Key Takeaways from the 2017 College Board Forum

During the last week of October, just as the back-to-school season was winding down, high school counselors, college admissions officers, and education professionals all convened at the annual College Board forum. This year the forum was held in New York City and offered numerous sessions that covered everything from equity and access to trends in higher education and the redesigned SAT. Below are some of our key takeaways from the forum.

1. Students need coaching and community support to be successful.

This year’s forum opened with a session honoring the legacy of Lois Dickson Rice, education policy expert who lobbied for the creation of the Pell Grant, which provides funds for students with financial need to attend college. The session challenged everyone in the room with a simple question: “In education and within our communities, what are we solving for?”

The answer and solution were broken down into a simple statement and relatable analogy.

Answer: Fewer people getting lost.

Analogy: The sports world.

How can we compare the sports world to the education system? And how can we use an analogy to sports to help us understand what we need to fix within our education system?

1. The bar is very transparent. In sports, there is a clear understanding of what success looks like and how to get there.
2. Coaching at every level. There are coaches every step of the way — from little league to professional or Olympic teams, and each level in between.
3. Support and community. In sports, athletes are surrounded by a network of supporters: community, mentors, sponsors, teammates.

Within education, we have #1: we have a set bar, and it is clear what success looks like. Coaching for our students remains a challenge. Though we are making progress, we still have a long way to go to ensure all of our students have the coaching they need at all grade levels. Our community is where we are most greatly challenged. Some very lucky students find themselves with extensive support systems of parents, mentors, and school counselors who have the time to help them. Other students, in more challenged areas of the country, are not so lucky and struggle to find a support system.

2. There is an international student problem facing the US.

During this session, a panel of admissions officers from US universities talked through the challenges they are facing in terms of international students. An admissions officer from an Australian university also talked through what trends he has been seeing in admissions. Here are the key takeaways:

• US universities are seeing increased competition for international students. We are losing students to Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. International students see these countries as more friendly to international students. The price to study there, and the policies to work or acquire internships in these countries are more favorable to international students than those in the US. Additionally, the US does not have a federal outreach goal for international students as other countries do, namely the UK and Canada. Each college in the US is working towards its own goals, whereas in the UK and Canada, the country as a whole is working toward one goal.
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• We need to do a better job of helping international students adjust to student life in the US. One panelist noted that “We are in highly racially charged society,” and we are not adequately preparing our international students for this. She went on to say, “We don’t tell them how hard it is to be brown or black. We should let them know that they [may be] perceived as different.”
  
  The panel also noted that we treat international students as “the international students on campus.” They asserted that we need to do a better job of integrating these students into campus life. We need to talk to them more candidly about the US student experience and what they can expect when they arrive.
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• US students are looking to attend college outside of the US. The panel noted that millennials don’t see borders the same way as they used to - more students are applying out of state and internationally. Additionally, with the rising cost of college tuition, US students are attracted to the lower price tags of schools in the UK and Europe. In fact, according to a US News and World Report article from 2016, “the number of U.S. applicants submitting a UCAS application to attend a British university for an undergraduate degree has risen by more than 7 percent over the last five years, according to the British Council. Last year, UCAS received its highest number of U.S. applicants seeking bachelor's degrees in 2015-2016, with approximately 3,985 American students applying.”

3. The verdict is still out on the redesigned SAT

In a panel consisting of high school counselors and college admissions officers, we learned of some of the challenges they have faced with the redesigned SAT and the new August SAT test date.

• There are concerns about the SAT concordance tables*. With this past admissions cycle being the first with students submitting scores from the redesigned SAT, admissions officers found themselves asking, “Are we comparing apples to apples? Or apples to oranges?” Gordon Chavis, Associate Vice President, Enrollment Services for the University of Central Florida, noted that for the past several years the average SAT scores for their admitted students had risen, but this year, had they used the concordance table of old SAT scores to the redesigned SAT, scores would have dropped.
• *Update: ACT, Inc and the College Board released updated concordance numbers in June 2018. The newest numbers tell students who score above a 1250 on the SAT that their equivalent ACT score is about 1 point higher than was communicated in 2016's tables.
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• More students submitting ACT Scores for admissions. Admissions officers said for the Fall of 2016, they saw 2x more ACT score submissions than they did the prior year and that they are seeing this trend again this year.
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• We are losing out on international students. Janet Rapelye, Dean of Admissions for Princeton University, noted that she feels we may be losing out on talented international students due to several factors:
• Fewer international test dates.
• Limited access to the SAT, depending on the student’s location.
• Test security and student score cancellations resulting from security breaches and cheating scandals.
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• The verdict is still out on whether or not the redesigned SAT has improved college access for low-income and first generation students. Jim Rawlins, Assistant VP for Enrollment Management at University of Oregon, urged universities to do a College Board validity study indicating that we [colleges] need the study for several reasons.
• To know the scores are equivalent. Can colleges compare old SAT scores to redesigned SAT scores and be confident that they are comparing apples to apples?
• To tease out whether or not the redesigned SAT has done anything to improve college access. College Board listed this as a major goal of the test change, but there’s no data to suggest the goal has been accomplished.
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• The pace of high school may be moving too fast for students. Tamar Adegbile, Director of College Counseling for Cate School in California, noted she had concerns about the addition of the August SAT (and July ACT test dates) and the elimination of the January test date, which many of her juniors took as their first test. In general, the high school counselors expressed concern that the shifting (earlier!) testing timelines were compressing high school and putting an unnecessary rush on students. They urged admissions officers to put more emphasis on the 4 year experience.

Overall the College Board Forum encouraged an open discourse about some of the challenges that our students face in the current education ecosystem. From providing support systems for our high school students, to making changes that attract more international college students and prepare them for life in the US, to ensuring the redesigned SAT has improved college access - these are some of the problems we were tasked to solve and think about as we all departed New York for home. It will be interesting to see, at next year’s forum, how we tackled these issues within our own communities.