Test Score Reporting and Potential Pitfalls

  I’ve written before about colleges and universities that have moved to a test-optional admissions model. These institutions do not require students to submit their scores for admission purposes. Instead, they evaluate students on other factors like their in-class performance and involvement outside of school. However, many students will choose to submit their scores to schools and I advise that if a student’s score falls in the middle range of a school’s accepted freshmen profile from the previous year, they probably should. This data is pretty easy to find with an internet search.

There are a few ways a student might submit their score to a given college. At some institutions, students are allowed to self-report their scores. More commonly though, the institutions want to receive the scores directly from the testing services. When students register to take an SAT or ACT exam, they can choose to send their scores to up to four colleges. They can also choose to send their scores after the test. This is probably the most common way scores are sent. If a student takes a test as a junior, they might not even be certain which schools they are applying to, so by the time senior year rolls around, most of them will end up logging back into their accounts with the testing services and sending their scores. The testing services will send four score reports for free. After that, the SAT charges $14 for score reports. The ACT charges $18.50.

I recently encountered a potential trap one of my students fell into involving score reporting. She took an SAT in the spring of her junior year. At the time she registered, she requested her score be sent to four colleges including a large southern university that is test optional. At that time, I’m not sure she had a solid picture of which colleges she would actually end up applying to. She took the SAT again in June and solidified the schools she planned to apply to over the summer.

She did end up applying to that large southern university, but based on that school’s profile, she decided to apply there without her test scores. However, she forgot that she sent them her score when she registered for the test back in March. Generally, if a college or university has a score they are going to evaluate it, even if they are test optional. Or, as I’ve had colleges tell me before, “once we see something, we can’t unsee it.”

The only test score the college received was the March one. They never received a score from June because the student never sent it. Her March score was a bit below scores of most of the other freshmen admitted the prior year, but she has a great GPA and a very impressive resume. She was deferred from the university in the first round of decisions they released and we have to wonder what impact her scores had on that decision—scores she sent months before she applied and well before she had her head wrapped around a complete strategy for college admissions. This might be a cautionary tale about sending scores as a student registers for a test or before forming a firm application plan.

What Is The Common App

  The Common App (short for Common Application) just might be the most prevalent way to apply to college these days. The entity is a non-profit that started in 1975. It has slowly grown and is now used by over 1000 institutions. This number has doubled in the past 10 years which is indicative of how powerful The Common App has become in the college admissions world.

What’s so great about the Common App is how much easier it makes the college application process. When college applications were first introduced over 100 years ago, each institution produced its own application. So, if a student wanted to apply to ten different colleges, they had to complete ten different applications. The Common App allows a student to complete one application and then send that to as many of the subscribing institutions as they desire. There is a separate application fee for each institution, so it’s not practical for students to just apply to every school they find on the Common App. 

While most of the application is uniform, there are some customizations subscribing institutions can add for themselves. For example, some schools have supplemental prompts, essays, or personal statements they require. Some schools might require counselor recommendations or recommendations from teachers and other people who are familiar with the student. In these instances, the student simply needs to add this person’s email address in the designated place within Common App. Common App will send that person an email, inviting them to create or log in to their Common App account and submit the recommendation there directly. 

For transcripts, a designated school employee like a registrar or counselor will receive a request to upload a transcript directly in the Common App system. The student doesn’t need to have an additional transcript sent. However, some colleges will require students to separately report their academic history. In Florida, for example, most of the state colleges ask students to use the Self-Reported Student Academic Record or SSAR. This is an online device where students are really entering the same information they find on their transcripts (courses and grades) themselves. 

Finally, some colleges will require a mid-year report. This is where a school official needs to provide Common App with an indication of how a student is performing at the conclusion of their first term of senior year–basically their first semester grades. This is not something all colleges require.

Whatever is required by any post-secondary institution on the Common App should be clearly spelled out on the application. Students must pay their application fee or have their fee waived (which can be done under some circumstances) before a college will review their application. Students need to follow the directions they see there closely and monitor emails from colleges that might include further instructions. There are a couple of other aggregate application services besides The Common App students may encounter, and many colleges are still operating the “old-fashioned” way with their own exclusive applications that will be available on their websites.

The Importance of Safety Schools

        Before a student applies to college, they’ll put together a list of schools they intend to apply to. For most students, especially those who don’t have one very clear favorite school, I’ve always believed that it was best practice for students to approach this collection with diversity in mind. Students would do well to choose a series of schools they’ll apply to that can check a lot of different boxes. Big schools, small schools, public and private, Big cities, little college towns, reach schools and safety schools. And, any one school can check more than one of these boxes.

One of these might be more important than others though, and that is the safety school. When I listen to the list of schools a student will apply to, it’s the first thing I want to hear because I’m asking myself, “Is there at least one school on this list I’m pretty confident this student can get into?” If my answer to that is no, I’m worried. 

Preparing for college takes a lot of emotional energy. For most college-bound students, where they go to college will be the biggest decision they’ve made so far in their young lives. Getting to a place where a student can make that decision takes lots of dwelling and thoughtful consideration. For this reason, I’ve always felt that finding out you didn’t get into any school you applied to is just about the worst position a student can find themselves in as they put their post-high school plans together. 

The safety school is the solution to this. It is the insurance policy that guards against a student not having a post-high school option. Imagine a high school senior in a group chat with their friends who are talking about where they are going to college, what color scheme they’ll decorate their dorms in, where their roommate is from, and when their orientation is. Then, this student opens that last email from a college and finds out they’ve been denied from all the colleges they applied to. How devastating can this be to a young person’s psyche?

 Students will probably receive this information well into their senior year, and that timing can make putting a plan B into place difficult. For one thing, it leaves little time for a student to spend time on that thinking and envisioning themselves on a given college’s campus. Also, students might have missed out on application deadlines for schools they could have gotten into had they only applied to them earlier. You can solve all of this by including a safety school in your first round of applications. 

Of course, what counts as a safety school is relative to the student, and it's important to be realistic about what meets that definition for you. A quick way might be to google a college’s middle range of accepted scores and GPAs. If your numbers fall above this range, you can probably consider that a safety school. If your numbers aren’t there, a school might not be as safe as you thought, and using that school to check your safety school box might defeat the purpose of including it in your list in the first place. 

Why the Waitlist

        As students receive their admissions decisions from colleges this fall, some of those will result in students being waitlisted. Waitlists have somewhat of a nefarious reputation in college admissions, especially from the high school perspective, so let’s take a deep dive into why they exist and what they mean to colleges.

To the college, a waitlist is a valuable tool. A college’s admit class, or their freshmen class, is at the core of everything they do. Colleges have targets they must hit within their freshmen class that are crucial to their budgeting and other considerations. The problem is that it is extraordinarily difficult for a college to pinpoint what will happen in the admissions cycle.

Let’s say, for example, that last year a college received 20,000 applications. They can probably expect about that same number again next year, but what happens if the football team goes hot or cold in the fall? Or, if there just happens to be a spike or dip in their applicants? 18,000 applications or 22,000 applications instead of 20,000 can be very significant. Further, even if a college does receive about the same number of applicants and admits their regular percentage of those, they still can’t be sure how many of those students will actually decide to attend.

I recently had a college admissions rep tell me that if a class ends up being just 1.5% larger than they anticipate, they’ll face a housing crisis. If their class is 1.5% too small, they’ll face a $2,000,000 budget shortfall (this was someone from an extremely small college so this was a significant number for the)

The solution to this for the college is the waitlist. I’m not so sure about that word though–”waitlist”. The word implies some order or rank and there’s usually no such thing on college admission waitlists. We would probably all do better if we used the word “waitpool”.

Here’s why. So, a college is going to do its best to hit its admissions target, but as the admissions cycle churns on, it might turn to the waitlist to ensure it nails its target. However, the student who has the highest SAT score or grades might not be the first one in. A college is more likely to go run some demographics within the waitlist (or waitpool). They might say, for example, “We’re low on out-of-state commitments, we haven’t hit our target for the College of Engineering, and we’re a little off balance on girls and boys”. So, out-of-state girls majoring in engineering, all get an invite off the waitlist. If a college is in really bad shape, this group might even get an impressive aid package so they can be more certain they hit their target.. 

To many, this can seem unfair because it can mean some less qualified students receive admission offers that others don’t. Colleges don’t have a lot of options though. After all, budgeting is always extremely important and if you build your university around XYZ, it’s not very easy to suddenly see a freshmen class that represents ABC.

Casting Your Net--The Silver Lining of Electives

        Many students view their high school electives as some burdensome demand from their schools to just fill a portion of their day. I’ll concede just an ounce of truth here. Electives are generally required at the high school level. No school has every conceivable elective and all the ones they do offer might not find their way onto a student’s schedule for a variety of reasons. As a result, some students take a pessimistic view of the electives they do land in.

There isn’t always only a downside though. I believe any student can find a silver lining in any elective. Electives can be beneficial in a number of ways. Perhaps they can help a student hone a particular skill or talent. They might introduce a student to a new hobby or interest. They could teach new habits or lifestyles that increase the quality of life. They may prepare young people for a life lived well and effectively as an independent adult. Or, they might introduce and prepare a student for a vocation. All of these can serve a beneficial purpose and students would benefit from considering these upsides rather than zeroing in on what they hate most about a class.

With that in mind, what is often overlooked in electives is the opportunity for students to cast their net. Merriam-Webster defines that term as the act of trying many different things so that one will have the best chance of finding what one wants. Electives can do just that. They can be a way for students to try out several different skills that they might find have useful applications in their lives.

 I’ll give an example of how this can work. My school teaches a class called Digital Media/Multimedia Design. The emphasis of what is taught in the class is mastery of Adobe Software including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. There’s a little bit of photography and video production that’s taught along with that. It’s true that few students who take that class will spend their careers making significant use of this software. However, it is likely that many of those students will occasionally interact with digital images in their careers. If they ever have to make a flyer to promote something, or even post an image on the internet there could be skills from this course they make use of. They might need to do those things at some point in just about any conceivable career. What's more, we all walk around with a camera in our pocket and snap pictures regularly of what's happening in our lives. Surely, a class like this can have application there and maybe introduce a student to an additional level of photography that goes beyond taking quick selfies at your pool day. 

Students might not use Photoshop to manipulate every photo they take or use all their photographs in an impressive display in InDesign. They might need to at some point though and reaching back to that little bit of information they learned in the Digital Media class might make a difference in whatever they are trying to do. Such is the power of electives. Cast your net and appreciate the opportunity to try and learn something new. 

The Disadvantages of 529 Plans

  Most people are familiar with 529 plans. These are investment vehicles used specifically to save for educational expenses like college. They’re great because families won’t pay taxes on the earnings made within their 529 investments. They are the most common way American families save for college and it’s how I’ve chosen to save for my own children. 529 plans are not perfect though and there are some disadvantages that savers should be aware of.

One of a 529’s biggest disadvantages is that funds can only be used for what the federal government calls qualified expenses. These categories include tuition, room and board, and some educational supplies. These are the most expensive costs related to attending college, but in reality, they probably don’t cover the full cost of keeping a young person who is away at college afloat and content. Further, the amount that you are able to withdraw from a 529 for each category is capped by the college or post-secondary institution the student attends. This can be a problem in some scenarios. For example, if the college you attend sets their off-campus living expense at $500 a month, that’s the most you can withdraw from your 529 plan to pay for an apartment you might rent. If you find an apartment that costs $600 a month to rent, you can still choose to live there, but that extra $100 for rent is going to have to come out of your pocket and not your 529 savings.

Another disadvantage is that the money a family has stashed away in a 529 plan is considered an asset when a college calculates financial need. This can work to reduce or eliminate a student’s financial aid eligibility for things like Federal Pell Grants, need-based scholarships, and subsidized student loans.

Both of these points conspire to create somewhat of a disincentive to save in a 529 plan or at least to over-save. To be sure, having too much money saved for college is a good problem to have, but it can be problematic nonetheless. A family who found themselves with a surplus of 529 funds they were unable to find another use for could withdraw and pocket the surplus, but they’d be forced to pay taxes on the earnings that were leftover in addition to a 10% penalty. That could be a costly sum. Those other uses I mentioned could be redirecting the 529 funds to a student’s sibling or sitting on it a little longer in case the student decided to go back to school for a master's or doctorate program down the road. 

To get around these drawbacks to 529 plans, some savvy parents have chosen some other savings vehicles that might not be truly intended for educational savings but get the job done. These might include taxable brokerage accounts, IRAs, Uniform Gift to Minor Accounts (UGMAs), or even whole life insurance policies. Families can speak to financial advisors if they are interested in these as a 529 plan alternative.

Why you Should Probably Take Statistics in High School

  Mark Twain once famously said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Perhaps the sentiment he is implying there wouldn’t be quite so true if probability and statistics were taught to more students.

Statistics is the practice of collecting and analyzing data and using that information to infer proportions in a whole from a representative sample. That practice is quite different from what happens in other kinds of math, but it is no less important. Most American students will touch on statistics early on in school. They might encounter some basic problems like, “if I have ten marbles in a box and six of them are red and four of the blue what is the chance I pull out a blue one?” However, as they get deeper into grade school and into high school they are very likely to skew away from statistical instruction. Indeed, no state currently requires that high school students take a course in statistics but many do require credits in other courses like algebra and geometry. As a result, students are far more likely to encounter geometry and algebra in middle school. 

Geometry is kind of a one-off and many high school students will study it for a year. High School students who do well in math tend to eventually be fast-tracked to Algebra 2 and from there, trigonometry and calculus are natural progressions. Probability and statistics are kind of like the town that gets bypassed by the railroad tracks and not enough students are taking a detour to get there.

The problem with this is that statistics is an extremely practical math. The American Statistical Association lists about 150 broad college majors that are likely to require a college-level course in statistics. Far less require calculus or trigonometry and those that do may well also require statistics. Anyone who might have to read a study or report that speaks to some collection of data will likely benefit from some understanding of statistics and that happens in countless careers that require a college degree. Actually, I might be hard-pressed to think of one career that would never require someone such a report. 

Still, outside of colored marbles in bags, the first time the majority of American students study probability and statistics deeply is at the college level. Encountering a new kind of math for the first time in college does not likely lend itself to the best possible outcome. Even getting into college could be an issue. Here is a stat for you, about 30% of the math questions on the SAT relate to statistics or data analysis.

The good news is that while no high school requires statistics, many do offer it. So, the simple solution to all of this is to take the statistics class your high school offers. You have to take some math anyway and this should count for that. You’ll be better prepared when you likely have to take a statistics class in college and even if you don’t, you’ll be a more well-rounded mathematics student for the rest of your life. Probably.