Colleges that ask where else you are applying

George Washington University

Last year, Knox College and George Washington University were among over 50 Common Application member institutions asking applicants to provide a list of “other” colleges to which they were applying. 

Both colleges dropped the question for 2014-15.  

Knox says it was part of a technical overhaul of their application.  They dropped the writing supplement and because the question was part of the writing supplement, it simply got dropped as well.

GW, on the other hand, doesn’t have an answer why the question was left off the application. It just was.

But beyond begging the question of how much thought goes into structuring applications for admission, Knox and GW represent a small minority of colleges that have given up on placing applicants in the uncomfortable position of disclosing where else they are applying.

In fact, well over 60 Common App members, including some belonging to the Universal College Application group, are once again asking students to volunteer their college lists this year.

“When we used to consider admissions to be counseling work, it was a very helpful question to ask:  If a student had five other colleges, all of whom shared many similar characteristics, you knew she was on the right path; that she had decided to focus on the things you offer and had determined for herself what the right fit was,” explained Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University.  “If on the other hand you found a list of colleges that seemed haphazardly put together, you could ask and probe about why these colleges made it to the final list.”

Along these lines, the college list applicants voluntarily provided on their applications could also be compared with that generated via FAFSA, which also asks for a list the feds share with all the schools receiving your application for financial aid.  And that’s what some colleges do.

“It was never perfect, of course,” added Boeckenstedt.  “But it often led to good discussions about what the student was really seeking.”

In addition to DePaul, Bentley University, Chapman University, Goucher College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), RISD, and Hampshire College plant their list requests among Common App member questions labeled “General,” while Davidson College, Lynn University, Texas Christian University (TCU), Roanoke College, the University of San Diego, and the University of the Pacific place them within the “Other Information” category. 

Hendrix College asks, “To what other colleges or universities do you plan to apply?” under “Granola.”

Rice University, on the other hand, tucks theirs into its writing supplement.

For the most part, the questions are designated as “optional,” but not always.  The University of Redlands requires students to answer, “To which colleges are you applying and why have you included Redlands in this group?”

And some colleges are a little cagey.  Samford University asks, “Where does Samford currently rank among the colleges/universities you are considering?”

But both St. Michael’s College in Vermont and Salve Regina University are careful to specify that there should be “no ranking” of their lists, while Elon University (not a Common App member) and Macalester College have disclaimers stating that responses will be used for research purposes only.

All of this this begs the question of whether or not these probes violate the intent of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP), which clearly states that all postsecondary members should “refrain from asking students where else they have applied.”

It may be considered only a “best practice,” but someone within the NACAC organization seems to think it’s a bad, if not unethical idea to ask students where else they are applying.

“I find it to be an invasive and unfair question. To me it is in conflict with NACAC guidelines,” said Shelley Levine, an independent educational consultant (IEC) in Potomac, Maryland. “The question should be outright banned.”

Colleges wanting to see your list will insist that they do this to get a better sense of the context in which they are viewed by applicants. 

They want to know who their competitors are in an attempt to determine commonalities. For example, they look to see if students choose them for size, location, or programs in a specific academic area. 

“The value for the college is to know who their major ‘over-lap’ colleges are and to sometimes assess where they fall on the student’s list,” suggested Shirley Bloomquist, a college advisor in Great Falls, Virginia.

And they want you to believe this data is used to evaluate marketing efforts—not for admissions or scholarship offers.

But few colleges bother to provide such specific assurances in the framing of their question, and this makes applicants and their families very uneasy.

“…parents and students are so bogged down with suspicion about college motives, there is effectively no practical value to [the question] anymore,” explained Boeckenstedt. 

Yet sometimes, a truthful response can actually boost an application.

“Typically, people think this works against the student—and it can,” advises Hannah Serota, another Virginia-based independent educational consultant.  “BUT, it can also work for the student.  At a college down the list of selectivity a bit, they may work harder to yield a highly desirable student based on the list.”

So how should applicants deal with these requests? 

Colleges generally reassure you there is no penalty for simply leaving it blank (except if it's "required"). But sometimes being non-responsive feels uncomfortable. 

If you are confident in your research and have selected colleges that reflect a strong “fit,” you may want to share a few names. 

Wendie Lubic, who works with students in the Washington metropolitan area, suggests, “If [the question] is required, I tell students to put on their state school, and maybe one or two comparable colleges from their list.”

And more specifically, “When colleges are disclosed, I always recommend listing them in alphabetical order—same approach to FAFSA,” adds Serota.

Bottom line:  try not to be paranoid and take the perspective that you’re possibly providing an opportunity for a school to recruit you away from competing institutions or offer some additional scholarship money.

List a couple of comparable or crossover colleges that would seem reasonable in context of your stated goals and interests. 

And if space permits, add that your college list is still a work in progress, subject to change as you learn more about what each has to offer.

How bad data affects applicants or why you can’t trust scores reported by test-optional colleges

Along with data collected by the federal government via IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data), information compiled by the Common Data Set (CDS) pretty much forms the basis for metrics used to power the college ranking industry.  

These same numbers and statistics populate any number of guides, websites, and search engines sold to college-bound students and their families who have come to rely on them for making decisions related to “fit” and likelihood of admission.

But sometimes numbers lie.  In absence of reliable systems to prevent fraud, individual data points are subject to interpretation and can be manipulated by college administrators anxious to improve their standing among peers.  

And this is true as much for data collected by the feds as it is for the CDS.  The difference is that the folks overseeing the CDS use the information to make money—lots of money.

Yet for years, the brain trust behind the CDS—the College Board, Petersons, and US News—has steadfastly resisted calls for reform in the way they do business.

Robert Morse, the US News rankings guru, insists that if colleges and universities are willing to lie to the federal government, they’ll lie to any organization attempting to rank or otherwise describe an institution based on information they freely provide.

And in the face of a series of scandals involving deliberate misreporting, Brian Kelly, also of US News, insists to Boston Magazine that “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the schools are treating this seriously and reporting with integrity.” 

But this is a point debated by college administrators surveyed by Inside Higher Ed, 90 percent of whom believe “other” institutions falsify data to make themselves look better in the eyes of the public.

Kelly also told Boston Magazine, “It’s not up to us to solve problems. We’re just putting data out there.”

It’s a little like a green grocer who refuses to take responsibility for selling bad fruit.  The grocer packages the fruit, displays it, and sells it at significant profit.  Yet when anyone complains about the quality of the fruit, the grocer suggests they take it up with the growers.

And in this case the fruit can be questionable if not outright rotten.

Take for example the question of how test-optional colleges report standardized test scores.  This has been a recent issue for the CDS “listserve,” through which “crowd sourced” technical assistance is provided to college-based staff responsible for completing CDS forms.

Question C9 on the CDS asks colleges to report a range of standardized test scores—ACT and SAT.  For test-optional colleges, the question arises as to which scores should be reported, particularly in cases where students submit scores but request they not be used for making an admissions decision.

When asked whether all scores or a subset of scores should be reported, helpful colleagues (in absence of a more formal system of technical assistance) responded in a number of different ways.

The first response came from a relatively new test-optional college, “…we only report on test scores used in the admission decision.”

The next response came from a college that is not test-optional but insisted “…the directions do not say submit scores only used in the admissions decisions.  It says use all scores submitted.”

Another college asked if colleges were submitting ALL scores received for each student or only the highest of each test, as the CDS does not suggest or recommend superscoring scores submitted.

After more debate about policies in use at different schools, Robert Morse, whose official title is chief data strategist at US News, finally intervened with his interpretation which was that schools should be submitting scores for all enrolled students who submitted scores with no differentiation made as to whether scores are used in admission or not.

This begged the question of what constitutes “submitted.”  Does it mean that the scores were simply provided on the application or those officially coming from the testing agency?  And if a student asks that scores not be considered for admissions, are the scores appearing on the form actually “submitted”?

The entire debate finally came down to the fact that the CDS has not chosen, for whatever reason, to make definitions crystal clear and/or to communicate exactly what scores are to be included—those used for admissions decisions or all scores submitted.

And more importantly, the CDS has failed to provide an explicit directive to ensure that schools do not exclude the “submitted” scores of certain groups of applicants—legacy, international, athlete, AND test-optional.

To the outside world, this debate may seem like counting the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.  But for applicants and those who advise them, the standardized test score ranges reported by a college can have an effect on determining “fit” for a particular college.  

These scores also have a very real impact on a college’s US News rank and may explain why some schools only want to report scores students ask to have used for admissions, as they would likely be higher.  And of course, colleges want to superscore their reports providing numbers that only reflect on the highest scores submitted by individual applicants.

But this is just one of many data points subject to interpretation.   It’s only when the “interpretation” strays too far from the acceptable that scandals are revealed and administrators lose their jobs.

With all the money made by the College Board, Wintergreen Orchard House, US News, and Petersons, surely some could be set aside for the development of clear guidelines and the provision of annual training or more consistent technical assistance for college-based staff.  

At a minimum, college administrators should be asked to “certify” the accuracy of the data provided.  Sanctions for falsified data should be clear.  And while more invasive (and not likely to happen in this lifetime), random data audits or spot checks should be conducted every year.

Because at the end of the day, organizations profiting from the data need to take some responsibility for its accuracy.

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 may be found here.

Arbitrator nixes Advanced Placement grading policy

The controversial practice of linking grades in Advanced Placement (AP®) classes to scores earned on AP exams given toward the end of the school year took a minor hit earlier this week.

A plan promising students good grades if they did well on AP’s was struck down by an arbitrator assigned to a grievance filed by the Dearborn (MI) Federation of Teachers.

The school board previously enacted a policy offering students earning a 4 or 5—the highest possible AP scores—an “A” for an Advanced Placement class.  Students with a 3 would get at least a “B.”  Grades would not be lowered under the policy.

Because AP scores are not usually provided until the second week of July, teachers would be required to go back into their grade books and retroactively make appropriate adjustments—long after school closed for the summer.  

The final grade appearing on the transcript would be as promised, and no one—including colleges reviewing these documents for admission—would know the difference between a student who did all the work to earn an A and a student who happened to test well.

The plan was originally recommended because Trustees for the school district felt uncomfortable with discrepancies between high schools and individual teachers on how students were graded in AP classes. 

And more importantly, the school board wanted to be able to smooth out the correlation between grades and performance on the exam.

“Grades and performance are tied, and we don’t want one to laugh at the other,” said Trustee Mary Lane during Monday’s school board meeting.

But according to the Dearborn Press & Guide, teachers argued that the policy limited what power they had in the classroom, such as assigning homework and requiring attendance.

The arbitrator ruling on the grievance sided with the teachers and nixed the board’s plans.

While the practice of retroactively changing grades for AP classes doesn’t appear to be the norm for most schools and school districts, there is evidence that these policies may be catching on.  And they are effectively making the AP program an even more important player in college admissions.

As the College Board continues to look the other way, teachers are changing grades to reflect performance on AP tests, giving additional boosts to GPA’s often already inflated by various “weighting” practices employed by schools and school districts.

And for colleges claiming to be more concerned with grades than performance on college entrance exams, these kinds of policies amount to game changers insofar as they return the focus to performance on a test—this time the AP.

National Merit© qualifying scores released for 2014

Under a cloak of secrecy involving sworn promises from school administrators to keep information to themselves, the National Merit© Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) released the national list of state-by-state cut-off scores for merit scholarship semi-finalists yesterday.

And there’s pretty good news in Maryland and Virginia, but not-so-good news in the District of Columbia.

By rolling commuter and boarding students into a competing pool of candidates, the NMSC holds students attending DC high schools to outrageous qualifying standards for college scholarships.

And once again, DC along with New Jersey was assigned the top national merit qualifying cut-off score in the country—224, which is exactly the same as last year and among the highest qualifying scores in competition history.

In contrast, students in West Virginia and North Dakota only needed to score 201 points on the PSAT/NMSQT® to qualify for the same prize money and prestige.  In Pennsylvania, they needed 216, while in Michigan, 210 won the prize.  In New York and Texas, 218 was the magic number.

And on either side of the Potomac, the bar wasn’t as high that faced by DC Public Schools (DCPS) students. The qualifying score for Maryland went down two points from last year to 221, and Virginia dropped by three points from 222 to 219. 

The only other states with cut-offs even close to DC’s, were California (222), Connecticut (220), and Massachusetts (223).

Students may only qualify as “merit scholars” by taking the College Board’s PSAT/NMSQT in the fall of their junior year. For this year’s group of merit scholarship candidates, the test was in October of 2013—a long time ago.

Traditionally, high scorers are notified whether they qualify for the next level of competition in September of senior year—twelve full months after the initial test date.

Those above the cutoff—about 16,000 students—are invited to continue in the competition as semifinalists. Approximately 90 percent of this group traditionally earns finalist status, if they have already taken the SAT or are willing to take the SAT some time before the end of the year to “confirm” their PSAT scores.

In other words, ACT scores can neither qualify a student for nor be used to support the PSAT scores used to determine initial eligibility.  This ensures that the College Board will receive multiple sets of registration fees for each finalist.  

And the requirement also can create a problem for students applying to a few colleges not participating in Score Choice and who were perfectly happy to only submit ACT scores to schools like the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, or Stanford.

“In an era when more and more schools are adopting test optional policies because they recognized that standardized exams are weak measures of academic talent and the ACT has become the nation's most widely administered admissions exam, a scholarship competition based on test scores from the PSAT and SAT seems like a historical artifact rather than a valid way to identify the top students in the country,” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

The mysterious NMSC formula for anointing finalists credits a student by the location of their high school and not by the location of their home. So the District’s allotment of merit scholarship finalists gets largely consumed by tuition-paying outsiders or wealthy students who attend high school with the President’s daughter.

"Because of its misuse of PSAT scores—which correlate very strongly with household income—as the sole criterion to select Semifinalists, National Merit guarantees that its awards will predominantly go to children who least need scholarship assistance to attend college,” added Schaeffer.  “In DC, this means that nearly all winners attend private high school.”

So far, executives from the NMSC have brushed off calls to rethink the qualifying process. In letters to both the College Board and the NMSC, the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) advised that eliminating 99 percent of test-takers from the National Merit Scholarship competition solely on the basis of a single standardized exam was “at odds with best practices in the use of admissions test scores.”

 

And the problems go beyond simple misuse of the test.  Preparing for National Merit has evolved into a cottage industry for test prep companies seeing an opening in the market to expand business by offering targeted classes for the PSAT/NMSQT.

"Low-income, African American and Latino public school students are further disadvantaged by this biased system, since their parents cannot afford high-priced test-prep courses which further boost scores," concluded Schaeffer.

As a result of these concerns, a number of colleges withdrew support for the National Merit Scholarship program. Notably, the entire University of California system and the University of Texas no longer offer scholarships specifically for national merit scholars.

And yet, the process remains unchanged as students in area high schools, including those in District of Columbia, start the first step of the competition in a few weeks with the administration of the 2014 PSAT/NMSQT®.

For what appears to be a fairly reliable and complete list of state-by-state cut-off scores, check out what the posters on College Confidential have compiled.