Summer Break

Ethical College Admissions is taking a break for the rest of the summer (let me be clear that I mean ECA the blog, not college admissions practices that are ethical).  I had planned to start the hiatus a month ago, but waited for the Supreme Court to announce its decision in Fisher v. Texas.

I’m not spending summer in the Hamptons or the south of France, so if some issue of monumental importance raises its head I’ll be prepared to comment on it.  But this seems like a good time to step back, recharge, and focus on some other writing projects.

I started this blog last September not knowing if I would find anything to write about, whether I could discipline myself to post on a regular basis, and whether anyone would find it worth reading.  What I discovered was that all kinds of issues I couldn’t have anticipated popped up, and after a week went by following a post I felt an urge to sit down and address a new topic.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to blogging.  One is that the blogger should write for himself or herself.  The other is that blogging is about a conversation with readers.  I accept both views.  I have found that writing has helped me clarify my own thinking about issues, but knowing that there are people reading the blog, including people whose opinions I value greatly, has proved fulfilling at a level I couldn’t have imagined.  One analytical tool tells me that close to 5000 people have viewed the blog, with readers from 49 states (the holdout is North Dakota) and 30 other countries.  I am particularly grateful to those readers who sent me e-mails or told me in person that they enjoyed the blog.  That means more than you can know.

I already have a queue of topics I’d like to address, but I’ll also be thinking about how to improve the blog.  My original intention was to include both some short posts as well as the 900-1100 word sermonettes, but it will surprise no one who knows me that lengthy somehow won out.  The older I get, the preachier I become.  I am thinking about doing a several-part series tracing the evolution of the affirmative action issue from Bakke to Fisher.  I’d welcome suggestions for how to make the blog better or topics/issues you’d like to see addressed.

We are officially on break.  Back in September.   

Fisher

On Monday the Supreme Court announced its much-awaited decision in the affirmative action case, Fisher v. University ofTexas.  The announcement wasn’t a surprise, given that this is the final week in the Court term and that Fisher was the earliest argued case still remaining on the Court’s docket.

What was surprising is that the decision was by a 7-1 majority (Justice Kagan recused herself).  That is the kind of majority many observers thought this Court was incapable of producing.  That strong majority, along with the long period of time between oral arguments and the decision, invites speculation that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion was narrowly tailored in order to cobble together that majority.

I read the opinion as soon as it came out on Monday morning, and had hoped to post a response later in the day, but I had a meeting out of town on Tuesday and Wednesday and didn’t want to rush just to get something out.

In Fisher the Supreme Court vacated a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision supporting Texas, remanding the case back to the Fifth Circuit to try it on its merits.  The Fifth Circuit had denied Fisher’s appeal on the basis that Grutter v. Michigan, the last big affirmative action case decided by the Supreme Court, had required courts to give deference to universities to determine whether a diverse student body is a compelling interest and how to achieve that.  Justice Kennedy’s opinion finds that deference to be mistaken.

The good news is that the Fisher decision does not address the merits of affirmative action, although both Justices Scalia and Thomas made it clear that they would have voted to overturn Grutter if asked.  What it does is put the burden of proof on colleges and universities that take race into account in admission in order to achieve diversity.  Whereas the Fifth Circuit decision supported the idea that colleges should have discretion to decide what their institutional priorities are and how to achieve them, Justice Kennedy’s opinion puts the burden of proof on universities to demonstrate that achieving diversity is a compelling interest and that the admission policies put in place are narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.

So where does the Fisher decision leave the affirmative action debate?  It in no way resolves it, but it changes it by raising some fundamental philosophical questions that have been taken for granted in the past.     

The first question is, Is diversity a compelling educational interest for colleges and universities?  I think the answer is clearly yes, that a student’s education is broader and richer by being exposed to classrooms with a diverse array of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.  I also think that the higher education establishment has taken the value of diversity as an article of faith, asserting the value but not necessarily demonstrating the value. 

What factors contribute to educational diversity?  Given America’s history of racial discrimination, does being a student of color automatically bring diversity, or are there students of color who don’t contribute to diversity because of their socioeconomic backgrounds?  Are we as a society in a different place than we were during the Civil Rights Movement 50 years ago, or are our sensitivities to race just under the surface?  In oral arguments Texas argued for the importance of critical mass in order to relieve individual students of the burden of representing all students of a particular background, but didn’t have a great deal of research to show that classroom diversity would be lacking without the affirmative action program.  The amicus brief filed by the College Board and other educational organizations argues for self-determination, that colleges and universities should be trusted to determine their own policies, and it is clear that the court buys that argument only with limits.

If diversity is a compelling interest, is affirmative action necessary to achieve it?  Do colleges have alternatives?  In the Fisher case, the necessity argument was complicated by the fact that the defendant was the University of Texas. Several years ago the state of Texas instituted a law requiring that students ranking in the top ten percent of their high school classes be automatically admitted to public colleges and universities.  According to the UT-Austin website, 75% of the in-state spots in the freshman class are admitted through that program.  That law is certainly controversial and debatable on its own merits, but it has produced a diverse student body, if diversity is defined in terms of ethnic origin.  It was the program to admit the remaining 25% of students who were not in the top ten percent that was being challenged, and in oral arguments the attorney for Texas seemed to suggest that diversity required admitting underachieving middle- and upper-class students of color. It would have been easier to argue that affirmative action is necessary to produce a diverse student body had the defendant in Fisher not been located in Texas.

The ultimate question is whether the end justifies the means.  No one (at least no reputable voice) wants to return to the racial segregation of the 1940’s and 50’s, but does it make a difference how an institution achieves diversity?  In the first affirmative action case argued by the Supreme Court, the Bakke case, the medical school at the University of California at Davis set aside a certain number of slots for minority students and essentially conducted two different admission processes.  That approach was declared unconstitutional, but in succeeding cases institutions are less blatant but still figure out the result they want and reverse engineer the admission process to produce that result.  In Fisher the Supreme Court clearly answered that the means of achieving diversity is as important as the goal of achieving diversity.

In the wake of Fisher affirmative action lives, but colleges and universities will be challenged to demonstrate that their admission processes meet the burden of strict scrutiny if challenged in the courts.  That should stimulate a healthy discussion about how best to accomplish a worthy goal. I’m guessing that the Supreme Court will deal with this issue again in the near future.

Correction:  In the initial post I stated that the Bakke case involved the law school at the University of California-Davis.  It was the medical school, and I have corrected it above.  Thanks to Jon Reider for pointing out the error.  I could blame it on senility, but the truth is I was in a hurry to post and got careless.

Secret Agent

The National Security Agency wasn’t the only D.C. area entity dealing with fallout from leaks to the press last week.  While it didn’t receive the same publicity or have the same level of intrigue and serious implications for American society, NACAC was forced to release the report of its Commission on International Student Recruitment early after InsideHigherEd obtained a draft and published an article about the Commission’s findings.  It wasn’t exactly the Pentagon Papers, but NACAC had to speed-up its roll-out of the report to members and other stakeholders.

A Chronicle of Higher Education article on the report’s release characterized the report as weak and as attempting “to mollify everyone,” focusing on the Commission’s recommendation to change the language in the Statement of Principles of Good Practice prohibiting the payment of commissions to international recruiters from mandatory to a best practice.

I think that criticism is unfair, but I am hardly objective.  As a member of the NACAC Board, I was one of the driving forces for the Commission approach, arguing that a simple prohibition as originally proposed was an easy but wrong solution to an issue that is complex and in the words of the report, “dynamic.”  I think the Commission brought together a lot of good minds to study the morass of issues surrounding recruitment of international students, but the expectation that it would “solve” the problem is naïve.

What the Commission Report doesn’t attempt to do is address the ethical complexities that arise out of the use of agents compensated by commission to recruit international students.  That, of course, is exactly what I find most interesting.

Let’s try to sort through the issues.  First and foremost is that more American colleges and universities are recruiting students internationally.  Much of that is economically driven as colleges look for revenue, but it is also the case that bringing students to the United States from around the world is important educationally and also in the national interest.

Recruiting internationally is a challenge for many institutions.  Not only is it expensive to send staff members abroad, but getting a foothold in the international marketplace requires a network of contacts and knowledge of the culture.  A number of institutions have attempted to address these challenges by outsourcing recruitment to agents located overseas.

The use of agents is not in itself inherently wrong.  What is questionable from an ethical standpoint is that many agents are paid on a per-head commission basis, a practice that violates the NACAC Statement of Principles of Good Practice and is also illegal in the United States.  Given that per-head compensation of agents has been long-standing practice in many countries, is the NACAC/U.S. position morally right or arrogant and culturally naive?

A complicating factor is that in most parts of the world there is not a school-based college counseling infrastructure, although there seems to be movement in that direction.  If NACAC were to prohibit colleges from using agents (per-head) without there being legitimate alternatives for students to get information about American colleges, then it harms member institutions trying to do the right thing and perhaps also harms students. Any ethical principle is worthless if it is also impractical.

(It is not the case that there are no alternatives.  EducationUSA, a branch of the State Department, operates advising centers in 140 countries dispensing information about American higher education.  EducationUSA does not represent particular institutions and also does not work with agents who charge commissions.)

The essential issue is whether there is something fundamentally wrong with an agent being paid on a per-head commission basis.  There is always a tension in college admissions between counseling and sales; does per-head compensation tip the scales?  If I am being paid by a college for every student who applies or enrolls, is my advice to a student based on what is best for the student or what is best for me? 

Clearly there are agents who are ethical despite being paid per head, but the world of agents is rife with questionable and corrupt practices, from double dipping (accepting payment from both students and institutions) to conflict of interest to misrepresentation to falsification of transcripts and writing essays for students.  Commission-based compensation may not be responsible for these abuses, but it creates the conditions for them to breed and spread and poison the good work that is out there.

I hope that NACAC will not abandon the principle that payment of commissions based on the number of students recruited or enrolled is wrong.  The principle that admission officers and recruiters should be professionals and not salespeople led to NACAC’s founding. The commitment to ethical professional practice, while under siege on a number of fronts, remains the bedrock of our profession.  The federal prohibition on per head compensation for students receiving federal financial aid is telling, and the experience with the predatory recruiting practices utilized by many for-profit institutions in the U.S.  after the Bush Administration eased restrictions for a number of “safe harbors” should reassure us that per head compensation is dangerous and problematic, no matter where it occurs.

There are certainly those who argue that the train has already left the station with regard to agents and per-head compensation, including the American International Recruitment Council (AIRC), which argues that training and certification of agents is the better path.  That may be an interim step, but I don’t buy the argument that it’s the best we can hope for.  The fact that something is an accepted practice doesn’t mean that it’s best practice.  The fact that people commit bank robbery doesn’t mean that outlawing bank robbery is futile.

Saying that NACAC shouldn’t abandon its principle doesn’t mean that simply outlawing use of agents in its current form is the solution.  As the Commission correctly recognized, the issue is complex and dynamic.  Real reform requires developing legitimate recruiting alternatives for colleges that want to do the right thing for international students.  NACAC is not going to solve this issue alone, and I hope the Commission report will begin a discussion with groups like the College Board, NAFSA, AACRAO, IECA, HECA, and AIRC on a new framework for international recruiting, a framework that puts ethical principles like institutional oversight, accountability, transparency, and integrity at the forefront.

My hope is that the work of the Commission is the beginning of a larger discussion about the landscape of international recruiting, and my dream is that NACAC will serve as landscape architect, bringing simplicity and even beauty to that landscape.

 

Is "Fit" an Endangered Species?

Is “Fit” an endangered species in college counseling/admissions?  That question came up last week during a conversation with my close friend Brian Leipheimer.  Brian is the Director of College Counseling at the Collegiate School in Richmond, and he and I get together on a regular basis to compare notes and consume beverages.

The question came up because Brian was organizing his year-end Board report around the “fit as endangered species” theme to educate the Board about some of the trends and issues impacting college counseling. Brian continues to believe in the importance of fit and hopes it’s not endangered, but his hypothesis is that at many colleges fit is being eclipsed and preempted by the acronyms ED (Early Decision), DI (Demonstrated Interest), and FP (Full Pay).

I found the conversation both timely and ironic.  While Brian was preparing his board report, I was working on a presentation to alumni at the University of Richmond.  My assigned topic?  The importance of fit.

Both the conversation and the presentation made me think about fit, a concept that has been at the center of my college counseling philosophy and practice for more than thirty years.  It is one of a growing list of core values and beliefs that I find myself worrying are, shall we say, outdated.  Is the endangered species not fit but me?  Am I a Jumpasaurus, a college counseling dinosaur?  Are endangered species aware that they are endangered, or do they suddenly cease to exist?

The notion of fit is based on the belief that every one of the more than 3000 colleges and universities in the United States is right for someone and every one of them is wrong for someone.  What makes them right or wrong is the match or fit between the needs and expectations of the student and the culture or personality of the college.

I see fit as a world-view, the alternative to what might be called the “Best College” world-view.  That world-view, also known as the “Rankings” world-view, states that “you should go to the best college you can.”  What is flawed is the definition of “best” college.  More often than not “Best” equals “most prestigious” which has come to equal “most selective.”  This view sees the value of a college education in the name on the diploma rather than the college experience itself.

The world-view that sees fit as important is built on several foundational assumptions.  One is that a college education can be transformational in a young person’s life, with the experience one has in college being more important than where one goes.  The second is that where one goes to college is important, in that not all colleges are alike.  Finally, college selection is personal.  What is right for you may not be right for me.

There are two key ingredients in determining fit.  One is the student.  Understanding one’s self is essential to determining fit.  Who are you? What do you care about?  What do you want from college?  Issues like size, location, distance from home are all obvious considerations, but so are seemingly less-important things like climate and food.  If you can’t stand cold weather, going to college in Minnesota or Maine may be a mistake, while food, both quality and quantity, is pretty important to most of the college students I know.

The culture or personality of the college is the other component.  Figuring out what is unique or distinct about school culture requires some work, especially in these days of sophisticated marketing which makes schools sound alike.  A number of years ago I attended a conference session where a publications consultant read a passage from a viewbook from a small liberal-arts college and asked the representative from that college to stand.  Twenty admissions officers from twenty different institutions stood up.

Fit requires sophisticated research, and that is the part of the college search process that too many students shortchange.  It requires visiting enough campuses to have a base of knowledge in order to do “comparison shopping” among institutions.  I fell in love with the first college I visited, not realizing until much later that what I had fallen in love with was not the particular institution but the idea of college.  Years ago I worked a summer program at the College of William and Mary attended by students hoping to get an edge in the admissions process (which of course didn’t happen).  Every year I would counsel at least one student who discovered after three days that they couldn’t stand colonial architecture.  At another attractive campus a prospective student told his family to get back in the car as soon as they arrived because there were “too many trees.”

What too often gets overlooked is academic fit.  Several years ago one of my former students came back after his freshman year and stated that the only thing he didn’t think about in choosing a college was academics.  Fit requires finding the right balance between the intellectual, the achievement, and the social.  Going to a school where the other students are in a different place on that continuum is a recipe for misery.

The other issue with regard to academic fit is where you fit within a school’s student body.  One of my students, fortunate to be admitted to a selective institution, learned that the downside was that he had to work much harder than his classmates to earn grades that would qualify him for competitive internships.  Another student who earned good grades at a prestigious small college was told when he applied to law school that he would have been better off attending an easier undergraduate school and making straight A’s.  That seems absurd to me but perhaps says a lot about the legal profession.

Are colleges abandoning concern for fit?  Two years ago I attended a panel at a small conference featuring admissions officers from several selective institutions.  When I asked about fit, they looked at me as if I was speaking in tongues.  That doesn’t mean that fit is any less important in college counseling.  The rise in the use of ED, DI, and FP means that students have to apply more thoughtfully rather than simply apply to more places.  That increases the need for students to think about and articulate their fit with a particular institution.  

 

Counting in a Different Way

A couple of weeks ago I was on a panel at the annual meeting of the Deans and Directors of Admission for the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia.  During the Q and A, a Director of Admission wondered if any of the school counselors on the panel were seeing a trend of students applying to fewer colleges, as applications were down 9% at his institution. 

I gave him a three-part answer.  First, I don’t see any evidence that my students are applying to more or fewer colleges, but it is also the case that my office has worked hard to encourage students to apply more thoughtfully rather than just applying more.  Second, I’m not convinced that having fewer applications is necessarily a bad thing.  Third, and perhaps most significant, he is one of only a handful of college admission reps in my 30 year career to have, or at least admit, anything other than a record admissions year.

Within a couple of days came the news that two more colleges, York College of Pennsylvania and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Texas, had been moved into the “Unranked” category in the U.S. News college rankings due to having submitted inflated data.  I have previously written ad nauseum about misreporting data and also recommended that U.S. News place all colleges in the Unranked category, but one piece of the story caught my eye.

According to both U.S. News and Insidehighered.com, Mary Hardin-Baylor corrected data it had previously submitted regarding both the number of applicants and the number of students admitted for the 2011 entering class.  The corrected numbers change the percentage of applicants admitted from 27.4 to 89.1.

That is not a misprint.  Mary Hardin-Baylor’s acceptance rate was more than three times higher than originally reported, meaning that the university is closer to open enrollment than highly-selective. That’s hardly a slight adjustment or miscalculation, and there’s bound to be an interesting story there.  Unfortunately I don’t what it is, because Mary Hardin-Baylor did not respond to my questions, but I can only imagine the turmoil within the university community when the error was discovered. 

According to the Insidehighered story, a spokesman for Mary Hardin-Baylor stated that there was no intentional misrepresentation and that the university was “counting its applications in a different way” than that required by U.S. News, which relies on the Common Data Set definitions.

The phrase “counting its applications in a different way” is intriguing. I assume that means Mary Hardin-Baylor was counting inquiries as applications, because the only other possible explanation is that it was adopting the creative accounting made famous by another Texas institution, Enron.

I don’t believe for a second that Mary Hardin-Baylor is the only college or university “counting its applications in a different way.”  Several years ago my office received a request for a transcript in February from a college for one of my seniors whose application was incomplete.  We hadn’t sent a transcript because we didn’t know he had applied—and, as it turned out, neither did he.  He had visited the school in question the previous summer and filled out a card during an information session, and obviously the school was considering that an application.

It doesn’t take much sleuthing to find other potential examples of “counting in a different way.”  The most recent editions I have of U.S. News’s “America’s Best Colleges” are from 2012 and 2009, and I looked at those issues to check Mary Hardin-Baylor’s numbers.  The 2009 book shows UMHB with 1258 applications and 962 acceptances, while 2012 shows 8323 applications and 3114 acceptances.  Either Mary Hardin-Baylor experienced a 600% increase in apps over that span or it started counting differently.

Even more interesting was that I found two other institutions “counting in a different way.”  I won’t name them, but both are rural regional institutions, and so I was surprised that one accepted only 10% of applicants and the other 7%.  One of them has a long history of being unbelievably selective, and from looking at its enrollment and its admission numbers it is clear that it is counting acceptances “in a different way,” such that only students who enroll receive acceptances.  If a cursory glance at those numbers arouses my suspicions, I wonder why they don’t arouse U.S. News’s.  Is it too trusting or too lazy to verify?

The bigger question is, Is more better?  That could easily be a topic for one of the ads featuring an adult asking four children about whether bigger and faster is better.  I remember the ads but have no idea what they’re selling.  Is having more applications better?

The conventional wisdom has been yes.  One of the unexamined myths of college admissions is that selectivity=quality, and that is why so many colleges go to great lengths to increase application numbers.  Several years ago a friend of mine became the Vice President and Dean of Enrollment at a small liberal-arts college, the kind of place that is the backbone of America’s higher-education system, a solid school academically that admitted 75-80% of its applicants.  The first thing he did was move to a two-part application, with the first part being basic information (and the application fee).  Part 2, which includes the more substantial information, is sent once Part 1 is received.  The first part  counts as the application, and because many students never complete the second part, within a year the institution’s acceptance rate was cut nearly in half.  But is it a better (or even different) institution?  The same argument can be made with colleges that have adopted “snap” (or a word that rhymes with snap) apps to increase numbers.  Is there a difference between increasing number of apps and increasing number of serious applicants?

It is important to affirm and recognize those who are attempting to maintain sanity in the admissions process, and earlier this year the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS) sent a letter of commendation to John Mahoney and his staff at Boston College.  Concerned about rising numbers of applications, BC added a supplemental essay last year.  The topics are substantive and require both thought and serious interest, and they support the belief that applying to college should be a Goldilocks process—neither too easy nor too hard.  The supplemental essay had more impact than expected, with applications dropping 26%, and there was undoubtedly consternation among those who measure success by rising application numbers, but I applaud BC and other institutions that are fighting the prevailing wisdom about increasing application numbers.  It’s time to count (measure success) in a different way.

Waiting

If you want to get my blood boiling (and, as a bonus, get an essay answer to a short answer question), ask me how I’m keeping busy now that May 1 is past and my seniors have made their final college choices.  I’ll try to avoid boring you with a rant about how my time in the spring is consumed more working with juniors than with seniors, but all bets are off once the topic of Wait Lists comes up.

A colleague and close friend stopped by my office yesterday for a venting/counseling session, one of three different conversations I had about Wait Lists during the day. Just when his daughter had come to peace with her college choice, her counselor has asked her cryptic questions along the lines of “would you say yes if asked to go to the dance?” about the school that was her first choice and where she was Wait Listed.  Are the counselor’s questions a signal that she might get a call?  Will a Wait List offer come with sufficient financial aid?  Should the family get its hopes up or stick with the existing situation?  Do they have time and energy to think about all this in the midst of AP exams and her sister’s college graduation this weekend?

I told him he had “appropriate anxiety.”  Just as you’re not paranoid when the thing you’re afraid of is real, angst and frustration are perfectly normal responses to being on a Wait List.

Of course it is not only students and parents (and school counselors) who feel anxiety regarding Wait Lists.  Several years ago I talked with the Dean of Admissions at College X.  There were rumors that University Y might be going to its Wait List.  If they went, there would be a chain reaction.  When Harvard itches, everyone scratches.  She needed to pull the trigger on her Wait List first, she said.

Wait Lists are the admissions equivalent of limbo (the theological state, not the dance).  Students on a Wait List are caught in a netherworld between the known and unknown, between reality and possibility.  The view is always shrouded by fog and the rules are unclear.  It’s not a place you would choose to take a vacation. 

Wait Lists have become a regular part of the admissions process, such that I expect that 10-20% of my senior class will ‘upgrade” and end up at their final destination off a Wait List.  The use of Wait Lists may be the least transparent part of the college admissions process—and that’s saying something. 

The lack of clear rules regarding use of Wait Lists and the impression that Wait List procedures have become the “Wild West” of college admissions led Jake Talmage, the Director of College Counseling at St. Paul’s School for Boys in Baltimore, to ask NACAC to study Wait List procedures in a motion to the NACAC Assembly two years ago in New Orleans.  Jake’s motion resulted in two changes to the Best Practices section of the Statement of Principles of Good Practice regarding Wait Lists.  One asks colleges to utilize written or electronic communication in offering admission off a Wait List.  The other change gives students 72 hours to respond to an institution’s offer.  That provision generated considerable debate, with some colleges arguing that institutional needs dictated moving more quickly down the Wait List.

Those are positive steps but don’t begin to address the larger issues.  Primary among those is the classic question of how large a Wait List should be and what being on a Wait List should signify.  A recent Washington Post article named several institutions that Wait Listed more students than they admitted. At first glance that seems absurd, but I think it’s a more complex issue than it appears.

I learned that after my own professional Black Monday back in 2000.  Over the weekend the decisions from the University of Virginia had been mailed, and as I walked in to chapel that morning there was a buzz in the air.  Six seniors that I thought would be in the gray area between admit and Wait List had been denied.  My instincts aren’t usually that far off, and so I called the late Jack Blackburn and made an appointment to meet with him.  When I got to his office he showed me the folders, and each of the students had been Wait Listed at one point and then moved into the deny pile.  He explained that every spring there was an internal debate within his office about the Wait List.  Some thought being on the Wait List should be a message that a student was qualified for admission but space not available.  That might lead to 2000 students being placed on the Wait List.  The opposing school of thought was that few of the students on the Wait List had a legitimate shot at getting off and that it wasn’t fair to give them false hope.  That spring the smaller Wait List advocates won the day.

One of the incidents that triggered Jake Talmage’s concern about Wait List procedures was seeing a student Wait Listed in December by a rolling admission school, told the Wait List would be reviewed in May.  I see that as a twist on the classic understanding that being Wait Listed is a sign that a student is qualified but there is no room at the inn.  The institution, it seems to me, is saying that the student is someone they don’t want to admit, but might have to.  That might be cruel, but I’m not sure it’s unethical, as long as the practice is transparent.

What has changed is that Wait Lists are no longer used as a safety net but as a calculated enrollment management strategy.  It has been described as “Early Decision 3,” with a number of schools planning to admit the last 10-15% of the class off the Wait List to keep the acceptance rate low and yield high.

The ethical issues raised by use of ED-3 and Wait Lists in general are the same issues raised in all parts of the college admissions process.  Does it serve students, or just the institution?  Is it transparent? Do students know how decisions are made and what they can do to improve their chances?  What role do demonstrated interest, academic merit, and institutional needs play?  Is it equitable? Does it squeeze out students with financial need? Does it advantage the already privileged with access to savvy college counseling?

A veteran admissions dean once told me that the perfect admissions process would be to Wait List all acceptable candidates and admit those who most want to come.  I’m not sure that’s any crazier than the system we have in place.  If Samuel Beckett were to return from the dead and write a modern sequel to his most famous absurdist play, he could do worse than call it “Waiting List for Godot.”    

Being Yourself

Nearly twenty years ago I served as chair of the Professional Development Committee for the Virginia Association of Independent Schools.  The committee’s primary job was putting together the program for the annual VAIS Professional Day Conference, and one year during my term we brought Alfie Kohn to the conference as keynote speaker. 

Kohn is one of the original “edutainers” who has made a career of writing and lecturing about education without actually working in a school.  His keynote address was a critique of grades and other external rewards, and it produced widely varying reviews.  A number of teachers found his presentation refreshing and inspirational, the best keynote in years. Others gave it the lowest rating possible on conference evaluations, and some even commented that VAIS should take his message to heart and show its opposition to rewards by refusing to pay him.

I considered the strong sentiments a sign of success.  The job of a keynote speaker is to provoke thinking, and people were clearly provoked. 

If being provocative is also the job of an op-ed writer, then Suzy Lee Weiss is wise (or Weiss) beyond her years. Weiss is the Pittsburgh high school senior who wrote an op-ed for the March 30 edition of the Wall Street Journal titled, “To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me.”  In the article, which she characterized as a satire during a Today Show appearance, Weiss argued that selective colleges lie to prospective students when they tell them to “be yourself.”

Weiss’s article drew widespread attention and criticism.  Many were offended by the tone of the piece, finding her references to diversity mean-spirited and insensitive.  I was surprised by the visceral reaction to the piece among a number of colleagues on both sides of the desk who are sick and tired of media coverage of the college admissions process that focuses almost entirely on students who don’t get into the Ivies and, like Groucho Marx, don’t want to be a member of any club (or college) that would have students like them. There were also responses from current students at Ivy League schools suggesting that clearly she must not have had the sterling qualifications that students admitted to those schools obviously possess.

I wasn’t offended by the article.  I thought Weiss failed the first rule of satire—if you use humor or satire, make sure it’s funny—but I have been guilty of the same offense too many times.  I also don’t feel sorry for her (she is apparently attending Michigan). But I think the piece touches on interesting questions about the current state of college admission, the messages we send to students and parents, and the changing nature of the work we do.

First and foremost is the question she indirectly poses.  Do we mislead or do a disservice to kids when we tell them to “be yourself,” as if “be someone else” is an option?

That begs larger questions. Is the college search process a journey of self-discovery or about obtaining membership in a club with a secret handshake? Should college be a product of who you are and what you’ve accomplished or a be-all, end-all goal? Which is more important, the name on the diploma or the college experience itself? As Eric Hoover observes in his article about College Confidential in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, the article of faith underlying that site is that your life is defined by where you go to college. I wish media coverage of college admissions didn’t accept that premise so uncritically.

College counseling is a tightrope walk fraught with danger.  It is my job to support my students in pursuing their dreams and at the same time ensure that they are grounded in reality, and the changing admissions landscape makes that hard.  I don’t know Ms. Weiss’s credentials, but I feel her pain.  This year I had five or six seniors with stellar grades and course loads, SAT scores around 1500, and the kind of character and leadership qualities that schools like mine hope to produce.  All would have Ivy League admits 10-15 years, but none got in.  All have good college options, so I don’t feel sorry for them, but I share their disappointment.

I remember talking to Fred Hargadon shortly before his retirement as Dean of Admissions at Princeton.  “Anyone who thinks we’re doing anything other than splitting hairs has no idea,” he lamented.  He talked about spending three hours in committee deliberating over 50 applications, ultimately admitting five, then the next morning not being able to remember why they picked those five. 

It’s far worse today in the age of 30000 applications and 5-6% acceptance rates.  Colleges and universities don’t add staff to match the increase in apps, reading time is decreased, and holistic review may become “half-istic.”  In such a climate, are certain kinds of applicants advantaged and others disadvantaged?

Last week at a professional conference, I had a conversation with a colleague about Susan Cain’s book, Quiet.  The book makes an argument that introverts are underappreciated in our culture, but have important intellectual and leadership strengths.  My colleague wondered if introverted kids who are hesitant to blow their own horns are at a disadvantage in the selective college admissions process.  The corollary is whether the process rewards kids who are savvy about packaging themselves.

How does one maintain sanity and a sense of purpose as college counseling becomes more complex and challenging? My answer is the same one Suzy Lee Weiss finds wanting—“Be Yourself.”  Our work should be a reflection of who we are and what we believe.  So while it makes me feel on far too many days that I am a dinosaur, I will continue to preach that the college search journey is more important than the destination, that the search and application processes should measure a student’s readiness for college itself, and that what one does in college is more important than where one goes.

 

P.S.  My cynical, tongue-firmly-in-cheek self wonders—Now that Suzy Lee Weiss has been published in the Wall Street Journal and interviewed on the Today Show, should she appeal her denials on the grounds that she has new information to add to her file?