Business Models, Media and Authenticity: What Affects Your Student's Candidacy?
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- 7 min read
I'm on a Zoom call with a student. We're chatting about final changes she can make to her Common App Activities section. The reason we're only focusing on Activities: she's completed all her supplements along with two interviews, telling me, “Most of my friends haven’t even started their essays.”
That's always a goal with my students; they should feel a sense of satisfaction with their apps. Besides, why would they want to drag this process into the senior year?Now that your students are back at school, what do you need to understand about the college process - and what myths can we dispel?
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Admissions Noise: Can You Believe It?
I always tell parents to block out the noise, which is confirmed in a recent article in Inside Higher Ed about misinformation in college admissions. Author Johanna Alonso notes, "Admissions myths tend to rear their heads around this time every year." As Alonso explains, "Admissions experts attribute these pervasive myths to a number of sources, from social media conversations to word-of-mouth or parents’ outdated understanding of the application process." She calls out Reddit subgroups, as "they invite students to ask other users—often fellow applicants or young adults who may know little about the admissions process—to evaluate their chances of getting into specific universities."Here's some feedback Alonso received directly from admissions directors at:
Penn: Students shouldn't use the thank-you prompt to uplift themselves.
Grinnell: Students really can write about ordinary things. (Grinnell is looking past that for writing ability.)
UCSB: Different UC campuses don't exchange notes on applicants.
Washington & Lee: Students using ED really don't get less in financial aid.
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Business Model Development: A College's Everpresent Challenge
Syracuse University: freezing in the winter, but always warm in spirit. If you follow this blog, you know that Syracuse is getting roasted in the media for budget deficits and program cuts. Just the other day, the Wall Street Journal devoted significant space to an in-depth report about the university, stating, "A national brand-name institution with a $2.5 billion endowment and a storied 150-year tradition is suddenly beginning to flail."What's going on? According to authors Douglas Belkin and Roshan Fernandez, "Syracuse’s challenges are both structural and self-inflicted."It's almost like a Harvard Business School case study. What national trends are affecting large universities like Syracuse? Should it pull back and make its best-known programs (e.g., Newhouse, Architecture) the focus of the institution? The article points out that not only are there fewer college-bound students, but more are looking toward warmer Southern spots. Syracuse's acceptance rate has risen compared with universities up north such as BU, Northeastern and NYU, where far more students pay full fare. For now, Syracuse is hoping to attract more applicants with a new Early Action option. It also hopes to connect with a nearby semiconductor manufacturer for student research.
Contrast that with small, Southern Wake Forest. In The Stakes for Wake, we learn that "staying small is expensive." So despite concerns about overcrowding, Wake is looking to increase enrollment along with revenue from athletics under newly appointed president Peter Rodriguez. While Wake always liked its smaller size, which lends itself so well to undergrad learning, it did not like a particular publication (see below) downgrading them. Rodriguez, by the way, led Rice University through an expansion that included launching the Virani School of Business.
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At IU Kelley, Students Mind Their Own Business
Indiana University's Kelley School doesn't do business the interdisciplinary way; it's heavy duty business. As we learn in the WSJ, their student-run real estate investment fund, Sample Gates Management, is quite the success story. Students raise funds from third parties, including Kelley alumni, and get to manage $12 million in equity. Now that's quite the resume credential! Kelley has close to 300 real-estate majors.
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Is the Media Driving Your Student's College List?
This college counselor regularly fields parents' questions about ratings - and responds that it's just marketing. Who knows what the best college is, especially for your student? When interviewed for the article about Wake Forest (see above), Rogan Kersh, a previous WF provost now NYU director, said this about U.S. News: “All of us in higher ed decry it, deplore it, lament its power."
Then there's the LinkedIn list of top colleges, published early last month. They define the best "based on five pillars: job placement; internships and recruiter demand; career success; network strength; and knowledge breadth." We've got the usual suspects on the LinkedIn list, like Princeton, Duke, Harvard and MIT, but are thrilled to see Babson, Villanova, Fairfield and Providence College making the cut.
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It's All About Authenticity
You read about it in these posts and (hopefully) in my ebooks. College admissions people want authentic voice, for which I'm most thankful - no parents, no AI in student essays. But then there's authenticity in student research, which the WSJ featured in a piece about CalTech's "fraud squad." These students validate submissions from applicants, and they stop at nothing, getting in touch with counselors and competitions. They might even ask applicants to show proof of their extracurriculars!
Among the tools they count on: InitialView's VIVA, which uses AI to prompt students on their research projects. I watched a video of a student interview, and it was fascinating! InitialView has been pushing videos as long as I have. For college applicants, they've created Glimpse, which gives students two tries at an unprompted video. See my ebook Supplementing the College Supplement for more on how applicants can use videos, including their own, or email me.
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Besides the Scores, What's Up with AP?
If you're tired of paying fees to College Board - or just fed up with them - you'll appreciate this feature in The 74 on why AP performance has soared. Author Kevin Mahnken explains that CB changed its scoring methodology in 2022, placing "their standards into better alignment with those of universities themselves, making the AP a more reliable indicator of students’ readiness for college-level work." Check out the article, especially the charts, to see the rise in AP Lang, AP U.S. History and AP Government exam scores.
Mahnken also cites Harvard professor Paul Petersen, who "faulted the College Board for stirring confusion over what American students actually know — and for not being more forthcoming about changes in their methods." Researcher Tom Loveless, previously of Brookings, points out that the rise has happened while just about every other standardized measure has fallen.
At the same time, College Board's Trevor Packer, suggested to me on my Instagram feed (I didn't follow him), believes that "passing rates [scores of 3,4,5] have risen precipitously because the old grading process, reliant on small panels of college instructors, dramatically understated high schoolers’ actual readiness for college."
But wait, there's more. AP Lit passages are shorter and easier, according to a teacher and test-prep pro interviewed. We learn that the number of students receiving 4s or 5s in popular AP subjects like bio, chem, lang and lit soared - from 28 to 45 percent between 2021 and 2025. Mahnken tells us that there was actually a 10 percent increase in students taking the test in that time period, thus the increase. Go figure!
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Handling AI: UChicago Goes After Both Students and Faculty
Leave it to UChicago. As reported in the Chronicle, its undergraduate Social Sciences Division will implement a "blanket policy banning technology in class and AI assistance on coursework across the division’s core courses [and will also] will also ban in-class audio or video recording and prohibit faculty members from using generative AI to assist in grading." No Meta glasses or recordings by professors or students are allowed, either!
Still, AI fluency is becoming a reality at many colleges. According to Inside Higher Ed, Ohio State, Miami (Ohio) and SUNY colleges are among those integrating the discipline within existing majors. Northwestern now has an AI major, while IU Kelley is requiring Hoosiers to complete coursework in AI.
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Michigan's Low-Stress Model
We hear about grade inflation. But what about no grades at all? Recently, the University of Michigan announced that there will be no letter grades for first-semester freshmen - but that's for the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts beginning in 2027. They'll get pass or no credit, something this Brunonian is quite familiar with. (Brown's Open Curriculum allows that grading to encourage students to sample courses they otherwise might not be comfortable with.) As discussed in the WSJ, Michigan believes this policy will "curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals."No grades, freshmen! Now go catch some Wolverine football!
A professor who left U-M for Rice "didn’t think the new policy would make much of a difference because grade inflation had made grades largely irrelevant."
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Dislike Calculus? U-M Comes Up with a . . . Solution!
he no-grade policy isn't intended for those smart Wolverine engineers. Moreover, Inside Higher Ed reports that U-M is "redesigning foundational math to connect calculus to real-world engineering." U-M robotics professor Jessy Grizzle found a "disconnect between the math they were learning and how they expected to use it as engineers." So he restructured his calculus course to start with something most of us wouldn't understand: calculating the trajectory of a drone. Interestingly, Grizzle points out that some professors aren't prone to changing the sequencing of engineering math courses because that's how they were taught.
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While I don't claim to have any solutions, I am confident that together, we can address your questions and guide your student in a way that helps them discover and support their interests - before and during the college process. So start the academic year the unCommon Way: get in touch!
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