Could it be that once the first domino falls the rest will follow?
Leaders at eighty leading colleges and universities, including the Ivy League, are attempting to revise the application process to look at students and their personal interests! They want to focus less on the canned metrics.
Are college and university leaders across the country beginning to understand how crummy high schools are when they focus primarily on dozens of AP courses and the SAT and ACT? Are they also starting to understand that canned service requirements do not get to the heart of a student’s passions and do little to bring out the best in kids?
Frank Bruni writes about the possible changes to college admissions in The New York Times.
It seems they are also taking a look at the stresses of schooling and the mental health of students. They seem to get that more students require mental health counseling as they enter college, which could be a significant factor in whether they stay in college.
Why, they are even considering sleep deprivation in kids!
There seems to be understanding, also, that a lot of students are coming out of high school focused primarily on achievement and not on the things that really matter—like caring for others. They found this out by surveying students starting in middle school.
And most important they seem to finally understand that the system, as is, does little to help those who are poor get into college.
The Today show sums up the changes.
- De-emphasize standard testing, which could include making the SAT and ACT optional.
- Quality over quantity with extracurricular activities and advanced placement classes, with students showing sustained commitment to a community service rather than just listing a bunch of things they have done.
- Factor in family and community responsibilities to level the playing field in admissions by capturing the contributions of low-income and working-class students.
- Include an essay question on college applications for students to write about their contributions to their families and others.
- Broaden criteria to include public service that consistently contributes to the common good as part of the admissions process instead of just “brag sheets” listing two-week community service projects.
- Widen the net by emphasizing a good fit for each student rather than the notion that there are only a few elite colleges that matter.
Like so much in education, perhaps there is some hidden meaning or underlying reasoning that will pop out later, but for now this is pretty encouraging. If everything in school is geared to getting our children to college, the dynamics just changed.
Here are the 7 recommended changes involving college admissions being promoted in the report.
- Contributions to One’s Family
- Assessing Students’ Daily Awareness of and Contributions to Others.
- Prioritizing Quality–Not Quantity–of Activities.
- Awareness of Overloading on AP/IB Courses.
- Discouraging “Overcoaching.”
- Options for Reducing Test Pressure.
- Expanding Students’ Thinking about “Good” Colleges.
Here is the full report from Harvard.
Best news. Thanks!
Thank you, Janna.
Good academics matter, too. As an English professor who always taught a section of first-year composition, I was pleased when, in the 1980s, the trend went toward a library research paper in high school because no matter how much the students may have struggled with that assignment, they were much better prepared to take it on in college. When the testing craze started, that preparation disappeared. Students would enter college never having written even an essay. I like the Common Core’s shift back to more writing, esp based on research. Macrorie’s I-Search Paper is a good way to get students involved intellectually and emotionally in communities outside the classroom. Writing can be a great tool for learning and maturing. See http://www.amazon.com/The-I-Search-Paper-Revised-Searching/dp/0867092238
I agree that testing has been damaging, and there is nothing wrong with I-Search that I can see.
But it irritates me that those who wrote up Common Core make it sound like this is something new that they invented.
Also, I found teaching high school students how to do research much harder with technology. It is tempting for young people to go online for information and pull from Google searches without understanding much about the topic.
Thank you, however, for sharing and I pretty much agree for what it’s worth.
The issue is not as much the technology as the students not being taught to use it properly. That is why school librarians are critical at all ages. Classroom teachers and librarians must work collaboratively on research, with the classroom teachers responsible for teaching the content leading into the project and librarians teaching the relevant research skills, such as research database usage, effective keyword searching, website evaluation, note taking, and citation, just to name a few.
I agree that students tend to simply Google their questions and start copying and pasting answers. That is not the fault of the technology though. That is the inevitable result of not teaching them the correct way to use the technology.
I wonder how Pearson will react to this.. And the SAT and ACT companies.
It sure does seem too good to be true, Máté. And it’s from Harvard which has some pretty serious reform ideas. So it makes me wonder.
This sounds nice, in theory. .
But you’re going to have students claiming all sorts of activities: Picking up trash, building homes for poor people, teaching younger kids how to read, cooking meals for old folks, etc., etc., etc.
And the college admission committees are not going to have nearly enough time or resources to verify one-tenth of all the “community service” that applicants are going to be claiming.
And I hate to admit it, but this sure smells like just another under-the-table way to “sneak” in the right diversity mix without having hard and fast numbers (such as SAT or ACT scores) that can be used in a lawsuit when a college admits certain students over other students who were not admitted, despite having much higher qualifications.
Hi LaKeisha,
I would say that what you describe is a bit like it is now. Hopefully, they would look more at a student’s real interests. What they enjoy doing.
Your second point is a good one. Test scores do give concrete evidence and we will always need test scores to some degree. There is a balance I think to determining how to use tests and how to read what they measure.
Unfortunately with the SAT and ACT students can retake the tests if they pay for it. One could argue that that gives an unfair advantage to the wealthier students.
Thanks for providing some good insight.
I wonder how Pearson will react to this.. And the SAT and ACT companies.