How do colleges build a freshman class? NACAC’s annual State of College Admission report — released on Thursday — offers students, parents, and others a peek at the various factors weighed when reviewing applications.
Now in its 15th year, the report continues to emphasize the importance of academic performance in the admission process. Altogether, colleges on average accept nearly two-thirds of first-time freshmen, with students’ grades and the academic rigor of their course loads weighing more heavily in decisions to admit than standardized test scores, high school class rank, or demonstrated interest in attending.
But other factors also play a role. For example, 22 percent of colleges rated the high school a student attended as at least moderately important in admission decisions for first-time freshmen. And roughly half of all colleges attributed some level of influence to alumni relations when accessing the applications of such students.
The intensity of the current political climate has led to increased activism among students at more than half (52 percent) of all secondary schools across the US, according to survey data from the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).
The finding is one of several included in a new NACAC research brief that explores the effects of today’s political rhetoric on college-bound students and examines how the political climate is affecting the college admission process. The association surveyed school counselors and college admission officers on the subject earlier this year.
Although levels of activism varied across schools, with 27 percent of respondents reporting that the political environment had no effect on the students they served, a full 52 percent of school counselors reported increased political engagement.
In the words of one respondent: “They’re woke and they’re angry! And they’re registered to vote!”
Building a freshman class has never been an easy proposition.
But attracting and retaining students today requires admission professionals and their university colleagues to possess a different set of skills than in the past.
“At the most basic level, the students of today and tomorrow are not the students of yesterday or yesteryear,” author Karen Gross writes in Breakaway Learners. “…Many of today’s students are the first in their families to attend college, let alone graduate; many are immigrants; many are low income. Many have experienced trauma or toxic stress.”
The book — now available in paperback and electronic format — will be the subject of our next #NACACreads discussion. The hour-long Twitter chat will kick off at 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 12.
The 2018 National Conference last week left an impression on many attendees, and most importantly, it left an impression on our new NACAC President Stefanie Niles.
Niles chatted with Platform Q Education’s Gil Rogers in a livestream Thursday afternoon about her takeaways for the conference and her goals for her presidential year and the years ahead.
“There’s a lot to do,” she said. “A lot in higher education that we are going to have to do to continue to make this experience most accessible to students.”
NACAC’s national conference offers members a chance to learn and grow. It also signals the beginning of a new year for the association’s Board of Directors.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof believes in the power of education.
From early childhood through adulthood, few other institutions hold the power to transform lives so completely. Yet as the gap between the haves and have-nots grows wider in America, more and more families struggle to tap into those benefits, Kristof told attendees Friday during the keynote address at NACAC’s 74th National Conference in Salt Lake City.
“Colleges are a great public good, and yet too often, that public good is largely reserved for kids of the modern educational aristocracy,” Kristoff told the roughly 6,000 attendees at this year’s annual gathering of college admission professionals. “…At 25 institutions around the country, including five Ivy League institutions, more kids come from families in the top 1 percent than from the bottom 60 percent — that is a failure of that public good. We can do better.”
The statistics are stark when it comes to college access and success for American Indians and Alaska Natives.
On some reservations, the college-going rate for high school grads is as low as 18 percent, according to data from the American Indian College Fund. And US Census Bureau data shows that only 14 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives hold college degrees.
Yet when given support and curriculum that affirms their culture, Native students excel, Carrie Billy, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), told attendees Thursday at NACAC’s 74th National Conference in Salt Lake City.
“A lot of our students don’t know who they are,” she said. “They’ve been through the K-12 system — a lot of them on reservations — and still haven’t learned their culture and their identity.”
How do colleges build a freshman class? NACAC’s annual State of College Admission report — released on Thursday — offers students, parents, and others a peek at the various factors weighed when reviewing applications.
