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9. Recently, many colleges have acknowledged at least some of these problems, and have pledged to help make the admissions process more healthy and fair.
Facing pressure from many different sources, including parents of applicants, concerned alumni, and even lawmakers, colleges have begun to acknowledge and address some of the problems just listed. In particular, many colleges have begun a concerted effort to make the process more healthy by reducing excessive stress in the competition for college admission and more fair by expanding access to students from low-income families. (In contrast, though, colleges seem to have little interest in acknowledging or ending certain unfair advantages they extend to high-income families, e.g., the practice of development cases.)
Most recently, in January 2018 more than thirty colleges began sharing their financial aid information with MyinTuition, a free online tool that applicants can use to easily calculate the out-of-pocket cost for them of each school. This addresses the problem that most colleges publish inflated tuition rates, intending to offer almost everyone a discount. These inflated rates have the effect of scaring off many well-qualified students from low-income families.
A similar but broader initiative, The Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success, began in 2016. It is a consortium of over one hundred colleges, including all of the Ivies and Stanford, that have pledged to make the admissions process more ethical and more accessible, especially for low-income applicants. To become a member of the coalition, a college must prove its commitment to certain ethical practices: demonstrating that they admit a certain percentage of low-income and underrepresented students, that they offer responsible financial aid, leaving students with minimal debt, and that they maintain a high graduation rate. Drawing on research that shows the benefits of beginning college advising from the beginning of high school, the Coalition has a website with free advice, helpful information, and digital storage for teens to keep track of their creations and accomplishments as they begin to think about college. Later, they can then easily apply to member colleges through the same website.
The Coalition not only seeks to ensure ethical practices by colleges but also promotes ethical reflection and growth in applicants. This can be seen in the essay topics for the Coalition’s application. The first prompt asks applicants to describe “an experience that either demonstrates your character or helped to shape it.” The second asks them to describe “a time when you made a meaningful contribution to others in which the greater good was your focus.” The third asks them to describe “a time when you’ve had a long-cherished or accepted belief challenged” and how they responded.
Another national initiative that emerged in 2016, the Turning the Tide report, also seeks to promote a more ethical approach to admissions for both colleges and applicants. The report, a product of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, has the full title Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and The Common Good Through College Admissions. It details the dangerous effects and unfair outcomes of the current college admissions process and makes specific recommendations for how to make it more fair, healthy, and conducive to compassionate and responsible behavior.
The report includes a pledge from almost 200 colleges, including all of the Ivies, to abide by these recommendations. These colleges have pledged to reduce the pressure over standardized tests by de-emphasizing them or making them optional, and to reward quality over quantity in AP’s and extra-curricular activities. They also pledged to reward applicants who show “ethical citizenship,” especially in their "genuine investment" in service to others that is “sustained,” “authentic,” and “meaningful.” In addition, they have pledge to reward applicants who show “ethical engagement” with family and those around them on a daily basis. Announcing that they are wary of applicants who cheat or who try to “game” the admissions system, these colleges have pledged to look for applicants who show “authenticity, confidence and honesty” in expressing themselves in their own “original voice” in their college applications.[1]
As the title "Turning the Tide" suggests, the colleges endorsing these recommendations are hoping to bring about a new era of college admissions, one that they hope will be a specially ethical era of college admissions. It is worth considering whether this kind of epic shift will in fact happen and what it would mean for young applicants facing the admissions process today and in the years to come.
In the interviews I conducted with high school college counselors, I found a unanimous desire for these kinds of changes to take place, but many were skeptical that all of these colleges would really follow through with these pledges. Many were also skeptical that these changes would reduce the stress and pressure that young applicants feel.
My interviews with college admissions leaders convinced me that they were indeed committed to making the process as fair and ethical as possible, and that they were genuine in seeking applicants with strong ethical character traits. More than one insisted that their college had begun these admissions practices long before Turning the Tide; they saw the report as a sign that other colleges were finally catching up.
My research suggested two additional, ulterior reasons why colleges would want to make some of these changes. Popular anger at colleges over college admissions stress and unfairness threatens their public image. A public pledge to make these changes may benefit a college’s public relations, something that becomes especially important as colleges rely more and more on donations rather than tuition for their funding. Also, instituting admissions practices that include a significant attention paid to inscrutable, immeasurable factors like ethical character helps to shield colleges from having their admissions decisions second-guessed by law courts or the public.
Importantly, several of these admissions leaders also pointed out that they face strong institutional demands to uphold high standards for grades and test scores; the “character piece” of admissions, the attention they would give an applicant’s ethical character, would always be in addition to (not instead of) the attention they give to the applicant’s grades and test scores. Put another way, among applicants with roughly equal grades and test scores, a strong sense of the applicant’s ethical character was now more likely than ever to be the deciding factor that makes this applicant stand out from the others.
The fact that colleges began participating in efforts like the Coalition for Access and MyinTuition adds further support to the assertion expressed in Turning the Tide that we are entering a new era of college admissions. The efforts of individual colleges, beyond these broad coalitions, gives further evidence for this conclusion. For example, The New York Times reports that Trinity College nows “look for evidence of 13 characteristics — including curiosity, empathy, openness to change and ability to overcome adversity — that researchers associate with successful students.”[2]
At the very least, Turning the Tide and the other recent initiatives show that ethical values and character traits, and the ability to articulate them, have become central to discussions among colleges and their expectations for admissions. As this message continues to filter through to high schools, this emphasis on ethical character will almost certainly become much more central to how young applicants approach the process.
What do these changes mean for applicants? Whether or not some colleges are able to fulfill what they have pledge in signing the Turning the Tide report, the pledge itself will prompt new expectations for admissions among applicants, thereby changing the admissions process as a whole. The important question is how these changes will affect young applicants and how can they best respond to them. Some of the high school college counselors I spoke with expressed frustration that colleges were willing to take the pressure off of grades and test scores only in the sense that they are adding another requirement alongside them. They worried that students would remain just as stressed and over-competitive about grades and test-scores, but would now face an additional stress of needing to show things like “ethical engagement.”
I also worry that these new expectations require a mastery of concepts and vocabulary that young applicants may find unfamiliar and puzzling. Especially when it’s a matter of presenting themselves, and when they feel that so much is as stake, each degree of uncertainty or confusion can produce a huge increase in stress. I suspect that many young people will be frustrated and confused by some of these abstractions (“character,” “the greater good,” "ethical engagement") and daunted by the demand to bare something deeply personal about themselves that fits these abstractions.
The need to work through these abstract concepts and then find them exemplified in their own lives is understandably daunting. (I don’t know many college educated adults who would find it easy to write a succinct, insightful, well-written essay in response to these essay prompts.) Clearly, applicants facing this new era of college admissions need personalized, professional guidance as they navigate these new expectations.
This, I think, will be the greatest challenge of this new era of college admissions, one not well addressed by any of these initiatives. Inadequate college counseling for applicants had already been a central problem, and one that contributed to several other problems. Many schools have college counselors who face a workload that prohibits the kind of one-on-one counseling required to best serve applicants. The sort of soul-searching questions that are promoted in this new era would require more, not less, personalized guidance.
As I see it, the most immediate benefit of this new era is not so much a universal improvement of the process for all applicants as much as the opening of a new path to success, one that is available to all applicants if they have the right guidance. An alignment of interests and values between colleges and applicants results in the fact that what is good for the applicant as a whole person is now more than ever also good for the applicant’s chances of admission to selective colleges.
Citations:
[1] Richard Weissbourd, Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and The Common Good Through College Admissions, Executive Summary, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2016, p. 1-6.
[2] Eric Hoover, "What Colleges Want in an Applicant (Everything)," New York Times, November 1, 2017.