When I hear the phrase “The College Admissions Process” a million different thoughts and memories race through my mind. I think about all of the stress and long hours put into one primary goal; college. I know I am not alone when saying I know multiple people who were cut short of being able to receive a college education. Whether it was due to their ACT or SAT score, High School GPA, Ethnicity, or Geographical location. I know that not every person denied from a college was wronged somewhere along the way, but there are those people out there that were and they are the ones who interested me to look deeper into this issue. I grew up in a very diverse town and attended public school my whole life. I would not change one thing about where I am from because I was exposed to so many different kinds of people with so many different backgrounds. I have been able to witness the students who put everything they have into school as well as the ones who just do not care or try at all. I have been able to witness those people that want to do everything they can to do well in school and to score high on college entrance exams so they can make something of themselves, but just do not have the resources. I was lucky enough to have what I needed to succeed and I do not take any part of that for granted because I know there are so many people, young and old, around the world that would do anything to be in my place, receiving a college education. For some it may be too late, but for the ones that it is not, I want to discover the true answer to my question. Are College Admission Policies fair? 

The requirements for College Applications have changed a lot since they were first created. These requirements have made the admissions and acceptance process unfair for many of the students applying. SAT/ACT scores and GPA are not good enough indicators of a prospective student’s abilities in the classroom or a predictor of how well they will do in college. Ethnicity and geographical location of applicants represent institutions need for a diverse student body and nothing else. Ultimately, institutions are looking to better themselves and receive more money than help their students learn and succeed. Colleges and universities should implement new policies to accept applicants so they may better themselves as well as the applicant.

 Guest host of South Carolina public radio, Lynn Neary talks to Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, about his new book, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College. Andrew Ferguson details his ongoing efforts at helping his son with college applications and the confusing, and often infuriating, admissions process. Neary had Ferguson on the show to discuss his book. Ferguson was just like every other parent trying to help his child get accepted to the College or University of their choice. Ferguson first starts off the interview by explaining that there are different categories in the College industry that help us separate colleges. These categories are highly selective, selective, less selective, and even below that. Ferguson explains that he thinks most of the people in the middle-class of America truly have their sights set on a selective school or even those highly selective schools. Neary mentioned that once Ferguson got started helping his son apply that he felt like he was already behind even though he began when the average population does, their junior year of high school. Ferguson agreed and said that he realized it when he went to see a SAT tutor who charged big money to get kids accepted into colleges. He realized parents who had been going to this woman had started preparing their children in the fourth or fifth grade. Ferguson said that no matter what the kids do they are always going to be competing against these parents who will do anything and everything to get their kids where they want to be (Neary).

One of the biggest components of college applications are the ACT and the SAT. The ACT is a college readiness exam compiled of different subject’s sections taken by high schoolers. The SAT is also a college readiness exam compiled of different subject areas taken by high schoolers. Many people ask what the difference between the two is. The SAT contains three sections including: Reading, Math, and Writing & Language. The ACT contains four sections including: Reading, Math, English, and Science. Each test has optional essay as well. However, many colleges require the essay score to be submitted. Each section is formatted differently on the different exams and they are scored differently, but, the differences are not all that important. Some Colleges and Universities prefer one over the other, whereas, some schools allow the student to decide which exam they are more compatible with. Being a college freshman, I am very familiar with these exams and remember the stress that they brought along all too well. Students try and try again to get to the score they need to be accepted into their school of choice. Unfortunately, some students do not get to have that luxury. Essentially, this one exam can either make or break your future.  

The ACT exam has many gaps in its scores, unfortunately, ACT has not performed very many studies of score differences in its test, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the score gaps. However, we can come up with a few likely candidates on our own. One being the format of the exam. Research shows that a timed multiple choice format gives males a higher advantage than females because a male is more likely to guess than a female. Females tend to try and be more ‘careful’ than a male. Research also shows that the most typical thinking of a female goes way beyond choosing from four multiple choice answers, which leads them to a problem with this exam. Another source that could be contributing to these problematic score gaps could be the language used. “Idiomatic terms such as "ball and chain" used to indicate a married partner and "straight from the horse's mouth" used to indicate information coming from a primary source, are most likely not familiar to many test-takers, especially any whose first language isn't English, causing them to choose wrong answers (FairTest).”

These gaps in ACT's scores are having serious consequences. Cut-off scores on the ACT have unfairly denied education as well scholarships to students who deserved it. One point can determine whether a student is admitted or is awarded needed scholarships. Fair Test explained that in 1962, Mississippi's higher education board instituted a minimum ACT requirement for admission that was eight points above the average Black student's score in the state (FairTest). According to a federal court, this was done "soon after the court ordered admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi because it deterred black enrollment." The U.S. Supreme Court agreed, specifically citing the role of the ACT cut-off as a key factor in denying African Americans access to the state's major universities (FairTest). Even after the supreme and federal courts recognized this the state still relies on these unfair ACT cut-offs to determine what students are accepted as well as what students receive scholarships. Many states offer scholarship programs that wave a part of tuition based on a student’s ACT score. 

Arthur Dobin of Psychology Today explains that a 2010 study in the Harvard Educational Review argued that the SAT used vocabulary that was more familiar to white test takers. “The study said that the SAT appears to be biased against the African-American minority group (Dobrin).” He says the difference in test scores just reflects the deep inequality in American society. Lower class students do not have the same access to the educational resources that upper class families do. “Students from lower income families just don’t have access to the same educational resources across the board. And that is a real problem. And that, I think, is the problem we should be discussing in trying to address...the SAT makes a convenient villain (Brock).” Cheryl O’Brien owns a test preparation company in New York. She says wealthy students have a major advantage on college entrance tests. They can spend months or even years preparing for the test with private teachers. Students with more motivation than money can practice with study guides. But self-study, even for highly motivated students, is not the same. Ms. O’Brien explains: “It’s never going to be as good as working with somebody when you can have feedback. Books don’t talk back to you. Books don’t explain to you what’s going on and how to understand something (Brock).” How can we be content with these exams determining every student across the worlds’ future? Every student is different, every student has a story, and every student deserves to have a chance. 

High school GPA, also known as grade point average, is another key factor in college applications. Generally, a GPA of 3.5 on a 0 to 4 scale is considered good. For any student, outside of the United States, colleges and universities hire specially trained individuals to review the certain academic standards of that student’s particular school and have them converted to be equivalent to our GPA. The problem with a universal GPA for all high schools across America is that every high school has a different curriculum, different teachers, and different students. I am from an average size town and just in my town alone I know people who went to about 8 different high schools. Each school learning different topics at different levels. Now, we have to think about this in every town. How can we throw every school under one category if no one is learning the same thing? When a college or university is reviewing a student’s application they read a number, having no clue what that student did to receive it. A 4.0 student at one high school could do everything they were supposed to. They could study every day, do all of their homework, create relationships with their teachers to better understand material. However, a 4.0 student at a different high school could have the easy teachers who do not make them do anything or grade everything for completion. These students get the easy way out. This is known as grade infiltration. My point is, when reading over these two students applications they are placed in the exact same category, but these students have nowhere near the same level of knowledge. Some people may look at this as the luck of the draw or that life is not fair. While that technically is correct, a student’s future should not be based off of ‘luck’ or ‘fairness’.

Grade infiltration is a problem in high schools. We cannot assume that all schools are affected by the infiltration, but we also cannot assume that they are not. Samantha Lindsay of Prep Scholar says “based on data, grades in highs schools have increased over recent years (Lindsay)”. The data shows that “from 1990 to 2009, average high school GPA increased by .33 points for female students (from a 2.77 to a 3.1) and .31 points for male students (from a 2.59 to a 2.9) (Lindsay)”. Lindsay also looked into the National Household Education survey, which in 2007 reported that a large 81% of high school students received primarily A’s and B’s in all of their classes (Lindsay). First looking at these statistics left me wondering why would any teacher want to deprive a student of a worthy education by making it easier. Lindsay explains that due to the rigorous competition between high schools they cannot afford to score below each other causing the grade infiltration to occur (Lindsay). Due to such a large number of students receiving high grades, it can be difficult for admission offices to separate average students from outstanding students. Grades can only reach a certain point, so if you lower the difficulty, more students will be able to reach the spot they need to be. This is dangerous because it is preventing prestigious students with loads of potential from standing out in the huge pool of applicants and can easily harm them from getting into those highly selective colleges and universities. The major problem with grade infiltration is when college admissions notice that a high school has higher than normal GPA percentages across the school making it hard for them to determine which students are worthy without looking into their test scores. Meaning that the admission officers will have to rely less on GPA and more on test scores, which as I explained earlier can be detrimental for some students (Lindsay). This leads us right back into the problems of the ACT and SAT. If there was a way to make sure that GPA’s were accurate then colleges and universities would not have to look back into the problematic test scores. 

Most institutions strive for a diverse student body. They do this by looking to applications for information about ethnicity and geographical location of their applicants. When choosing to accept applicants based off of their ethnicity, the university is using race preference. Carl Cohen describes race preference as giving preference towards someone based solely off of their skin color or nationality. It is wrong, unlawful, and violates the Constitution (Cohen). Universities and institutions that do this have no bad intentions of doing so; they simply want a diverse student body. In the future, I believe that schools should seek diversity in other areas that students are not born into. Such as intelligence and viewpoints about controversial issues. However, colleges want to be racially proportional so that they may seem to represent equality; when in fact they are doing quite the opposite. If a college were to receive applications from two students with exactly the same credentials, they would most likely select the student of a minority over the student of the majority. Situations like this occur all the time in the college admissions process and represent yet another reason why the process is unfair. Cohen also mentions when schools select students based on their ethnicity and not performance, there is an overall lower performance rate of their students. Which should be expected by the university since they selected certain students based off of skin color criteria. 

Geographical location of applicants is also heavily relied on by admissions of universities. Arthur Dobrin speaks about institutions striving for a geographically diverse student body. Take the same situation mentioned earlier but now instead of two students with exactly the same credentials other than ethnicity, their differences are in their location. Some schools will accept the student from a more diverse region. Also, there are situations that occur like the following: a highly-qualified student from Georgia applies to a school in South Carolina but receives a denial letter because a less qualified student from Colorado applies. In both of these situations, the student with better credentials and probably better work ethic was denied because a student from somewhere that would add diversity to the student body was accepted. The idea that colleges accept students based off of the residence of a student is shocking. Where someone comes from has nothing to do with how hard they will work or how far they will go to better themselves and represent the university. Colleges that accept students based exclusively on their ethnicity or geographical location clearly care more about the amount of money they make than the overall credentials of their schools (Dobrin).

Many of these factors that are used as decision makers in the acceptance process can lead to the decline of graduation rates and an increase in drop-out rates for universities. They may think they are achieving something by accepting students with high standardized test scores, grade point average, diverse within their ethnicities and locations; however, they are cheating the students and themselves in the long run. Colleges must implement some changes to achieve fairness for applicants. First, all applicants should be required to write an essay and if possible, participate in an interview. These interviews could be done over Skype or FaceTime, so that students do not have to travel to the university. This would also create a more casual setting and not put so much pressure on the interviewee. Test scores will probably still be used as an indicator of academic abilities learned in high school for a long time. I believe using these test scores is fine as long as they are not the only thing used by the university. As mentioned earlier, it is easy for students to learn the types of questions the SAT and ACT ask and ace a test that has been around for quite a while. Also, most colleges should make recommendation letters absolutely necessary. This will allow the college to hear about the student’s abilities if their scores are not as high or their GPA was somewhat lower. I understand that any of these requirements colleges ask for can be manipulated by students if they really tried. However, by receiving a recommendation letter and following up with whoever wrote the letter, the school will have a better idea of who they are accepting into their university. I am sure there are many other ways that the college admissions process can be bettered overall so that students whom are deserving are accepted into the schools which they apply. Universities need to start implementing these new policies for acceptance so they may accept worthy students that will represent themselves and their university better. 
