Myths and Tradeoffs The Role of Tests in Undergraduate Admissions (1999) / Chapter Skim
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What Do Colleges Really Do?
What Do Colleges Really Do?
Pages 10-16
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From page 10... ...
Factors that may be weighed as institutions deliberate about admissions decisions include the needs of different academic departments; overall goals for academic quality; a desire for athletes, musicians, campus leaders, and the like; a desire to maintain alumni loyalty, by accepting legacy students, for financial and other reasons; a desire for geographical and gender balance; and a desire for racial and ethnic diversity. Every institution strikes its own balance among these and other factors, and the right of institutions to do so has been explicitly upheld by the Supreme Court in its 1978 ruling in the Bakke case.
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From page 11... ...
, test scores, and class rankings; interviewing students; reading student essays and recommendations; consulting with faculty and other administrators; recruiting individual students or categories of students; reviewing the performance of students iThe Bakke decision applies to public institutions throughout the United States except in areas in which it has been explicitly superceded: the region served by the fifth court circuit, which decided the Hopwood case, and states that have passed referenda limiting affirmative action, California andWashington.
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From page 12... ...
The recent investigation of the effects of affirmative action by William Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River, for example, documents "a real wage premium associated with enrollment at an academically selective institution," as well as other, more qualitative benefits, and others have found similar results (Bowen and Bok, 1998:128; see also Kane, 1998:440448~.2 Given these benefits, as well as the countless other factors that contribute to institutional reputations, it is no wonder that some institutions attract as many as eight or ten candidates for every available place. Because a majority of the self-selected applicants for these institutions are academically strong, such schools can hardly rely on numerical formulas in composing their freshman classes.
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From page 13... ...
Such schools often have complex eligibility requirements for individual departments, required placement tests, and other means of sorting admitted students, and these separate processes have their own implications for fairness. However, the admissions procedures are often quite straightforward, and these institutions rely on formulas not for selection, but to identify among the thousands of applicants they receive those students who meet all of their stated criteria.
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From page 14... ...
Some accounts of approaches to admissions at individual schools are available, but relatively little is known about the range of specific practices and the extent to which they vary. Surveys conducted by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars end admissions Officers, the College Board, Educational Testing Service, American College Testing, and others have answered some basic questions and provided intriguing aggregate data about test takers, test use, and other practices.
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From page 15... ...
What is less common is a public statement that includes a detailed and nuanced picture of the admissions process. In the absence of specific information about the kinds of criteria that most interest a school and the educational goals that dictate those criteria, students and their advisers frequently rely on other sources most particularly, published rankings that weigh quantitative factors fairly heavily in deciding where to apply.
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From page 16... ...
· The use of test scores in the admissions process should serve those institutional goals. · The admissions policies themselves, and their relationship to the institution's goals, should be clearly articulated for the public, so that students can make informed decisions about whether to apply.
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