Admissions Blog

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What 2023 Might Bring, But Probably Won’t

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January is the time of year when all kinds of people make predictions about the year to come, and the world of college admissions is no exception.  As a variation to that theme, here’s my list of responses to current issues in admissions that I know stands no chance whatsoever of happening—but if the start of the year isn’t the time to dream a little and create a little whimsy, when is?

Colleges Return to Testing  After a three year, COVID-driven experiment with test optional admissions, 125 colleges announced a return to using the ACT or SAT as part of their admissions process.  “We finally got around to creating an algorithm based on admissions trends with and without COVID that also combined our institutional priorities” said a spokesperson for this new consortium. “We spent months churching data through all kinds of models, and finally hit on one that best represents what our school stands for.  It just so happens that testing is a small factor of that mix, so it’s coming back.” Test optional advocates were stunned by the announcement, in part because most of them had no data to suggest the algorithms were wrong.  This represents the first time a change of this proportion was data driven.

Admissions Essays Monitored Online  In response to the anticipated increased use of artificial intelligence to help craft college admissions essays, Southern Michigan University announced the debut of a portal where students are required to craft their personal statement online.  Once signed into the portal, students will not be able to view another screen on their computer, or use another device to seek assistance through an AI tool.  “If corporations can develop software measuring keystrokes of their employers” said SMU’s president, “we figured there was a way to lock a student into a web site”.  Realizing the online essays may not be the same quality as those students devoted hours to in the past, SMU urges students to make comments at the end of the essay, indicating how they might improve the essay if they had more than the 90 minutes the portal allows. SMU has created a companion site for students needing accommodations for the time-based essay.

Innovative Approach Announced to Match Birth Decline  Citing the upcoming steep decline in the number of high school graduates in 2025, Bernard Cologne announced the sale of his social media platform today, planning to use the profits from the sale to provide a free college education to every student in the United States who wants one.  “I clearly wasn’t cut out to run online platforms” Cologne confessed.  “Here’s hoping the funds will encourage more students to think about college, so they can take social media to the next level, along with everything else.”

Green State Revamps Admissions Process  Green State Vice President for Enrollment Management Bill Smith has long argued every facet of the admissions process is biased towards the privileged—and now he’s about to prove it.  GSU announced it is jettisoning its entire admissions process, opting to admit all students based on one previously unused criteria—the ability to bake a cake.  “Students will log into a portal where they’ll get the recipe, and they’ll have 90 minutes to make it happen under the glare of an online camera” said Smith, a longtime fan of The Great British Baking Show.  “From our perspective, there’s no way the wealthy can game this new system.”  Smith’s hopes were almost immediately dashed when Betty Crocker announced the creation of its College Cake Baking Prep program less than an hour after GSU’s announcement.  CCBP, which has a student price tag of $15,000, will be spearheaded by British master chef Graham Rambo, who will be running a similar program for the UCAS colleges next year, where the outcome will not be a cake, but scones.  “Any teen who can do something interesting with scones doesn’t deserve to go to college” said Rambo, “they deserve to run one.”

How to prepare for the IELTS exam in a short time

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IELTS is an international standardized test of English language proficiency for non-native speakers. IELTS can be used for a variety of purposes, such as study or work where English is a communication language.

IELTS consists of four parts: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. All three listening, reading, and writing sections are done in one day with no breaks in between. The speaking section can be completed up to a week before or after other sections, depending on the test center. Each section is scored on a 1-9 scale, with 9 being the highest score. The overall score is an average of four sections.

The test is available in two formats, IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training. The IELTS Academic test is for those who want to study at undergraduate or postgraduate levels, and for professionals such as doctors and nurses who want to study or practice in an English-speaking country. The IELTS General Training test is for those who want to migrate to an English-speaking country, or for those who want to study a vocational or training program.

Importance of the exam for those looking to study or work abroad

The IELTS exam is important for those looking to study or work abroad because it is widely accepted as a measure of English language proficiency by universities, colleges, and employers around the world. Many English-speaking countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, use the IELTS exam as a requirement for admission to universities or as part of the application process for work visas.

For international students, the IELTS exam is often a required component of the application process for undergraduate or graduate programs at universities in English-speaking countries. The exam scores are used by universities to determine a student’s language proficiency and to assess their readiness for academic study in English.

Challenges of preparing for the exam in a short time

Preparing for the IELTS exam in a short time can be challenging for several reasons:

Time constraints: With limited time, candidates may not have enough time to fully prepare for all four sections of the test, which can make it difficult to achieve their desired scores.

Language proficiency: To achieve a high score on the IELTS exam, candidates need a high level of English language proficiency. For those who have limited time to prepare, it can be difficult to improve their language skills in a short period of time.

Test format and question types: The IELTS exam has a specific format and question types, which can be challenging for candidates to understand and prepare for in a short period of time.

Stress and pressure: Preparing for the IELTS exam in a short period of time can be stressful, and the pressure to perform well can make it difficult for candidates to focus and perform to their full potential.

Limited resources: Candidates may not have access to all the resources they need to prepare for the test in a short time, such as IELTS preparation courses or official IELTS materials.

Assessment of your current level of English

Assessing your current level of English is an important step in preparing for the IELTS exam in a short time. This can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and set realistic goals for improvement. There are several ways to assess your current level of English, including:

  1. Self-assessment: You can take an online English proficiency test or use a self-assessment guide to evaluate your language skills. This can help you identify your current level of proficiency and determine which areas you need to focus on.
  2. Practicing with sample tests: You can take practice tests or sample questions from the IELTS exam to get an idea of your current level of proficiency. This can also help you familiarize yourself with the format and question types of the test.
  3. Talking to a tutor: You can talk to an English tutor or teacher to get an assessment of your language skills. They can give you specific feedback on your strengths and weaknesses, and help you set goals for improvement.
  4. Identifying the areas of weakness: The IELTS exam is divided into 4 sections: Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. Identifying the areas of weakness can be helpful in focusing on the specific areas where you need to improve.

By assessing your current level of English, you can determine which areas you need to focus on and create a study plan that addresses your specific needs. This will help you make the most of the time you have to prepare for the IELTS exam.

Study and Test-taking Strategies

Effective study and test-taking strategies are crucial for preparing for the IELTS exam in a short time. Some strategies that can help include:

Time management techniques for efficient studying

Create a study schedule that maximizes your time and allows you to focus on the areas where you need the most improvement. Use a timer to help you stay on track and make sure you are using your time effectively.

Tips for improving listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills

Tips for improving your listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills for the IELTS exam:

  1. Listening:
  • Practice active listening by listening to English-language news, podcasts, and songs
  • Try to understand the main idea and key details in spoken passages
  • Take practice listening tests and focus on improving your understanding of different accents and speaking speeds
  1. Speaking:
  • Speak with native speakers as much as possible to improve your fluency pronunciation and confidence
  • Practice speaking on a variety of topics to improve your vocabulary and grammar
  • Use a mirror or record yourself while speaking to evaluate your pronunciation and fluency
  • Seek feedback from your tutor or native speakers to improve your speaking skills
  1. Reading:
  • Read English-language newspapers, books, and magazines to improve your reading comprehension
  • Practice skimming and scanning techniques to quickly find information in reading passages
  • Learn and practice high-frequency vocabulary words to improve your reading speed and comprehension
  1. Writing:
  • Practice writing on a variety of topics to improve your vocabulary and grammar
  • Learn and practice different types of writing, such as argumentative, descriptive, and narrative writing
  • Seek feedback from your tutor or native speakers to improve your writing skills
  • Keep a notebook or diary to practice writing daily

Practice exercises and sample test questions

Practicing IELTS exam exercises and sample test questions is an essential part of effective preparation for the IELTS exam. It helps to familiarize oneself with the format and timing of the exam, as well as the types of questions that are likely to be asked. Through practice, it is also possible to identify weaker areas and focus on them in order to improve performance. Additionally, practicing these exercises can help boost confidence and ensure that test-takers feel prepared for the real IELTS exam. Therefore, by taking advantage of available practice materials, test-takers can significantly increase their chances of success in the IELTS exam.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we discussed the importance of the IELTS exam for those looking to study or work abroad and the challenges of preparing for the exam in a short time. We also covered strategies for assessing your current level of English, study and test-taking strategies to aid in preparation.

Some final tips for preparing for the IELTS exam in a short time include:

  • Use official IELTS materials and past papers for the most accurate representation of the test
  • Focus on high-frequency words
  • Speak with native speakers as much as possible
  • Seek feedback from a tutor or teacher to improve your language skills
  • Stay calm and focused on the day of the test

Preparing for the IELTS exam in a short time can be challenging, but with a well-planned study schedule, the right resources, and a positive attitude, you can achieve your desired scores. Stay motivated and focused, and remember that every effort you put into preparing for the test will be worth it in the end.

A Primer for College Admissions Decisions

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We’re about three weeks away from the height of the release of college admissions decisions, the time of year when students pull their hair out either waiting to hear or musing over what they’ve heard.  Along with trying to ease student angst, college admissions veterans know they can expect an inbox full of articles featuring the following content:

  • Record High Applications at Highly Selective Schools
  • Highly Selective Schools Report New Lows in Admit Rates (yes, these two are related, but most Americans don’t understand this, thanks to the way we teach math in this country, so…)
  • Calls for Equity in Admissions Follow Record Application Year

We can expect these articles because they are written every year, partly to make an official record of what actually has happened, partly to supply some kind of solace to students who didn’t get the admissions news they had hoped (“See Son?  It was harder than ever to get in”) or to fatten the praise of those who did (“Wow!  I beat the odds in the Most. Competitive. Year. Ever!”)

To balance these “the sky is falling” articles, I write one that tries to keep everyone on an even keel, so they can provide some stability to the students and parents who are new at this, or who are doing it again, and forgot what it felt like the first time.  Hardly anyone notices the piece I write—it’s apparently more fun to be out there on rocky seas than to be safe in the harbor—but in the interest of trying to offer some support, here we go:

  • Not all applications are created equal. A college that reports a 5 percent admission rate doesn’t mean a particular student’s odds of getting in are 5 percent; it means the college admits 5 out of every 100 applications it receives.  Put another way, a student with a C average applying to Swarthmore doesn’t have the same “chance” of being admitted as a student with a 3.9.  Juniors should keep this in mind.
  • Much of the college experience depends far more on what the student puts into the experience than where they experience it. A former student was admitted to a Seven Sisters college, which then proceeded to gap her in financial aid.  She ended up at a public university, where she basically ran the Global Studies program where she earned a degree.  This included fulfilling her desire to do a semester abroad in South Africa, even though her college didn’t offer study abroad there.  She simply registered as a guest student at another college that did.  Tell me she would have had any of those opportunities at the Seven Sisters school.  Go ahead.
  • Notions of the need for change in the college admission process are overblown. It takes about 20 minutes to apply to most colleges, since they require neither essays nor teacher letters.  Since that’s about the same amount of time it takes to get to another level in Mario Brothers 812, it’s pretty safe to say most students can complete this task without life-altering stress.
  • Notions of change in the college admission process are simplistic, Part I. Admissions observers had a field day when COVID drove many competitive colleges to go test optional, a change that was gaining steam even before 2019.  Two years later, we now find a rise in “test optional strategies” from test prep advisors who will advise students on which tests to take, and which scores to send—all for a fee.  Similarly, we see some competitive colleges admitting fewer—far fewer—test optional students than those who submit scores, but deciding not to report that to the major public, since the “test optional” moniker is so highly valued.  The result?  A change that was supposed to make applying to college easier has made it harder in many cases, except at colleges where the admit rates were generous to begin with—and those are the schools where applying takes 20 minutes, and application reform wasn’t necessary.
  • Notions of change in the college admissions process are simplistic, Part II. Undeterred by the lack of real parity brought by many test optional policies, many reform advocates are now turning to essays and teacher letters of recommendation as the next parts to go in the current process.  This leads to two questions:
    • If you take out all parts of the current application process (some are even saying grades shouldn’t have to be reported), what do you replace them with?
    • Do you honestly think whatever you answered in the last question can’t also be gamed to favor the rich? Interviews?  Community Service?  Cake Baking?  Put any life experience or skill in the mix of college applications, and in a year, a horde of tutors will crop up that will give an edge to students who can afford their services.  That will be very hard to beat.
  • My annual plea for more counselor training in college counseling. If it’s safe to conclude that any admissions process will favor students who understand it, it’s reasonable to conclude it will favor any student who works with a counselor who understands it.  So, instead of changing the admissions process, how about leveling the playing field by making sure all counselors receive deep training in college counseling?  Less than 5 percent of all school counselor training programs devote any time to instruction in college counseling, and that sometimes only consists of how to register for the SAT.  Private school college counselors have greater access to professional development that keeps their already keen college counseling skills sharp.  Most public school counselors got their counselor training in a program that gave them no college counseling skills at all.  Which group needs to be better trained in the first place?

That should be all you need to make it through the media madness of the next month.  Release the hounds.

 

AP Exams Aren’t Worth the Hype and Hysteria

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Taking and doing well on Advanced Placement Exams could earn you some college credits, but they shouldn’t influence the grade you earn in your AP Classes and they rarely are factored into college admissions decisions.

Sadly, many high schools pressure students to freak out about these exams; yet, the exams themselves have limited utility to the vast majority of high school students. These exams do make the College Board and schools a lot of money.

What Needs to Change in College Admissions

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The ups and downs of the quarantine gave college admissions officers and school counselors a taste of application life to come, as the birth rate for high school graduates continues to slide, and the need to develop new approaches to recruit students increases.  As the profession continues to try and improve college access, and knowing that small differences can make a big difference, here are some considerations for both sides of the desk to ponder this summer over a well-deserved glass of lemonade:

Colleges—move your deadline dates.  November 1 (early applications), January 1 (regular applications), and May 1 (many deposits) are all big dates in the college application world—and they all fell on a Sunday or a holiday this year.  I don’t understand this, since the admissions offices weren’t open, and the vast majority of high school seniors had no access to counselors or other application helpers the day of and before the deadlines.

This needs to change.  Yes, students need to be responsible, and should learn to plan ahead—but perhaps that lesson is better applied to deadlines for things they’ve done before (like papers), not with things they are doing for the first time (like applying to college).  The first Tuesday in November, the second Tuesday in January, and the first Tuesday in May would solve this problem nicely, increasing the quality and quantity of applications to boot. Georgia Tech made the move, and they get kaboodles of applications.  It’s an easy, but important, change.

High Schools—stop working holidays.  Moving the January 1 deadline to a date when high schools are in session is also overdue for school counselors, who have taken a serious shellacking this year with all the student mental health issues arising from COVID.  School counselors have always been overworked, but never able to use the December holidays to recover, since they were expected to help their students make January 1 college deadlines.

It’s time to take a stand.  Assuming the colleges move their deadlines, counselors need to learn to let go.  Send a note to all senior families early in November, letting them know your vacation is—well, a vacation.  If you really can’t let go of your students for that long—or if the colleges unwisely cling to January 1– set two days of vacation for online office hours, and take a breath all the other days.  You have mastered online office hours this year.  Let them be your friend.

Colleges—keep innovating.  One (and perhaps the only) upside of the quarantine was the ability of college admissions offices to adapt major chunks of their traditional approach to recruitment. Test optional, drive-thru tours, and online high school visits suggested it might be OK for everyone to get their hopes up, that some real college admissions reform was in the air.

Yes.  Well.

In a post-vaccine world, we see more signs of returning to “normal” than creating new normal.  Reinventing the entire admissions process is no easy feat, to be sure, but how hard might it be for admissions offices to spend half a day this summer doing “What ifs” to one part of the application process?  Do that for five years, and you have a new admissions paradigm, and a more accessible one—the thing you say you keep wanting.

High schools— mental health and college access aren’t either/or.  I will legitimately blow my top if I read one more post from a high school counselor insisting that the increase in COVID-related mental health needs makes it impossible to do any effective college counseling.

School counseling as a profession has long been showing a mental health bias at the expense of quality college counseling, and this year just seems to have widened the gap.   Counselor training programs plant the seeds of this bias— training programs devote about 7 classes to mental health training, and none to college counseling—and all of this must stop, if only because the dichotomy is a false one.

Discouraged, depressed high school students light up like a hilltop church on Christmas Eve when I tell them college gives them a fresh start to life and learning, proof enough that college counseling affects mental health.  That, plus the American School Counselor Association says college counseling is part of the job.  Counselors truly are overworked, so they can’t do everything they want in any part of counseling.  That said, college can still be part of a key to a better self.  More counselors need to see that, and act on it.

Everyone—stop beating up on the Ivies.  The Ivies and their equally tough-to-get-into institutions largely decided to go test optional this year.  For some reason, this gave a lot of students with B averages the hope that they too could pahk the cah in the yahd, now that they didn’t have to reveal their test scores.

So—more students applied to the Ivies this year than last year.  The Ivies didn’t admit more students this year than last year.  That means their admit rate had to go down, and more students were denied.

That isn’t news—it’s math.  And if you want to blame the Ivies for encouraging students to apply who didn’t really stand a chance of getting in, you’re going to need to make a thousand more jackets for that club.  If you think the Ivies take too few Pell-eligible students, say that.  If you think they admit too many legacies, stay that.  But don’t beat them up for proving the laws of basic ratios.  Any other college in their shoes would have to do the same thing. (Besides, it’s the national media who has left our society with the impression that there are only 25 colleges in America.)

Everyone—about Kiddos.  It’s no secret that college is largely a time of youth, especially with the expansion of adolescence into the early twenties and beyond. But college is also a time to help young people embrace the opportunities of adulthood, skills and attitudes that sometimes require setting the desires of self to one side.

This goal would be more easily achieved if we saw students—and if they saw themselves– as capable of embracing a larger sense of self by referring to them as students, not Kiddos.  They don’t need to grow up in a hurry or, with the right kind of help, succumb to the media images of college choice as a high stakes pressure cooker.  But they also need something more than just a pat on the head and a verbal affirmation that’s the equivalent of a lollipop. Let’s try calling them students.

College Admissions and the Eyes of a Child

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There were only eight in the box, but Billy didn’t see it that way.  To him there wasn’t anything he couldn’t draw.  Especially anything red.  Shoes.  Birds.  Strawberries.  Even dogs.  Look at it the right way, and anything could be red.

Mrs. Struthers understood that, and loved to see Billy in class every day. Together, they discovered all kinds of things that turned out to be red.  As the year went on, Mrs. Struthers showed Billy how many other things were a mix of red and one of the other colors in his box of crayons.  By May, Billy was working with just green, and just yellow, and just about every other color.  But once kindergarten was over, it was the red crayon that had been worn down to a stub.

Coloring somehow became both less important and more important as school went on.  By second grade, the box had grown from eight to twenty-four, but there was less time to color in school.  Billy had rearranged the box to keep his favorite eight colors together, in the front row.

During one of those rare times drawing was allowed, Billy was relishing the chance to draw another cardinal, when Mr. Tyler walked by his desk.

“Cardinals aren’t really red, you know” he said.

Billy kept drawing, and looked up.  “What do you mean?”

“They’re actually their own color.  Cardinal red.  You have that in your box.  It’s in the top row of colors.”

Mr. Tyler walked away.  Billy kept drawing with red.

The last time Billy saw a box of crayons in school was fourth grade, when the box had grown to 64.  Billy had no idea what to do with a crayon named Salmon—wasn’t that a fish?—and the two named Yellow Orange and Orange Yellow looked exactly the same.  Why take up space with two crayons of the same color?  Billy brought his box of eight crayons from home.  The red was getting very small.

There wasn’t time for coloring again until eighth grade, when Billy took an art class in middle school.  The crayons had been replaced with pastels that were thicker, and moved across the paper differently than crayons.  Suddenly, Billy’s crisply drawn cardinals were fuzzy, and smeared, and looked a little more like smushed raspberries.  Billy waited until the end of class to ask his teacher about this, and how could he draw crisp cardinals with pastels.

The teacher frowned.  “We didn’t draw cardinals today” she said, “we were drawing mosaics.  Did you draw mosaics?”

Billy put his head down.  After school, he took his crayons home, and put them in the back of a desk drawer.

The counselor opened up the file on his lap and smiled.  “The career tests suggest you have an exceptional talent for art.  Have you considered a career in graphic arts?”

The student across from him stared at his blank phone screen.

“Billy, did you hear me?”

“Yeah” Billy said, not looking up.

“Your records say you haven’t taken an art course since eighth grade.  There’s room for one in your schedule next year as a senior.  What do you say?”

Billy’s eyes were frozen on the ground.

“Mrs. Jefferson is a great art teacher.  She taught me how to cross hatch.  Have you ever tried that?”

The counselor pulled out a blank piece of paper, and opened the top drawer of his desk.  It was filled with crayons.

The squeak of the drawer made Billy look up.  “They’re all green” he said.

“Yeah” the counselor chuckled, “I had this thing for green crayons when I was a kid, and it’s stuck with me all these years.  I had a couple of teachers try and talk me out of it, but when you love something, you just stick with it, you know?”

Billy looked away for a minute, then pulled out what looked like a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“Uh, Billy—” the counselor said.

Billy flipped open the top of the box, revealing a dozen crayons of different heights.  All red.

“Do they teach art in college?”

What the death of SAT Subject Tests means for strong high school students

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What are high achieving members of the high school Class of 2022 and younger to do now that SAT Subject Tests are no more?

That’s the question many of my students have been asking me since the CollegeBoard pulled the plug on the rigorous one-hour content-based tests that at one time covered everything from Biology to Writing. In more recent years, the Writing Subject Test was subsumed into an optional section of the main SAT, but with the news that all SAT Subject Tests were being cancelled also came word from CollegeBoard that the optional Writing section of the SAT would also be canned. So much for the importance of writing, at least from the perspective of the powers that be at both the CollegeBoard and most American colleges, none of which made so much as a peep opposing the CollegeBoard’s decision to no longer attempt to assess students’ writing.

Oh well, I don’t make the rules; I simply help students play the game, and what a perverse game the American college admissions process has become.

Below are my first thoughts about what students can and should do to pump up their chances of college admission now that a very important objective measure of knowledge mastery has fallen by the wayside.

Amherst Shares Latest Admissions Stats

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Amherst College received 857 Early Decision (ED) applicants this admissions cycle, which represents a forty-three percent increase over last year. This led to a twenty-five percent ED admit rate, which is down from a thirty-two percent ED admit rate last year.

This news came from Cate Granger Zolkos, Amherst’s Dean of Admission. As a result of the application increase, Amherst expects forty-five percent of its Class of 2025 will be drawn from its ED admits (up from thirty-nine percent last year). Meanwhile, 13,930 students applied to Amherst Regular Decision (a thirty-one percent increase over last year).

In other news, Amherst has announced that for domestic Early Decision applicants this fall, a whopping forty-five percent applied without testing (test-optional) and a full thirty-nine percent of Amherst’s ED admits were test-optional. Among all Regular Decision applicants, forty-nine percent have applied test-optional. With the applications flooding in, Amherst will continue to be test-optional for high school seniors applying during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 admissions cycles.

At some point before the 2023-2024 admissions cycle Amherst will evaluate whether the test-optional policy will remain in place permanently.

“Your anguish is justified.” The ACT apology for canceling your registration.

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Many colleges have gone test-optional for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle, and so far, ACT, Inc., the publisher of the ACT, has done all it can make colleges appear prescient by doing so.  When you can make the individuals running Mizzou (went test optional this week) appear forward-thinking you know you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to organizational effectiveness.

Throughout the spring and early summer ACT administrations were cancelled with little to no notice. Students often registered for testing sites miles away from home in the hopes that they had found a rural school willing to allow them into the building to take the ACT only to find that they were student #251 out of 500 students in line, and the school, because of social distancing, was only accepting the first 250 students to show up.

All this happened with no warning or guidance from ACT, Inc.

In other cases, students showed up to a school on a Saturday morning only to find the whole place locked up and the ACT unable or unwilling to give any pre-test or post-test guidance as to why the test was never administered. Was it the ACT’s fault or was it that proctors just didn’t show up or was it because the school was closed by some higher power? Does it matter?

Obviously, the plague spreading around the Earth came at a time when many long-standing institutions were least capable of dealing with it. Most venerable institutions in the U.S. are notable for their lethargy, inflexibility, listlessness, and lack of leadership, and their reaction to doing business through a plague is to remain in denial as long as possible.

Yet, now that summer is waning, the hits keep on coming for the ACT.

The latest ACT snafu comes in the form of a random email some students who thought they successfully registered for the September ACT received this week that read as follows:

Hi [Student Name],

We’re sorry. We know on Monday you visited MyACT to register for the ACT test and did not have the experience you were hoping for or the one we wanted to provide you. Your anguish is justified.

We are refunding your full transaction amount that occurred on July 27 through MyACT.

Your order did not complete as expected and you do not currently have an ACT test registration.

MyACT will be up and running on Monday, August 3 at 10:00am CT, and you will be able to register successfully. Customer Support teams are not able to complete or change registrations until our system is back up on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

What’s going on in Iowa? ACT, Inc. claims a new registration system is in the offing in 48 hours. Maybe come August 3 the powers that be at the ACT will wake up fully aware that their entire business model is hanging on by a thread and they will chart a positive course for the standardized test. But, would you be money on that? Chances are ACT, Inc. will keep stumbling from embarrassment to embarrassment into the fall and winter until someone who is actually a leader takes charge and proactively guides the organization forward in a world unlikely to return to fetid “normal” any time soon.

In the meantime, if you can earn a strong ACT or SAT score and the college(s) you are applying to is test optional, it’s still my recommendation to grin and bear this shady process. Test optional is not test blind; therefore, the clamor to take the SAT and ACT will remain no matter how bad both of these test makers behave.

The (former) SAT word for all of this: debacle. The (current) SAT words for all of this: hot mess.

Our Next Quarantine Lesson: We’re Blowing it for This Fall

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It isn’t just the seniors who missed this year’s scholastic rites of passage.  Students may be the stars of this show, but there’s something about weak lemonade, folding chairs, and speeches about pursuing your passion faculty and administrators find just as assuring as the honored students.  It’s the closest we get to winding down a year and taking a breath before taking up the task of deciding how the coming year could be smoother, better, or more effective. And if ever there was a year when that breath was needed, it was this year.

We didn’t get it.  Instead, pundits and parents, who had spent the spring seeing first-hand what educators really do, were banging on academia’s gates, asking about the resumption of “school as usual” in the fall with a keen level of expectation.  They may have been saying “Will schools reopen?”, but they meant “Schools had better reopen.” Unaccustomed to making such deep decisions on the fly—and, frankly, a little exhausted from having made two months’ of such decisions on the fly—K-12s and higher ed begged off.  Let’s see what the numbers look like, they said, and we’ll have an answer soon.

Wow, did we blow it. One of the best ways to convey confidence in leadership is for leaders to make decisions with some sense of anticipation and planning.  Given all the seemingly spontaneous decisions this spring required, how much better off would we be in the eyes of the public if we had used April and May to say what really needed to be said in three key areas:

“We’re going to review our entire application process.”  School counselors are exhausted by June, but word that hundreds—that’s right, hundreds—of colleges were not requiring SAT or ACT scores for this year’s juniors created a groundswell of euphoria unknown to the summer months.  The arguments for ridding college admissions of these tests are better articulated elsewhere (like here).  Now that quarantine had added one more point to the argument—that the students just can’t take them—colleges succumbed to the reality in hordes, leaving counselors hopeful that, as long as they were checking under the hood of their admissions policies, admissions folks would toss out some other policies that deny college access to many students who need it most.

That bigger review doesn’t seem to be appearing.  In his typical fashion, Lawrence U dean Ken Anselment was the first to suggest in a Tweet that colleges should use this opportunity to clean up the entire admissions process, instead of taking an approach centered on the question, “So, how do we make admissions decisions without test scores?” If anyone can make major revisions to their application in two months, it’s Ken and the Lawrence crew.  It would have been better if, as a profession, all colleges had committed to this in April, creating more time and space to ask the bigger, better questions.

“We’re going online, and it’s going to be great.”  Colleges also tried to buy some time this spring when they were asked how instruction was going to occur.  As a group, they intuitively demurred, sure that any answer involving pure online courses would turn off students looking for a “full college experience,” sending them into the arms of community colleges, and leading many small private liberal arts four-years with weak decades-long financial struggles to close.

These same considerations are evident in the early announcements some colleges have made about Fall classes.  Hoping that reduced sizes of in-person classes and cancelled Fall breaks will contain the health risks, these colleges are ignoring the realities of some of their own football teams, where summer scrimmages are leaving up to twenty-five percent of the team COVID active, and at least one re-opened bar in a college town, where a quarter of all patrons are now on self-quarantine (and this is before students show up). It’s clear the best health option for all is to stay completely online—but how do you sell that to a student who just had a slew of online classes at either college or high school that, by and large, were less than they could have been?

Enter the professors.  It’s easy to see how parents and students don’t want to pay for weak online learning.  On the other hand, professors and high school teachers had about a week this spring to turn their classes into an online version of its face-to-face self, a task most colleges give professors an entire semester (and time off) to do.  Now that the summer is here, college instructors can give their courses the firepower they need to be more vital, more individualized, and more like the face-to-face thing.

If colleges connected the professors to families who rightfully see online learning as dubious, the profs could bring their websites along and show how these courses are more robust than their springtime counterparts.  Smaller colleges have long tried to get faculty involved in discussions with students, because good profs create an excitement about learning that closes the enrollment deal.  The same could have applied to online learning, if we had started sooner.  Now, we’re forced to play catch up again.

“We want your kids to be healthy.” The teachers at a local kindergarten decided they wanted to run a quarantine version of kindergarten graduation.  They made a giant rainbow arch, a few lawn signs, and went from house to house of every one of their students.  They’d set up the display, have their student walk through the arch, and created a composite video of the whole event.

A success?  Not really.  The edited video didn’t show what really happened: that the excited students broke every safe-distancing rule in the book when their teacher showed up.  Kindergartners love their teachers (thank goodness), and two months apart led to a euphoria that was shown by hugging everything in sight, a scene that’s reassuring to everyone but the Health Department.

In a nutshell, that’s why reopening K-12 schools to any kind of face-to-face learning is a bad idea.  Wal Mart can’t even get “adult” customers to wear a mask; what chance does a teacher have making a dozen five year-olds practice safe distancing?

A joint effort by state and federal officials in April, devoting dollars and expertise to developing nationwide broadband access and best practices in K-12 online learning, was the best answer to teaching students.  It also would have given time for working parents to develop resources for child care.  Instead, K-12 is left with a continuation of the catch-as-catch-can policies that allowed them to limp to June in one piece, thinking that a couple of days in the classroom each week will placate parents.  It might, until school closes again for quarantine—and if you think of the last birthday party you attended for a seven-year old, you’ll understand why that’s a certainty.