers at seven colleges, but had not yet disclosed its partnership with the counseling center in Rhode Island. Nelnet’s voluntary, self-made code of conduct agreement with the Nebraska Attorney General does not include ending its calling centers, in contrast to the code of conduct developed by New York

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

2) From College Confidential: Let me share with you what I know about the National Honor Roll. The National Honor Roll is a scam organization. They are targeting high school students all across the nation. Last year my daughter received notification. Don't be fooled. Their letterhead is fancy, and they even claim to be located at a prestigious Pennsylvania Avenue address in Washington, DC . The address they use is 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue. However, that is the address for Mail Boxes Etc. If you have any doubts, go to the Mail Boxes, Etc. web site at http://www.mbe.com/ and click on the icon "locate a store globally." The icon is in the upper right hand corner of their web page. I contacted the Mail Boxes, Etc. store in Washington, DC . Here is the full address and telephone number: 2020 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20006-1811 - USA , phone (202) 457-8166. National Honor Roll claims to be in Suite 8000 . There isn't a Suite number at 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue. The number 8000 stands for the mailbox number for National Honor Roll. A courier picks up mail from this mailbox. It could be a different courier every day. The phone number for "National Honor Roll" is (202)737-0715. It re-routes callers to a New York telephone number. The address in New York is 300 Merrick Road, Suite 206 , Lynbrook , NY 11563 . The phone number is 516-593-0555. This is the same address for Student Marketing Group. The state of New York filed a petition against StudentMarketing Group on July 8, 2002. Please see the .pdf file at http://ww.epic.org/privacy/student/smgpetition.pdf Student Marketing Group collects information on students and sells lists. Unsuspecting teachers pass out information to students. The students do not know their personal information is being fed back to National Honor Roll and Student Marketing Group. You see, the teachers are also being sucked into this scam. The bottom line is that National Honor Roll is a vanity press. A vanity press means anyone can publish anything for a fee. Colleges throw away stuff sent to them from the National Honor Roll because it is considered unsolicited junk. They claim your name and profile can be published free in the book, but why would you want them to do this? You do not want to have your personal information on the streets. Call them right away and have your name taken off their list. And while you are at it, ask them why they are scamming the American people. I encourage all to file a mail fraud complaint against the National Honor Roll. Postal Inspectors base mail fraud investigations on the number, substance and pattern of complaints received from the public. Here is the URL to the Postal Inspector's web page https://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/welcome.htm In the lower left-hand portion of the screen is the link to 'File a Mail Fraud Complaint' So, how do they get students' personal information? Well, they share the same office and survey information with Student Marketing Group in Lynbrook , New York . But, there is a third element involved in this scheme. Student Marketing Group gets their information from Educational Research Center of America, Inc., otherwise known as ERCA. ERCA is the organization that sends the surveys to teachers all across America . Teachers pass these surveys out to their students. Of course, students think these are "safe" surveys because the teachers are passing them out. Teachers collect the surveys and place them in postage-paid envelopes. They mail them back to 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW , Room 7799, Washington , DC 20006 . Hmmmmmmmmmmm! Does this address sound familiar? Yes! It is the same address as National Honor Roll at Mail Boxes, Etc. on the George Washington University campus. In this case, the 7799 is not a room. It is ERCA's mailbox number. ERCA claims their phone number is (202) 393-7799. The (202) is a Washington , DC area code. E-mail address is info@studentresearch.org I haven't tried the phone number or the e-mail, but I can guess that the phone number re-routes callers to Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . Please see the Federal Trade Commission report involving Student Marketing Group and Educational Research Center of America at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2003/01/ercaconsent.htm Happy reading! By the way, National Honor Roll claims they give away scholarships. Does anyone know if these scholarships exist? Who receives these scholarships? Does Lynn Romeo, the publisher of National Honor Roll, give these scholarships to her nieces? nephews? herself? Please advise. The people in Lynbrook , New York will tell you that their Headquarters is in Washington , DC . If you ask them anything about the "Headquarters" they will tell you, "well, it is really our processing center." I have talked with Jane, Wendy and Linda in the Lynbrook , NY office. They are all very evasive about the organization. They won't tell you anything about the courier who they hire to pick up the mail. When they get tired of you asking legitimate quesitons, they will transfer you to the voice mail of Lynn Romeo. Of course, Lynn Romeo doesn't return your calls. Let's stop these people. Every educator, librarian, parent, congressman, journalist and anybody else who cares about the safety of our nation's children should be concerned. Please forward this information to everyone you know. Want to learn more? Please visit the Better Business Bureau web site at http://www.dc.bbb.org/report.html?compid=W8000570&national=Y to see the Better Business Bureau Report.

2007-05-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

NRCCUA

NRCCUA was subject to a major Federal Trade Commission suit that stated they misrepresented what they did with the data they collected.

http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/nrccuacomments/

Also (see below) there was an article on the web site of the Transcript, the AACRAO on-line newsletter, that repeated information from a December 3, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal about NRCCUA. The rebuttal appearing in December 10 on the Transcript web site was written by someone named, you guessed it, Bob McLendon:

http://www.aacrao.org/transcript/index.cfm?fuseaction=show_view&doc_id=551

On October 2, 2002, the NRCCUA agreed to a consent agreement to cease the actions that were listed in the complaint. See

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/10/student1r.shtm for details.

I have gotten packages from NRCCUA that I promply filed in our circular file (i.e. recycling bin) in our office. All our sophomores and juniors take the PSAT (paid for by the district) and they have the option of stating that they want to share their information with colleges through the College Search Service. I see no particular obligation to enrich the College Board, but this seems to work well and there have not been lawsuits against the College Board (or at least FTC complaints) that the College Board is sharing student information to other marketing groups.

School Officials Upset to Learn that Information From High School Survey is Sold to Commercial Marketers

The National Research Center for College and University Admissions, which was started in 1972 to help small midwestern colleges recruit students, collects names, addresses, GPAs, races, religions, and social views in a classroom survey of high school students each year. National Research tells the schools it will distribute names and profiles to colleges and universities across the country. However, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, it does not tell them that it also sells the personal information to American Student List LLC, a leading supplier of names to such commercial marketers as Gillette Co.; American Express Co. and Capital One Financial Corp.; Kaplan Inc.; the Washington Post Co. unit that is an admissions test coaching chain; Primedia Inc.’s Seventeen Magazine; and Columbia House Record Club, owned by AOL Time Warner Inc. and Sony Corp.

School officials believe the information obtained in the survey is available only to educational institutions. The College Board and ACT Inc. also gather information collected from students who take the SAT and ACT tests, respectively—and sell this to colleges; however, they do not sell it to commercial markets.

Many school officials expressed anger when discovering the commercial sales of the information they felt they had been led to believe was sent only to educational institutions. According to The Wall Street Journal, National Research president Don M. Munce explained that the survey has a “privacy statement” that tells students the responses are “used by colleges, universities and other organizations to assist students and their families.” “Other organizations,” in this case, covers the commercial contacts.

A few of the contacts to which American Student List sells are college aid consultants targeted by the Federal Trade Commission since they began to buy the information. For example, Christopher Nwaigwe of Maryland was convicted on federal mail fraud charges in 1999 for offering phony scholarships. College Resource Management Inc. of Texas paid $40,000 this year to settle civil FTC charges it misrepresented its ability to obtain financial aid for students. A third company, College Financial Aid, has received an “unsatisfactory” rating from the Better Business Bureau of upstate New York for the many consumer complaints it has received.

National Research is opposing a bill now before a congressional conference committee, which would require parental consent to collect information from students for commercial purposes. However, a National Research official states that this opposition reflects concern for recruitment and fundraising for high school proms, not for the right to sell to commercial marketers.

E-mail to Liz Farrell of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Mr. Munce, who you interviewed in the Chronicle on-line, was the subject of a FTC suit and settlement where the company admitted to selling their information to companies without telling students, including a number of financial aid scams.

Liz Farrell's response:

Hi Scott- Good to hear from you! Thanks for your note -- Yes, I have
interviewed Mr. Munce many times for many stories and have found him to
be very helpful. I plan on continuing to use him as a source. Strangely
enough, no-one sent me an email mentioning that we have used Marilee
Jones as a source as well. Perhaps it is because NRCCUA is viewed as
"business" and Ms. Jones is not. I find that even more strange
considering that she wrote a book which ostensibly made money. Speaking
of which, do you know if she kept the profits of it? Or has any plans
to give them back? I'm curious about those things. No-one else on the
NACAC listserv seems to be. I'm not saying either Mr. Munce or Ms. Jones are
criminals or
mercenaries, because I don't think either of them are ... I'm just saying that
after reading the NACAC listserv for the past five years,
I'm constantly vexed by the arbitrary treatment wrongdoers get depending
on whether they work in admissions for a college or a company. While many of the
posts for Ms. Jones were sympathetic, or expressed
disappointment ("it's sad, she's still a great lady," etc.), the ones
about the College Board or NRCCUA have a "gotcha" tone, like they were
under suspect anyway ("the latest in a long string of offenses! I'm not
surprised!"). Because they run things "Like a business" - whatever that
means. Businesses, in my experience, come in all shapes and sizes and
moral proclivities.
Perhaps this will come across as having a devil's advocate tone. I
don't mean any offense by that, it's just that it's my job to treat everyone
fairly, and to not assume that any high school counselor or college
admissions officer is inherently more moral than the people who work for the
companies that also focus on admissions.
I will watch with interest to see how NACAC handles the NRCCUA issue. I will
also watch with interest to see how many more admissions deans
have lied about their own educational backgrounds.
cheers,
liz.

My response:

This is one argument I'm happy to engage in. Let's look at NRCCUA. They mislead those to whom they send surverys, now, (and only under a consent agreement from the FTC) stating in small print that they use this information for other than college searches. And it turns out, that they sell this information, yes, to legitemate businesses like teen magazines and Kaplan and Gillette, but also to some pretty shady characters, including some under indictment for financial aid scams. I am sorry, but there is some limit on the intersection between education and private enterprise. One might say that they cannot be held responsible for how the information is being used, but I don't buy that.

These are just a few that were discovered:

"A few of the contacts to which American Student List sells are college aid consultants targeted by the Federal Trade Commission since they began to buy the information. For example, Christopher Nwaigwe of Maryland was convicted on federal mail fraud charges in 1999 for offering phony scholarships. College Resource Management Inc. of Texas paid $40,000 this year to settle civil FTC charges it misrepresented its ability to obtain financial aid for students. A third company, College Financial Aid, has received an unsatisfactory” rating from the Better Business Bureau of upstate New York for the many consumer complaints it has received.

And the issue with Marilee was about her message, not her as the messager. I do not know of one person who has excused her lying but there is quite a bit of shock and more than a small sense of sadness at her voice being silenced.

Do me a favor, google Munce and NRCCUA and see how many FTC complaints have been lodged against the company.

There are some quasi-legitimate things this organization does, but if you were barraged by the deceptive stuff they send to high schools as I and thousands of others are, or by the high pressure techniques they use, I do not think you would feel as sanguine about Mr. Munce. Mr. Munce many not be a criminal (though I have no good reason to doubt this) and, contrary to your assertion, I believe he is an mercenary.

Throwing together Marilee Jones and Munce is just absurd. Marilee lied about her credentials. She illegitimately held her position but did not abuse her position or harm students. Actually her affect on education despite her personal issues was quite positive. I do not think that you could say the same things about Munce. There are numerous instances where he sold his lists to people who sought to deceive or cheat students and parents. He could state that he did not know or care, that his job is to make money not serve students. Then he and McLendon should get off their high horses and stop pretending to be legitimate educational research enterprises and let people know that the names that are being collected go to the highest bidder without any thought being given to their legitimate educational merit or, for that matter, educational, personal and financial harm.

I also feel that comparing NRCCUA to the College Board is a huge stretch. If you have read my postings on the College Board, I generally say the same thing over and over in different ways: they do a good job a producing a test that has merit and in administering this test. I am all for them cracking down on extended time kids and, as an SAT test administrator for 25 years, think that they do a far far better job than state testing agencies. I do think they are slow to consider things that are not in their economic interest, like having a modular SAT. But they are a business so this is understandable. College Board does what it says it does, NRCCUA does not, and that is not a minor matter. I do think College Board pretends to be more of an educational service than it is but they are at least on the right side. They at least try to be responsive to the educational community.

NRCCUA does produce some admissions training materials that are used by some, but on balance does not promote educational interests. Yes, there are those on the e-list who are reflexively anti-College Board, but I think you are painting with a pretty big brush there, in my (less than humble) opinion. Maybe you can convince me that Munce is providing a service to the educational community on balance or that the methods of NRCCUA are legitimate, but you would have to refute some pretty strong evidence to the contrary.

Giving him and his organization the voice in the Chronicle that you did in your interview I felt lent your paper's legitimacy to someone of questionable integrity. Just my two bits. Just as the Chronicle promotes educational interests while still having business interests. I think you should expect the same of those you promote in your publication.

And a follow-up posting to the NACAC e-list:

Mr. McClendon is President of the Board of Advisors for NRCCUA.

http://www.collegeoptionsfoundation.net/mclendon.html

Mr. McLendon is also one of three Members of the Board of Directors of the College Options Foundation. This organization helps students in Junior AF ROTC to navigate the college process. And what tool do you think these students use for this kind of self-discovery? You guessed it, the on-line version of the NRCCUA survey.

http://www.collegeoptionsfoundation.net/JPACtools.html#

Well, that seems harmless enough. Except that there is no restraint on where information collected from NRCCUA data goes. As you might remember from yesterday's post, (if you read to the end of my post from yesterday), these are just a few of the shady characters who they have shared their data with: Christopher Nwaigwe of Maryland was convicted on federal mail fraud charges in 1999 for offering phony scholarships. College Resource Management Inc. of Texas paid $40,000 this year to settle civil FTC charges it misrepresented its ability to obtain financial aid for students. A third company, College Financial Aid, has received an “unsatisfactory” rating from the Better Business Bureau of upstate New York for the many consumer complaints it has received.

Surely the consent agreement with the FTC prevented this from happening in the future. No, the consent decree only states that they must say they are sharing their information with other groups than just educational entities. And they do that on their web site, listing the following on their web site:

1. financial aid planning, student loans, and scholarships;
2. enrichment opportunities such as travel programs, camps, extra-curricular activities and conferences;
3. curriculum materials, books, Internet-based educational programs, magazines and low-cost literary products; and
4. academic assistance, remedial help, and preparation for college-entrance examinations.

And what scholarship services, student loan programs or financial aid planning services are paying money to buy lists from NRCCUA? Maybe Mr. Munce or Mr. Mclendon would like to post on the e-list the list of these organizations that receive names from NRCCUA.

And not only does NACAC give their seal of approval to NRCCUA but so, apparently does the Chronicle of Higher Education. In an interview in the Chronicle (http://chronicle.com/live/2006/10/munce/), Liz Farrell moderates a discussion with Don Munce, stating that he was once admission director for ten years of an unnamed Midwestern college. There is no mention of the well documented complaints against NRCCUA. She stated in response to my query:
"Yes, I have interviewed Mr. Munce many times for many stories and have found him to be very helpful. I plan on continuing to use him as a source."
(For the full discussion, go to whitesworld.blogspot.com In it, she wonders why we would give greater criticism to Don Munce than Marilee Jones).

In a greater view, I would like the membership to think about what the biggest story in the news is in relation to education. No, the Marilee Jones incident is not even a blip. Newsweek even referred to her as Marilee Dean. No, it is the misuse and abuse of financial aid practices and student privacy. We are not only being told about the cozy relationships between financial aid offices and lenders, but that there was widespread abuse in the use of student data. In the May 3rd NY Times there is an article (p. A17) that the Education Department had restricted access to student data because "of concern that student lenders or other marketers were improperly obtaining private information about potential borrowers." And in today's NT Times (p. A19), there was a report that alumni associations "are taking payments form loan companies and providing names and addresses of graduates that the companies can use for marketing purposes."

I just wonder why there is not similar outrage about the use of student names and private information, including, according to their published information, names, addresses, GPAs, races, religions, and social views, of secondary school students. Instead we are seemingly endorsing this practice through the NACAC seal of approval and prime placement through the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A Follow-up posting on the NACAC e-list

Checking the internet to find who is on the Board of this organization (something which is curiously nowhere to be found on their web site), I did come accross the following document:

http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/2216EF8D-97B1-4446-915E-3DD3C0CB2059/0/CEOReportforCouncil.pdf

Which, on the final page, notes about Joyce Smith, the Executive Director of NACAC:

NRCCUA Advisory Board
Joyce continues to serve on the NRCCUA Advisory Board as they expand their array of program and research focused on student preparation, college transition and diversity. Shanda Ivory attended their December meeting and reported back on activities underway at NRCCUA for the postsecondary and secondary community.

Maybe Ms. Smith can, in this role, find the answer to a few questions for us:

1) Does NRCCUA still sell their lists to any organzations or groups which have had criminal or civil judgements against them from the FTC or other governmental groups for fraud of misrepresentation? What about organizations that are presently under investigation or receive unsatisfactory ratings from the Better Business Bureau?

2) What is the financial compensation for the member of the Board of Directors?

3) Is it policy for members of the Board of Directors, particularly its president, to defend the organization without stating his affiliation to it.

4) Is there a reason that the members of the Board of Directors or the Board of Advisors are not publicly made available?

5) What was the process for choosing NRCCUA for the seal of approval. Was Ms. Smith or those who reported to her involved in the decision? Would that be considered a conflict of interest?

6) Did anyone at NACAC know that this outfit had been forced to sign a consent degree with the FTC? Did Joyce even know this when she joined their Board of Advisors? Did she know until you revealed it on the listserve the other day? Does she know today? Does she think it matters?

7) Does having a subsidiary approved mean that the overall organization can use the Seal of Approval as part of its marketing? (I think this constitutes fraud. What does Joyce think?)

8) Is there any written policy at NRCCUA about the sharing of personal student data, including such issues as social and religious views, with what they call "education related organizations?"

9) Is there any attempt from NRCCUA to gain parental permission from minors for the collection and dissemination of this personal information?

There seems to be a national outrage of the sharing of college student and alumni financial data but a benign acceptance of this sharing of personal information of high school students, the far majority of whom are minors. Aren't we supposed to be in the business of protecting them. Inquiring minds want to know.

From Jim Montague of Boston Latin to Don Munce:

From: Jim Montague
To: don@nrccua.org
Cc: jsmith@nacac.com
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 6:46 AM
Subject: your iresponse to the NACAC elist

Since you have invited members of the NACAC list to reply directly with questions, would you please help me understand this press release from the Connecticut Attorney General's Office in January 2005. There were similar press releases from the other states involved. These public statements seem to call into question your assertion that:

"NRCCUA does not currently nor has it ever provided access to its lists to the scholarship companies mentioned in some of the comments, and has never to its knowledge had a relationship with organizations or groups with records such as those cited. In fact, we do not provide access to our list to any organization that charges a fee for financial aid advice."

January 13, 2005
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) Commissioner Edwin R. Rodriguez today announced that Connecticut has reached a settlement with National Research Center for College and University Admissions ( NRCCUA) for improperly selling personal information that the company collected from prospective college students.
The settlement, including 41 other states, as well as Connecticut, is with NRCCUA of Lee's Summit, Mo., a company that sends surveys each year to millions of high school students nationwide promising to share the information only with colleges or universities that might want to them to attend their institutions.
For at least a decade, however, NRCCUA sold students' confidential information to American Student List, LLC, which in turn sold the data to credit card, music, media and other companies that market to college students. In at least one instance, a company that scams students by falsely claiming that it can secure scholarships for a fee bought and used information collected by NRCCUA.
Personal student information sold without permission to marketers included address, grade point average, birthday, academic and occupational interests, racial and ethnic background, and, in some cases, religious affiliation.
"NRCCUA trashed the privacy rights of millions of college students by hawking their personal information for higher profit," Blumenthal said. "Students filled out surveys expecting to receive useful information from colleges, not useless pitches from advertisers. NRCCUA's actions constitute an outrageous and unconscionable breach of trust that must cease immediately. The company's practice of selling personal information is especially egregious and reckless given the growing problem of identity theft. My office will continue to closely scrutinize data collection companies to ensure that they protect consumers' privacy rights."
"We have to hold companies and organizations that collect personal information accountable for protecting privacy rights," Rodriguez said. "If the company intends to use the collected data for reasons other than its stated purpose, consumers should be given clear notice and the opportunity to opt out."
The agreement requires NRCCUA to clearly disclose how it uses student information and give students and their parents the opportunity to request that the company share information only with colleges and universities, including information that it already possesses. The company will also pay $300,000 to cover the legal expenses of Connecticut and other states taking part in the settlement.
Other states taking part in the settlement are: Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
I am also concerned that you have never clarified your relationship with American Student List, LLC, the organization named with you in the FTC complaint that was brought in 2001. By the way, the public record would not suggest that you "approached the FTC and offered to provide them with information." Instead, it appears in the FTC complaint that you were accused of violating the provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act and were required to respond.

2007-04-28T05:49:00.001-07:00

Marilee Jones: Shock, Sadness and Dispair

I have a hard time describing my emotions when I heard about Marilee Jones. I am saddened for her, the students of and applicants to MIT and her family. Each of them are suffering a great loss, for whatever the reason, from her leaving the position she has held for decades. Did she bring it upon herself? Absolutely, but that does not lessen the impact that she has had on the college admissions community nor the impact of the loss of her voice in the profession. She had a message that needed to be said and was able to be heard both because of the person she is, the position she held, the message she delivered and the consistency and firmness of her convictions. I honestly believe she moved the college admissions process in a more humane direction. I can't count how many times I have quoted her in presentations, writings and publications. Am I disappointed? Yes. Dissolusioned? No. Someone wrote to me comparing her dismissal as a Pete Rose moment, but for me it is more of a John Kennedy moment. I can hear the responses now: "She disgraced herself", "She showed a lack of integrity and honestly while preaching about ways of maintaining those qualities in the college admissions community." And, I can't disagree. But I can't help but feel sadness upon the loss of a leader with a message and a vision of sanity, compassion and concern. I truly fear that disillusionment with the person will translate into dismissal of the message and that would be a huge loss to our community. Certainly there are those, Lloyd Thacker the most vocal among them, who have dedicated their lives to changing how colleges act to recruit and select students. But Marilee's message was directed much more to the parents and students of how to live their lives. She went school to school (including ours) and town to town to deliver her message in a way that was engaging and effective. There is this true void now that I feel with a great amount of sorrow. There are a number of leaders who have shown poor judgment, (Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon), whose accomplishments were overshadowed by their errors in judgment. I hope that the disappointment I believe we all harbor to some extent or another does not cause us to minimize the extent of Marilee's contributions or power of her message.

2007-04-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

On a Modular SAT: A discussion between Scott White, Director of Guidance at Montclair High School in NJ and Pamela T. Horne, Assistant Vice President for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions Purdue University
:
Original post by Scott White:

I was conversing via e-mail the other day with Brad Macgowen about the College Board's response to our proposal to allow students to take only one or two sections of the SAT at each testing (or at least, as the ACT does, make the essay section optional). I repeated my feeling that their reaction is like the Bush administration's response to global warning. They are studying it (interpretation: "ignoring something that they have total disregard for") and will only act on it if absolutely forced by circumstances.Well, we came up with a proposal: why not let the College Board know that we are serious about the need to serve students by withholding dues payments. Certainly, they do not need our money so this is a symbolic gesture. I see no advantage to College Board membership. What's the down side of stopping being a member? Not being able to vote? It does not seem as if they are bringing any substantive issues to the membership, thus our vote is meaningless. The College Board has moved so far from its original mission that it has ceased, in any meaningful way, to be a true membership organization.Save your school a few hundred dollars and make a statement at the same time. Let the College Board know that they need to be responsive to the needs of students and desires of its membership to earn our participation and membership.

Response from Pamela T. Horne:

Scott please let me assure you that the SAT modularity issue has been and continues to be thoroughly discussed by the Guidance and Admission Assembly National Council of which I am a member representing the Midwestern region. The SAT Committee has also been studying this issue for over a year. The College Board is not dragging its feet, but rather is working with the membership through the governance process. There is absolutely no consensus in GAAC or among the members whom I talk with in the Midwest around this issue. In fact, the sentiment among many members tends against test modularity for several reasons:

1) Access and gaming its very likely that it would be wealthier students who would have the time, resources, and access to advice from others to take advantage of modular testing“ already we know that low-income students frequently wait until the fall of senior year to test at all, and that they are much less likely to take multiple sittings of admissions tests we know that low-income and first-generation students are at schools with 600-1000 student to counselor ratios and would not have access to advice regarding taking the SAT in a modular fashion. I have already seen wealthy students who know that some scholarships use mix and match scores from multiple sittings as criteria blow off one part of the SAT in order to score well on others (700 math and 400 CR in one sitting and 600 math and 550 in an earlier one). And clearly, it is well-off students who have the time and resources to forgo multiple Saturday mornings work and family obligations and stack their test preparation for a single module at a time. Low income students don’t have those luxuries or privileges.
2) Concordance Admissions staff members are dependent upon the ACT Comp/SAT CR+Math concordance scale “ it is not appropriate nor would it be sound educational practice to compare candidates who have taken the SAT in a modular fashion with candidates who have taken the ACT in one sitting. In the interest of full disclosure, I can tell you that many of us in the admissions community (including all of the Big Ten) are advocating strongly with ACT that the writing exam be mandatory. You don’t have to deal with it being in an SAT-dominant part of the country but the optional writing exam has created serious confusion among students in the Midwest and the South with the high school counselors and admissions professionals holding the bag of communicating to students about whether or not they should opt for writing. I and others have told ACT that they have also sent a tacit message to high school students that writing skills are not important or at least optional (lets face it “ teens are not going to look at ACTs published reasons for not requiring it).
3) Whom would be protected by the availability of a modular SAT option and for what genuine purpose Millions of teenagers all over the world in other cultures sit for very high-stakes exams that last many hours over several days. These tests absolutely determine their fate and access to higher education (and in some places at ages much younger than 17 or 18). ALL US high school graduates have access to higher education, regardless of scores on standardized tests (no, not everyone has access to their top choices “ but neither will they throughout their lives always have access to first or top choices in jobs, location, etc that’s a part of being an adult and a human being). Are our American young people subject to more pressure than Chinese or German students? Of course not -- just the reverse is true. Are our American young people such hot house flowers that they cannot tolerate 4 hours (with several breaks) in one sitting? And honestly we all heard a lot of fuss from students and parents during the first year with writing there has been virtual silence on the issue of test length this year. I believe most students are pretty sturdy and accepting of change, especially when they know all of their peers are going through the same process.

The most common reason brought forward for modularity is fatigue if that is a disadvantaging factor (and the data so far do not support that it is) then it is a phenomenon that is experienced equitably and universally and is not a differentiating disadvantage among individual test-takers (yes, I understand that students with documented disabilities may be there for more than 4 hours). To allow or encourage modularity, however, would inevitably advantage those who are already advantaged and introduce an unsound psychometric variability in admissions assessments when SAT and ACT scores are compared.

The issue of whether or not there are benefits of College Board membership is another issue and another debate. Resigning membership due to opinion on this issue or any others is of course an option any educational institution can take. But if you post discussion around modularity issue (rather than College Board membership in general), I hope that you will include a full discussion of the issue and not just comments from those who agree with you.

I very much appreciate your passion and advocacy for your students -- but please remember that your students have access to you, a college-going culture throughout your school, and 25 AP courses. Your students would probably benefit from modularity, among the many other opportunities they have available. I don’t think the same can be said for a student from a farm in rural Indiana where there are 25 kids in his senior class, only 5 of whom aspire to a 4-year college, and maybe one part-time counselor for an entire school system. Nor could it be said for a neighborhood high school in inner city Detroit or the upper peninsula of Michigan were there isn’t an AP course (or the availability of even taking the SAT for that matter) within 200 miles. It’s a big country out there with very diverse needs. I believe that while we work to ensure a better education for all of our students that we should also preserve what little equity exists.

Scott White’s response with Pamela T. Horne’s’s comments (italicized)

Pam:

I appreciate your thoughtful and detailed response. You have obviously given this issue a lot of thought and reflection. Despite that, I disagree with virtually all your premises, whether on logistical, financial or educational grounds.

First to the argument that modular testing benefits the rich. Yes, in many communities students take the test only once. But we have a group of kids, quite a few in fact, who are lower income but not so low as to qualify for fee waivers. They do not take the test more than once not for logistical reasons but for financial ones. Two $45 fees are a real sacrifice. But if this kid had to re-take just the math portion, this would make a difference to this kid. Your example of kids who take the test only once is twisted logic...how do we not know that if there were modular testing that these students would not now re-test more often. Those students who test late and only once truly do not need modular testing but would not be disadvantaged by it. Most score very low and attend less selective or 2-year colleges.

You may be correct about potential benefits of modularity for those low-income students who have access to good counseling like yours; sadly, the vast majority do not Some of our differences in opinion may be regionally-based. It is not my experience (at 3 Big Ten universities in two states) that most students who test late end up attending 2-year colleges .Its not even necessarily true that they score very low “and I’ve reviewed hundreds of such files -- they just didn’t have access to college planning advice in their schools or homes that encouraged junior year testing. The Big Ten public universities enroll hundreds of fall-only testers each year as we do with all admissions factors; we review their test scores in a holistic manner, considering the context of their communities and their schools.

During my years in Michigan (at both UM and MSU), we worked very hard to try to convince urban (and rural for that matter) counselors that junior year testing was a good thing many were specifically advising their students to wait until senior year, under the assumption they would score higher later. But counseling staff at many urban schools move through a revolving door as hard as the universities committed to outreach worked, these messages were difficult to embed in schools that are not adequately or consistently staffed. This is one of the reasons that we started a free-of-charge one-day high school counselor conference funded by all the public universities in Michigan so we could continually help educate new counselors about these and other issues over 600 now attend this annual event. Most counselors in Midwest states have no funding or release time to attend ACAC meetings and the like. Its also why (more full disclosure) I personally lobbied hard with the Michigan State Board of Education and Legislature to replace the state junior-level assessment (which in my judgment as a parent and an educator did NOT serve any purpose other than complying with NCLB and giving some school districts bragging rights and higher real estate prices) with a college admissions test. I wanted every kid in Michigan to have the chance to test early, receive the helpful feedback that either ACT or College Board provides, get on college mailing lists, start to see themselves as college-bound, and test free (and have a re-test for free if they wish). I didn’t care which test I just wanted the kids to have the access I’m very proud that the Michigan Merit Exam, which includes a nationally portable ACT+writing, was administered to virtually every high school junior in Michigan for the first time this March. All Michigan kids also have the opportunity to re-test on a national testing date next fall for free. The test will also give the schools quicker feedback on their students that is nationally normed and relevant to their student’s futures not just a reflection of their pasts. The kids, knowing that they could have a personal stake in the outcome, are also taking the junior level assessment much more seriously. MI should see an immediate jump in the # of low-income and minority students attending college in 2008 it happened in IL and CO. Indiana is also considering a state-wide, state-funded admissions test in some ways I hope that it ends up being the SAT, because we are surrounded by states that have or are considering adopting the ACT for this purpose’s. The entire country benefits from having both tests and the competition keeps both testing services on their toes. I don’t want either College Board or ACT to have a national monopoly. But most importantly, it’s about the kids and access.

And just in case you might think I’ve been co-opted by the College Board, I also served on the Michigan ACT Council, chaired it a year ago, and was the keynote speaker at the Indiana ACT conference a few weeks ago. The Big Ten Admissions Directors and ACAOPU (directors from large publics all over the country) also meet very regularly with regional and national staff from both testing services. Leadership in both College Board and ACT will tell you that I’m a pretty vocal and healthy critic if I have concerns, opinions, or questions about their policies, programs, and services.

As for test integrity, that is another red herring. Certainly the subject tests are offered as stand alone tests without affecting test integrity. And let us not forget that the SAT Writing test is almost the same test as the old Achievement Test in English. How is it that the same test is no longer valid as a stand alone test?

I didn’t speak to test integrity, validity, or reliability different topics for another time. I spoke specifically to concordance with the ACT composite. If a student crams for and only takes the SAT Critical Reading at one sitting and then the same for Math a few months later I don’t think that that CR+M total score should be considered as concordant to an ACT Comp taken in one sitting. Again, this may be a regional issue Big Ten universities have to be very concerned with concordance we each have thousands of applicants from all over the country many with only SAT and many with only ACT. Some of my colleagues elsewhere around the country who accept the ACT in lieu of required SAT Subject tests might disagree with me on this psychometric point. (Very few Midwest institutions require Subject Tests, so the topic seldom comes up here.)

Perhaps the weakest and I would argue bordering on ridiculous, rationale for the status quo is that 4 and 1/2 hours is somehow good for the character and that it helps our kids somehow experience some kind of global norm by going through this rigorous exam experience multiple times. Testing is not an inherent good, and is in fact, in most cases, a necessary evil. To subject students unnecessarily to excessive testing for no good reason other than that is serves as an international educational boot camp is a notion that I do not, and probably never will, understand.

I also do not believe that testing is an inherent good it has many limitations; but given the current disparities in grading systems and scales, how class rank is computed, grade inflation (its REAL!), curriculum and course availability variability, and even disparate opportunities for extracurricular opportunities among American high schools, standardized tests are the only common yard stick that admissions professionals have to take into consideration in our holistic reviews. (And although I do not plan to follow suit, I can respect institutions that truly believe that not requiring standardized tests will expand access to their schools. Somehow, however, large publics that do require test scores have been educating thousands of Pell Grant recipients for years.) I’m only saying, relatively speaking, that the pressure and time for American kids involved with testing associated with their future education is far less than experienced in other countries. I don’t think a 3-part SAT is particularly character-building, but nor do I think that it is particularly useless or harmful. What I do strongly believe is that there are far more serious and important educational issues that we all need to be addressing.

Scott White’s response:

I have to say this last post is quite reasonable. I don't see the ACT switching to a modular test so there issues of concordance, but I would really like to see some independent data about whether having a modular SAT would affect that. I understand that it may be a concern for some institutions. Most colleges out East, even large instititutions like yours, use the highest individual subscores when looking at SAT scores and the same could be done for the ACT. This would not be a terribly difficult technical challenge.

You make the exact same point that I made about 5 years ago about testing. I have run our state testing for 16 years and have been an SAT administrator for 25 and I spend SO much time preparing for these tests, as do the students, teachers, administrators and parents. Not to mention the huge amount of money to develop, distribute, score, etc. each state test. This is money that could be put back into the schools! It is absurd to have so many resources devoted to different tests and even more absurd that there are different state tests to assess the same skills. Combining both the state test with the college admissions test makes perfect sense.

I don't believe that the kids you speak of who only test once and late will be at a disadvantage due to modular testing. The rich or well counseled kids will still have the advantage of multiple sittings. The difference will just be that those kids will have to go through more testing than they need or desire, resulting in literally millions of dollars of wasted fees and millions of hours of truly wasted time.

I also agree totally with your conclusion: What I do strongly believe is that there are far more serious and important educational issues that we all need to be addressing. Unfortunately, there are many parents, students, administrators and legislators who think otherwise. The NCLB is forcing schools to do more and more testing and there is a point, and we have reached it, where it truly takes away in a substantial way, from instructional time. I believe most states are like NJ where students only have to re-take the parts of their exit exam they do not pass. No one is arguing that there is a problem with this. In fact, most would consider making the kid retake all sections unnecessary, overly costly and a waste of the student's time. Though there is no "pass" in college admissions testing, there is not a plus side for students of having them have to re-take all sections of the test. If the strongest reason for not making the test modular is the concordance with the ACT, then that is something that should be addressed on the post-secondary side.

Whether I like it or not, my bosses, the state of NJ, central office at our district, etc., put a huge emphasis on state testing thus it becomes important, in a realistic, logistical way (not a philosophical one) to me. In addition, the SAT takes on almost mythical status in my community. We are unusual, with a 50% white population that is overwhelmingly rich and a 50% black population, 1/3 of who are on free/reduced lunch. We do not really have the blue collar, lunch bucket crowd, so I cannot speak with authority on this sub-group (which I think you are referring to in your post). But testing is a major part of the life, whether I like it or not or believe it should be or not, of my students. If modular testing is one way to lessen the time, energy, cost and focus of testing, then I'm all for it. If I was convinced (and I am not now, but accept the possibility) that this would lead to more testing, then I would be the first to oppose it.

2007-04-28T05:41:00.000-07:00

Modular SAT and a College Board Boycott

I was conversing via e-mail the other day with Brad Macgowen about the College Board's response to our proposal to allow students to take only one or two sections of the SAT at each testing (or at least, as the ACT does, make the essay section optional). I repeated my feeling that their reaction is like the Bush administration's response to global warning. They are studying it (interpretation: "ignoring something that they have total disregard for") and will only act on it if absolutely forced by circumstances.Well, we came up with a proposal: why not let the College Board know that we are serious about the need to serve students by withholding dues payments. Certainly, they do not need our money so this is a symbolic gesture. I see no advantage to College Board membership. What's the down side of stopping being a member? Not being able to vote? It does not seem as if they are bringing any substantive issues to the membership, thus our vote is meaningless. The College Board has moved so far from its original mission that it has ceased, in any meaningful way, to be a true membership organization.Save your school a few hundred dollars and make a statement at the same time. Let the College Board know that they need to be responsive to the needs of students and desires of its membership to earn our participation and membership. Please e-mail me if you are willing to take this bold step.

2007-04-28T05:39:00.001-07:00

Merit Aid and a REcent History of College Admissions

There are a few things that colleges could do that would make those things which we all like to rail against (need-aware admissions, gapping, merit aid, financial aid leveraging, preferential packaging, etc.):

1) Honesty and transparency: Do what you say you are going to do and say what you are going to do.
2) Predictability: Put on the table how you award financial aid. If you use formulas for aid, put a financial aid calculator on your web site. If you use the federal formula or a CSS formula or some formula of your own, state what it is. If you have some degree of need aware admissions, articulate your policy.

I think there is this mind set that when you are not proud of what you do, the reaction is to obsfucate. I see this certainly with isues of the admission of legacies and athletes and development cases but even more so in the awarding of financial aid.

The most common response when I suggest this is that there are variables that may affect financial aid that make this unrealistic. But is someone like me, who has been in the business 25 years and who is pretty well versed in financial aid has no idea what level of financial aid my children might get, think how the average family must feel. And the slide into need award admissions has the average family believing that simply applying for aid will hurt their child's chance of admission. Thus many families with need do not apply for it or families that would qualify for aid at private colleges do not apply there. Maybe this is what more people should be talking about, i.e. that this is exactly the purpose fo this obsfucation: more full pay kids and lower financial aid budgets. For a more detailed analysis of this, see below:

A Recent History of College Admissions
Up until the early 1980’s, the college admissions process was fairly straightforward. Almost all colleges promoted themselves through their publications primarily the “view book”, sent to students who had expressed interest in the college and through direct mail. Colleges would buy lists of names from the College Board of those students who took the PSAT or SAT and met some demographic or test score criteria. Admissions selection was usually based on academic factors with preference often given to children of alumni, athletes or those with other special talents, and, to a much more limited degree than today, to those from under-represented minority groups.
Financial aid was given to help families in need meet the cost of education. There was a single form that almost all colleges and the federal government used to analyze financial need and award financial aid, the FAF (Financial Aid Form). There was a standard formula that took into account a number of factors (income, cost of living, age of the parents, savings, equity, etc.) and that used a series of standard tables to determine what a family could afford to pay for college. This formula, the Standard Methodology, produced a figure, the Family Contribution, which was the same for every college to which a student applied. Financial Need was the cost of the college minus the Family Contribution. Most colleges, and virtually all highly selective colleges, agreed to meet 100% of financial need, meaning that they would, through a series of grants and loans, meet the full Financial Need of all applicants.
Thus if the FAF determined that a family could pay $5,000 for college and the college cost $15,000, almost all selective colleges would give students a financial aid package totaling $10,000. Colleges would use preferential packaging, giving financial aid packages with higher grants, which did not have to be repaid, and fewer loans to those students they most wanted.
The National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC), the organization governing most of college admissions, prohibited colleges from using financial need to determine whether a student would be admitted. This policy, accepted by virtually all colleges, was called need-blind admissions. And the cost of college had risen less than the cost of living for the previous two decades and was affordable to the average upper middle class family.
A demographic shift occurred in the early 80’s with a marketable drop in the number of students graduating from high school. Even the most selective colleges began to scramble to maintain the quality and quantity of applications they received. A new beast emerged on the admissions front, the Enrollment Manager. Prior to that, Admissions Directors controlled the marketing of the colleges and the selection of students. Financial Aid Directors determined what financial aid was given to students, generally based on the figures from the FAF. Both generally reported to the College President or someone else not directly involved in admissions. In the most common Enrollment Management model to emerge, the Admissions Director and Director of Financial Aid reported to the Vice President of Enrollment Management.
At this point, you might be asking yourself how these demographic, financial and internal managerial and admissions practices might have any meaning to you. The decisions made by the colleges, the federal government, NACAC and the media over the last 25 years have increased the hype, manipulation, uncertainty and, in the end, the mania surrounding college [delete s] admissions and costs.
Colleges made a number of decisions that had a significant impact on students and parents. Several publications, most notably the US News and World Report, were starting to rank colleges, leading Enrollment Managers to put pressures on to get high rankings. These rankings usually were highly affected by the percentage of students accepted, the standardized test scores of those admitted and the numbers of students who accepted offers of admissions.
Thus colleges began aggressively seeking as many applicants as they could merely to seem more selective by rejecting more and more students. The harder it became to get into college, the more students wanted to apply. And as the number of applicants increased in the 90’s, the strategy to maintain the status quo became a frenzy of scarcity. The most selective colleges were beginning to have admissions in the teens, and the media jumped on the trends. The Grouch Marx phenomenon became the rule of college admissions. It seemed that no one wanted to apply to a college that would admit them. Students and parents began to hire their version of the colleges’ Enrollment Managers. SAT preparation has become a rite of passage for many communities and the growth of the use of private college counselors has grown exponentially. One consultant now charges over $30,000 for her college counseling services. Recently, Michelle Hernandez, a former admissions counselor at Dartmouth, has offered a three-day college admissions boot camp for $10,000.
It was on the financial front that even greater changes were taking place. As financial aid budgets continued to increase, college Presidents and Boards were putting increasing pressure to increase revenues and decrease costs. Beginning in the 80’s, college officials began to realize that there was a much greater elasticity of demand for college than they had assumed, i.e. that costs could continue to rise without causing parents to abandon attending prestigious colleges.
Thus years of increases below the cost of living were followed in the past two decades by tuition increases well beyond inflation. Colleges needed more and more money to be competitive: to build state-of- the- art science buildings, dorms, libraries and athletic complexes, to stay on the cutting edge of technology, to stay in the market for the best professors, to meet the needs of those on financial aid and to attract the best students with merit scholarships not tied to financial need. College tuition at the most expensive colleges (almost all college tuitions at these schools rose at nearly the same cost and rate) passed the $20,000 mark, then the $30,000 mark, and the then the $40,000 mark, with seemingly no end in sight. The cost of college every year was outpacing income year after year.
To increase revenue, every selective college began to market themselves aggressively both nationally and internationally. Colleges began to travel and directly market to areas where they had never previously sought students and started actively seeking international students, to whom they rarely offered any financial aid.
Then a shock wave went through the admissions world. One of the most selective colleges announced that though they were still need blind, they could not guarantee to continue to be so. This was soon followed by a pronouncement by one of the most prestigious women’s colleges of a specific policy to abandon need blind admissions: students who had very high need and were marginal in the pool would be denied. NACAC backed off, after a huge internal fight, from requiring colleges to be need blind in their admissions policies.
The colleges thought they had a fair solution to the problem of escalating financial aid budgets: promulgate a policy that only affected a very small number of applicants. The problem for parents was one of definition. What was a “marginal applicant?” Wasn’t admissions an inexact process where, at the most selective colleges, almost no one had a high assurance of admission? And what was “high need”? Parents began to become more and more anxious about not only whether they could afford college but also whether simply applying for aid would jeopardize admissions for their child. Need Blind Admissions was replaced by the cynically named Need Aware Admissions.

A decision by the federal government at around the same time had an equally negative effect on the ability of parents to predict college costs. The government has given special consideration in its tax code to those who own houses. Interest on mortgages and real estate taxes on one’s residence are deductions from one’s income. The government decided to make the same decision about housing equity in the awarding of federal financial aid: housing equity no longer was in the formula for determining financial need. A new form, the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid, was developed to reflect this new policy.

Unfortunately, high cost and high tuition colleges wanted housing equity data. Thus the College Board’s CSS Profile was born, where each college would have its own formula for determining need. Fewer and fewer colleges were meeting, with financial aid, even their own computations of what a family could afford to pay. The previous standard of meeting 100% of financial need was replaced with a policy of “gapping” where 90%, 80% or even 70% of financial need was met. In addition, more and more colleges were offering no-need merit scholarships to vie for the most talented students, often at the expense of need-based aid.

Thus we went from a relatively predictable system of admissions and financial aid to one of almost total unpredictability. At the most selective colleges, admission rates are in the single digits. In 2005, for instance, Stanford admitted less than 16% of students with straight A’s in high school or who were in the top 10% of their high school class and admitted only 20% with a perfect 800 math SAT score and 28% of those with a perfect 800 verbal score. Colleges have continued the aggressive marketing begun in a time of decreasing enrollment when the children of baby boomers have been swelling the number of students applying to college to record numbers.

Now one system with total uncertainty replaced a fully predictable one. Financial aid awards to the same students applying to similarly priced and endowed colleges began to differ by tens of thousands of dollars. More and more poor students were being denied simply because they were poor. Enrollment Management firms began to advise colleges on how to use financial aid to get students to enroll. “Financial aid leveraging” used complex demographic analysis to target financial aid. If it were discovered, for instance, that Asian students would more likely enroll if they were given automatic scholarships of $2000 that became policy.

Prior to the 90’s, a parent with a given income and assets could almost totally predict what level of financial aid they would receive. There were publicly available tables that determined the parental contribution from the FAF. Since most high priced colleges agreed
to use this figure to determine financial aid and agreed to meet 100% of need. Thus a student applying to five colleges could reasonably expect to get the same level of financial aid with only a small variation among them in the ratio of grants to loans. With the introduction of the CSS Profile, the abandoning of need blind admissions and meeting of 100% of financial need and the proliferation of merit scholarships and financial aid leveraging, all predictability of financial aid was lost.

At the same time, the cost increases at public colleges were far outstripping the increase in the financial aid from the federal and state governments for poor students. Except for public community colleges, even public colleges have become no longer affordable for the poor and middle class parents.

2007-04-28T05:34:00.002-07:00

Finding Colleges with Strength in a Certain Major

There is probably not one source of information that will give you an answer to the quality of a particular major at a given school or a list of the colleges that are "best" at that major, but there are a number of tools you can use to get some clarity on the issue:

1) At the Reed College web site there is a list of colleges that send the most students on to PhD programs in each field: http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html. Using this measure, the top schools in history are Yale, Grace, Reed Swarthmore,Wesleyan, Carleton, Oberlin, Grinnell, Pomona and Chicago.

2) There are a number of subjective lists, such as Rugg's Recommendations, the Gourman Report (take this one with a grain of salt), etc.

3) Popularity of a major is not necessarily a measure of quality but there probably is a strong correlation. You can go to the IPEDS web site to get this information: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/ (as well as a number of cool tools like the Executive Peer Tool: http://nces.ed.gov/ipedspas/ExPT/index.asp that lets you compare colleges across a number of measures).

You can also buy MCP Search (mcpdatabases.com) which is a tool I use pretty often to sort and select IPEDS data. It will give you data like what is the percentage of students in a school in a given major.

For instance, you can see the colleges where over 2% of the student body major in history include Yale (4.0), Holy Cross (2.3), VMI (3.85), Trinity (CT) (2.61), U. South (3.71), Columbia (3.09) Princeton (2.35), Colgate (2.66) Williams (2.94), Davidson (3.12), Washington and Lee (2.69), Hampden-Sydney (3.41) Haverfor (3.71), Centre College (2.78) Whitman College (2.0) Bryn Mawr (2.0) Earlham (2.01) Agnes Scott (2.55) Wabash (2.21).

I terms of raw numbers, the colleges with the greatest # of history majors are UCLA, Bringham Young, U. Texas, Yale, Wisconsin, Virginia, U. Penn, Florida, Washington, Michigan and Ohio State.

None of these are really difinitive, but together they do help find schools with strong programs.

These programs and lists are probably more useful for more obscure majors. For instance, you can find that the colleges with the most marine biology majors are UNC Wilmington and Coastal Carolina and those with the high percentage of marine bio majors are Eckerd College, the Florida Institute of Technology and LIU Southamton, information that may be hard to know off the top of your head.

2007-04-28T05:34:00.001-07:00

Early Decision and Financial Aid

If there were some predictability and consistency (and one might argue fairness and decency) in the awarding of financial aid, then there would be little problem with ED.

For those who have been in the profession more than 20 or 25 years, you can remember a time when both institutional aid and federal and state aid was determined by the data from the Financial Aid Form. Most colleges were need blind and met 100% of need. "Need" was easy to determine. There were tables that one could use which would tell you how to compute financial need and expected family contribution.

Then the feds decided to mess with a good thing. Someone thought it would be a great idea to remove housing equity from the federal formula, thus the FAFSA and the CSS Profile were born, primarily because it provided one major piece of data that the FAFSA did not: housing equity. The College Board thought it was a great idea to give individualized financial profiles to each school using their own formulas, thus no one applying to a college that required the FAFSA had any idea what level of financial aid they might expect.

Around the same time, the rise of enrollment management, in a time of a declining college applicants, arose. The worst of EM techniques was and is financial aid leveraging, an insidious process of awarding aid not on need, or even on merit, but on the demographic characteristics of the student. One time I was pretty shocked when a classified and very weak (academically) student of mine was given a $2000 merit scholarship to a relatively selective place. Then I picked up that some EM guru must have let the school know that Asian students from our area were more likely to attend with this kind of incentive. Another college routinely underfunds students, holding back money to give only to those who appeal their FA awards. One admissions dean told me how his board told him to find more full pay kids, but gave no direction on how. One college I know admits they they want to admit at least 50% of their class ED and another tells legacies that this advantage will not "count" (wink, wink) if they don't go ED.

I am certainly sympathetic to those colleges that are not well endowed who truly need to meet bottom lines that other better endowed college do not. It is certainly easier to be pious about one's financial aid policy when the college has a multi-million or billion dollar endowment.

There is much that has been written about how ED hurts the disadvantaged, particularly minority students. I don't know if that is true. It does seem that many colleges use ED to not only nail down full pay kids, in many cases, but also institutional priorities (their "shopping list" so to say), which clearly, with other groups like athletes and development cases/legacies, clearly includes under-represented minorities. And they seem to be funding this group competitively. But ED does advantage the wealthy at the expense of, well, uh,....me (and those like me) who cannot afford full freight but have no idea what level of financial aid I might get. Sure I can guess, but my experience is that kids in my kids situation get awards that vary sometimes by tens of thousands of dollars.

So what do I recommend? That colleges, in respect to financial aid, say what they do and do what they say. Make it so students and parent can easily predict how much financial aid they will get with some degree of certainty. At least a range. Then the down side of ED is gone. No longer would students need to shop around for financial aid.

I just think this whole process is too opaque for students and parents. Its pretty predictable who is in the ball park in terms of admissions, but it seems that every college wants as many applications as possible, even though, in some cases, it is just to be able to deny as many as possible. Maybe part of my feeling is coming from that miserable spring I have each year, breaking dreams by the dozen by telling kid after kid that they are not going to get into their dream school. Maybe I should take the line of the colleges and just imply that it could happen (even though I know it won't). But my integrity prevents that. I dread that look, from both the parents and kids, when the realization happents that they have set their sights too high. I think to myself that its just not that big a deal where you go. That there are great teachers everywhere and that it really doesn't have much effect on ones life. It has this myth of opening doors, but that's almost always at the first job and that's it, which most people leave in a couple of years anyway. But there is this romantic notion about college and this vicarious thing with parents that I need to respect.

What's the point of all this. Let's keep things in perspective. It is really necessary for colleges to be more open about admissions, but even more so, about financial aid. Stop playing games and stop using financial aid as a marketing and leveraging tool. Then we can go aobut our business and ED will no longer be seen as an evil but as a productive tool to help match kids to schools.

2006-07-06T04:10:00.000-07:00

SAT Scoring Errors

1) The decision to make known only the scoring errors that resulted in lower scores and to suppress scores for those who were too high was a political not an educational decision. Of the seven students we had who had scoring errors reported to us, only two were truly affected for the other 5 already had previous scores which were higher than the re-scored test. There is likely a higher percentage of students who scores were artificially inflated who are affected than those with aftificially low scores (if our percentages are typical).

2) There may be students who received scholarhips or admissions based on a numerical selection index who received a benefit that they were not qualified for. I cannot see a college withdrawing a scholarship or offer of admission from these students, but some organizations or schools might expand opportunities for other students to take into account "unqualified" students receiving awards or admissions (whether using scores in this way is appropriate or sound is another whole topic of conversation).

3) By only reporting those students whose scores were originally too low makes public relations sense but not educational sense. Obviously there would be less of an outcry from students, parents and ultimately lawyers from students who received corrected high scores than those who received corrected low scores. Yet if the purpose of the SAT is to help students and colleges in a matching process, then the decision to only report the high scores makes a mockery of this test. It supports the notion of college admissions as a beauty contest more than finding the best match. Obviously, if the College Board has reported scores for a student which were artificially too high and the SAT helps improve, with the transcript, a prediction of who will be successful in college, than that student with artificially high scores is being done a disservice. Both the student AND the college may be basing decisions on incorrect information. If there is any credibility of the validity of the SAT, the College Board would released all incorrect scores, high or low. Not doing so makes a mockery of the claim that the SAT is only a tool for colleges to aid in selecting students and for students to select appropriate colleges and further promotes higher SAT's as a goal unto itself, a notion all to common with students and parents.

4) On the comment of the scoring error being a "stone in the shoe"...I think is should be viewed more a club to the head. It should be a wake up call to the College Board that there are serious qualms about the credibility of the College Board. With ill advised decisions to become a for profit company to doing a total reversal on SAT prep (at first claiiming its lack of effectiveness to then actually developing its own SAT prep materials), the College Board is losing the hearts and minds of the college admissions community and to students and parents. It is not just one more blow to blow to their reputation but it could not come at a worse time for the SAT I Writing Test. I believe this may be the death knell for wider acceptance of this test. Many colleges have been sitting on the fence about whether to use this score in admissions and more and more seem to be deciding to not give it the same weight as the reading and math sections and many more are rejecting its use altogether. It is time to do as the ACT does and make this test section optional so that market forces can determine its use rather than it being shoved down the throats of colleges and students.

2006-07-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

Q: Is there any student who is harmed by being in an AP class?

A: That's a rather leading question. For one, I said nothing about there being a problem with encouraging students participate in AP classes. In my mind, there are two sides to the argument to having more kids participate in AP classes for their enrichment value. On one hand, there is an established, high level and standardized curriculum which can benefit a large number of students, not just the most talented. I can certainly see the argument that all students benefit from high expectations. On the other hand, is participation without performance really meaningful. Here we had one "AP" class whose students' AP scores were so low that we took away its AP designation. Is a course where almost all the students receive 1's or 2's really an AP course?

The other side of this question is not whether individual students are hurt by being in an AP course but whether other students are hurt by students who may be unprepared for the course being in the course. This is a tough question. On some level, it is like having students audit a course. Even if they are not at the level of other students, they probably gain from being in the course without affecting the other students. But there probably is a tipping point where too many unprepared students bring down the whole level of the course. At what point does the course have the AP disignation without being a true AP course? I don't really have an answer for this, but it is obviously a question the College Board is trying to answer by its AP auditing.

But this is all beside the point. My argument with the Newsweek list is its manipulative quality. If Jay Mathews has an agenda he want to promote, let him do what Lloyd Thacker has done: be straightforward and passionate about it and convince others of the merit of your position by the facts as you and others present them. I see the use of this spurious "Best High Schools" to be using the pulpit Jay's been given in an inappropriate manner. Whether it is good for individual students, schools, the validity of the AP program, or the society as a whole for more sutdents, particularly those who would not traditionally be taking them, to be in AP courses is an open question. To pretend that there is some value or merit to a list of school's with a high AP participation rate is another issue altogether.

So to Bob Turpa's question, I would say he is asking the wrong question. The question he should be asking is there harm creating and publicizing a list such as the one that appeared in Newsweek. I think there is. Lists masquerading as meaningful information are harmful. Promoting an agenda by creating a well-read list in a national publication is harmful. It uses the public's thirst for simplicity to promote a viewpoint.

Some have asked why I am so focused on this list and not all the others that are out there. For one, I have no inherent problem with lists. I produce my "list of lists" which I think is quite useful in context. I use list of majors quite often. The list most often villified is the US News and World report list. How is this different from the Newsweek list? For one, there has been plenty of outcry about it from groups like the Education Conservancy who are much more articulate then I have ever been. Both lists certainly use pseudo-science masquesaring as science. I am bothered that the US News list is so heavily weighted by peer's measurement of "quality". How many among us are truly versed in the strengths and weaknesses of the thousands of colleges out there. It is an absurd notion. I am troubled that is is a rating of input statistics without, like the NSSE, measuring value added. I am bothered by the fact that the highest correlation to the standing on the list is the founding year of the institution.

Maybe I am naive here, but I see the agenda of the US News list as selling newspapers. And maybe I am splitting hairs here, for both lists are clearly cases of the tail wagging the dog. And one might argue that there is an advantage to the Newsweek list because the desired outcome (having students who might not otherwise take AP course take them) is preferable to the outcome of the U. S. News list (have more colleges put emphasis on incoming statistics than improving the student experience). But I am troubled by the use of the media to create a list to promote an agenda, no matter how worthy.

2006-07-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

College Board Schools

I have a good degree of familiarity with the College Board. I have been an SAT test center supervisor for 20 years (1984-88 and 1991 to present), was a paid member of an advisory board for College Board publiscations (Book of Majors, College Counseling Sourcebook, etc) and was on two panels organized by the College Board (one on student's perceptions of the New SAT and one on advising first generation college students) at the College Board National Forum. I write this as perspective on my comments. I think there is some merit to what they are trying to do. The goal to work with first generation minorty kids to prepare for college is an admirable one. Yet I have all too often seen College Board as a lumbering, bureaucratic organization which lacks much creativity. I got to read and review many of their publications and this came out again and again: out of touch and off the mark. Then they decided to become a profit making organzation, further muddying the already murky waters. I would question the wisdom of taking an organization with so many misteps to serve in this capacity. I know of no one who describes this organization as innovative or concerned with the welfare of students. They are pretty good at doing what they do and I would question the wisdom of them running schools. If there is any momentum for the college counseling community, it is toward less focus on tests and more on learning. There is clearly a backlash toward NCLB. The one state that has a true obsession with testing is Florida, so there is little surprise that College Board Schools are thinking of expanding there. College Board running schools? Talk about the tail wagging the dog!

2006-07-06T03:53:00.000-07:00

How has the thinking about and use of EA changed in the last few years? Do you think the changes are good or bad? Why?

The implication here is that the system has remained the same and the students are acting differently in relation to early action. That is partly true, but this does by no means capture the whole story. Colleges continue to be rather opaque with any information they give to students about admissability and there are major changes going on with admit rates. But colleges who feel they may be left out of this wave are acting to prevent this.

I think we are going through such a period of anomie in college admissions that, for now, EA is a good thing. It allows for some degree of assurance in a rapidly changing landscape. There was a quote in The Chosen that there is not a democratization of oppotunity in college admissions, just a democratization of anxiety. The landscape that is changing the fastest is in urban areas.

Like the double deposit discussion this is another red herring to attempt to blame the victim. I have had only one kid double deposit that I know of in a career directly counseling over 2000 kids and this year did not have a singel kid apply to more than one school early action. Have I had kids apply EA, ED I and then ED II? Sure. But the system is designed to encourage this kind of thing. Would I have a problem with a kid applying to 6 EA schools. Not at all, as long as the kid is not choosing those schools BECAUSE they were EA. That is gaming the system. But if they were six schools that he would have applied to whether the schools were EA or not, then I would not discourage him,

I guess you have to look at the school culture and the behavior of the students. If there is a highly anxious student/parent body and a culture of "means justifying ends", then you might feel that too many kids are choosing colleges by their admissions plans rather than what the colleges have to offer. And that certainly is a pernicious thing. We happily do not see that going on. We have almost every parent and student on an e-mail list and send things out daily (you can log onto http://www.montclair.k12.nj.us/ then to high school, then to guidance and scroll down to the end and sign up for any group and you can see the archives of what is sent out). Parents and kids begin to feel that they have a sense of what is going on despite what I believe are the intentions of the colleges and the media, for very diffenent reasons, to distort what is going on. They also, at the same site
http://www.montclair.k12.nj.us/schools/mhs/page.cfm?pid=67
have a full pdf version of my book which I think gives them a lot of info that they need. They need information without hype, which is what I believe we give them and that is the greatest antdote to anomie.

Durkheim noticed greater suicides during times of economic change, which he called anomie, even when economic conditions were improving. The fluidity of the college landscape is very damaging. A lot of the things may settle out. The intense marketing of colleges, beginning in the 80's, is still only relatively new in societal terms, with the most intense models of enrollment management probably emerging most in the last decade. We have had widley cyclical numbers of students applying to college, from a decline in the 80's, to a rapid and steep climb in the 90's. Things are starting to level off and will begin declining in the next decade. Will this decline help students due to increasing openings in the more selective colleges? Not according to Durkeim. It will still make for changing expectations and high uncertainty. Not until there is a stable base of applicants and some change in how colleges do business (such as all colleges going rolling admissions or have a preference system like that for medical schools) will there be a change in the huge anxiety and thus game playing by students, parents, schools and colleges.

2006-05-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

Americas "Best" High Schools...in Newsweek

Are you out there as disturbed as I am about the yearly list that Jay Matthews puts out in Newsweek purporting to list America's best high schools? I really don't know where to begin to state why it is so inaccurate, distrubing and damaging. The list ranks high schools by the ratio of the number of AP tests taken to the size of the school.

1) There is no evidence whatsoever that there is a correlation between simply taking AP courses or tests and students' post high school performance: Klopfenstein and Thomas in The Link between Advanced Placement Experience and Advanced Placement Experience and College Success (2005) find, in a rigorous study, that participation in "the three most popular categories of AP classes, math, English and history, do not consitently improve college retention or GPA... Students are no better prepared for the academic rigors of college than their non-AP taking counterparts."

2) There might be some justification (llittle in my mind) for ranking high schools by their participation rate AND their performance on the tests. But to 'reward' participation only is like praising that kid in little league to never gets a hit but gets a walk from not swinging. "Good eye, Jonnie, good eye."

3) There seems to be some misguided attempt at social engineering here that I don't get. I do not think there is enough evidence out there to state that increasing participation in AP courses is a social good. Yet this list is clearly an attempt to do just that. As with the case of the US News list of colleges, this is another case of the tail wagging the dog.

4) I don't really have any idea what this list is really measuring, except maybe a school or state's emphasis on testing and appearance over learning. Florida is by far number one on this list with 21 of the 'top' 100 schools. My father, who lives in the state and is a PhD. in psychology and a highly trained psychometrician, complains constantly of the state's obsession with standardized tests. I look at the state of Florida's students' scores on tests like the AP's, the PSAT's and other national tests and they are no where near the top in the nation. Yet those states and schools who do score the highest are almost absent from the list. Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee each apear as many times on the list as Massachettes, New Jersey and Connecticut COMBINED.

5) The school list does note the percentage of free lunch kids, but does not use it in the formula. If the formula were something like (Mean AP Performance) X (Participation Rate) X (free/reduced percentage), there might be improvement from both a predictive and social engineering point of view.

6) This is simply, in my mind, bad science and lazy and sloppy journalism. It is taking numbers and pretending they mean something without doing the work that such a activity should entail: controlled study and expert analysis.

That the journalism community has been allowed to define educational quality in this way is an indictment of both the education and journalism professions. It is irresponsible reporting for which the Washington Post (the parent company), Newsweek Magazine and reporter Jay Matthews should all take responsibility. It is also the responsiblity of the educational community to re-take the reins of answering the question of educational quality on the secondary and post-secondary level.

The educational community's response to this issue seems to be similar to the Democrat's response to the Republican's. The republican's come up with pithy, simplistitic and deceptive catch phrases ("death tax", "soft on terror" "waffler") that the Democrats respond to with long diatribes that few understand.

The educational consumers want information and it is the responsibility of the educational community to provide that informantion is a way that is meaningful and useful. Just criticizing the lists (as I am...guilty) is not working. On the secondary and post-scondary level it is necessary to take the mound of data that is being collected and make it that students and parents can find and use it easily. Does it mean we should be developing our own lists using data like the NSSE? I don't know. But it is time to begin a discussion on how to transform the way students and parents look at the quality of schools or we are doomed to have ever more simplistic and unsicientific lists.

Joy Matthews Response

I saw this posting and was very sad i have never shared with you my rationale on this. Below are the faqs that summarize what is the result of 23 years of reporting, thinking and writing about high schools, but i know you like to go deep, so i would recommend you read two of my books, Escalante, which sets up my mind set for trying to change the way we think about high schools, getting away from the standard "rich kids good, poor kids bad", and then Class Struggle, which introduced the index and my reasons for it. I get a lot of very kind emails from AP teachers like the one at the end of the faqs who say it helps them a lot. It is less popular, and harder to understand, in more blessed schools like yrs, but i think once you read this you will get what i am talking about. i would love yr comments after you read this. you have been so helpful to me, and if i can get a dialogue going, that would be even more help. maybe we could even debate it in my column. ---jay

My Response:

I read the full text of your faq as well as the recent web posting on what makes a great high school and it only strengthened the feelings i originally wrote in the posting. 1. I didn't see a shred of evidence that you are basing your list on anything backed up by evidence, either through a controlled study or a review of literature. I quoted the study by klopfestein and thomas that found that participation in ap courses does not improve retention or gpa's in college. is there any evidence you have to the contrary. 2. I do think that this is an attempt at social engineering. your goal is to increase participation in ap courses, particularly at schools with less advantaged students, with the assumption that there is a value to exposure to higher level teaching, expectations and material. this is your perogative and it may be a laudable goal, if there were evidence that it was productive, other than a hunch on your part. I still think it is inappropriate to produce a list such as this which purports to identify strong schools when you have no evidence whatsoever on the quality of instruction. This is why so many like me, who are no great fans of the college board, are lauding their decision to begin auditing ap programs. 3. You seem to contradict yourself on the use of performance statistics. First you say that school's restrict ap participation and thus have skewed statistics and then state that the college board has an 'equity and excellence' rate for schools which takes this into account but still choose not to use it in you computations. 4. I know you want to redefine quality in a way that does not reward wealth and advantage, and I have to say that this is an interesting and provacative approch. but i think it is misguided. anything the journalism or education community does to promote participation without quality has great risks, not the least of which is treating taking an ap course or test as an end in itself. I do not believe this is a worthy goal. It can lead to students to set the bar to the level of participation only. This is like comparing the olympics to the special olympics. aren't they both competing in olympic events....but you and i know there is no similarity between the two other than participation... 5. I might be convinced that your methods or your goals were sound if either - they were based on established, corroborated, controlled studies whose conclusions supported your assumptions or - you did some study of your results which supported your position..i.e that students who participated in ap courses, no matter the result, performed better in college, graduated from high school at a higher rate, had higher sat scores or overall high school records, had higher college graduation rates, etc. or that schools that were higher on your list, in aggragate, had higher college gpa, graduation rates, etc. as schools that were similar but did not have high ap participation rates. 6. There are few suggestions that i might make -use a formula that uses participation and performace in equal measure -multiply the result by the free/reduced percentage so that disadvantage was taken into account.

And Jay's response:

Thanks scott. the multi-pillars of my confidence that this is the right way to go are: ---the many emails and conversations from great educators like you in low income schools that say this helps them, the letter at the end of the faqs being a sample. ---23 years of watching kids struggle and sometimes fail AP tests but hearing from them that it has helped them survive in college. ---and most particularly, as far as research goes, the UC and NCEA reports of AP in Calif and Tex that show significant correlation between getting a good grade on an AP test and higher graduation rates. You can't get a good grade on an AP test, except in a tiny number of cases, unless you take the course and the tests, so schools that restrict access are standing in the way of higher college grad rates, as least based on that research.; the NCEA tried to look at the kind of kids i have covered, marginal students at risk of failing an AP exam, and could not reach a conclusion. it looked like blacks did better on college graduation even if they flunked the AP test, and for others it was a wash, but they could not reach any conclusion. My problem with the Klopfenstein study is that she looks at kids who have taken an AP class without any distinction between those who took the test and those who did not. AP kids who dont take the test are not getting a full dose of AP, and my reporting indicates that such classes with few kids taking the test are rarely taught at an AP level, since there is little incentive to do so. Lastly, given all this, and i really want to hear yr thoughts because i think this is the heart of yr argument, but i am not getting it yet, what harm can come from removing the barriers to AP and IB participation and letting all students, as Garfield did, take AP if they want to? What harm can come from letting motivation be the entry ticket? All the kids I have followed, and that is a lot of kids in two decades and three books, say that it helped them to make that struggle. And yet the vast majority of US high schools restrict access, and for reasons that they rarely even review or subject to debate. If you have a chance to skim through Class Struggle, you will see my points made in more detail. But i do want to hear you on the harm factor. as for the contradiction between my distrust of using grades and using the e and e rate, you are right. i have a problem even with e and e because i think any focus on passing scores inhibits efforts to start AP or IB in low income schools. but as long as i dont use the e and e in the rankings, i think it is a useful number, just as is free and reduced lunch percentage. ---jay

Counselor comments:

*I am the principal at _____________High School, one of California's top academically performing schools. I am absolutely appalled that Mr. Matthews can gain an audience with this ridiculous way to rank schools, and I think it's even worse that Newsweek picks it up and makes it a national pronouncement. I would be happy to talk to you in more detail, and I might even be able to get my Principal's Collaborative, a group of principals from ten of the highest performing public schools in Los Angeles County, to make a joint statement, if that would be of any use. Thanks for taking up this issue. My former assistant principal carried on some dialogue with Matthews about this, and he even invited her to speak against AP's at a forum he moderated (our school would like to get rid of AP's completely, but we play the game). If we can help, let me know.

*Bravo to you for this response! I couldn't agree more, and only wish there was a way to communicate this to all of the students and parents who take stock in these kinds of listings!

* It seems this entire debate over the challenge index is centered around attempting to find one rule for all, which is destined for failure. School culture and community expectations are perhaps two of the most significant influences in public schools. In one school if a student struggles in AP and earns a 75 as a final average, the student and parent may understand that this was a challenging course that they attempted and were happy to have the experience. The parent may also not fully understand AP curriculum or what it means. Given the family's total picture, the level of classes in which the student is enrolled may be the least significant issue in their lives. In another school, the culture can be one where if a student is struggling with a 75 in an AP, the onus and intense focus is on the teacher not simply to try to bring the student up to a 'B', but that anything less than a 'B' is an indictment of the teacher's abilities. Questions arise as to how the counselor had allowed a student to take on a program that was beyond his/her abilities. Parents may also look in retrospect at how the school could not have been aware of how this would negatively impact admission to a highly competitive college. And issues inevitably arise from parents of students who see their own child's learning being impacted, whether true or not, by those students who are, "slowing down the class." Subsequently, what is school administration doing about this? These are two different worlds. Each one carries their pluses and minuses, but the most important thing to acknowledge is that you can't necessarily go about business the same way at each school, or be critical of one for not abiding by the same rules as the other. Given that schools are an extension of our homes and families to a large degree, I envision prescribing one standard of operating as no different than walking into one family's home and instructing them that they must now abide by another family's standards, which has been deemed by a national publication to be the better way of living. Hopefully we can keep that idea contained in the realm of reality television.

*I'm on your side of the aisle. Have been since Jay started doing this about 5 years ago. Your summary of what's wrong with it is masterful (really) and I wish I had written it. ACT, in the last year, has come out with two reports showing that students aren't prepared for college. Now, one way of putting the ACT report and the findings about AP together is to say, that there is no contradiction â€“ AP isn't good preparation for college, except that it teaches students to focus on their schoolwork in ways that will serve them well as students in college. But that's like saying that students who score well on the SAT or ACT tend to do better in college than those who don't. To claim a predictive relationship because of the tests is one possible way of understanding that relationship. Another, simpler, way is to recognize that students who do well in college generally are those who have done well in high school and they tend to do well on the tests. In other words, it's like saying the people with certain characteristics tend to be good at certain things â€“ or not (all you have to do is look at me to see that I'll never be a good pole vaulter). But I wonder if the ACT reports won't give ammunition to those who argue that AP is good preparation for college in the sense that there does seem to be an easy, natural association of the rigor of AP (well, mostly â€“ we all know about the exceptions; why else did CEEB begin the "audit" process?) and the rigor of curriculum that ACT seems to be talking about. No conclusions here, but I wonder if we aren't going to see a continuing rush to AP as the standard for the "college track" in high schools. I'm coming more and more to the view that high school generally is lousy preparation for college, and not just academically. The more AP is shoved down the students' throats, the more we will see a tiered high school program and the more emphasis there will be on taking the "right" courses and getting the "right" grades so that you have a chance at college. It goes on and on. The machine is broken, the emperor has no clothes, we all know it but none of us seem to be able to do anything about it. Maybe the post-consumer society, when it comes, will think differently

*Scott, Not to be overly political, but how can false pretense with testing not be a focus in Florida when you consider who their esteemed governor is? You might appreciate this article on good 'ol Jeb and his push for numbers and less creative learning. http://www.fldoe.org/news/2006/2006_02_02-2.asp <http://www.fldoe.org/news/2006/2006_02_02-2.asp>

* I have to say that Jay truly believes he is one of the nationâ€™s authorities on AP and education. I am continually appalled by his lack of understanding and his continual reliance on feedback from a small handful of self-promoting VA public high school teachers, who he deems to be experts. Having read essays on the AP exam during the grading period, that have sometimes been written on an elementary school level, no one can tell me that the number of students taking the AP reflects anything about the quality of a school. If you want my take on this, which I have shared with ______________, I believe College Board is positioning itself to take over the US public school system in the future. Privatizing American education is already on the horizon. I donâ€™t think this is a case of the tail wagging the dog â€“ itâ€™s a case of the media hog-tying educators and disallowing us to educate the public. Makes me wish I had enough pocket cash to take out a full page add in the NY Times. *As ever, you're right on target. I agree with your dad.

*I really appreciate your statements on the NACAC list regarding the use of that list to somehow rank US high schools. Our parents here in _________ are always looking at the list as if it were some type of gospel. It just grates on my nerves when I have to be part of a conversation about why a school was or was not included on the list. I shared your comments with our curriculum person since our school is seemingly getting more and more involved with the AP frenzy, so much so that teachers are wondering how we got to this point. *Amen to your thoughts.

*It's just as wacko as rating colleges... *Instead of making a personal comment, let me just direct people to Jay Mathews' preemptive rebuttal (of sorts) in his weekly on-line column. It is available at <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050200567.html <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/02/AR2006050200567.html> * While I understand your concerns over these rankings, I would like to point out one way in which they can be helpful. Despite the simplistic formula for determining this proxy for the level of educational rigor in a high school, the list does in fact include the vast majority of strong high schools in my state and others. In my opinion, the Advanced Placement program (along with IB) has been one of the true success stories of educational reform in the US. The expansion of AP (and IB) curricula has served as a catalyst for pushing the academic bar higher in many high schools--and for many kids who have long suffered the effects of low expectations. As you may recall, I have worked for many years as a member of my local school board. By pushing for a more robust and accessible AP program in our high schools, we have seen substantial gains in academic performance and college-going rates. Every year, I use the Newsweek "Best High Schools" issue to challenge my board and our administration to push for ever higher levels of academic challenge. In fact, I just cited this year's rankings in a public statement Monday evening. I noted that I was pleased to see (on the Newsweek website) that 3 of our 5 high schools made the list--they weren't in the top 100, but they were on the larger website listing of some 1,200 schools. I challenged our school division to strive to have all 5 of our schools on next year's list and to work to move up in the rankings by further expanding our students' AP participation. It may be that "ranking" or calling them the "best" high schools smacks of too much elitism for you. Or it may be that the false precision of the rankings gives too little acknowledgment of the myriad other factors that constitute "quality." However, I just wanted to offer another perspective and suggest that these things can be used to spur positive actions on the part of some of us who are toiling in the vineyards of school improvement. Hope all is well with you. I miss our frequent interactions through NACAC service but I do keep up with your listserv postings. Take care.

*You are so on target , again.

* Scott, thanks for your comments. It is one of those things like US News and Reports that will hit once a year and you always shake your head and say "why"?....your thoughts were right on....we have neighboring schools with 70% in AP courses but low percent taking the tests and admission that the curriculum is not fully taught....maybe this is why College board is developing the AP police. I actually was writing on another topic. I am mentoring a graduate of DHS who left here in 1990 and went to Northwestern. In his junior year he and his younger brother went to med school in Hungary. They returned 6 years later (brother went from hs to med school directly...all taught in English) and passed the USMLE and did a residency and became docotrs. A few years ago the other doctor decided he wanted to give back and formed a company to take students direct from high school to med school in Slovakia and now Bulgaria. No MCATs required. I have helped him connect up with the Detroit Public schools and develop an Urban Physician's initiative with Marygrove College where inner city kids take the first 2 years at Marygrove and 4 years in med school in Bulgaria..He has done the same with two colleges in Illinois. He is actually coming to your NJACAC meeting and I would love to have him have a chance to visit you at your high school after the conference and perhaps a few other high schools. However, I need guidance as I do not know the schools in NJ. Can you provide any guidance. His name is Dr Mark Kaushal and his company is Source America. Thanks Scott.

*Well, Scott, I couldn't agree with you more. The death knell, to me, was when George Bush mentioned AP in the State of the Union.If he likes it...it must be bad!!! Funny how his brother's state gets the good press (Florida also pays for all testing), and yet as you noted, the scores on national tests are awful. There just has to be some big "kick back" for this relationship.

*I also was shocked to see what the criteria was. I am an independent consultant in ______________ (right down the road) and I am more impressed by schools that received Benchmark Awards and things of that nature because they take into account the diversity of the school and many other pieces of info. Thanks for your comments.

2006-04-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

The Tail Wagging the Dog

Overheard at a library in a wealthy New Jersey suburb:
Girl A: Did you hear Jake had cancer?
Girl B: Yeah. But I heard that he’s in remission now.
Girl A: He’s so lucky…he’ll have a great college essay to write.

As a college counselor at Montclair High School, I get to see first hand how preparation for college admission is profoundly, and negatively affecting the way many of our children are growing up. At a recent event where I sat on a panel on the college admissions process with the former Dean of Admissions at Princeton, a girl stood up to ask a question. She started by telling the audience that her name was Ivy because her parents wanted her to attend an Ivy League college and that she attended a pre-school named Little Ivy Leaguers.

I have a pretty good idea of what a girl like Ivy’s day is like. She starts her school day at 7 am so she can fit in AP Economics in addition to the five AP’s she has in her regular schedule. She plays violin in her orchestra during the elective period. She goes to crew practice immediately after school. Her evenings are spent doing homework, doing some SAT prep problems and practicing the violin (when she is not attending Latin Club or Key Club events). She send Instant Messages to some friends from midnight to one before collapsing to begin the next day. Weekends and summers are spent at sports camps, SAT prep courses and what is perceived as mandatory volunteer work. She has been thinking about where she wanted to go to college as long as she can remember and it consumes her thoughts every day. Her parents have lived vicariously through Ivy all her life and have been hyper-involved in every aspect of her life. She feels the pressure to please her parents and meet their high expectations. High school for too many students like this, has become a time to strategize rather to experience.

Marilee Jones, Dean of Admissions at MIT, has been touring the country with the President of the American Pediatric Society talking about college admissions as a mental health issue. She speaks of generational causes for this mania, describing baby boomer parents as over-involved and busy parents who don’t trust authority but love experts, and their Millennium children as “the most anxious, stressed out, sleep deprived, judged and tested generation in history - a generation trained to please adults.”

Its not just neurotic, over-achieving baby boomers who are to blame. In the 1980’s, there was a drop in the number of high school graduates. Colleges employed sophisticated enrollment management techniques to bolster popularity. Now that the children of the baby boom generation have swelled the number of high school graduates, techniques appropriate to an era of student scarcity could not be more damaging Commercialization of the college admissions process has resulted in education being viewed as a product rather than a process and students as consumers rather than learners. As it has become more important to look impressive than be impressive, substance has taken a back seat to reputation and status.

The media has perhaps been the most destructive force in this process. The US News and World Report rankings - eagerly awaited by parents each year - have helped colleges to create an aura of even greater elusiveness. Relying on input statistics such as average test scores and acceptance rates as major components in their rankings, they have induced colleges to seek more and more applicants in order to simply have more to deny. With Harvard having acceptance rates in the single digits and Stanford denying over 70% of students with a perfect math or verbal SAT scores or a perfect 4.0 average, these publications encourage practices bad for students and colleges.

Recently, in a story reported by both the Washington Post and the Bergen Record, a private college counselor advised his clients that their daughter would have a better chance of admission into an Ivy League school if they moved to another town and entered her in a local beauty pageant. They followed his advice. The result: their daughter was accepted at Yale. This kind of coverage reinforces the idea that drastic measures are necessary and justified to attain admission to highly selective institutions. This is not exactly encouraging an ideal for finding a match between what a student needs in higher education and what a college offers.

This month, Newsweek Magazine has come up with the brilliant idea of ranking high schools by the number of Advanced Placement (AP) tests taken per student, stating in the publication: “It's one of the best measures available to compare a wide range of students' readiness for higher-level work”. Never mind that numerous studies have come to the opposite conclusion: While student performance on AP examinations is strongly related to college performance, merely taking AP or other honors-level courses in high school is not a valid indicator of the likelihood that students will perform well in college. But to rank high schools by only the AP courses offered is a gross and highly misleading statistic. It is also damaging, an inducement for schools to offer AP courses no matter the quality of the students or the teaching. Like the college rankings have done to the colleges, this is one more attempt by the media to have the tail wag the dog.

The repositioning of higher education in the public mind as the ultimate goal of status gained by association is not merely observed by the press, but is actively promoted by it as more and more unscientific “rating” systems are published and represented as valid means of judging success and failure. The snake oil salesmen for higher education, the media has knowingly engaged in sensationalism at the expense of our children. Pseudoscinetific instant rankings and eye-catching stories are the substitutes for well-reasoned and well-researched writings.

The media has abrogated their responsibility to give clarity to this process. “Fear, anxiety, myth, secrecy, false precision, hype and educational irrationality characterize the admissions landscape,” notes Lloyd Thacker in Colleges Unranked. “The way the media is shaping our perspective about this critical life transition is simply wrong and misinformed and very few voices have emerged to put the brakes on this runaway train.” Students and their parents will continue to game the system for, in the view they get from the media, that is the only choice they believe they have. As Thacker concludes: “The stewardship of student needs has been forsaken.”

2006-04-14T18:38:00.000-07:00

2006-04-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Are the Best Minds of our Generation Being Destroyed by Madness?[1]

What’s going on here? I have more students than ever suffering from anxiety, depression, anorexia and panic attacks, particularly among the highest achieving students. A student once told me that she loved to read, but with the five AP courses, sports practices, SAT prep and community service, she had little time to do it.

An article by James Fallows in the Atlantic Monthly quoted one student saying: “Very few students get enough sleep. They get either too much or not enough exercise. We don’t go for moderation- you can’t because the hype is too high.” Are we damaging the best and the brightest of our nation’s youth, perhaps permanently and unnecessarily?

The common thread among these students having difficulty at my school, and I suspect at many high schools across the nation, is the obsessive desire to obtain admissions to the most elite colleges. Denise Clark Pope has aptly noted that for students, “Future success is more important than present happiness.” These students, our future leaders and thinkers of the United States, are not happy and are not healthy. And things are only getting worse. Psychologist David Elkind agrees. “The truth is,” he says, “advantaged children are less well off today than they were a couple of decades ago.”

What drives these students is the perceived need to do whatever it takes to get into a ‘good’ or ‘great’ college. Students and parents walk into my office wanting to know what secret [that] will make the difference between acceptance and denial. If it’s a game, they want to know the rules. Bruce Poch, Dean of Admissions at Pomona College, claims “things have gotten worse and more game-like, although the strategic approach seems particularly acute in upper and middle class families and schools.”

Students perceive that there is a flow chart; an instruction sheet on what they need to do and all will be okay. It is difficult to let them know, usually in some indirect way, that it is more of function of who they are, rather than what they do that matters most in this process. By the time they meet with me late in their junior year, most of what matters in college admissions has already occurred. Colleges want students who have shown long term, in-depth interest and true talent in extracurricular activities. Spending next summer on an Indian reservation will not do that for you. They want students who have shined academically throughout high school. Those few B’s and, God forbid, C’s, do matter.

The sad truth is that the best most students can do is not foul up. They take that killer schedule and get impressive grades in their senior year, but their application file will be read and rated before those senior grades ever get in. Certainly, it is great if a student can write a “knock your socks off” essay. When I asked a University of Chicago admissions counselor to read an essay from a student who was applying to (and later admitted into) Harvard, he stated that it was “serviceable.” A strong argument can be made that things such as the personal essay and the interview are largely in place to give students some illusion that they have some control in the process.

“The way I stressed the importance of the essay while recruiting was frankly disingenuous,” notes Rachel Toor in Admissions Confidential. “By the time they were hearing me talk, there was little they could do to bolster their candidacies; and, in reality, the only part of the process in which they had complete control was their essays. So I made them think it was an important thing for them to work on if only to help them feel that they weren’t helpless.”

Surely, students are acting as if they feel they have no control. Much of the behavior I am seeing in students is quite similar to that described by Martin Seligman in his book Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death during the early 1990’s. He describes studies he and others have done to determine if a lack of perceived control results in hopelessness and helplessness. The kind of behavior I am seeing in my ‘best’ students leads me to believe that the term, ‘learned helplessness’ coined by Seligman, accurately describes the wrenching experience students, and in many cases, parents, are going through. “It seems like a judgment of not just your child,” comments one parent, “but of your parenting and all your hopes.”

The Admissions Process

Why did this happen? Who is responsible for it? What impact will it have on the future well being of these students?

Certainly there has been a dramatic change in the last 25 years in the perception of college admissions in our society. Where there were one or two books out on the how-tos of college admissions, now there are whole sections of bookstores on the process. Rarely would you see articles in major publications on the college admissions process- now they regularly make the front page of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Clearly there has been a societal momentum in this direction for a number of years and it has clearly taken on a life of its own.

Much of what feeds this frenzy, though, is a lack of coherence in the college admissions process. Few colleges accurately and effectively communicate how they choose their students and, more importantly, why they have the policies and procedures that are in place.

“Colleges do not want any rules,” notes independent counselor Tedd Kelly, “except for those that protect the elite institutions and work to keep it that way, since they keep control away from the students and families.” Most colleges have rating systems for applicants, but few make them public. Perhaps this is out of fear that there will be even a greater perception that there is a game to be beat. But just as likely, they may not be proud of what these rating systems might show.

For one, the system is inherently unfair and not student centered.

“I am continually frustrated by the vague and misleading statistics that colleges report,” states Bridget McHugh, counselor at Fairfield High School in Connecticut, “as if it were a mystery to them as to which students might get in.”

There is a lot of talk about college admissions offices working to find the best match between each student and each college and university. To be fair, to a great extent this is true. I do believe that the brightest and most talented students do end up at the most selective universities and that most students do go to colleges where they are challenged appropriately. It is little secret, though, that the final outcome as to whether a student is admitted or denied has as much to do with institutional priorities as it has to do with the academic strengths of the students admitted.

We are provided with information on average SAT I and II scores and class rank of admitted and enrolled students and we often believe that they have some meaning, i.e. that about half of students who are admitted fall above and about half fall below that number (median figures would actually show this, but are rarely provided). Yet we know that there are a significant number of students who skew these statistics. Most highly selective colleges give preference to students who are recruited athletes, under-represented minority students (usually African American and Hispanic) and ‘legacies,’ students whose parents went to the college. Michelle Hernandez in A is for Admissions notes that at Dartmouth, 17 per cent of the freshman class is made up of recruited athletes and 12 per cent are underrepresented minority students and, at Yale, legacies make up 15 per cent of the student body. At most selective colleges, according to Hernandez, only 60 per cent of the space in the freshman class is left for students with no admissions “hook.”

Some colleges treat students whose parents went to graduate school as legacies. Others give preference to students whose grandparents or siblings attended the institution. Most colleges seek to enroll the children of their professors. Almost every college seeks famous students or the children of famous people. One highly selective university went so far as to use the term “non-special interest” applicant in their admissions literature. Another has a huge number of “Dean’s admits”; who are prospective applicants recommended by the development office as having a connection to a potential or actual donor.

The truth is that these special cases are not mere exceptions but may make up about half of enrolled students. It is also the true that there is a benefit to having these students on campus. Having a diverse student body makes the campus experience richer. Certainly one need only to look at Boston College’s selectivity after Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary pass or Georgetown’s admissions statistics following the Patrick Ewing era to see the connection between athletics and prestige of an institution. Furthermore, taking steps to keep alumni and donors happy contributes to the financial health of an institution, allowing it to keep down costs to students, offer better financial aid, improve facilities and hire the best faculty.

It is equally true that many students who are in these groups have standardized test scores and class ranks that are well below the mean of other accepted students. It is necessary for colleges to give accurate statistical analyses of the admitted and enrolled students who are not part of what they designate as special cases.

What’s Best for Students?

One of the most intractable problems in college admissions is that there is not a clear congruence between what is best for students and what is most desirable in terms of college admissions. Here there has to be some sharing of the blame between parents and students who obsessively do what they perceive is necessary to gain admission to the most selective colleges as well as admissions professionals who give in to this by raising the bar higher and higher.

Take the example of the rigor of the student’s senior year schedule. I was admitted (25 years ago) to all the colleges to which I applied three of which are generally considered among the most selective, with a schedule consisting of AP Physics, AP BC Calculus, electives in English and history and no foreign language. If a student comes to me suggesting a schedule like this, I inform them that they will likely be out of the running for the most selective colleges. So students are driving themselves into the ground to stay in the running. I’ll go out on a limb here, but I believe it is unhealthy for students to be taking AP courses in five or six subjects in their senior year

“One thing has become clear,” notes Poch, “at many colleges there is a growing concern about students with significant problems that spill out into all kinds of destructive forms, from alcohol and drug-related problems to eating disorders to clinical depression How much of this is a result of crushing pressure and painfully high expectations, I don’t know.”

A frequent question I hear from parents and students at highly selective college admissions presentations is “Should my child) take tougher courses and get B’s or get A’s in a weaker schedule.” The answer is almost universally the same: “To be admitted here, you should get A’s in the toughest schedule.”

According to Caitlin Flanagan in her article “Confessions of a Prep School Counselor,” college admissions books “explain that if kids are to have any chance at a top college, they must pursue the most rigorous curriculum available to them. Flanagan argues that it is true that students should take the most difficult courses in preparation for applying to elite institutions but : “It is also true that such a curriculum is going to crush a lot of kids. A regimen of brutal academic hazing may be appropriate in some disciplines for medical student or Ph.D. candidates, but it is not appropriate for fifteen-year-olds.”

There is also a conflict between what parents want (well-rounded students) and the goal of those making college admissions decisions: well-rounded admitted classes. What many good parents want for our children is that they be emotionally healthy, have a variety of interests and friends and that they are happy. Sure, we’d like our children to be really good at something, especially when we are talking with other parents at cocktail parties, but this isn’t our highest priority.

In the admissions world, it is truly valued that students have one talent and interest that truly stands out. A few maxims in college admissions: “we want well-rounded classes, not well-rounded students” and “the students who get admitted here are not just talented, but distinguished.” Both, I believe, are true at the most selective colleges. Fred Hargadon, Dean of Admissions at Princeton, recently noted that plenty of students at Princeton displayed an unusual degree of excellence in even more than one area. The bar was notched up for all students that day.

Author and former admissions officer at Duke University, Rachel Toor also acknowledges that many students applying to college excel in many areas: “what’s hard is that there are so many applicants and they all look so much alike.” Anne Roiphe, a reporter for the New York Observer, has commented similarly on the uniformity of much college applicants: “children are too young to be distinguishable.” As early as 1981, David Elkind critiques the trend to overwhelm children with responsibility in his book The Hurried Child, Growing Up Too Fast, Too Soon. He wrote:

“Hurrying children into adulthood violates the sanctity of life by giving one period priority over another. But if we really value human life, we well value each period equally and give unto each stage of life what is appropriate to that stage.”

College admissions personnel need to acknowledge consider and act upon the awesome degree of control they have over the nation’s youth seeking to be admitted into college. A huge number of students will do anything they think will help them to achieve that goal. If suddenly the main criterion for admission was perceived to be large biceps, these students would spend every waking hour doing arm curls. There are few students who are acting spontaneously and naturally. At an earlier and earlier age, there is calculated behavior to beat the college admissions game. This is not all bad. There is a perception out there that it is necessary to do community service to get into college, so hospitals are flush with candy stripers and food banks are full of volunteers seeking to pad their resumes. But is that what community service is about? Isn’t the goal of having students give of themselves throughout their lifetimes reduced when it is done with such a self-conscious aim? And doesn’t this minimize the impact of the service students have always done which is truly genuine?

A Few Modest Suggestions

Maybe we have gone too far and cannot go back. We cannot erase the national obsession with college admissions. It is often impossible to regain the innocence of the past. Yet there are things that the college admissions community can do to ameliorate the negative effects of the process on our nation’s youth.

College lists, like those published by the US News and World Report, flourish because of the lack of clear alternatives for accurate and reliable information. Many colleges seek to be all things to all students and to encourage as many students, even clearly unrealistic candidates, to apply. It is a laudable goal to find that ‘diamond in the rough,’ but not at the expense of the scores of students whose hopes are dashed unnecessarily. Colleges need to provide a breakdown of admitted and enrolled students by the measures they themselves use. Statistics for admission of students who do not fit into a special category such as legacy or athlete, should be provided.

There are a few college policies, which if enacted more widely, would improve the lot of the nation’s students. For students, early decision, rather than helping improve the match between students and colleges, has become a way of alleviating suffering and angst. Northwestern University makes only two decisions on early decision: accept or deny. The most common practice of deferring early decision applicants prevents students from realistically going about the business of applying to appropriate colleges.

“I cannot for the life of me see why admission people don’t simply deny kids they don’t take early decision,” notes counselor Dodge Johnson. He continues:

“No testicular fortitude, maybe. Hedge bets, avoid dealing with folks who don’t like the decision. But I have a terrible time convincing kids to let go of an impossible dream and focus on something more realistic. And frankly, I wish they would do what Syracuse does- no wait list. Administering a college is not like administering a church or a family is like administering a corporation. Sales and marketing techniques applied to colleges have mostly served to homogenize how colleges describe the students themselves and colleges increasingly describe the students they want rather than those they work best with.

Though I appreciate the goals of things like on-line applications and the Common Application, which reduce the difficulty of applying to college, I believe University of Chicago’s difficult and erudite application questions discourage unrealistic and inappropriate students from applying. There should be some standards for the rigors of a senior year schedule. Taking four courses in the major subjects at the school’s highest level should be communicated as sufficient for admissions and boosting a schedule to 5 AP or IB courses should not be given extra weight in the admissions process.

William Fitzsimmons offers this possible solution: “Colleges can help themselves as well as their prospective students by declaring (and demonstrating) that they are not judged simply by the number of AP and other advanced credits amassed at the end of the senior year.” Students should be discouraged from taking too many standardized tests by providing alternative measures of aptitude as Hamilton College has done.

There also has to be a dramatic change in the way advantaged parents are raising their children. They must let children be children.

“Sports, music, dance and other recreational activities used to provide a welcome break,” notes Fitzsimmons. “NO more…In high school, SAT prep has become a way of life. The problem can often be well meaning, but misguided parents who try to mold their children into an image of success they value; and their children, being moldable as they are, often get on board and go along with the programs before they have the capacity to make such a choice for themselves.”

Flanagan describes a kind of “fetishistic sense of power being able to associate your child with one of these (elite) schools’ parents”. She continues to say that these parents “who had always been lovely and appreciative would become irritable and demanding once I was helping them all select a college.”

In his article, “The Early Decision Racket,” James Fallows, national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, points out: “The wonder is that getting through the admissions gate at a name brand college should have come to seem the fundamental point of middle-class child rearing.

It is difficult to avoid the frenzy, particularly considering the media attention on the subject. Flanagan describes what she calls “admissions porn” in the form of how-to college guides that “add to the impression that kids are not merely applying to college but are in fact involved in a drama of almost life-and-death consequences. The teenagers described in such books have transferred the most profound and elemental of adolescent emotions- romantic attraction- into the most unromantic of pursuits- college selection.”

College counselors want what is best for the individual student. Unfortunately, there is no quick remedy for the intense anxiety facing students in the college admissions process. Marc James of Charles Wright Academy suggests a first step in solving the problem: “My short answer,” he says, “is to stand in favor of urging students and parents to do what is healthy and what is true to the core values and inspirations of the individual.” Nancy Scarci of the Roosevelt School proposes another apt recommendation: “We need to educate families that no college is a silver bullet that will ensure fame, fortune or happiness.”

Clearly, something needs to be done to abate the highly competitive nature of college admissions, or at least make students and parents aware that which college a student attends does not guarantee a happy or prosperous future. High schools need to stop measuring their success only by the number of admissions into the most selective colleges. Parents need to stop living vicariously through their children by pushing them too early and too hard to focus on the college process. College admissions officers, as they expect of their applicants, need to define and distinguish themselves and their admissions processes. And students need to look for colleges that are the best match for them rather than merely the most selective college to which they can gain admissions
[1] White, Scott Journal of College Admissions, Winter 2002

2006-04-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Parents and the College Admission Process

The majority of those going through the college process are just trying to find a good match, a college that best meets their needs and goals. And most parents want what is best for their children. Yet there seems to be this prevailing sentiment that parents need to micromanage this process, from hiring SAT tutors and private counselors to pressuring teachers and coaches to give their children that added advantage. Yet what parents need to do most is support and protect their children while allowing them to grow.
I push my three-year-old around the neighborhood on his tricycle equipped with a handle in the back. In the beginning, I needed to help him steer the tricycle for he had no concept of how to do it. Very quickly, though, I realized that the only way to help him learn how to steer was to allow him to start going off the sidewalk on his own. He soon learned how to correct himself and head on a straight course. I am still behind him, keeping him from hurting himself by hurtling off the curb or into oncoming traffic. I no longer steer or control his bike. He knows I am there and finds safety and comfort in the fact that I will protect him from danger. But he equally knows he is the one steering and controlling the bike. As time goes on, he will begin to ride the bike without me there at all.
This is the same role parents should take in the college admissions process. At a minimum, they should be there to make sure their children do not harm themselves, say, by missing deadlines or not as a result being accepted into any colleges, or just as worse any that you can afford. More than this, they need to be there to support their children in making some of the toughest decisions of their life to this point. There are many more important decisions, from choosing a spouse to choosing a job. But this is the first time in most children’s life when they have had to make a lasting decision about their future. This book is an attempt to describe a sensible approach to college admissions. It is a tool to allow you to understand what is happening in the process and to help you to recognize when you should intervene and, even more importantly, the security to know when you should not.
As one student recently stated, “It’s tough raising parents these days.” Marilee Jones, the Dean of Admissions of MIT, did a recent panel with me at the national conference of the National Association of College Admissions Counselors on the topic “College Admissions as a Mental Health Issue.” She is giving talks around the country with the President of the American Society of Pediatrics to discuss disturbing trends in college admissions and child rearing.
“The increasingly bad ‘parental etiquette’ that college admissions officers are seeing right now comes from a confluence of several characteristics of our boomer generation,” she writes. “Our sense of entitlement, our suspicion of authority and our bad habit of living too vicariously through our children.” Dean William Fitzsimmons of Harvard, also on the panel, similarly notes: “Sports, music and other recreational activities used to provide a welcome break. No more. In high school, SAT prep has become a way of life. The problem can often be well meaning but misguided parents who try to mold their children into an image of success they value; and their children, being moldable as they are, often get on board and go along with the programs before they have the capacity to make such a choice for themselves.”
“The launching of a child stirs up everyone in the family,” notes Michael G. Thompson. “For the parents it is the culmination of their child rearing, the end of the parental curriculum. From now if they act as parents for a college-age or older child, it will be by invitation only.”
What is the main testing ground of fears about incomplete or inadequate child rearing?
The College Admission Process.
If you are afraid you don't discipline your children enough--too much Dr. Spock--the incriminating evidence of parental failure is right there in front of everyone. The child is not filling out her college applications!
If you are afraid you have allowed your children to watch too much television and settle for low grades, the chickens all come home to roost--painfully and publicly--during the meeting with the college counselor at the end of junior year.
The frantic involvement of many parents in the process is, from my perspective, a cover for this profound parental anxiety: Did I do a good job with this child? Did I do everything I needed to do for this child? Is this child prepared? Is this child going to have a good life? I have seen many laissez-faire parents, not much in evidence in the tenth and eleventh grade years, swoop back into their children's lives at college admission time, trying to stuff all of their wisdom and discipline into their children at the last moment.
Parents may need to be reassured as their fledglings leave the nest that they really have taught them how to fly. Since it is impossible to assess the quality of what parents have done for their children at this point, what is the next best thing? What comes closest to getting graded as parents?The status of the college to which the child is admitted.

Some Advice for Parents

1) Be honest with your kids about restrictions and needs. If there is only so much money to go around, if there are geographic restrictions, if there is anything that may restrict college choices, communicate them to your child and the counselor.
2) Listen, listen, and listen! Hear what your kids are saying. What is important to them? Don't tell your kids what you think until you've heard what they think
3) Keep an open mind. Colleges have changed dramatically since we went to school. Don't rely on impressions based on old stereotypes. Realize that there are some great schools you may never have heard of.
4) Move away from a pecking order mentality. The best college for your child may not be the most competitive to get into or the highest on some college list.
5) Sometime in the spring of junior year, sit down with your child and set up a calendar of when each part of the process will be done. Set up a schedule of college visits, a testing schedule, deadlines for when essays drafts will be completed and when final essays are completed, when all applications are to be completed, etc. Have your child recommend the deadlines instead of your imposing them. They will almost always make them more rigorous than you would.
6) Read over your child's essay to see if it communicates who they are, how well they think and how well they write.
7) Make sure your child has a college that is both a financial safety school as well as an admissions safety school.

Some don’ts for parents to consider

1) Don’t micromanage the process. Occasionally make sure that your kids are on track to meet deadlines, but don't nag, nag, nag. If you are concerned that your kid is not on track, call your child's counselor and let him/her help get your kid moving.
2) Don’t talk to other parents about where your kid is applying.
3) Don’t let any deadlines lapse, especially with regard to financial aid.
4) Don’t add your voice to your child's essay. Content and style suggestions should not include re-writing that your child has written.
5) Don’t get caught up in the college frenzy. Just because your child's peers are geting SAT Prep and private counseling, it isn't necessary for you to get this as well.
6) Don’t try to create an 'image' for your child. Don't try to 'package' your child. Don't try to do something special between junior and senior year to try to make your child an attractive college candidate. Colleges want students to have depth and breath of experiences. Foster what your child wants to do and is good at. Don't try to create something that sounds good.
The bottom line is that the goal of college admissions is to find a match between what the student needs and what the college offers.

Yale, Bush and the politics of power

2006-04-14T12:52:00.000-07:00

In the imbroglio over the Single Choice Early Action, the tactics and methods followed a very similar methodology to that of the Bush White House.

For those of you who don't know the details, it started with the President of Yale voicing reservations about Yale's early decision, especially in terms of fairness for those applying for financial aid. He wanted to go back to an early action plan but was concerned about dealing with the high volume of applications such action might bring. Thus was born the idea of Single Choice Early Action (SCEA) where students applying to Yale SCEA could only do so if they did not apply anywhere else early. There were a number of problems with this policy, though. One was a clear definition of what early was: early decision, early action, rolling admissions, early notification... The second was that there was a feeling that the plan had an air of arrogance and more than a hint of restraint of trade: who was Yale to say what students could do when applying to other colleges? But the biggest problem to many was that this new policy was not in accordance with NACAC Statement of Principals of Good Practice (SPGP) which stated that students who applied early action could apply to other colleges "without restriction". There was a mixture of reaction as to whether the new plan was a positive one. Some agreed that Yale was taking the right step by moving away from Early Decision, a plan embraced mostly by those who did not need to be able to compare offers of financial aid, i.e. the well-to-do. And some saw that Yale needed to restrict EA applications or they could not logistically make this move. Others saw it as an arrogant usurping of power, with the powerful restricting applications to colleges which were less powerful. Perhaps the loudest voices against the plan were those in NACAC who, despite the merits of the new admissions plan, saw the new plan as an affront to the accepted rules which had governed college admissions for the previous seventy years. They were genuinely concerned that if Yale and others went down this path of changing their policy to one that was in direct opposition to the SPGP, that other more vital parts of the SPGP would begin to be ignored by member organizations.

There was an acknowledgement from many in NACAC that there were problems with the SPGP. There were feelings of some that SCEA was not an issue to "go to the mat" on. There was an acknowledgement that there was a need to look at the SPGP with fresh eyes. The Admissions Standards Steering Committee was born (of which I was a member) to develop guiding principles for the SPGP and to decide whether the tenets of the SPGP were consistent with these principles and of appropriate merit and meaning to be added. The SPGP had become unwieldy and disorganzed and the Steering Commitee was convened to simplify , prioritize and organize the SPGP.

Yet the issue of SCEA still loomed. If Yale, and then Stanford, were to go ahead with SCEA, it would be a direct affront to the principles that they agreed to abide by. Yet while the Steering Committee was still going through its work and there was room to work out a compromise, Yale announced, in 2004, that they would be adopting SCEA for the next year's class. Stanford's representatives stated that they had planned to wait a year to work out a compromise but that Yale had forced their hand. Eight hours later, Stanford also adopted SCEA followed soon after by Harvard. The Assembly of NACAC at the national conference was to decide whether to modify the SPGP to accept SCEA as an admissions plan. If this was defeated, there would likely be a vote to sanction Harvard, Yale and Stanford with Harvard and Yale making it clear that they would withdraw from the organization if that were to happen.

During this same time period, we were observing one of Yale's most famous (imfamous?) graduates, George W. Bush, using various tactics to justify breaking with established rules, laws and traditions. Whether is was justifying pre-emptive war, lying to the American people about weapons of mass destruction, not following the Geneva Convention, justifying torture or approving eavedropping on American citizens without the going through agreed upon channels, there were behaviors and rationales that bore a striking similarity to the actions of his alma mater in the SCEA debate:

Both:

1) acted unilaterally.
2) felt no obligation to respond to critics.
3) acted without transparency
4) ignored established and agreed upon laws and rules to achieve their own needs
5) misused their positions of power
6) dismissed the established rules and laws as quaint
7) used disengagemnt as a threat.
8) had a total lack of appreciation of how an atmosphere of breaking a contract affects the behavior of others.