Instill Integrity in Admissions
Today's brochures and Web pages for a college's prospective students are little more than advertising. Colleges, which hold themselves out as icons of integrity, need to start acting that way. Each college brochure and Web site should be required to offer consumer information that would enable prospective students to compare colleges:
* The four-, five- and six-year graduation rate, with separate statistics for students with excellent, good, and fair high school records. (You may be surprised to know that nationwide, only 40% of freshmen at four-year colleges make it to graduation, even when given six years. Few other businesses would survive if 60% of their products fell off the assembly line before reaching the end.)
* The amount of growth from freshman year to graduation in writing, reading, math, computing, and information literacy. Again, separate statistics should be provided for students with excellent, good, and fair high school records.
* A grid showing the average cash and loan financial aid for students with different family income, assets, and high school record.
*As Lloyd Thatcher, in "College Admission: Profession or Industry," suggests, "No college, student or school is perfect. Let's be open and upfront with weaknesses as well as strengths."
* It is absurd that a student who wants to apply to Columbia, Northwestern, Penn, Georgetown, Stanford, Yale, and Cornell, must complete seven separate, extremely time-consuming applications. Most colleges are looking for the same thing: academic potential, extracurricular depth, and the ability to contribute to the campus and larger community. A student should be able to apply to any seven schools s/he wishes with one essay, listing of extracurriculars, transcript, and set of test scores submitted to the high school counselor's office on a nationally-agreed on date. The packet would then be e-mailed to any seven colleges designated by the student.
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