One of the things that annoys me most about the testing publishing industry, especially ACT and College Board, is how much it behaves like the Big Tobacco. And not just modern Big Tobacco, but Big Tobacco in the halcyon days of the industry when they had free reign to make mildly supported hyperbolic claims about the benefits of their products.
Continue reading “Big Tobacco is to ACT as::”The P in PSAT doesn’t stand for practice
Recently almost 4 million students around the country received their scores back from the PSAT. I have a child in 11th grade and I tutor the SAT (which is the same as the PSAT for all intensive purposes ) and other bubble tests, so I talk to students and parents almost daily about testing and what it means. So I’ve been talking to a lot of parents in the past few weeks about the PSAT. Thus this blog. . .
Continue reading “The P in PSAT doesn’t stand for practice”The Lionization of Testing and other weird metrics
Recently, the main villain behind the Operation Varsity Blues (OVB) scandal was released from federal custody after a brief 16 month stint in minimum security detention and has embarked on a reputation rehabilitation tour. With the cooperation of WSJ, ABC, and others, he’s attempting to relaunch a less illegal version of the same business that led to the massive federal investigation that exposed the networking, influence peddling, philanthropy laundering, fraud, and bribery that wealthy people use to get and keep advantages.
Continue reading “The Lionization of Testing and other weird metrics”Something cool happened!
I was pleasantly surprised this week to get text from my friend John Ambrose of Michigan State University. He had recently read my article The Hidden Factors in College Admission and said it was “spot on”.
Oh hell yes!! I was psyched! It’s always good to know that your work is appreciated and that you get something right.
But it got better.
He’d shared it in his office and one of his colleagues (thanks Ashley!) created a graphic to capture the article. As they say a picture is worth a 1000 words!
Cutting Room Floor: The Hidden Factors Influencing College Admissions Decisions
I recently wrote an article published in Word In Black about the different ways colleges go about the business of evaluating applications and even though it was long as hell, I couldn’t get in everything I wanted. So let me highlight a few bits that got left out. This is, obviously, part of my periodic series on this blog called Cutting Room Floor (the first one is here).
Continue reading “Cutting Room Floor: The Hidden Factors Influencing College Admissions Decisions”The NY Times Doesn’t Cover College
What’s Kanye wearing? What’s El*n driving? What’s Besos buying?
If you believe the answers to these questions are relevant to your life then the New York Times might be the best paper for you to learn about the college process. If you pattern your life choices after what a billionaire or celebrity does, if you think that brand is all that matters in college admission, the NYT is for you. If not, then you should probably never bother to read it about college admission or at least read it with a careful and critical eye. This is because I’ve been forced to conclude that the NYT doesn’t write about college, it writes about a few highly rejective colleges. Yes, I said that intentionally…a few.
But let me rant less and demonstrate more.
Cutting Room: The Misguided War on Test Optional
Ever since I was first interviewed for a news story and especially when I was interviewed for the documentaries I was in (both the Test and The Art of Thinking and Netflix’s Operation Varsity Blues). I’ve been fascinated by what’s left out. I asked both producers of the documentaries if they would release the uncut footage but alas that’s not something they do. I feel that the cutting room floor and editing choices are as interesting as the final product.
So in the spirit of practicing what I preach, I’ll periodically post my cutting room floor. Anything labeled “cutting room floor” will be incomplete thoughts, mildly edited text, unfact checked data points, etc. Do with it as you see fit.
Things worth reading
A couple things of note that are worth paying attention to.
Jon Boeckenstedt published an analysis of discount rates at colleges and its well worth reading and playing with. If you’re unfamiliar with the term discount rate, it captures aid that isn’t new money (merit aid that is essentially discounting, grants that are discounts, basically all the things that are coupons). Jon breaks it down nicely. And you can look up individual colleges. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can rollover a university and see their discount rate and even the percent of full pay (Damn Georgetown . . . I guess money means merit). Click here to check it out.
Also, I wrote a thing. I looked at the latest IPEDS data (government reporting of educational statistics), which is for the 2022 enrolling class of college students, to see trends in how many students are enrolling without test scores. The big take away is lots of kids are enrolling without test scores, but I’m not revising my previous advice on should you test. Ask the 3 questions: Should my child prep? Should my child test? Should my child submit? The screenshot below shows one of the tables in the post. As you can see the number of students ENROLLING (not applying) with scores has dropped precipitously since 2018. Click this link to see the full post.
Merit: Myths and Money
Many people believe that merit aid means aid awarded for students who are the smartest and most accomplished, but that’s not true. I just spent months reviewing state-funded “merit” scholarship policies and school-funded “merit” scholarships rules at flagship universities and what I found WILL SHOCK YOU!
All dramatics aside, my report found a few important, and somewhat surprising to me, things:
1. Metrics not merit.
Merit means nothing. There is no formal definition of merit. There is no formal determiner of who is meritorious and who isn’t. So getting a “merit” scholarship just means you met whatever criteria was set.
Many “merit” scholarships are given on the basis of random criteria, for example this one:
My Favorite College Search Things
It’s easy to hard to find information on colleges, its hard to sort out what’s good info from what’s bad. I am constantly sending emails to people about tools to support college search and learning about what tools are good and which aren’t. So I’m going to try to compile my favorite things in this post.
This will include all the things I think you should read and use to help you understand the higher education landscape and related industries. This is essentially the listicle form of this post with additional things added in each section. I’ll update it as I remember.
Enjoy.
Bellowings 
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