Pearl Lo, Julie Park (with whom I politely disagreed here; scroll down), Nancy Wong, Jia Zheng, OiYan Poon, and Kelly Rosinger published a paper last month for something called the College Admission Futures Co-Laborative.
Their main point is that test-free admission policies — under which the admission office doesn’t look at applicants’ test scores even if applicants submit them — are good. Lo et al. say admission officers feel comfortable with these policies, like them, and think they increase diversity.
Lo et al. conducted a survey to learn those things. The sample size is (ahem) 10, so we won’t put too much stock in these conclusions, but let’s see what we can learn.
Test scores save colleges money
Here’s what stood out to me the most. If you’ve worked with me one-on-one or taken my online class on academics, you know that the first round of cuts in admission removes the applicants whose grades and test scores fall short of a given school’s standards.
These survey results support that claim. Respondents said that going test-free forced admission readers to spend more time on each application. One respondent said:
“Many readers don’t admit this, but they use numbers as shortcuts far too often, so this requires them to slow down, read the full app, a [sic] fully consider a student’s achievements and triumphs.”
Lo et al. say cutting off that shortcut is good:
“[R]eading applications without considering standardized tests could help admissions officers identify talented students, through carefully reading all parts of the application instead of leaning on the test score as a shortcut.”
“[T]est-free policies may encourage admissions professionals to read applications more carefully—a welcome development, but one that will likely require additional investments in staffing and resources to support a comprehensive review of students.”
This is an odd claim. Labor is a cost. Lo et al. are acknowledging that removing test scores makes the admission process less efficient. Test-free admission requires more man-hours to get the same throughput, so I expect many schools will continue to use test scores as a labor- and cost-saving shortcut.
What does that mean for your kid? He or she should take a standardized test. Learn how to get the best scores possible in my online class.
Diligence is diligence
I guess Lo et al. don’t do much due diligence on pipelines.
In my day job, I perform due diligence on energy assets: power plants, pipelines, etc. That job is similar to admission in some ways. Maybe a pension fund wants to know if it should buy a solar developer. It asks my coworkers and me to assess the developer and advise “yes, buy it” or “skip this one.” Admission officers are doing the same thing. They look at a kid, rather than an asset, and say “yes, let her in” or “skip this one.”
(This is a new day job! I can talk about my old one in a year.)
Let’s now imagine the UC Berkeley admission office picks up a little due diligence consulting during the slow season. CalPERS comes to them and asks them to look into some solar projects or refineries or veterinary practices or whatever. Let’s imagine the conversation.
UC Berkeley: Sure, we can take a look for you. But just so you know, we practice test-free admission and EBITDA-free due diligence. In fact, we’re EBITDA-blind: even if the target company submits their historical financials, we won’t look at them.
CalPERS: What? Why not?
UC Berkeley: We find that ignoring EBITDA really forces us to slow down and consider the target company’s achievements and triumphs. EBITDA and other numbers are just shortcuts.
CalPERS: But we’re paying you by the hour! I want to know a sound answer as quickly as possible. It sounds like your approach costs more for worse results. Bye!
Agency problems
I’ve had a hunch that individual admission officers at elite colleges want to act on their ideological convictions more than their institutional paymasters allow. Lo et al. suggest this hunch is right.
One of the surveyed admission officers said test-free admission “make[s] the process more equitable” and “take[s] the pressure off to not worry about whether our test average would go up or down (even by a few points).”
If we read between the lines here, we see an admission officer wanting to let in kids that fit his/her ideological preferences (“more equitable”) but not getting to because more senior administrators “worry about whether our test average would go up or down.” Test score ranges dropping would push the college down the US News ranking and increase the riskiness of the incoming class.
Taking away test scores gets rid of that conflict.
What do the ideological tendencies of admission officers mean for your kid? Make sure his or her extracurriculars and essays have what I call NPR appeal, regardless of his or her own political views. Let’s discuss it in a one-on-one session.