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[Forum Administrator]

The intense competition that dominates the college-application process at top colleges and universities results in the admission of students for all the wrong reasons, says Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, in Admissions & Financial Aid, a Chronicle special report. In fact, he argues, the process subverts the aims of colleges, which would do just as well by admitting students randomly from a pool of qualified applicants. Does he have a point? Read more...

[Rob Abel, President, A-HEC]

This is an intriguing article that I believe is pointing to a symptom of a much larger issue: Are the so-called "elite" institutions providing leadership in setting measurements and values other than what appears to be a single-minded focus on economic success and prestige?

I personally have three degrees from three elite institutions and a decidedly "corporate view", having just left 25 years of successful corporate achievement to found a non-profit focused on higher education advocacy.  Elite institutions, it seems, are engaged in a self-reinforcing feedback loop with the society in which they exist, that lives off of and amplifies a single value: economic success.  A subsidiary impact of this main loop has been a secondary loop that reinforces the importance of figuring out how to "work the system" to get the best credentials possible.   It seems that our society needs more than that from our leading institutions.  In my opinion, it is these two underlying values that are the root causes for the admissions problem reflected in the posted article.    

When I selected and attended an elite school as an undergraduate physics major in 1977 I literally had no clue what my employment prospects would be.     I was also quite cognizant of my chosen focus, to learn the material and its applicability in-depth and to "learn how to learn" rather than be swayed by the particular grading approach (or, perhaps, the poor teaching skills) of the professor.  I definitely knew many others that were solely focused on doing what it took to achieve an A, regardless of long term learning achieved.  I did not finish at the top of my class, but, became recognized as the person to go to when a really challenging problem or task arose.  This is a learned skill that has served me well in my corporate career.  

I would characterize my appreciation for my "college days" as being a seminal experience in "learning how to learn" whereas I'm pretty sure that my peers "focused on A's" would probably have the same feeling in terms of an experience that taught them "how to work the system". Oddly enough, I see and have seen many successful executives that have come from this ilk.  These are the ones that are at the same time very proud of their academic lineage but will say that they would never return to higher education because they learned so little during the experience (translated: "if I'm not making money it's not worth the time").  

I see these seeds reflected in the high school seniors I know who amaze me with their knowledge of what they have to do to be accepted and what the potential economic benefit of their chosen degree will be.  In other words, the focus on working the system for maximum economic benefit is so engrained it has almost become heredity.   The loop continues to get stronger.  After all, it is those focused on economic success that end up building that endowment.

Which brings me to my suggestion about the posted article.  Rather than randomizing the selection process, which I agree might help, wouldn't we all be better served by addressing the root cause and requiring all our institutions, especially our most prestigious ones, to change how students are measured so that they begin to seed the loop with forces that balance "economic gain" and "working the system"?  For instance, an elite institution that would dare to put into place a measurement system that did not include grades but rather included measurements based on meaningful project accomplishments and/or demonstrated ability to self-direct learning, would start to produce graduates that had stronger values around actual learning and less on competition, prestige, and "working the system".  

What would be the incentive for an elite school to do this other than to become even more prestigious?  As well stated in the posted article, it is the institutions that are benefitting from the feeding frenzy at their gates.  Again, it gets down to leadership and an institution being willing to consider the nation, world, and larger society in which they exist - where high quality education needs to be expanded rather than restricted - and that means that leaders need to demonstrate values that balance prestige and exclusion.

I'm sure there are many other ideas that readers of the Chronicle have for how to seed the system with balancing forces that can help mold the value system of our most precious asset - the graduates we produce that in turn build our society.  I argue that this should be at the heart of how an institution should be addressing this issue - because it is at the core of what our institutions are supposed to care about.  Isn't this the type of solution we need, rather than the band-aid proposed in the article?  I am interested to know what the leaders of our prestigious institutions have to say on this topic?

http://www.ahec.org/

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[Prof. Bruce Rockwood, Bloomsbu]

   This cuts two ways: I agree with Barry's comments. As a Swarthmore alum & a parent, I'd much prefer Swats adopt his view, or else cease even asking for information about family members who previously attended Swats, and I'd like the old place to be less intense and more random. And as a professor at a public university, I think the self-esteem of our own students is negatively impacted by the notion that, somehow, not being somewhere else cuts against them.  Grad & professional schools probably still use graduation from a more or less elite school as a plus that makes a difference -- it may be a handy proxie but there are better ways to assess qualifications.  One thing: apart from using a lottery plus showing the ability to do the work, schools need to consider that personal & family histories are often locked up in college admission preferences apart from the status race, & loyalty needs to be nurtured or it will be lost.

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[Rym AlSalihi, Prog. Coord, SCO]

From an international educator’s perspective, Professor Schwartz’s argument seems like one way of getting top international students who may have the academic abilities to excel but may not be as “groomed” for admission as their American counterparts, to have a better chance of admission into these top colleges. I work with students from the Arabian Gulf, some of whom clearly have what it takes to make it at these top schools, however they almost always fall short when it comes to competing with those students who have started their campus visits in their 9th grade! Students whom I work with do not have that privilege nor can they be prepared as early as that due to the nature of their education system (something that us admission advisors can not do much about!). Unfortunately, despite their preparation and obvious eagerness to excel in  a top US college, they are not always part of the frontline soldiers in the battle for admission! I understand that there may be other factors at work among admission officials when it comes to international students however I can not help thinking that should Professor Schwartz’s theory be embraced by top schools, the chances for our students to make it to their top choice schools will considerably improve.

[Alexander Macmillan]

Pick names of minimally qualified applicants out of a hat, taking turns with other schools?

Sounds like a great solution for schools slightly down from the top of the acasemic  food chain, where yield rates are lower. HYPSM would be prevented from scooping up all the top applicants and leaving the rest to take sloppy seconds.

I don't see the top schools agreeing to "share the wealth" through such a scheme, nor do I see top applicants willing to live with the results and play with the team to which they are assigned.

Remember what happened when Eli Manning got drafted by San Diego?

[Dan Lundquist, dean, Union Col]

An interesting proposal.  Reminds me of medical residency "matches" and the way some selective, non-USA universities operate.

Though the PROCESS would change, one wonders how different the outcome would be for the "capriciously selective" universities... and if introducing an ultimate randomness would have a salubrious effect on the high-aspiration families?

I'm glad the conversation is proceeding!

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[Patrick Mattimore]

    Barry Schwartz' assumptions are more troubling than his unrealistic suggestion that colleges experiment by admitting a class of rejected applicants. Those assumptions stem from the colleges' blind belief in playing follow-the-leader roulette dictated by the magazines' rankings game. Schwartz, for example, feels the necessity to include his own institution, Swarthmore, in a Holy Triumvirate, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, to which it does not belong. That "right" colleges malignancy, which in turn fosters student/parent paranoia, narrows choices for top students and diminishes colleges all along the spectrum, because they did not "make it" according to one magazine  or another.
      Of course, the universities are creative in devising ways to let parents and students know that they are among the elite. As the parent of a college sophomore and a high school junior, I am reminded daily (and have been for the last four years) that the rankings numbers can be manipulated to reflect varying realities, such as the fact that a school is a leader among the comprehensive regional colleges, or that the school has the highest percentage of students choosing to study abroad, according to one survey or another.
     The damage to our universities in allowing magazines to dole out esteem citations is immeasurable. Apart from the very real bribery temptations that must surely exist between colluding college officials concerned with rankings and magazine data collectors, there exists a more fundamental question as to whether university policies should be set at U.S. News and World Reports headquarters.
      There simply is no way to objectively line up colleges in beauty pageant displays to prospective suitors. The American public should demand that colleges stop courting the favor of magazines whose interests have nothing to do with advancing education and everything to do with selling product.

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[Alexander Macmillan]

In reply to Patrick Lattimore's fashionable response, I can only observe that HYPSM were desirable addresses long before USNews "Best Colleges" ever hit the newsstands.

Most of the sour grapes about the "rankings" come from schools that wish they could still hide revealing numbers from potential admits - like they did in the "good old days" before USNews exposed what used to be considered "sensitive and confidential" data to the light of day.

No, I don't think being held accountable "damages" universities - except where the damage is deserved and self-inflicted.  

We don't need to view college admissions as a sport where - as in the NFL - mediocrity is the goal and the college draft is the leveling device designed to achieve it.

[D.Mintz, emeritus/Montclair St]

How very odd! This procedure was advocated by my father about fifty years ago. Specifically, he was concerned about the NYU law school of which he was a proud (and first generation) graduate. He thought, no doubt rightly, that the school, faced with an enormous number of qualified applicants, was distinguishing among them by criteria so subtle (and at best of third or fourth order relevance) as to be specious. The lottery seemed to him the only fair way of getting out of the dilemma.

[Patrick Mattimore]

I agree with Mr. Macmillan that there certainly was a hierarchy of "bests" long before U.S. News came upon the scene. Doing away with the rankings game has the added disadvantage of possibly locking schools into a mystical placement on the continuum that has little to do with the school's quality.
Where I disagree with Mr. Macmillan are his market-driven assumptions that (a) ranking the colleges by magazines tells us anything objectively qualitative about the colleges (b) even if the magazines could produce worthwhile data it is subject to manipulation and graft and (c) the magazines are the appropriate means to drive educational policy.

[teacher of AP and SAT]

Three comments:
1. Contesting Dr. Schwartz's belief that "Everything they do is calculated to produce better credentials -- high grades, great SAT scores, impressive extracurricular activities. They choose classes that play to their strengths, rather than those that might correct their weaknesses or nurture new interests." I teach  high school juniors and seniors: they are passionate, not exploitative, about their building houses, racing cars, tutoring other students.... I teach an extra period because my SAT and AP Language courses, although having lower grades and more writing than college prep courses, are oversubscribed.
2. I have read many assumptions about the criteria used by admissions offices, I haven't seen a response from an admissions officer. High GPA's and SAT's may by accompanying, not determining, traits. I'm not an admissions officer, but I think that admissions officers, after determining a pool of scholastically qualified candidates, look for what a candidate can contibute to the undergraduate experience at a university. I had ok SAT's and GPA, but (I think) my trombone got me into Princeton, where I played in the orchestra, marching and jazz bands, the Triangle Club pit crew, and local night spots. A high school classsmate, John Lithgow, a good student, was a superb actor and artist. Harvard accepted him, and his success on stage and in films shows it (Harvard) should have.
3. Questioning Mr. Mattimore's "Apart from the very real bribery temptations that must surely exist between colluding college officials concerned with rankings and magazine data collectors, there exists a more fundamental question as to whether university policies should be set at U.S. News and World Reports headquarters", I ask, "Prove it: give one specific example of a college bribing a magazine, or a university policy determined by a magazine."

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[student at Colorado College]

Rob Abel wrote:

[[For instance, an elite institution that would dare to put into place a measurement system that did not include grades but rather included measurements based on meaningful project accomplishments and/or demonstrated ability to self-direct learning, would start to produce graduates that had stronger values around actual learning and less on competition, prestige, and "working the system".]]

As a student who likes the whole learning thing, but who also stresses a lot about getting into grad school, I think this would be a far less depressing alternative for the high achievers than to know that it's all a crapshoot (do I have what it takes to get into Yale? Maybe, and I do like their graduate program, but I've heard scary things about New Haven and I like the atmosphere of UW Madison's grad program in my field better.  Random selection of qualified applicants doesn't take into account students matching the schools, for example.).  

It's bad enough watching the current seniors stressing out about graduate acceptances they can't do anything about; I'd hate to listen to the whining if they were picked out of a hat (and probably become one of the whiners myself in another year).

My GPA is only decent (3.5) as far as I can tell, but I ask questions, I'm engaged with the material, I talk to professors about random things I've read outside of class, I independently research things that interest me, and I love learning and research and writing.  Currently, it's pretty hard to show most of this on an application form.

I don't like the random selection idea at all; my self esteem frankly isn't good enough.  I also don't like the cutthroat competition to have the spiffiest CV.  Somewhere in there should be a different form of application that shows the things that matter.

And the reason I took honors classes in high school and participated in extracurriculars was because regular classes were slow, boring, and full of people who weren't interested in the material, and I liked my extracurricular activities.  Looking good on college applications was a bonus; the same was true for the majority of honors students in my high school.

[Patrick Mattimore]

AP teacher asks me to prove two things. First, that there has been a bribe of a data gatherer by a college official. I cannot prove it. Nor did I suggest that I could. My contention is that the very real possibility exists that under the table payoffs are being made without the public being aware of it. Certainly, there are a variety of parallel instances in our history (payola scandals, contractor bids) in which subjective judgments of worth are manipulated by parties that benefit from the judgments. Eliminating the magazines as the judges of college worth (a task for which they have no particular qualifications) would also eliminate the real possibility of behind-the-scenes manipulations.

My second task was to prove that magazine rankings drive colleges. The evidence that colleges are allowing the magazines to push agendas is less difficult to show. One need only receive the countless mailings, visit college Websites, or travel to the colleges themselves and take a tour (I have done all of that) in order to understand how colleges pitch themselves according to their rankings.

More specifically, colleges now routinely manipulate yield (the percentages of students accepted at a particular college who attend that college) in order to look good. High yield is one factor magazines use to rank colleges. One way in which colleges manufacture yield is to accept high percentages of legacy applicants (who traditionally attend parents' alma maters at higher rates). Another way to manufacture high yield is to accept large percentages of early decision candidates, since at most colleges those acceptances are binding.
Another criteria by which colleges are judged is selectivity. Colleges can and do encourage unqualified applicants to apply thereby increasing rejections.
Have I done the statistical analysis to support the claim that colleges manipulate yield and selectivity? No, I have not. In that sense, I indeed, cannot prove anything. But these are nevertheless very real possibilities that would be eliminated if the public and the universities stopped being guided by magazine rankings.

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[Monica Inzer, Hamilton College]

Mr. Schwartz:

I invite you to sit in with our admission committee at Hamilton College.  I have a hard time believing we could reduce our selection process to a random sampling from the top cut.  Our process is one with great integrity, and while it isn't always efficient and/or perfect, it is thoughtful and with students' best interests in mind.  And, our decisions include the factor of "fit" (not for retention rankings for USNWR, but rather for the well being of the student).  I'd love the opportunity to have you join us for a day to see if you might, perhaps, change your mind.

Monica Inzer
Dean of Admission and Financial Aid
Hamilton College
Clinton, NY

[peewee at no-name U]

I am curious to know if the good Dr. Schwartz would be willing to apply the same process when determining who teaches at which institution? Couldn’t a pool of good enough candidates be gathered together and then be randomly selected to teach at various colleges? Perhaps, Dr. Schwartz would be willing to give up his spot at Swarthmore for no-name U?  Anyone who has been to a prestigious school knows there is immense pressure on professors (especially untenured ones), to the point where many of them suffer mentally and physically (lots of broken marriages, etc.). Perhaps, random assignment of jobs would allow professors to lead more normal lives. Why ever select for the very best, when mediocre will do?