Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Changes in college admissions policies?

As long as you exclude law school from "graduate school", where they generally really only care about your access to student loans.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, are you saying that where you live college classes DON'T have tuition/book fees for high school students? Because around here, classes on a college campus are at least a few hundred dollars per credit hour, and possibly more -- whereas AP classes are free to take and $90 for the test.

At least LSAT and GPA are both very important too. And my friends told me their law school GPA/class rank determines where they get internships/jobs.Is that not the case?

At elite schools, well-rounded is not the way to gain admission. Doing something really unusual gets the attention of admissions folks. Lots of ECs is not the way to go - just a few and win some national/international awards in those few is the way to go.

The essay about the volunteer trip to Africa that cost the parents an arm and a leg is not a good idea. Just Google bad college essay topics and this one comes up every time (as does scoring the winning goal essay).

While the pressure to take AP courses is not good for some kids, for others the rigor of the AP is the only way to go, because the alternative course is not good. Val lives in CA, where there are actually good CCs (and DE might be free for HS students). We live in PA, and my 11 year old might be bored by the local CC courses (and not because she is bright - the courses are that bad). We have some great local colleges, but they are private schools and do not give HS kids a tuition break.

There is no perfect metric for college admissions. You can change the standards, but kids will just game the new standards.
Perhaps if you made kids rank their top 5-6 schools (other applications would not be ranked, so the college would know they were not a top choice for the kid), and colleges saw that rank, then you wouldn't get top HS students employing a shotgun approach to college applications. Schools would know which qualified applicants really want to attend their school, and they could give those applications more weight,

According to California law, high school students can take community college classes for free through dual enrollment. See this page for more information. I'm not sure what "minor cost" means on that page; it might refer to "you have to find a way to get to the college yourself."

One of my kids is enrolled in a program called Middle College (these programs exist all over the US). The first time he signed up for classes, I had to go with him. He took 3 classes and the "bill" the registrar gave me said $0.00. The high school pays for all his books, including expensive math and science textbooks. It pays for access to online homework systems. I can't remember if I had to buy safety goggles and a lab coat for chemistry, but I don't think I did.

Massachusetts has a similar policy, except that four-year-colleges are also included but books aren't always. New York also has one of these programs.

I found a link to information about dual enrollment in each state. This link includes information about homeschooler eligibility. I don't know how current the information is.

ETA: schools don't go out of their way to advertise these programs, at least not around here. If anyone is interested, I recommend doing a web search and then contacting the people in charge of the program directly (or better yet, have your high-schooler or 8th grader contact them). I got incorrect information from other people in the district.

Not sure how this works? So if 10,000 kids rank Yale 1st, Yale gives them more weight? And then the next choices drop them, since they are not first choice? There is a middle school situation in NYC and if you do not rank the one school 1st, you cannot go. It has become rank it first or you don't have a shot and so your second choice becomes your 5th, because the better school you ranked second, was ranked 1st by enough kids you don't have a shot.

I was referencing the fact that a number of law schools are essentially admitting anyone because they need the revenue to stay open.

Wren, I gave it about five seconds of thought - it will never happen. Besides, not all 10,000 ranking Yale first will be qualified applicants. So when you bring the top 20 or 30 schools into play, and there are only 30,000 kids at most with top 1% SAT and ACT scores, plus good GPAs, you won't have 10,000 "top" applicants at one college.

Won't happen though because colleges love to have tons of kids apply so they can be "selective" (single digit admission rate). There was an article recently about Duke's selection process. Half of applicants get tossed after the first read of the application. For kids without a major hook, the true admission rate of selective schools isn't 5-10%. It is more like 0% for half of the applicants, maybe 2-3% for some kids with slightly below average scores but something else special (great essay, really unique hobby, etc.) and somewhere in the 10-30% range for the top students.

Some of these top kids don't get into the top schools, because even 10-30% acceptance rates means admission is far from a given. So many resort to applying to 15-20 top schools in a shotgun approach. The result might be that some kids using this approach get into a number of the top schools. Some other kids don't want to use this shotgun approach, apply to maybe 3-5 top schools, and don't get into any.

The kid using the shotgun approach can't attend the 5 top schools to which they were admitted (and they may not even like the schools) - maybe they effectively "took" the top spots from some other kids who only applied to their true top choices. If there was a way to figure out the true top choices of the top applicants, perhaps there would be fewer disappointed kids come April 1st. Sure, there is ED at some schools, but family finances figure into this, so ED is not a good idea for all.

It's just as spaghetti describes here, too. We are lucky that our district offers DE classes from several local colleges and universities on the HS campus, but offerings are limited to specific classes, and one has to pay (typically about 300$ per class.) Agree about the AP courses as well; they are cheaper, and here are often the higher-level option (for example, my DD will earn a 200-level college credits for her junior year of foreign language, but the senior year is the AP year and more advanced material.)

Given the basic assumption that a college is an academic institution first and foremost - academics should carry more weight - for people 18/19 and younger.

To ask the most obvious question; why don't the elite colleges in the US offer their own entrance exams that have a much higher ceiling academically? Oxbridge colleges have alwas done this...

Oh, wait! That would mean more east Asians qualifying than the Ivies currently appear to find palatable.

I don't think of the busywork in today's AP classes as being particularly stringent academically - requiring deep analysis and novel insights, myself.

(Some from under privileged or abusive backgrounds that didn't have the chance to do particularly well when at high school age and may need some time to overcome the trauma of their childhoods so there should also be an alternative means for older students to apply using non-traditional metrics. They are not the majority of applicants and outside of the scope of what I am writing here)