Score Choice…So Far
Editor’s note: I am happy to post a guest blog by Peter Farrell, Dean of Admission, Fordham University.
We have now worked through our first wave of admission activity with Score Choice in play. Without a doubt, this new wrinkle in the admission process had made the work of admission officers at Fordham more complicated.
The first wave of difficulty we experienced was a lag in the receipt of students’ scores. In early November, we had thousands of fewer SAT’s on file than the same point last year. With a deluge of scores at the end of the first week in November, it became clear that students had held off on sending scores until they had viewed their October SAT results. This delayed the onset of our early action review by nearly a week.
The second wave of difficulty came with many more high schools not sending testing on their transcripts. While this is totally understandable as students exercise their rights of ownership with regard to test results, something was clearly lost in translation with students. Much more follow-up was required to remind students to get their scores to us from the testing services. Again, a delay in reviewing many applications ensued.
The third wave of difficulty with Score Choice resulted from students opting not to share their testing plans on their applications. Seemingly, the advice students were given was to not share any testing information on applications: no test results, no planned test dates, no nothing! Obviously, this complicates our lives as we wrestle with how to handle individual applicant’s early action decisions. Should we defer a candidate with the hope they might be planning on taking a December SAT or ACT? In the past, students had told us their plans, which helped make these decisions clearer. Now, we’re just left to guess.
All of this is especially troubling in light of the fact that ours is one of the many colleges that clearly tell students they will only be reviewed on the basis of their strongest testing profile. The fact is that sharing a mixed record of testing with us formally, or just on the application itself, will not work against a student in our review.
|
