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What 2023 Might Bring, But Probably Won’t

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Patrick O'Connor Leave a Comment

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.”

Remembering Tom Weede, and Calling on the Next Tom Weedes

Posted on July 16, 2019 by Patrick O'Connor 5 Comments

I could tell this was not going to be a typical meeting with a college representative.  He walked into my office with absolutely no hurry, as if this was all he had to do all day, and talked about his school from the heart, not from a memory-committed checklist of things someone else told him to say.  When I asked questions, he left a space between when I stopped talking, and when he started his answer, never once referring me to the school’s website, or the college catalog.  This was clearly a guy who knew his school as well as he knew his middle name.

It was also notable that he didn’t talk about his school in some theoretical abstract.  We do that a lot in college admissions, where we talk about a college in the third person, like it’s some kind of god.  He mostly talked about the students at his school, what they were doing, what they liked about being there.  He knew that’s what makes the college experience work for a student—who you go to school with.  He wasn’t going to waste my time reciting scores and rankings, because Rugg’s could tell me about scores, and rankings were, well, pretty pointless.  If you have time to talk with someone face-to-face, the conversation should be a giving of self, not of data, and that meant talking about things that mattered.  What matters most in college is the students.

After he said everything he thought I should know, he got up and gave me his card.  As I recall, he said something about how he’d like to hear from me, but the university had made it kind of hard to get hold of him, with a student aide and a secretary standing between him and every incoming call, but he urged me to persist.  After he’d left, I read his card, and realized I’d just spent forty-five minutes talking to a Director of Admissions who had made a cold call to my high school.

That was my introduction to Tom Weede, who passed on earlier this month, leaving this world and our profession all the poorer.  The outpouring of loss has come from all circles of our field, and it all contains one common message; Tom was the rare person who not only felt you mattered; he made sure you knew you mattered.  He trusted you with his opinion, and trusted that you would step up and let him know how you felt in turn, even if you saw things differently.  His advocacy in the profession was focused on students, and when he engaged you in conversation, you felt, as George Bailey once said, that he knew you all the way to your back collar button.

Tom’s come to mind quite a bit this summer, and not just because of his passing.  I’ve been besieged by a number of students and parents flooding my office with requests to make college plans, and they’re all ninth and tenth graders.  One father called and insisted he had to meet with me right away, since his son was a junior, and had no college plans at all.  The student’s name wasn’t familiar to me, so I looked him up.  Turns out he was a sophomore, but since his father called the day after school was over, calling his son a junior made things sound more important, I guess.

That’s the kind of month it’s been.  One parent wants to meet to talk about “college strategy,” another one is convinced his ninth grader’s chances at graduate school are already shot because the student has no plans for this summer.  It’s easy enough to get caught up in the mania the media is peddling as college readiness, but it’s never hit the ninth and tenth graders like this before.  Worse, it seems to be hitting their parents, and too many of them are succumbing to the herd mentality of college angst, abandoning their post as sentinels of their children’s youth.

If there’s any remedy to this, I’d like to think it’s the calm, listening voice of the Tom Weedes that are still with us.  Tom did most of his preaching to admissions officers, and none of us were smart enough to ever ask him if he’d thought about saying this to kids and families. Since similar voices are doing the same thing, it’s time to ask them to broaden their scope, before SAT flash cards become the in gift for bar mitzvahs.

Voices like Ken Anselment, Heath Einstein, and Tamara Siler do a very nice job of reminding colleagues that that the college selection process is all about the kids. What’s needed now is for them to share their insights with a larger audience, giving kids permission to be kids. It would be a great way to honor Tom’s memory.  Better still, it would be the right thing to do for our world.

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