Not Your Average Admissions Blog “A Beneath the Surface Look At Everything College Admissions (with a few shameless plugs)”

We’ve been getting quite a bit of email feedback and questions, which go to our central in-box then get forwarded.  Many of the questoins are off topic from my postings, so my staff members (tired, I suspect, of having to forward those emails) suggested we created a blog post for whatever random topics you might want to raise.

I’m still lounging at the shore, while my staff are busy answering those emails and over at President’s Park, one of our freshmen housing areas, helping our newest Patriots move into their rooms. Shameless Plug – Like most universities, Mason has a great Welcome Week I’m looking forward to when I get back in town this weekend.    In between vacation and campus events I’ll try to get around to posting some the comments and questions we’ve already received.  Feel free to use this post to put up whatever discussion topics you’d like to add, admissions or otherwise. Be seeing you.

I was on vacation with my family this week when my seven-year-old son overheard one of his cousins calling another member of the family a “tool” and asked me what that meant. I tried to explain that the term “tool” can be used to suggest that a person is easily used or manipulated by others and that it’s another way of saying the person is a fool, or at least terribly mislead.

Since he still seemed confused, I used a recent example from admissions. I had just read an article in the Journal of College Admissions regarding score optional admissions, or admissions decisions in which SAT or ACT scores are not used as factors. the author also had a nearly identical article in Recruitment and Retention in Higher Education. Perhaps some may consider it questionable to have the same article under two different names in two different publications, but that’s not a reason to consider the author a “tool”.

In the article(s), the author raises ethical questions regarding colleges and universities that have implemented score optional admission policies. He asserts that the reasons for implementing such policies are entirely self-serving. He also notes that most institutions with these policies claim higher SAT/ACT averages when they only report averages of students who submitted scores.

I don’t doubt that some institutions have self-serving reasons for implementing such policies. I can speak for Mason, however. Mason, shameless plug here, may be the largest competitive institution in the nation to have implemented such a policy. We did it based on really solid data that standardized tests were not good predictors of success for our applicants with the strongest academic records. We allow students to substitute greater weighting on leadership experience in place of standardized test scores. So far, as with nearly every school that has implemented such a policy, we have found that students who we admit through our score optional policy do just as well as students with similar academic records admitted with scores. It appears, however, that the author never bothered to do a lick of research and has no idea of the data behind these decisions. Such sloppy and incompetent research could lead some to label the author a slacker, but not necessarily a tool.

His point on how colleges with score optional policies average their scores is even more ridiculous. He claims that not including scores from score optional applicants who are admitted in our admitted student averages is misleading. So, if I follow what the author is trying to pass off as logic, if I include scores in Mason’s averages that had nothing to do with students’ admission, I will somehow make my averages more accurate. These statistics, as a result of following his method, would be less likely to help future applicants understand their chances of admission. Such inept logic is most unfortunate, but again doesn’t brand the author a tool.

All of these issues were enough to get my attention and arouse my disdain for the articles. Imagine my delight, then, only a few days after I read the first of these wonderful articles to receive an email from the company that employs the author (official motto, “helping you get your future students to accept higher tuition and lower financial aid, no matter what kind of education you decide to provide”) inviting me to participate in a phone interview survey of higher education practices and the use of standardized testing, “on behalf of a client in the college admissions testing industry” (would that be SAT or ACT? So many choices!).

Fascinating. Let’s review. The author works for a company that consults for educational organizations, and his company has a contract with one of the standardized testing companies. Those companies seem to perceive (wrongly, I think) that score optional policies are a threat. Then he writes an article (twice!) condemning the policies that concern his company’s client.

Now I don’t mean to disparage the author, who I have never met and who I’m sure had very good intention in writing his article – both times. I will say, however, that by the time I was done explaining, my seven-year-old understood the use of these terms (or at least said he did, possibly in order to get me to stop explaining). The question is, do you? Be seeing you.

Time, once again, to rant about how colleges and universities busy themselves trying to manipulate you.

Transfer students are a hot commodity in admissions. Since Mason is one of the most popular transfer destinations in the U.S., I may be even more disturbed by misinformation about transferring schools than I am about the usual admissions confusion. A recent article intended for college admissions officers reminded me of this pet peeve.

Jason Bakker is a most excellent college marketing guru. In a recent article on Ypulse.com, however, he offers help with responding to the “increase” in potential transfer students, asserting that what transfer students want most is help achieving their “life goals,” and therefore, colleges should market themselves to that concept. Instead of trying to prove that point, Jason offers some examples of tuition discounts. He seems to feel the main reason students transfer is to get a cheaper education. This could lead colleges to believe that the best way to convince you to transfer schools is to offer you a better financial deal. No offense to Jason, but that seems like a big steaming pile of nonsense.
Community college or other transfer students are no more prone to respond to value or discount pitches than any other group of prospective students. In fact, claiming to be “cheaper” can just as easily translate to impressions of lower quality rather than higher value. This may seem insane, but there is far more evidence that raising cost increases perceived value and little evidence that lowering tuition provides comparable benefit. That’s how colleges and universities get into that whole dirty science of how little they can discount your tuition and still get you to enroll – otherwise they’d all just lower their price, and transfer students would be flocking to the least expensive schools.
As for Jason’s initial assertion that what transfer students want most is help with life goals (he means making more money), colleges have been trying lay stake to that claim for years. Of course, the data says that your income level after college has nothing to do with what college you attend, but don’t let that stop you savvy (evil) marketers!
What clearly works with transfers (and every other market segment) are assertions of quality. Strangely, we tie quality to exclusivity –schools that are hard to get into are more likely to be labeled as high quality. That impression (linked to hints of future income) is one successful way to reach out to recruit transfer students, and the cost issue can have an inverse relationship to that effort. In simple terms, colleges and universities have found that being more expensive makes it easier to claim higher quality. It even raises school standing in the rankings.
There is a better, even less evil, way to recruit transfer students. Far more than freshmen, transfer students are concerned with convenience and expedience. Access to online courses, evening and weekend classes, acceptance of credit, and general accommodation and assimilation of transfer students are HUGE issues, often far outweighing (although also influencing through time to degree) cost of attendance. Be seeing you.

A couple of weeks ago, the ongoing drama at the University of Illinois (motto, “Will trade admissions for appointment to U.S. Senate.”) led me to post a note debunking one of the three great myths of college admissions. In case you’ve forgotten, the three great myths of college admissions are:
1) The college admissions process is fair.
2) The college admissions process is complicated.
3) The college admissions process is easy to predict.

I’ve already covered that the process is unfair, and I’ll cover more of that in the future since the general unfairness of the process is one of my favorite subjects. Today, however, a bit about how very simple admissions can be.

If you were able to get the resumes of the staff members in most admissions offices that review applications, you would find a HUGE number of them that are recent college graduates. I don’t mean, mind you, that they just finished their Nobel Prize-worthy dissertations for their Ph.D.’s and are taking time off from rocket science and quantum physics to read your application. Actually, most admissions file reviewers are the same admissions “officers” you see at college fairs and high school visits. By and large, those individuals recently (as in the past two years) finished their bachelor’s degrees, and this gig in admissions is their first full time job.

Speaking of first full time jobs, a giant SHAMLESS PLUG to one of my favorite George Mason University alumni, Kevin “BDK” McCarthy. Kevin took an internship with one of our local D.C. area radio stations as a student. He accepted HEAPS of abuse in return for opportunities at the microphone and has managed in just a couple of years to parlay that into being one of the hottest up and coming film critics in the country. Apart from creating a job/career for himself, he has also managed to make me INSANELY jealous by getting to sit down with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Check out his movie review site so you can share in my envy.

Before I get heaps of complaints from colleagues (or whining from my staff) I need clarify that I am NOT saying that admissions people aren’t every bit as smart and hard working as Kevin. Many are quite (ahem) brilliant. There is, however, no standardized test to become an admissions officer, and there are no sources (of which I am aware) for checking what scores those staff members received back when THEY were applying to college, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that there are some smart people working in this field. However, and I say this implying no ill will toward any of my colleagues at any institution anywhere, there are a fair share of knuckleheads who occupy desks in admissions offices across the country.

In other words, one does not need brilliance to perform the task of reviewing applications and selecting students for admissions. It also doesn’t take all that much training. I’ve experimented with this by taking a sample of applications, taking out all the names and personal information, and showing them to groups of teachers, guidance counselors, students, and parents, giving only about fifteen minutes of instruction each time. Amazingly, they will all pretty much make the same decisions. In fact, they will even make the same decisions my “experienced” and “highly trained” admissions staff made.

Why is it so easy? In another post I explained that the vast majority of decisions are decided on academic record more than anything else. Even at the most competitive institutions, there is enough difference in scores, grades, essays, and the rest to be able to sort students fairly well. Most admissions officers that I’ve met in my career tell me that reading applications is the least interesting part of their job, and usually by the second year in admissions I have staff members begging me for more of almost any other assignment.

Considering how very simple process this process can be and how decisions are very consistent no matter who is doing the reviewing, you may think that the outcomes are VERY predictable. WRONG. You’ve fallen prey to the third myth, but that’s a tale for another day. Be seeing you.”