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Amherst Shares Latest Admissions Stats

Posted on January 19, 2021 by admissions.blog 14 Comments

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.

Posted on August 1, 2020 by Craig Meister 1 Comment

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

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Patrick O'Connor Leave a Comment

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.

Pandemic Response Puts Many Colleges in Peril

Posted on April 17, 2020 by admissions.blog Leave a Comment

The Coronavirus Pandemic has dramatically reshaped the college admissions landscape in just a matter of weeks. While many colleges are attempting to present a united front of care and concern for future applicants by going SAT- and ACT-optional for the high school Class of 2021, what’s really happening is this: colleges’ survival instincts are pushing them to do what they feel they must in order to make it through in one piece what is likely to be a 2020-2021 college admissions cycle unlike any other before it.

The pandemic has killed thousands, but the decision by political leaders to shut down economies has led to the loss of nearly twenty-five million U.S. jobs as of this article’s publication, and with them, many a nest egg to pay for college. Whole industries are in ruins, and job cuts and business failures are likely to continue through at least fall.

Colleges are businesses. Most colleges depend on tuition dollars paid by families and subsidized by the federal government to survive. If too few applicants apply and ultimately matriculate, colleges crumble. That’s why many American colleges are so rapidly going test-optional. They fear for their very survival if they don’t. And we’re not just talking about the obscure colleges in rural locales that were late to go-test optional out of habit. We are talking about the biggest names in American liberal arts education. Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Scripps. All are in grave danger in an economy unable to produce jobs or produce the income necessary to support the luxury of liberal arts degrees. The powers that be at Case Western and the UCs wanted to go test-optional before the pandemic and used it as an excuse to do so. Tufts must fear that being so many students’ second choice will not suffice in the choppy waters that will define the dog-eat-dog 2020-2021 admission cycle.

With the situation is so critical you can bet that talk of a bailout for colleges is drawing near. If a bailout is good enough for Boeing and Delta, college presidents will argue it’s an absolute must for them too. Even Harvard – with an endowment larger than the wealth that exists in many countries – is cost cutting savagely. Many colleges will likely shut down in the months ahead if the likes of TUFTS are suddenly test optional and MIT refuses to look at Subject Test Scores even as ACT, Inc. and College Board hurriedly try to produce at-home tests. Buckle up, you’ve never seen what’s coming.

 

Here is a list of colleges, as of this article’s publication, that have gone ACT- and SAT-Optional within just the last month:

Amherst College
Anderson University
Babson University
Barry University
Boston University
Butler University
California Lutheran University
Centre College
Chestnut Hill College
Clarkson University
Coastal Carolina University
Colgate University
College of Wooster
Concordia University Texas
Davidson College
Drury University
Gonzaga University
Hamilton College
Haverford College
Loyola Marymount University
Middlebury College
Montana State University
Murray State University (for high school applicants with 3.0 GPAs)
Neumann University (as long as applicants have a 2.5 GPA)
Northeastern University
Pomona College
Portland State University
Purdue University Northwest
Rhodes College
St. Edwards University (TX)
St. Olaf College
Santa Clara University
Scripps College
Seattle University
Shenandoah University
Swarthmore College
Texas Christian University
Trinity University (TX)
Tufts University
Tulane University
University of California Berkeley
University of California Davis
University of California Irvine
University of California Los Angeles
University of California Merced
University of California Riverside
University of California San Diego
University of California Santa Barbara
University of California Santa Cruz
University of Maine System
University of the Cumberlands
University of Montana (for high school students meeting GPA requirements)
University of Oregon
University of Washington
Vassar College
Virginia Tech
Western Michigan University
William Woods University
Williams College

With admissions standards being lowered by the day, remember to keep checking ConvertYourScore.org for the latest information about which colleges require or recommend which tests.

ConvertYourScore.org is the Internet’s most valuable ACT-SAT score conversion and information supersite. The regular updates to ConvertYourScore.org allow students and parents to plan better than ever before when or if to take the ACT, SAT, and SAT Subject Tests.

ConvertYourScore.org not only gives students the opportunity to compare their SAT and ACT scores just like college admissions officers do when evaluating applications; it also gives students the knowledge they need in order to determine which remaining test(s) may be worth taking in order to meet their college admissions potential.

ConvertYourScore.org has always helped:

  • students who have only received SAT scores to convert their SAT scores into comparable ACT scores.
  • students who have only received ACT scores to convert their ACT scores into comparable SAT scores.
  • students who have received scores for both the SAT and ACT to definitively determine which test they did best on – ensuring that students only send to colleges the scores that put them in the best light the eyes of admissions officers.

In addition, ConvertYourScore.org has always provided valuable background information about both the SAT and ACT and discusses the key ways in which the SAT and ACT differ.

Best of all, ConvertYourScore.org has always been completely FREE and requires no sign in process. The one-page site is the Internet’s best one-stop destination for ACT and SAT information and advice.

Yet, the site’s latest updates also allow students and parents to:

  • determine which colleges and universities require or recommend their applicants take the optional SAT Essay section and/or the optional ACT Writing section (only a handful of colleges still do).
  • determine which colleges and universities recommend or favorably consider submission of strong SAT Subject Test scores as a part of their college applications.
  • determine which four-year colleges and universities in the United States are test optional in the admissions process, test flexible in the admissions process, or test optional for those students who rank in the top ten or top eight percent of their high school classes

ConvertYourScore.org is better than ever! No student or parent should start down the path of ACT or SAT planning or testing without first visiting and digesting all the information on ConvertYourScore.org.

Caltech cuts SAT Subject Test, alters official ACT/SAT submission requirements

Posted on January 23, 2020 by admissions.blog Leave a Comment

Caltech’s Undergraduate Admissions office, with the support of the Faculty Committee on Freshman Admissions, has revealed that it’s eliminating the university’s long-standing requirement for submission of SAT Subject Test scores as part of the undergraduate admissions process. This change takes effect for students applying for the Caltech starting in Fall 2020.

Caltech has long required students to take and submit scores from the SAT Subject Test in Mathematics Level 2 along with at one science themed SAT Subject Test (in either ecological biology, molecular biology, chemistry, or physics).

“In reviewing our admissions requirements, we have come to the conclusion that the requirement for submission of SAT subject test scores creates an unnecessary barrier to applying for a Caltech education,” announced Nikki Chun, director of undergraduate admissions, noting that only a small percentage of high school students take the SAT subject tests. “We are guiding our focus back to long-term academic STEM preparedness based on coursework and grade performance.”

Of course, SAT Subject Tests do assess students’ depth of knowledge in advanced high school sciences.

Chun added that the Caltech admissions process has always focused, and will continue to focus, on seeking students who will approach the Institute’s core curriculum with as much enthusiasm and interest as they do classes in their specific major.

“This move will definitely widen the door for talented candidates we may not have been able to reach in the past who deserve our consideration.” said Jarrid Whitney, Caltech’s assistant vice president for student affairs, enrollment and career services.

In related news, Caltech will continue to require submission of SAT or ACT scores for first-year admission; however, applicants will not be asked to pay ACT, Inc. or College Board for the submission of ACT or SAT results “until and unless they are accepted and decide to matriculate at Caltech, Whitney adds.” Thus, Caltech will now accept self-reported scores during the admissions process.

College Counseling: The Year in Review

Posted on December 17, 2019 by Patrick O'Connor 8 Comments

There are many years in the college counseling world that come and go without a lot of fanfare, but this certainly wasn’t one of them.  Thanks to America’s ever-growing fascination with the college application process, counseling received more than its share of the limelight in 2019.  Here are the highlights:

The Scandal Known as Varsity Blues  Leave it to a small group of parents with way more dollars than sense, and a con man feigning to be an independent college counselor, to create even more angst over selective college selection than ever before.  Since this story involved Hollywood, money, and some of the three schools the New York Times considers representative of the world of college admissions, way too much time and energy was devoted to understanding what this kerfuffle meant to college admissions as a whole. The average high school senior takes the SAT once and goes to college within 150 miles of home.  Varsity Blues meant nothing to them.  The same should have been true for the rest of us; instead, this issue is now running neck and neck with Popeye’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich for the year’s Story That Wasn’t Award.

Change to NACAC Ethics Code It made fewer headlines, but the Justice Department’s investigation into NACAC’s Code of Ethics could prove to have far more implications to the college plans of seniors than Varsity Blues could hope to.  With colleges now allowed to offer incentives for students to apply early, and with colleges able to continue to pursue students who have committed to another college, the May 1 deposit date is still in effect, but may prove to have significantly less effect.

 College Testing and the University of California  The value of the SAT and ACT popped up in the headlines all year, as even more colleges decided test scores no longer had to be part of their application process.  At year’s end, the test optional movement got a big media splash, as the University of California announced it was reviewing its testing policy.  Combined with a lawsuit filed against the UCs claiming the tests are discriminatory, it’s clear that business as usual in the college application process is on its way out.  Will more changes ensue?

The Harvard Case and Race  Affirmative action advocates celebrated a legal victory this fall when a court ruled Harvard’s admissions procedures do, and may, use race as a factor in reviewing college applications.  The case drew national attention in part because it was initiated by a group claiming Harvard didn’t admit enough students of Asian descent.  It’s likely to stay in the headlines when the decision is ultimately appealed to the US Supreme Court, a group that, as it currently stands, has been known to be highly skeptical of race-based programs—meaning this year’s lower court victory could be pyrrhic at best.

Improved Research on College Counseling  Academic research has never gotten its due in the world of school counseling, and that’s certainly true in the more specific field of college counseling.  That trend may be changing, as a report from Harvard lays the groundwork for a more data-based approach to measure the difference counselors make in their work.  The findings include an indication that counselors tend to be more effective in college counseling if the counselor was raised in the same area where they work, and, as a rule, are more helpful providing information to the student about the college the counselor attended.  The report suggests this may be due to undertraining in college admissions as part of counselor education programs– to which most of the counseling world replied, no kidding. Look for more to come here.

Billions More for More Counselors, But Who Cares  It’s hard to remember the need for more counselors was one of the favorite topics of the media just two years ago.  A sign of American’s true indifference—or short attention span—rests with a congressional bill that provides up to $5 billion for new school counselor positions, a bill that is currently languishing in committee.  Is this bill a victim of an absence of school shootings, impeachment, or both?  Given what it can do, is there really any reason this bill can’t be a focus of action in 2020? That’s really up to us.

 

 

ACT to allow section-specific retesting starting in 2020

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Craig Meister Leave a Comment

ACT, Inc. is dramatically reforming and enhancing the ACT® test with options that keep students’ interests in mind. Beginning with the September 2020 national ACT test date, ACT test takers will have more options when taking the ACT:

  • ACT Section Retest—Students who have already completed a full ACT test can choose to retake one or more sections (English, math, reading, science, or writing) without having to retake the entire test.
  • Superscore reporting—To support the growing trend of students taking the ACT test multiple times, score reports will now include a calculated ACT Superscore, along with an ACT Composite score.
  • Faster results with online testing—Students will be able to choose to take the ACT online at a test center on national ACT test dates and get their multiple-choice test results as early as two business days after taking the test

These new options, according to ACT, Inc., will offer students, “more choices, a better experience, and greater confidence that their ACT test scores best reflect their hard work, overall academic achievement, and potential for success throughout their lives.” I tend to agree. Students being able to choose to retake only the sections in which they want to improve their scores (after initially taking the full ACT test) is a wonderful, student-centered approach. ACT, Inc. should be applauded for this reform.

Faster score reports means that students will be able to make decisive plans for college sooner, and superscoring will help students demonstrate to colleges and universities their best achievement in each subject. The ACT is already the preferred choice for many test-takers, despite College Board efforts in recent years to win test-takers back with yet another re-centering of scores. The newly announced changes by ACT will make ACT even more popular starting in September 2020. At a time when more colleges are going test-optional, it’s not surprising that the testing agencies – ACT, Inc. and College Board – will feel ongoing pressure to make their tests student-friendly.

Learn more about the changes here.

When to Start Working with Your College Counselor

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Craig Meister

Many high schools don’t provide proactive college counseling to students until the end of eleventh grade. Don’t wait until your school gets around to it. Find out when to assertively approach your counselor.

What’s a CEEB High School Code and Why is it Important?

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Craig Meister

When registering for standardized tests and filling out college and university applications be ready to provide your high school’s CEEB code, which helps your counselor and admissions officers.

2017 Advanced Placement scores are now available

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Nancy Griesemer Leave a Comment

Virginia Tech students are allowed to use up to 38 hours of AP credit towards graduation.

In case you missed the email, the College Board rolled out Advanced Placement (AP®) scores for tests taken this past May earlier this month.  And by now, most AP students should have already received their scores—for better or worse!

For the record, old fashioned snail mail reports were discontinued several years ago in favor of an online arrangement that requires you to have a College Board account to access scores. In other words, to obtain scores, students must have

  • an online College Board account requiring registration
  • a username and password
  • 2017 AP number (the number on the labels in the Student Pack) OR student identifier (student ID number) if provided on your answer sheet

Unless there was a problem with identification, scoring or test administration, your scores should now be available and will be added to a cumulative report of all AP tests you have taken to-date (you actually have to pay an extra fee to have any scores removed from the report).

If you’re unlucky enough not to have a score report, feel free to contact the College Board at [email protected] or 888-225-5427 (toll free) or 212-632-1780, especially if you haven’t received scores by September 1.

And what do the scores mean? AP scores are a “weighted combination” of results on the multiple-choice and free-response sections.  The final score is reported on a 5-point scale, as follows:

  • 5:  Extremely well qualified to receive college credit or advanced placement
  • 4:  Well qualified
  • 3:  Qualified
  • 2:  Possibly qualified
  • 1:  No recommendation

You can also think of the five-point scale in terms of letter grades, with 5 equating to an “A” and 1—well, you get the picture.

And what are they worth? The awarding of credit and placement status is determined by individual colleges or universities. You can check directly with the school or on the College Board website to research this information, but note that the latter is neither as specific nor as accurate as what you are likely to find on individual school websites.

In most cases, a student who scores a 4 or 5 may receive college credit. In rare cases, a school will require a 5, and almost no colleges will accept a score of 2. In fact, the most selective colleges will not accept a 3 for credit.

For example, George Mason University will accept a score of 3 for 4 credits in an entry-level environmental science class. For 8 credits, the student must earn a 4 or 5 on the exam.  Neither Georgetown nor GW will award credit for any score below a 4. In fact, Georgetown awards no credit for AP Capstone, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Comparative Government, AP US History, AP Human Geography, and AP Physics 1 or 2.

The University of Virginia generally awards credit for scores of 4 or 5, but for French will dip as low as a 3 for some entry-level exemption. The University of Maryland takes a different approach and awards credit for scores of 3 or better in Art History, English Language and English Literature but requires at least a 4 to receive credit in a foreign language.

Keep in mind that wise use of AP credit can reduce the total number of credit hours needed to graduate. At Virginia Tech, students are allowed to use up to 38 hours of AP credit towards graduation, while Vanderbilt University will only award up to 18 credits. And Dartmouth College will accept no AP credits toward graduation.

AP exam scores may also be used to meet standardized test requirements in the admissions processes of several colleges. Fair Test keeps track of this evolving trend on its Test Score Optional List and includes Colby College, Colorado College, Drexel University, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, NYU and the University of Rochester among those colleges and universities allowing APs to be submitted in place of ACT/SAT scores.

Teachers and AP administrators will also be receiving scores this month, and many high schools include score distributions in the school profiles they send to colleges along with transcripts (see Montgomery Blair High School’s profile for a good example). This is so admissions offices can put individual scores reported on applications in context with those earned by others in your class. But note that some high schools are extremely reluctant to make this information public and will routinely deny requests from families interested in evaluating a particular class or teacher.

For those new to the process, the online reporting system seems like an efficient, environmentally-friendly way to get scores. But be aware. The College Board can now connect your AP scores with PSAT and SAT scores as well as any grade, career interest or family income information you provide in the course of test registration or on their net price calculators. 

And the College Board is all about mining for data that can be sold to postsecondary institutions, scholarship programs, or any number of organizations willing to pay for lists it aggressively markets.

These connections can be both good and bad. If you haven’t graduated from high school, expect to receive recruitment materials from colleges purchasing name and contact information anxious to get to know you. At the same time, don’t be surprised to hear from questionable honor societies or other organizations hoping to con you into paying for something you don’t want.

Check back tomorrow for a sneak preview of AP test results as tweeted by College Board executive, Trevor Packer.

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