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Oct. 4, 2006
Scaring Seniors Straight
The problem, as laid out in a series of federal reports and statements by politicians and educators alike in recent years, is clear: Too many high school students are frittering away their senior years, creating what the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, in its report last month, called a “vast wasteland” at a point that young people should be gearing up for college.
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The solution is far less clear. But the University of Washington is trying to combat the problem in its little corner of the world, adopting a policy this year in which it is reviewing the senior year transcripts of all applicants and systematically withdrawing the acceptances of those who seriously flopped or fooled around.
Twenty-three students who had what university officials call “extreme” downturns received letters this summer that said: “After reviewing your final high school transcript through spring term 2006, I am sorry to inform you that your University of Washington Seattle offer of admission for autumn quarter 2006 has been withdrawn.... I regret that we had to take this action and hope you will find an educational alternative that meets your needs.”
Another 180 students who suffered “a significant downturn” in their senior year performance were told that the admissions office had “considered withdrawing your admission,” but stopped short. The letters added: “We hope that you live up to your academic potential and take full advantage of the many teaching and advising resources at the UW to help you to that end.”
Washington’s approach is not unique; admissions committees at lots of selective colleges review senior year transcripts and keep their eyes out for students who go into a freefall late in high school. (The University of California at Berkeley, for instance, revoked the admission of slightly more than two dozen students in each of the last two years.) But Philip A. Ballinger, Washington’s director of admissions, says he hopes the widespread, aggressive approach taken by the university — an institution to which “a major proportion of high school students in our state” apply each year — will have a significant impact in its backyard.
“In this State of Washington, this coming from us will be a fairly direct communication to students here, and I have no doubt that counselors will be using it,” says Ballinger, who adds that “high school counselors have been asking us to do this for years.”
That wasn’t possible, though, until the university, which had previously admitted students based largely on grades and standardized test scores, adopted a new admissions process this year in which admissions officers read each application thoroughly.
After admitting students last spring, based largely on students’ high school performance through the junior year, the university reviewed applicants’ credentials in late July and early August. Admissions officers looked for three major warning signs, says Ballinger: students who received multiple Cs, Ds and Fs; failed a course required for admission to the university (such as math or foreign language), or said they planned to take challenging senior year courses and then did not, instead “taking introduction to breathing,” says Ballinger.
Washington, he says, was “not that tough:” the dropoff had to be “pretty extreme,” and students had an appeal process in which they could show that family situations or other issues had contributed to their decline.
Of the nearly two dozen students turned away because of senioritis, Ballinger says only one parent’s complaint reached him. “I think in many cases, parents say, ‘Yeah, I don’t like it, but my son or daughter didn’t do diddly in the senior year, so they’ll go to another school.”
Michael Kirst, a professor of education and business management at Stanford University who has studied the high school/college continuum, says that approaches like the one at Washington does little to attack the real issues in high school performance. “Only a small number of institutions do this, and they are selective,” he said in an e-mail. “The bigger problem is with students who were never prepared to begin with and attend nonselective four-year or open enrollment two-year institutions.These institutions comprise 80 percent of postsecondary enrollment. Until we rethink the senior year for them, no systemic change will take place.”
Ballinger doesn’t dispute Kirst’s point, but says he hopes that with the university’s wide reach in its state, Washington’s new policy will change at least some students’ behavior. It is only fair, he says, that students who expend meaningful effort throughout their high school careers should get an edge over those who begin to coast early, and stop striving for excellence.
“Some who was a concert pianist wouldn’t take a year off; for a star athlete, taking a year off would be inconceivable,” says Ballinger. “If you’re expecting to come to a university and do good work, taking the senior year off should be inconceivable, too.”
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Comments
Go Washington!
I have to respectfully disagree with Jeff (above), though I agree with his point about hight school & compliance. So I think my alma mater is doing the right thing & sending a message to students that they are not automatically entitled to indulge themselves. In my experience, unlike Jeff’s, many students arrive in my college classes with their priorities exactly backwards. This policy may go some small way toward marking out the expectations colleges have of their entering students.
Joseph Duemer, Professor at Clarkson University, at 9:35 am EDT on October 4, 2006
While I truly applaud the decision to “pull” acceptances from those who perform poorly in the second half of their senior year, it happens much too infrequently to “scare” most students. Wouldn’t it be great if we could recapture the senior year by basing admissions decisions on four full years of high school?
I realize that such a radical move would call for a major shift in how the admissions process works, but allowing seniors to continue to believe that they have earned a break just because they have successfully completed three and a half years of high school is appalling.
Terence Giffen, Director of College Counseling at Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville, TN, at 11:30 am EDT on October 4, 2006
re: senior year
All of this begs the question of whether students actually should go to high school for four years. I grew up in a college town, and many of the academically motivated seniors opted out of high school classes and took college courses instead.
If students can take the year off and nevertheless perform well in college, perhaps their time would be better spent pursuing other interests, such as a internship or travel, or start college in January instead of September.
Debra Lattanzi Shutika, Assistant Professor at George Mason University, at 12:00 pm EDT on October 4, 2006
tough love
Our campus reviews final transcripts as well, making sure students continue to meet admission requirements. We’ve been doing it for years. I am the one who gets to make the phone calls asking what happened. For some reason, this year we put more students on probation than the past two years combined. (akin to UW’s “we could have rescinded admission but didn’t letter"...I’m hoping it’s just a fluke, but the senior slide is rampant. We did rescind a few actual admissions this year and most of the time the student says, “I didn’t know I needed that class for admission.” Hmmm. It’s terribly agonizing on this end trying to make the right decision on how to proceed, and usually rescinding is a last resort. But I’d rather exercise a little tough love now than have them bomb out in college. There are too many students working hard who would love to have that admission spot.
Kris Anderson, Executive Director of Enrollment at Univ Wisconsin — Eau Claire, at 2:10 pm EDT on October 4, 2006
I echo Debra’s point. Furthermore, I question the value of the last TWO years of high school. I can personally attest to the power of stultification in reducing academic motivation. I lost interest in high school after my freshman year, dropping an entire gpa point by the end of 10th grade. My answer was not to push harder at subjects I found unstimulating, but instead to go straight to college.
Simon’s Rock College is a four year liberal arts college specializing in young scholars; they’re a part of Bard College and also grants an AA in liberal arts. It was there that I renewed my interest and vigor: my grades shot back up, I got involved in extracurriculuar activities, and ended up earning my AA a semester early.
I am not unique, as Simon’s Rock’s success can attest to. Leon Bottstein has written extensively on the subject. To put it simply, I believe the “slacking off” of college seniors is not a personal failure so much as a system failure.
Taj Moore, Marketing & Adjunct Faculty at AIMC Berkeley, at 3:30 pm EDT on October 4, 2006
The arena of education needs to communicate
I believe high schools and universities need to take a more collaboratve approach with high schools and the students attending. For, the most part students and and parents are grossly unaware of what expectations universities have to be admitted. In addition, students who perform well on standardized test are led to believe they will do well in college, which is not nearly as accurate as many believe. Nonetheless, students are misled resulting in students kicking back their senior year and allowing their performance slack. By working in the unique position of counseling students in high school preparing to go to college, I find that many students are bored,disinterested and misinformed. Students need to be stimulated to think. I see so many students in college unable to formulate their own opinions and articulate their thoughts. Why? They are not being asked to in high school. To engage a student is to inspire a student to learn. If schools continue to rely on standardized assessments as a means of determining if a student has “truly” engaged in the process of learning, our young people are always going to come up short.
Eletta, Counselor, at 4:15 pm EDT on October 4, 2006
NACAC Debate
As this online discussion is progressing, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) is also in the midst of this debate in its governing Assembly. The focus is on when colleges and universities should be allowed to encourage/allow students to apply to college — September 1; to first notify students of acceptance – September 15; and when to set the earliest application deadline — October 15. The crux of the discussion is what this does to access (and equitable admission processes) and the effect on the senior year. Because NACAC is composed of admissions officers and college counselors, there are perspectives from both sides. In essence, there does need to be strong collaboration between secondary and post-secondary educators and admission/counseling professionals in order to develop curriculum, application procedures, and deadlines that best serve students in their growth and progress educationally as well as personally. We may not reach a firm decision by the time we meet again on Saturday morning, but it is being closely examined in a national forum by those who a most directly involved in the transition process.
Bill Dingledine, Counselor, at 10:10 pm EDT on October 4, 2006
Since the University of Washington accepts any Washington State resident who graduates in the top third of their high school class, this is only going to affect a very tiny and marginal strata of students who have let their grades slip from Bs to “multiple Cs, Ds and Fs....”
Steve, at 8:20 pm EDT on October 6, 2006
Communication
Here at Oregon Institute of Technology, we also study the final transcripts carefully to ensure that admitted applicants completed required classes with acceptable grades and continue to meet our admission standards. I believe we revoked fewer than a half dozen offers of admission this summer but in each case we had told the students at the time of admission that they needed to maintain an acceptable record and in some cases we were quite explicit about our expectations. In addition, for those who applied prior to February, we also sent them a letter last winter gently reminding them not to allow senioritis to set it and warning them that we do sometimes withdraw offers of admission.
As for Dr. Ellington’s perspective on this, I couldn’t disagree more. Failure to enforce our standards—with reasonable exceptions—at the front end of the college experience would send the message that we will not take our standards throughout the balance of college (e.g., deadlines for dropping classes, graduation requirements) seriously. In addition, it seems quite unlikely that students who have developed poor work habits in high school will magically get back on track simply because they have stepped onto the college campus.
Palmer Muntz, Director of Admissions at Oregon Institute of Technology, at 10:55 pm EDT on October 9, 2006
My 3 daughters attended a very high achieving, “blue ribbon” high school in San Diego. In their senior years,they only had 2 courses required to graduate- English, and History. Math was “recommended” for 4 years so they took college level calculus. Their English class was Advance Placement and their History class was a college Political Science/ Government course. I tried to get them out of school early so they could go to work but the school would not allow it, insisting they stay at school taking stupid “electives” to fill the time. My children are not the exception at this school. All of the seniors on the college-prep track are done with the necessary classes, if not by the end of their junior year, certainly by Dec. of their senior year. The senior year seems like a waste of time. It’s no wonder we have “senioritis.” Why not make the senior year an internship or a year abroad or some other worthwhile endeavor that would expand the child’s horizons and make them more excited about going to college?
Kathy Fait, at 11:23 am EDT on October 12, 2006
Scaring Seniors
The highly selective colleges that are concerned about the lack of intensity from accepted seniors during their final semester in school have every right to be concerned. These schools seek serious, intellectually curious, life-long learners and the students they have accepted presented themselves as such. To gain acceptance and then “slough-off” seems deceptive and dishonest. Furthermore, elective high school courses are selected by students and are not a waste of time. They provide the enrichment that helps them develop into well-rounded students that the universities and colleges “thought” they were receiving.
G. Townsend, High School Counselor, at 9:25 pm EST on October 30, 2006
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Why are they trying to solve a non-problem?
As a high school physics and math teacher with a PhD who has also taught at the university level I have to say that this is a very stupid policy addressing a nonproblem.
Yes, I regularly have very bright students whose work crashes during their last quarter or two of high school. But usually they keep up with the class, they simply don’t turn everything in or turn in a poor quaility of work and their grades suffer. But in every case I know of this happening these students shine when they get to their university—univeristies that include CalTech, MIT, Stanford, Reed etc.
The real issue here is that most of high school is about compliance not about learning and there is nothing wrong with students kicking back a bit before they head off to college. I would love to see some actual research establishing that students who pull back due to senioritis perform differently in university than those who don’t. I’d be surprised if the data supported this policy that seems more designed to act like cops than educators.
Jeff Ellington, at 8:50 am EDT on October 4, 2006