Friday, May 30, 2014

The Year in Review

Recently Mrs. Carter and I presented to Visitation's Board of Trustees. We present college data related to the Class of 2015 and also present some of the most "newsworthy items" in the most recent college admissions cycle. Here is a snippet of the section of our board related to "national news." We will post the matriculation list for the Class of 2014 next week!

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

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