Noteworthy National
News in College Admissions
·
The fall of 2013 brought major
changes to the Common Application and, as has been widely reported in the
media, there were numerous functionality issues with the launch of this new
version. On a national level, colleges, students, and school counselors
experienced frustration with numerous technical glitches involved in the
completion and submission of forms.
· The College Board
announced the first major changes to the SAT since 2005. The changes come after
the SAT has faced major challenges, including skepticism from colleges about
the test’s usefulness and competition from the rival ACT test. This new
version, which will be launched in the spring of 2016, will be a test that more
accurately tracks what students learn in school by eliminating obscure
vocabulary words, eliminating the penalty for guessing, making the essay
optional, allowing students complete the exam on paper or electronically.
·
In September of 2012, it
was announced that for the first time in history, more students took the ACT
than the SAT, which is a trend that continued in 2013. Many of the new SAT
changes mirror the ACT, such as the elimination of the guessing penalty and the
optional writing section. There have also been a growing number of colleges
(now close to 800) that have eliminated the SAT and the ACT as admission
requirements, citing a 2008 University of California study which characterized
the SAT as a “relatively poor predictor of student performance.” Critics have
stated that the new SAT changes are the College Board’s way to compete with the
ACT by making it a more similar test and to stay relevant in the college
admissions process.
·
In
April, The Supreme Court upheld a
Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to
the state’s public universities. The 6-to-2 ruling effectively endorsed
similar measures in seven other states. It may also encourage more states to
enact measures banning the use of race in admissions or to consider
race-neutral alternatives to ensure diversity. States that forbid affirmative
action in higher education, like Florida and California, as well as Michigan,
have seen a significant drop in the enrollment of black and Hispanic students
in their most selective colleges and universities.
·
A national study revealed that since
2007, interest in STEM majors and careers has increased, particularly in
engineering and biology. Growth in engineering was greatest, at 57.1 percent, followed by
biology, at 28.2 percent. Upticks were smaller for other STEM fields: 11.1
percent in the physical sciences, 12.6 percent in mathematics, and stagnation
in computer science. The number of anticipated majors in biology and
engineering increased among both men and women. Growth in the number of
students planning to major in engineering is also seen in rising enrollments in
colleges of engineering, which have grown 29 percent. The 6.7-percentage-point
increase in engineering and biology majors was nearly offset by a
5.9-percentage-point decline in business and education majors. In other words,
the growth did not come at the expense of the humanities and social sciences.
(Sax and Jacobs, presented at The American Educational Research Association’s
Annual Meeting).
·
Reacting
to a series of highly publicized assaults on college campuses, the White House released
guidelines in April that increase the pressure on universities to more
aggressively combat sexual assaults on campus. The recommendations urge
colleges, among other measures, to adopt anti-assault policies that have been
considered successful at other universities and to better ensure that the
reports of such crimes remain confidential. The guidelines are contained in a
report by a White House task force that President Obama formed earlier
this year and the administration is likely to ask Congress to pass measures
that would enforce the recommendations and levy penalties for failing to do so.
FPublished by TSM
