Since the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the consideration of race in college admissions, colleges have struggled to find their footing. College Transitions publishes a pretty accurate selectivity guide. Their data show that only about 35 colleges are considered Most Selective, accepting less than 15% of applicants and having test scores in the 25%ile of 1340. Another 40 or so are Highly Selective, accepting fewer than 35% of applicants and having average test scores in the 25%ile % of 1280. Another 40 or so admit fewer than 50% of their students with a 25%ile score of 1210 are considered Very Selective
Out of the almost 3000 4-year colleges, there are approximately 100 that admit fewer than half of their applicants. Of the rest, their major concern is filling their classes. Since March of 2020, 64 colleges have closed and many more are at risk of closing. The number of colleges cutting back programs, merging and closing has reached epidemic proportions.
As one moves down the selectivity ladder, colleges are less concerned with the composition of their class and more concerned with simply filling their classes. One empty dorm room can cost a college tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
The elite, extremely selective colleges are not seeking to fill a class; they seek to craft a class. These colleges have many constituencies to please who provide a shopping list of priorities. The orchestra may need a trombone player, the philosphy department needs at least a dozen majors to survive, the womans’ soccer team needs a goalie and the enrollment manager informs the admissions director that they need more full-pay kids. Priorities such as meeting Title IX gender fairness issues, limiting the financial aid budget, funding a capital campaign and populating the new Human-Computer Interaction major all affect admissions decisions.
These colleges use holistic admissions to achieve their goals. Some public colleges use an “academic index” process to admit students based almost wholly on statistical data: GPA, test scores, class rank (if available), and possibly a measure of the challenge of the student’s schedule and some ranking of the high school attended. Holistic admissions has admissions staff read and rank everything in the file, recommendation letters, essays, interview notes, points of contact, match for the university, strength of the academic course load, test scores, high school attended, perceived interest and personal qualities. Generally, the admissions staff member who has a certain territory (usually the person who visits that area’s high schools) is the first reader and gives initial rankings. There is usually a second reader as well who also rates and ranks who they read.
The rare students who are clear admits or clear denies are generally given a decision without needing to go through an admissions committee. Admissions Committees generally are the entire admissions staff, but some may break them up into smaller groups. The person who has a certain territory generally introduces their own students from there and frequently advocates for them. It is up to the committee to choose a class that has a gender and racial balance, creates a positive community, has intellectual depth and satisfies all the shopping lists.
The students’ ratings and rankings are generally a major part of the discussion. The most important ratings are those that are highest on the college’s list of institutional priorities, their shopping list if you will. Highest on most college’s shopping list is academic excellence. For the most elite colleges, a perfect academic record is necessary but not sufficient for acceptance. Applications are often flagged for a particular purpose, which can result in a second look. These include legacies, development cases, and athletes. Prior to the Supreme Court Decision, these frequently included whether the applicant was a student of color.
This year, though, colleges were constrained from giving preference in admissions to students of color. Many colleges used proxies in order to maintain diversity on their campuses. They flew in low-income students. They added an optional question on the application about hardships in order to reveal student’s backgrounds growing up. Some colleges increased their recruiting efforts to visit schools where they could find highly capable students of color and others used direct mail to reach these students.
Colleges have had varied levels of success. Yale, for instance, saw no change in its Black enrollment while MIT and Amherst saw significant declines. College admissions is nuanced and complex and many other factors led to this being a difficult year in admissions, particularly the troublesome rollout of the revised FAFSA. The Supreme Court decision likely had an impact on the compositions of the class of 2029 at elite colleges, but it is impossible to gauge the extent of it. When the Common Data Set numbers are available, we may be able to draw conclusions that are impossible now with the limited data available.
Moving forward, the dust will settle and colleges will begin to coalesce around a few strategies that are shown to be effective. Let’s start with the 35 Most Selective Colleges. These colleges generally have enormous resources and can deny admission to almost flawlessly talented students. Admitted students may not always need a “hook” to be admitted to these colleges, but they do need to be distinctive, not just extremely talented.
These colleges could effectively use proxies to maintain diversity. It is possible that some of these ideas would result in giving an admissions preference to some economically disadvantaged students who are not students of color but these colleges are wealthy enough to fund them as well.
This ranking sheet and rating system, provided by College Master’s Independent Consultant Ed Custard, shows an actual ranking sheet from a highly selective college decades ago. Everything is ranked and given a number and all students get a ranking of some sort. A student may be ranking 124 out 1590 at a public college or a 3B, 3 academic rating and a B non-academic rating, at a college using holistic admissions.
One way of addressing the diversity issue is placing proxies on the college rating sheets. Each college could modify and indivdualize their proxies according to their assets and their needs. Each proxy would have a goal attached.
These Most Selective colleges may want to have a separate proxy for Pell Grant eligible students with a particular goal of a percentage of the class being enrolled Pell eligible students. Another proxy may be students coming from a delimited number of high schools or zip codes that have high populations of under-represented students. Other proxies could be for first-generation students, and students from single-parent households.
These colleges can afford these measures, which in all likelihood bring in students with large financial aid needs. It is vital that these colleges have diverse campuses. Students learn from students different from them. And, as The Shape of the River so thoroughly pointed out, the denial of access to the reins of power and wealth for persons of color continues to this day and there continues to be a societal need to address it.
Colleges that are less well-endowed might have fewer proxies that strain their financial aid budget, but still should use individualized proxies to meet their institutional needs. College can continue to recruit and admit with the purpose of providing opportunity and access to the most vulnerable and economically disadvantaged in our communities while maintaining the goal of having diverse, culturally rich student bodies.