As the theme of the Association for College Counselors of Independent Schools (ACCIS) conference was testing, two of the presenters were there to question the emphasis on testing and argue for alternative admission policies. One session was led by Joseph Soares, researcher and Associate Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. Soares, author of The Power of Privilege, was a vocal proponent of Wake Forest’s decision to go test optional in 2009. The other session was led by Bob Schaeffer, the driving force behind FairTest. Schaeffer has been working for decades to help American colleges and universities wean themselves off their “addiction” to high stakes admissions tests. Though Bob Schaeffer told me they had not coordinated their efforts, Soares and Schaeffer delivered a well orchestrated critique of testing and its role in the admissions process.

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Six years ago I remember standing in the kitchen of my 13-year old “little brother” (I was part of a big-brother-little brother program at the time), watching him simultaneously participate in 6 IM chats on AOL. I watched in disbelief as he responded to each of his friends. How on earth could he focus on 6 conversations at once? My mind could not grasp that possibility. Was this a new kind of mind, a new type of consciousness? Suddenly I felt like my parents must feel when they call on me to help them understand some new technological development. I felt dated.

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How many times do you have to lose your keys before you start playing Sudoku or tackling the daily NY Times crossword puzzle to keep your mind sharp? Just ask a baby boomer: they’ll surely have the answer. The boomers have learned to keep their aging minds honed through cognitive challenges, as well as through a host of funky sounding supplements such as Ginko Biloba and St. John’s Wort. But there are other ways to keep the mind healthy. According to the neuroscientists at the most recent Learning and the Brain conference, the most direct way to maintain the mind, and encourage higher order cognition and executive functions (e.g. planning, organizing, problem solving), may be to take better care of our physical bodies.

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As the College Board’s flagship SAT product continues to lose ground to the juggernaut ACT, its AP product line has become more deeply entrenched in the world of high school academics. For better or for worse, APs have become the de facto symbols of rigor and commitment to academic excellence for high school students across America. No longer the domain of only the most ambitious, AP classes have become a staple for an increasingly broad spectrum of college-bound students. Students willing to play the admissions game know they must take AP classes. Moreover, if students are to submit their most competitive applications, they must consider not only the number of APs they will take, but also the strength of each class.

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Spotlight on the SAT and the ACT

The ACT is on the rise. Attending the National Association for College Admission Counseling annual meeting in Maryland, I could clearly see that the SAT is continuing to lose ground to its longstanding rival. During a well attended session, SAT Test Prep: Sharing What Works, as soon as one college counselor mentioned the success his students were having prepping for the ACT, heads began nodding in agreement throughout the auditorium. More and more schools, college counselors, educational consultants and tutors are shifting their energies toward this alternative to the SAT.

People love to attack the SAT, which has become a magnet for controversy. Over the years, the SAT has been blamed for many of the ills, shortcomings and inequities of the US educational system. In my research I have found dozens of critiques and analyses of the SAT, exploring its biases, lack of predictive strength and various other failings, whereas critiques of the ACT are conspicuously rare. Most educational researchers have chosen to overlook the ACT, which in turn has benefitted from the relative lack of public scrutiny.  The few researchers who have examined the ACT in the same light as the SAT have discovered that the ACT is not a corrective for the SAT; the ACT shares many of its flaws, privileging the same groups and creating the same social, racial and economic divisions as the SAT.

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The Chinese are Coming! This emphatic title lured me and dozens of fellow NACAC (National Association of College Admissions Counselors) conference attendees into a session exploring the expanding impact of Chinese nationals on college admissions in America. It turns out this title was only a setup for a punch line: The Chinese are Coming? The Chinese are here. And this is not news. The presence of China is now firmly established on the world stage. Anyone who happened to watch the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics, anyone who has stepped foot into a Walmart in the last decade, anyone who has taken a peek at the US trade balance or our list of national creditors knows unequivocally that the Chinese are here.

And it’s no surprise that Chinese nationals are entering our universities in record numbers. Our institutions of higher learning have always been the crown jewels of the US educational system. For decades highly talented and ambitious Chinese nationals have made their way to our shores to attend our graduate schools, and now they are coming with increasing numbers to our undergraduate schools.

Perhaps we should be flattered that our institutions of higher learning are so esteemed. Perhaps we should be a bit nervous, as the title of this session insinuated. Perhaps we simply need to adapt to the new reality. Other sessions at NACAC advocated this course of action, boasting titles such as: How to Recruit Chinese Nationals.

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Notes from NACAC

During the 3-day national conference of the National Association of College Admission Counselors (NACAC), I had the opportunity to meet with college admission counselors, high school counselors and educational researchers from across the country. More than 5,000 individuals attended the conference to gain insight into the many changes underway in the world of college admissions: changes in admission criteria, technological developments, new financial realities and the increasing internationalization of American education. Naturally, I gravitated towards all break-out sessions involving the collegiate assessments and their role in the admissions process. Over the course of several short installments, I will impart to you the main lessons I took away from the conference.

Part 1: Technology on the rise in the admissions process

I will never forget the painstaking process of typing up my official application to Penn in the fall of 1993; that was the last time I used a typewriter. A year later I was learning how to navigate the Mosaic browser, surf the web, and send an e-mail. A short year after that, I was logging in to virtual classrooms to chat with my teachers and classmates.

The technologies that were in their infancy when I applied to college have matured to the point of now transforming the face of college admissions. Paper applications are historical artifacts; communications are now taking place by e-mail, Skype and YouTube; colleges are promoting themselves via student blogs, virtual college fairs and podcasts. Vast social networks have transformed the manner in which people learn about schools and communicate with one another.

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After three years of waiting for a clear response from the world of higher education, we are getting increasingly consistent signals that the Writing component of the SAT will count towards college admissions for the majority of our students. Since the initial administration of the Writing section of the SAT in March of 2005, schools have been compiling data on the correlation between performance on the Writing section and performance in college. The data set has grown large enough for robust statistical analysis, and the results are fairly clear: Writing is a significant predictor of collegiate performance. The evidence has been strong enough to move schools from the “let’s wait and see” phase to the unequivocal “Writing counts!” phase.

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Did Barack Obama serve time in a Basque prison? Did Abraham Lincoln ever live in Ontario? Did Jack Kennedy go against his advisers and invade the country of Lilliput? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are on your way to achieving a perfect score on the SAT essay.

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As the May 1st deadline has come and gone, college deposits have been mailed and the majority of our senior students have happily secured their places in the incoming college class of 2013. Other students have tentatively sent in money to enroll for a spot in the freshman class but are riding the waitlist at preferred schools, hoping for the kind of positive admissions outcomes we saw in 2008. Still other students and families have sent in deposits but are looking for creative ways to finance the next four years of school.

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