Something to think about if your kid has received a college rejection letter

I was sitting in a metal folding chair in a hotel ballroom. The speaker had just said something that hit me so hard that I couldn’t listen to what she said next. I needed to stop and process that statement. I was thinking, “Holy crap!” and “Well, now that she’s said it, it seems so obvious. Why didn’t I figure this out before?”

The speaker was head of admissions at an elite private university. She was talking to a group of elite high school students and their parents, and what she said was this, “It is not my job to make the perfect admissions decision on your kid. No one is paying me to do that. It is my job to build the next freshman class.” She went on to point out something we already knew: The school could only accept a small fraction of the fully qualified applicants.

As high school students, or parents of high school students, or maybe just members of the public with an opinion, we tend to view the process from the outside in. And it’s like looking into a fish bowl; the view is distorted. We tend to walk around with an impression of the process, and we think that it works something like this: The school takes all of the applications and ranks them from first to last. Then it takes enough applications off the top of the list to fill the class, and boom! Done! And because we subconsciously realize that it would be impossible to rank the kids from first to last without considering numerical measures like GPA’s and test scores, we assume these must play a very large role in the process. If my kid doesn’t get in, that means he didn’t rank high enough on the list. The fact is, it doesn’t work that way. A lot of factors come into play. At the end of the admissions period, the incoming class needs to have all kinds of kids: Some who play on the football team and some who play in the band, some who join the Young Democrats and some who join the Young Republicans, some who build robots and some who work on the school newspaper. All of them need to have a shot at doing the course work.

Lots of factors come into play, and it is certain that the school did not make the exact right admissions decision for every single applicant. They may not have made the exact right decision on your kid. I’ve been there, and you have my sympathy. It doesn’t mean they’ve made a value judgment about your kid, and it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have done well there. It just means when they selected the components of the class, they didn’t select your kid. They may have made a mistake. Or maybe not. Either way, the system isn’t broken. Because making the perfect decision on your kid wasn’t one of their goals in the first place.

I'll say it again: Top SAT scores begin in the sandbox!

I've written about this topic before here:  Top SAT scores begin in the Sandbox.  However, it bears repeating:  When I work with high school students who are studying for their college entrance exams, I sometimes see evidence of what I have come to refer to as a Sandbox Deficit.  Children who don't spend enough time in unstructured play fail to develop the foundation for basic math, reading and science.  To compensate, they memorize steps, algorithms and strategies, but that only takes them so far.

Unfortunately, academics are getting pushed to earlier and earlier ages.  The good news is that more people are waking up to the problem.  Spread the news!  Share the studies!  And make time for children to play!

The most recent article I have run across regarding this subject can be found here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/06/a-really-scary-headline-about-kindergarteners/

And here is what Matt Walsh had to say about the same headline referred to in the above article:
http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/02/10/your-5-year-old-failed-a-standardized-test-therefore-he-is-stupid-insane-and-doomed-to-a-life-of-failure/

"Recruiting to reject"

I was reading a blog post earlier today when I came across a new phrase:  "recruiting to reject."  It refers to a practice whereby students who have a snowball's chance in the proverbial hot spot's chance of getting into a college are encouraged to apply anyway.  The college then (predictably for those of us "in the know") rejects the student.  By rejecting these students, the schools admit rate goes down and they look more competitive than they would otherwise.  This, in turn, raises the school's ranking in various lists.  I've seen this going on a various local schools, but I never had a nice phrase to refer to it by until now.

Colleges use various methods of encouraging potential rejects to apply, and I was witness to some of them on a recent visit to a local high school.  I was there to talk to the career counselor.  She wasn't in, but I happened into a room in which an admissions officer from a local public university - I won't say which one because they are both equally guilty, but if you'll note my location you'll see which two I've narrowed it down to - was meeting with a group of prospective applicants.  Among the statements she made:

"We look at your whole application."
"We really look for people who have made A's and B's, but we admit people with bad grades every year.  It really depends on your story."  (Followed, of course, by an anecdote of a kid who failed six courses, but got admitted anyway.)
"Yes, we consider your test scores, but you are more than just your score."

I had to bite my tongue.  What I really wanted to do was jump in and say, "Yes, they will admit you with substandard grades or test scores.  IF you are 6 and half feet tall and have a terrific 3-point shot. Or IF you are a Hispanic Buddhist who will be the first in her family to go to college. Or IF your family has donated money to the school in excess of seven figures."

If you want to see if you are likely to get into a school, go to a website like Cappex. It's free, but you have to sign up.  They have admission trend scattergrams that plot on a grid all of the students signed up with them who applied to a particular school according to their GPA's and test scores.

Here is a sample:

See where the blue and green dots are?  Notice those stray blue and green dots that represent students with low test scores and/or low GPA's?  Those are the basketball-players, the kids of big donors, etc.  They are NOT the applicants who are generally described as "a good kid."  As in, "You know, he's just a good kid."  If nothing about you is VERY unusual (in a good way) then you are not destined to be one of the stray dots.  Consider whether to apply accordingly.

"Young people today can't make change" just took on a whole new meaning

About 20 years ago, I was standing in the checkout line at a cafeteria-style restaurant.  Everyone in line was over the age of 30 because that style restaurant mainly appealed to the older generation.  The checkout clerk, who was probably in her early twenties, rang up the man in front of me, and he handed her a 20 dollar bill.  She punched in the 20.00 and hit return.  Just at that instant, the electricity flickered.  The cash register momentarily went dead and then came back on, but the transaction was lost.  The clerk didn't know what to do.  At first the people in line thought she wasn't sure if the transaction had been recorded or if she needed to repeat it, but that wasn't the problem.  She didn't know how much change to give him.  She remembered the price of his meal.  She knew he had handed her $20.  She couldn't tell what the change should be unless the cash register told her.  Everyone in line knew exactly what the change should be, but she couldn't risk taking our word for it.  A succession of managers was called to the scene until they found someone old enough to know how to make change for a twenty without electronic aid.  Until yesterday that was my "young people don't know how to make change" story.

Yesterday, I was at the cash register paying for an item that cost $7.42.  I reached into my purse, grabbed a ten-dollar bill and then poked around in my change pocket.  I pulled out a quarter, a nickel, a dime and two pennies.  I dropped the change into the palm of the checkout girl and then handed over the bill.  She set the bill aside, spread the coins across her palm and stared at them for 20 seconds or so.  She stared for so long, I began to worry:  Had I grabbed a third penny instead of the dime I was aiming for?  Is she trying to find a tactful way to tell me I've given her the wrong amount?  Finally she looked up, held out the coins and asked, "Is this 42 cents?"

My first thought was:  what in the world would have happened if she had needed to give ME 42 cents in change?  If she can't count out 42 cents, what would she have done?  Grabbed random coins, and if I complained add more random coins?  Call a manager? I wondered how she had been handling this problem up to now, but then I realized:  I may have been the very first customer she has ever had that paid for something in cash.

We are rapidly becoming a cash-less society and as we do, the ability to count change is becoming obsolete. Money-counting lessons will eventually be dropped from the school curriculum, and my question is:  Will this have unintended repercussions?

I frequently have this exchange with my students:

Student:  (staring at 75 ÷ 25)
Me:  How many quarters are in 75 cents?
Student:  Oh. Right.  Duh. (writes 3)

Coinage is an excellent medium for practicing all sorts of math skills that have applications in other places, but how many of those applications will continue to be relevant?  Do we need to be able to do things like divide 75 by 25 in our heads?  Much of the math in the current high school curriculum is unnecessary for the vast majority of adults.  We teach it anyway because we want to leave the door open for our students to choose those careers that need math.  However, there are other things going on when we study math.  What we learn shapes our brains.  For a long time we justified teaching geometry proofs by telling students that proof by deduction teaches us "how to think."  Geometry proofs have largely been dropped from the Common Core curriculum.  (You can read my elegy here.)
Will we see changes for the worse in students' overall cognitive functioning?  Will becoming a cash-less society have an adverse effect on our brains?

A less-biased look at Northeastern University's "meteoric" rise in the U.S. News and World Report ranking.

College rankings have taken a big PR hit in the last year.  Some of it is deserved.  However, as has become the norm in American public discourse, people eager to jump on the “bash the latest unpopular thing” bandwagon have demonstrated a remarkable lack of critical thinking skills.  This is especially sad when the topic is higher education – an institution that should be dedicated to encouraging critical thinking.

An article recently published in Boston Magazine by Max Kutner purports to be about how Northeastern University, located in Boston, managed to rise in the rankings of the U.S. News and World Report by “gaming” the system.  Before going on, it might be useful to note that “gaming the system” is typically defined to mean manipulating the rules in such a way as to gain an advantage.  It is generally understood that the entity “gaming the system” is not breaking the rules.  Rather, the entity is typically following the letter of the rules but not the intent.  Breaking the rules would be subject to disciplinary action of some kind.  “Gaming the system” generally is not.  Despite that, it is also generally understood that “gaming the system” is an unscrupulous act designed to obtain an advantage unfairly.

The article opens with a description of the state of Northeastern University in the early 1990’s.  Their situation was dire:  the school was under-enrolled and under-funded.  There was a real danger that if they could not turn things around, they might have to close their doors.  Enter one Dr. Richard Freeland who is charged by the author with making “gaming the U.S. News ….part of the university’s DNA.”

Here is a list of the things the university did under Freeland’s administration that resulted in a rise in the school’s ranking from 162 to 98:

•       Reduce class sizes
•        Begin accepting the Common Application, which made it easier for students to apply
•        Constructed new dormitories because studies showed that student who lived on campus were more likely to graduate
•        Do some PR to boost the school’s image
•        Report the number of students each year differently to reflect the number of students on campus instead of including co-op students

Wow.  How nefarious of them.  The author emphasizes that Dr. Freeland kept his eyes on the rankings throughout the improvement process.  What he fails to acknowledge is that, while the college rankings are far from perfect, they do include some measures that legitimately affect the quality of education.  Smaller class sizes are not only linked to better learning outcomes, they are also a measure that potential students and their parents find interesting.  Surely no one thinks that making the application process more convenient and accessible is a bad thing.  And if graduation rates needed to be raised (and it seems they did) then building dormitories sounds more like “data-based decision-making” than “gaming the system.”  Oddly, the author carefully avoids telling us how much the graduation rate rose, but rise it must have – the subsequent increase in ranking could not have been obtained otherwise.  On what planet is that a bad thing?

The one item in the list that sounds like it might be shady is the last bullet point in the list.  Northeastern changed their reporting methods.  Dr. Freeland realized that the metric being used by U.S. News hurt schools with strong co-op programs.  Northeastern counted significantly more students each year than were actually on campus, which made it look like the school was spending a lot less per student.  He took his case to the U.S. News statisticians who declined to change their metric, but who explained what they were doing with the numbers and why.  As a result, Northeastern stopped including co-op students who weren’t on campus in their numbers.  Is that dishonest?  I don’t think so.  I think it makes for a more accurate picture of their situation.

The article includes a list of schools caught flat-out lying on the numbers they report to U.S. News.  While the author acknowledges that this does not fall under the category of “gaming the system,” he does offer this as evidence that the rankings are irretrievably broken – an accusation the magazine denies.  Including them tends to – intentionally or otherwise – give the impression that the measures Northeastern has taken are as dishonest as these examples.

Not until the last few paragraphs do we find any evidence of actual “gaming,” and these were introduced after Freeland retired in 2006.  Northeastern stopped requiring foreign students to submit SAT scores.  Foreign students, for whom English is often a second language, can have lower SAT scores.  Not to require scores from foreign students may be a bit shady, although it has recently come to my attention that taking the test represents a true hardship for many foreign students by requiring an overnight trip to a distant city.  Some might consider dropping the requirement an effort to be more understanding.  Then in 2007, the school began a program whereby students could begin at NU in the spring – thus excluding their data from the reporting.  The author states that these excluded test scores and GPA’s are “lower” but offers no evidence for this statement.  They certainly could be, and if they aren’t, one wonders why NU would begin the program.

As a final jab, the author points out that the measures taken to improve educational quality at NU – and quality has undeniably been improved by increasing retention and graduation rates, if nothing else – has cost money, making the school more expensive.  This is undoubtedly true, but it’s an odd accusation to make.  Typically the complaint is that we don’t spend enough on education, or that when we do spend more, we don’t see an improvement in results.  Here is an example of a school that spent more – and it paid off.  The alternative was to close their doors.  Does anyone wish to argue that they should have chosen that as the more honorable course of action?  The price increase does, indeed, make Northeastern one of the more expensive options out there, but price is one of the factors every family should weigh in making decisions about where to send a student to school.

In over 30 paragraphs of writing, the author only mentions 2 possibly unscrupulous methods Northeastern may have used to improve their ranking.  He mentions several instances in which the school used metrics in the ranking to guide decisions that led to improved outcomes.  At one point the author quotes Lloyd Thacker as saying, “Have rankings contributed to anything beneficial in education?  There’s no evidence.  There’s lots of evidence to the contrary.”  As a refutation of that statement, I would point to Northeastern University.

Six Things You Should Do in College

Lately we've been hearing a lot of questions about the benefits of college in general and, more specifically, the benefit of attending a more-expensive, selective college over a less-expensive, less-selective college.  Evidence for the benefits of a college degree remains strong, but pundits are beginning to challenge the benefits of struggling to get into the biggest name school.  Evidence is mounting that what you do while in college matters more than which college you attend.

A new Gallup poll released this summer suggests that there are six choice students can make while in college that will make a difference in their Great Jobs Great Lives index.  The poll looked at five elements of well-being for 29,000 recent graduates:  social support, financial stability, physical health, sense of purpose and sense of community.  One interesting finding?  That students scored higher on the index when they had made these choices in college:

1. Do an internship or hold a summer job in your field of study.
2. Get deeply involved in an extracurricular activity.  (As opposed to shallowly involved in many activities.)
3. Do a long-term academic project - one that takes more than a semester.  It can be for a particular class, a senior thesis project, or an independent research project.
4. Find a professor that makes you excited about learning.  It doesn't have to be in your major.
5. Choose, as your professors, instructors who care about students as people.
6. Find a mentor.  This doesn't have to be someone associated with the university.

Doing these things was more important to the quality of graduates' well-being than their majors or which colleges they attended.  As you travel off to college this fall, keep these six things in mind, and look for opportunities to do them.

READ, dangit!

There exist SAT and ACT tutors who fill out a form after the test outlining for parents why the student didn't get the score they wanted.  I think it's a CYA thing, and I can see the motivation, but it seems a bit mean.  However, if I DID fill out such a form, "Doesn't read enough" would be one of the check-boxes.  "Didn't do what I told him to" would be another, and for many students this would amount to the same thing.

Students (and their parents) are told the importance of reading over and over again.  We all know we should be reading, but many people -- teenagers in particular -- don't.  Even if a student is a big reader, sometimes they don't read a wide enough variety of texts.  How many times have you heard, "They can read ANYTHING! It doesn't matter!  Find something they enjoy!"  This is only true up to a point.  When it comes to college readiness, the ability to read non-fiction at a college level is crucial.  However, you can't count on colleges to teach the student how to do this.  They expect their students to arrive already reading at a college level.  In fact, college entrance exams are specifically intended to measure the ability to do this.  High schools haven't traditionally done such a great job either.  They tend to focus on the types of fictional reading the practice of which will come in handy if you major in English Lit.  The Common Core Standards are supposed to address this issue.  We'll see.

When I get a student who needs work in the reading section, I usually assign reading homework.  I send home articles that were written "for grownups."  The students get to choose what to take home, although I encourage them to choose articles on topics they know little about rather than articles they think they would enjoy.  This is the homework that is least likely to get done.  I'm not sure why.  Is it because they can't bring themselves to read "boring" stuff?  Is it because they don't see the immediate connection between the assignment and improving their test scores?  Is it because the improvement is not as immediate or obvious?

An aside--  If you are reading this, and you are one of my current students:  I can tell when you didn't really read the article.  I may have chosen not to embarrass you, but I know.

Usually when a child's reading score is low, it's because he really doesn't read all that well.  You can't fix that without reading.  So, READ, dangit!

Check back tomorrow for some specific reading suggestions.