Mark Edmundson on teaching - and learning

If you haven't yet read about it, Mark Edmundson's new book "Why Teach?" sounds quite interesting - for a start, to anyone with kids in high school and college, but also for people with an interest in the future of education (not to mention the costs of college). There's an excerpt from the book on TheAtlantic.com titled "'Where Should I Go to College?'" in which Edmundson distinguishes universities that are more scholarly enclaves from those he calls "corporate cities." (He acknowledges that neither exists "in its pure form.") Here's how Edmundson outlines high school preparation for either kind of college:

High school now is about being an all-arounder. You've got to be good at your classes, but you've also got to shine as a citizen and a general hand- waving, high- enthusiasm participant. To do this, you've often got to make yourself into a superb time manager. You give each activity the amount of time and effort required so that you can reach the so- called standard of excellence. You give it that much, but you give it no more. Do I really need to read the whole book to get an A in English, the student asks herself? Probably she doesn't. Do I need a tutor and extra time to score a top grade in math? Perhaps yes. If so, the money is well spent and so is the time. Will it look better to put in two hours a week volunteering at the hospital or four at the soup kitchen? Does the guidance counselor say that both will look about the same to the college admissions board? Then better to do the hospital: You'll need those extra two hours for prom committee.

The article is worth reading in its entirety. You can also read a review of the book in the NY Times here. I hope you - and your kids - find the great teachers out there.

College admissions, and admissions yields

Now that the college acceptances are arriving, it's time for another post in my occasional series about the numbers in the college application process. Previous posts, about the college admissions landscape generally and the early application process, are available here and here.

The college application process, grueling as it is for students and their parents, is a two-step process. (Economists call it a two-player game, where neither side has complete information. Here's a link to an academic paper, "Student Portfolios and the College Admissions Problem" if you want to know more.) Students have to choose which colleges to apply to, whether to apply early, and then, once the applications are done, they have to wait. But once the colleges have notified applicants of their admissions decisions, they in turn have to wait and see which accepted students will accept them. (The number of accepted students enrolling is the 'yield' element in the college rankings.) The switch from seller’s market to buyer’s market is unsettling for parents and students. It’s even harder for the colleges: if they have guessed wrong - and the students they have admitted decide to go somewhere else - their yield numbers will decline, as might their selectivity numbers. (I will take up the issue of college rankings, again, in a later post.)

Consider Macalester College. It's a small liberal-arts school in St. Paul, Minnesota. From 2007 through 2010, the number of applications stayed fairly steady, floating around an average of about 4750 applications. In 2011, the number increased by over 40%, to more than 6100 applications. This increase generated a fair amount of commentary, eg, in the New York Times and the Huffington Post, but nobody was quite sure what had happened. But colleges have to pick the right students from among their applicants. Over the four years from 2007 to 2010, Macalester had done just that, and the number of admitted students who enrolled increased steadily. As a concomitant, Macalester admitted no students from its waitlist in 2009 and 2010. But something happened last spring. Macalester admitted more students who decided not to attend than usual, and the number of accepted students who enrolled declined sharply. Of the 196 students who accepted a place on the waitlist, 196 were admitted. (Source: Macalester Common Data set, 2007-2010)

Is this really a surprise? It probably shouldn't have been. Academic work suggests that joining the common application will increase applications and decreases yield. (You can get the relevant paper as a pdf from the National Bureau of Economic Research here.) Is there a lesson? I would draw two: context matters. I've said this before - but the short version is, don't get too excited about year to year changes. And, for parents of kids getting ready to apply for college, take a step back. Think hard about what's happened over the last couple of years at the school. Don't depend too much on a college's yield to tell you much, if anything, about the quality of the school. Whether the school is a good match for the student is much more important than the yield.

I will be away for the next week, but check back next week for more posts, including more about strategic planning from guest blogger Marta Siberio.

College applications in the US - Early Admissions

This is the second in a series of posts about the college admissions process in the US. You can read the first post in the series, a general discussion of the landscape, here. Today I am going to talk about early admissions policies at selective colleges.

There are basically three kinds of early admissions programs. Under binding early decision (ED) programs, the student commits to withdrawing all other applications and attending a college if admitted. Under early admissions (EA) programs, students signal a keen interest in a college but do not have to commit to attend the college if admitted. Under rolling admissions programs, colleges start admitting students early in the year, then keep admitting students until a class is filled. Rolling admissions programs are non-binding. Large state universities often use rolling admissions programs.

If college admissions are a geologically active landscape, Early Decision is one of its volcanoes. Parents and students have learned that applying early under a binding ED program can increase the chances of admission, and academic studies bear this insight out. But students who are admitted to more than one college, in the spring, can pick among (or negotiate) financial aid awards, an option that is foreclosed under binding ED programs. Since students applying to early may get a significant admissions advantage,* that's a significant trade-off. 

Thus whether to apply early, and where, are two important decisions applicants make early in the fall of senior year. But it's not a simple decision. The book “The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite” (2003) by Avery, Fairbanks, and Zeckhauser makes clear that despite the admissions advantage, simply applying early does not necessarily increase a student’s chances of acceptance. The authors advise: look for a good match and understand that their key insight is that “applicants stand to gain most from applying early when they have moderate chances of admission in the regular process.” If a student has only a poor chance of admission in the regular process, then applying early will not help; if the student has a good chance of getting in during the regular process, then he or she will probably be admitted later in the spring. 

So the application has to be to the right school that is a good match for the student. And on top of all the other challenges, extremely selective colleges keep changing the game. Yale and the University of Chicago have non-binding Early Action programs. In 2006, Harvard and Princeton ended their early decision programs. In 2011, they reinstated them, as non-binding Early Action programs.

What is happening this year? The New York Times reports an increase in the number of early applications in the fall of 2011; Bloomberg News reports a decrease in the overall number of applications. It appears that Harvard and Princeton’s reinstatement of Early Action programs may have resulted in fewer applications to other Ivy League schools. On the other hand, because of its reinstated program and its outreach efforts, Harvard reported greater diversity in its early action applications in the fall of 2011 than it had seen in the past:

Compared with the Class of 2011, when 4,010 applied early, African-Americans now comprise 9.1 percent of the pool, a 61 percent increase; Latinos comprise 9.1 percent, a 31 percent increase; Native Americans make up 1.1 percent, a 29 percent increase; and financial aid applicants are nearly 72 percent of the pool, a 9.4 percent increase.   

It may be that two new trends are becoming evident: more students may be applying early, and they may not be applying to as many colleges overall. That number is still to come.  (Unfortunately I cannot seem to format this footnote properly.)*About that advantage. Avery, Fairbanks, and  Zeckhauser put it this way in “The Early Admissions Game”:

Applying early provides a significant admissions advantage, approximately equivalent to the effect of a jump of 100 points in SAT-1 score. Applying early to an ED school provides a slightly larger advantage than applying early to an EA college.  . . . Moreover, we find that the claim made by some colleges that the pool of early applicants is much stronger than the pool of regular applicants is part exaggeration and part myth. Early applicants have slightly higher test scores and high school class ranks than regular applicants at the most selective EA colleges, but early applicants tend to be slightly weaker in these qualifications than regular applicants to ED colleges.

College Applications in the United States – The background

This is the first in a series of posts that will appear over the next few months about the college application process in the US, and in particular the numbers aspect of that process. But first, some background.

Applying to college in the United States is a head-spinning, gut-churning merry-go-round for high school seniors and their parents. The process starts as early as ninth grade, when students have to decide about taking SAT IIs. (There’s a school of thought that it’s a good idea to take, say the biology SAT II right after you’ve taken the course in ninth grade. There’s another that says it’s better to wait, and take it during the year the student is taking AP Biology.) Everything accelerates as the student advances through school, taking PSATs, SATs, and Advanced Placement tests. (And that description doesn’t begin to touch how the parent feels as she watches her child’s progress.)

Many things have changed in the college admissions landscape over the past 25-30 years, since the parents of today’s high school students applied to college. The Common Application has made applying easier, at least in some ways. The US News and World Report and other college ranking systems have made some schools appear more desirable. Web sites like College Confidential help students pick schools they are likely to be accepted to. The entire college application process has become the subject of academic study. It can be overwhelming.

And with vast amounts of information available, it’s hard to get a sense of the big picture. Today I describe the general landscape. Later posts will cover what colleges are looking for in their applicants, the substantial amounts of information available to colleges and applicants, the Common Application, the ranking system and some critiques of it, tuition and financial aid, the impact on students, and some recommendations for the future.

According to the US Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics, there are more than 2200 four-year degree-granting public or private not-for-profit colleges and universities in the United States, and additional two year public and private colleges and for-profit two and four year programs. Nearly 20 million students are enrolled in post-secondary education. According to the National Association for College Admission Counselors, colleges accept 67% of their applicants.

But for students seeking admission to the handful of selective or highly selective colleges, these numbers provide no comfort. (What makes a college “selective” will be the topic of a later post.) The number of slots available in these approximately 75 colleges has stayed more or less the same over the last 30 years, while the number of students applying to them has increased. (At least one study suggests that this is true regardless of the size of the cohort graduating from high school.) Fewer than 40% (or, in some cases, fewer than 10 or 15%) of applicants will get into those colleges.

So – overall acceptance rates of 67%, with hysteria over a few thousand spots. What happened? A lot of things, as the succeeding posts will show. One big change, as one academic study points out, is that over the last 30 years, the college market has changed from a local or regional one to a national market. High school graduates once went to a local or regional school, and only a few went to a faraway college. Now, colleges try to attract students from far away, and many students travel across the country to attend college. A number of factors have contributed to the change. The author singles out new ease in travel and communications (cell phones, Skype, Facebook, and nationwide calling plans) as two main factors making students more willing to travel further from home to attend college. The Internet has allowed colleges to market themselves directly to student in-boxes. And the rise of the Common Application, particularly the electronic version, has meant that students can apply as easily to distant colleges as to nearby ones. (And to more colleges, but that too will be the subject of a later post.)

This is the first in a series of posts about the college application process based on work done in collaboration with Michelle Slatalla.