The Wall Street Journal’s Naomi Schaefer Riley looks at college admissions, using the University of Chicago as an example, and comes away from it all with this:
As it is, colleges already discount so many of the concrete measures. In addition to ignoring test scores (when it’s convenient), admissions officers have a hard time keeping track of which high schools are rigorous and which are not. The U of C has freshmen matriculating from 900 different high schools this year. What does an “A” mean at any of them? “We don’t know,” Mr. O’Neill replies. What about the essays? More and more kids pay coaches to compose them. The U of C has picked some odd topics to get around this–“Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard” or “Use the power of string to explain the biggest or the smallest phenomenon”–but coaches can get creative, too.
I suspect that what bothers kids most about the process is not the cutthroat competition they face, but the arbitrary nature of the whole thing. You struggle to give schools what they want. But ultimately folks like Mr. O’Neill may simply ignore your grades or your test scores, focusing instead on whether you’ve had the right “experiences” or have the right skin color to be admitted to the sacred city.
This is an oft-repeated critique: Schools are moving away from hard measures of achievement and opting instead for increasingly fuzzy, and constantly moving, admissions standards. But what Riley and others miss is that admissions offices across the country are also marketing themselves more aggressively than ever — and many of them are using a Richmond-based agency, Royall & Company, to do it (disclosure: Mrs. Leahy once worked for Royall).
Never heard of Bill Royall’s firm? That’s not surprising, since he generally shuns publicity (and that the perpetually blinkered RTD hasn’t covered him isn’t surprising either…but that’s a rant for another time).
But Royall helps over 200 schools, including some of the biggest names in the biz, generate large, nationwide applicant pools. The process uses classic direct marketing techniques and a healthy dose of technology to give schools like the University of Chicago (a Royall client) the ability to reach beyond their traditional, regional bases, and target kids based upon any number of criteria including test scores — yes, they do matter, a lot — gender, interests, career aims and more. The whole process can begin as early as the ninth grade.
Kids provide the information themselves — more often than not on the testing forms they complete before they take exams like the PSAT. So when Admissions officers say they want to move away from crude measurements like the SAT, they are being truthful…to an extent. The reality is that their marketing efforts rely on test scores more than they want to admit.
And the schools have reaped enormous benefits. Not only are they attracting more applicants, which allows them to be more selective, it also helps make them into national, recognized brands.
The downside of this success is that it has given rise to bizarre essay questions like the ones Riley notes in her piece. It’s also made it harder for some bright kids to get into top schools. When the applicant pools were smaller, they stood out. But thanks to the wonders of national marketing, that’s no longer the case (unless you’re a legacy).
It’s fine and necessary to question college admissions policies, particularly when those policies seem to be ever-changing. But it’s also important to understand that the schools are working both sides of this game — marketing themselves like mad to get more people to apply, and then playing games with their admissions criteria.
Just remember that the next time your ninth grader gets a letter or an email from a college asking them if they’ve given any thought to life after high school.