\u201cTurning the Tide:\u00a0Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good through College Admissions,\u201d<\/a> was\u00a0designed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has been endorsed by 85\u00a0stakeholders in higher education, presidents, admissions officers, deans, professors and\u00a0high school counselors. The author of the report was motivated, at least in part, by\u00a0research he had conducted in which he asked 10,000 middle and high school students\u00a0what mattered most: high individual achievement, happiness, or caring for others. Only\u00a022 percent said caring for others.<\/p>\nThe new report examines how the current application process contributes to that\u00a0outcome, with its overemphasis on SAT scores, excessive AP classes and long lists of\u00a0extracurricular and volunteer activities\u2014what the author calls \u201cbrag sheets.\u201d According\u00a0to the report, the admissions process also needs to redefine achievement in ways that\u00a0create \u201cgreater equity and access for economically diverse students.\u201d Among its\u00a0recommendations is that colleges should prioritize quality\u2014rather than quantity\u2014of\u00a0extracurricular and volunteer activities, and that those activities demonstrate authentic\u00a0and sustained engagement. I was especially pleased to see the report\u2019s strong emphasis\u00a0on the high value that should be placed on students\u2019 contributions to their households: caring for siblings or sick relatives, for instance, or working to help support the family.<\/p>\n
This not only helps to level the playing field for students from less affluent families but\u00a0it also speaks well and loudly to a student\u2019s character. The report recommends that\u00a0colleges discourage students from \u201coverloading\u201d on AP courses and warns students,\u00a0parents, and high school counselors that colleges are more and more alert to \u201ccoached\u201d\u00a0applications that do not reflect the student\u2019s authentic voice. SAT and ACT scores are\u00a0also targeted with recommendations that they become optional and that colleges\u00a0describe clearly how they are related to academic performance at their institutions.\u00a0In effect, the recommendations are designed to make the admissions process\u00a0\u201cmore humane, less super-human,\u201d to quote The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
Now, as you know, reports on education are issued by the dozens every year.\u00a0What encourages me about this one is that it was spearheaded, conducted, and\u00a0enthusiastically endorsed by Harvard, which is one of the country\u2019s most elite, most\u00a0selective colleges with over 37,000 applicants for fewer than 2000 seats in its freshman\u00a0class. It has been equally enthusiastically endorsed by many other elite institutions, such\u00a0as MIT, Yale, the University of Michigan, and a growing list of others, some of which\u00a0have already instituted some of the recommendations.<\/p>\n
So what does it mean for FIT? FIT is selective in its own way. But this is not a\u00a0traditional liberal arts college and although we have very high standards, our approach to\u00a0admissions is very different. Since students are admitted into a major, they are evaluated\u00a0on the basis of qualities such as focus and drive and, indeed, character\u2014qualities that are\u00a0reflected in a student\u2019s essay, for instance, just as design talent can be demonstrated in a\u00a0portfolio. A student\u2019s academic record is important, of course, but we are generally\u00a0unimpressed by a long list of AP courses. Moreover, SAT and ACT tests are not required\u00a0of the general student population, and if students provide them, they are used for English\u00a0and math placement purposes only. I don\u2019t mean to say that prospective students don\u2019t\u00a0feel pressure when they apply\u2014of course they do. And to some degree they should because it\u00a0only reflects how much they care. But our bottom line is the question we always ask\u00a0regarding every applicant: can this student succeed here? And I think that helps keep our\u00a0process \u201cmore humane.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hope is that the excitement this report has generated among admissions\u00a0officers and other higher education officials keeps building, that its influence spreads. and that its recommendations are widely adopted. What a difference that could make in\u00a0the lives of students starting their college preparations. And perhaps, if the author of the\u00a0report is right, our future college applicants will find \u201ccaring for others\u201d more important\u00a0than \u201chigh individual achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this country, almost every teenager thinking of going to college faces the\u00a0application \u00a0process with excitement\u2026but also with dread. Applications, after all, are\u00a0impossibly complicated and criteria for acceptance impossibly daunting,\u00a0especially for\u00a0the more selective colleges and universities. To say that the competition is fierce\u2014and\u00a0probably unfair\u2014hardly does it justice, and at bottom, you have to wonder what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":436,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9545],"tags":[4168,41510],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-admissions","tag-harvard-university"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ycDS-9J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}