Welcome to my civic issues thread, through which I am discussing the drawbacks of the college admissions process. In my last post, I introduced some issues surrounding the SAT. Because the pandemic prevented many from taking the exam, schools have widely gone test-optional during the last few college admissions cycles. These changes have been particularly frustrating for some, and relieving for others–standardized scores being optional translates to a heightened of extracurriculars, essays, and portfolios.
Prior to the pandemic, many schools would use standardized scores to weed out applicants who appeared unable to succeed in the school’s rigor. For example, at high-ranking schools such as Princeton and Harvard, it was common that any applicant who scored below 1300 on the SAT was automatically brushed aside before even looking at supplementary materials. Although the method sometimes caused schools to reject deserving applicants who were simply bad at taking exams, it ensured that every student admitted would keep up with the school’s rigor.
After schools went test-optional, however, that process was eliminated because applicants could choose to not submit scores if they thought it would hurt their applications. Although this change opened the door for more people to apply to dream and reach schools, the criteria to compare the applicants to one another turned fuzzy for admissions officers. Comparing my own experiences to that of others, I noticed that although criteria for assessing applicants varied between schools, they were all looking for applicants with specific niches to achieve a diverse student body. In this context, “diverse” does not necessarily mean ethnic diversity, but rather having students who are involved in diverse activities and career paths–schools who were developing their fencing teams looked for fencers, for example.
https://www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/extracurriculars/how-important-are-extracurriculars-for-college-admissions-/
Extracurriculars have consequently outweighed not only standardized test scores but also other application materials including essays and portfolios. Yes, this does offer a nice break for those who are not good test takers, but putting such a weight on extracurriculars brings up the issue of socioeconomic divide yet again. Students who are at an economic or locational disadvantage are not given many opportunities to develop meaningful extracurriculars, once again leading to more well-to-do students from urban areas to have an advantage when applying to school. The amount of resources that urban areas offer (such as fencing gyms, based on my previous example) allows these students to create these specific niches that schools often look for, and we find ourselves back at square one.
So perhaps schools should not put too much emphasis on extracurriculars. Although the idea seems nice from the broad view, looking at such intricacies reveals yet another source of the same socioeconomic division that created issues with the SAT in the first place. Not to mention that there are other disparities such as mental and confidence issues that could prevent students from becoming president of thirty clubs, starting five nonprofits, and volunteering six hundred hours a year. To almost counterbalance such disadvantages from occurring, standardized tests probably aren’t going to be completely phased out anytime soon, but a threshold as to how important extracurriculars actually are needs to be established.
Based on my experiences, I think that standardized test scores and extracurriculars should only be supplementary materials for college applications–in my opinion, the most important part of applications is the essays. Essays provide admissions officers with the perfect glimpse of each applicant’s true character, which can help determine if the student would succeed at the school. Standardized test scores and extracurriculars would solely be used to assess the academic rigor the applicant can handle and if the applicant has the initiative to become involved at the school. They would maintain roles towards the admissions process, but neither scores nor activities should be the determining factor of an applicant’s admission. It would enable schools to weed out not those who were only president of one club or only scored 1350 on the SAT, but rather admit applicants who have moral character and are passionate about what they do.
https://www.ivywise.com/blog/why-the-college-application-essays-matter/
At the end of the day, students who are passionate, driven, and genuine are the ones who are able to succeed in college–and sometimes these traits are not accurately represented through activities or test scores. These application components can be supplementary materials to assess applicant levels of thinking and initiative, but the most important attribute of an admitted student is that they truly care enough about a cause to make an impact on the world, which is often evident through essays.
This is just one way, but a practical way, to revise college admissions to ensure that genuine students are not turned away for pure robots or people who are wishy-washy. The solution would take some time to implement, but I believe that it creates a happy medium for those who excel on standardized exams and those who excel in extracurriculars.
