Who is most impressed with rankings?

I think it's safe to say that many of us in higher ed are reluctantly obsessed (and obsessed might be a tad to strong) with the rankings we receive from the press. Regardless of our opinion about the authority of the magazines and their methodologies, constituents' interest in the rankings translates in our interest in the rankings.

Our publications list our accomplishments on these lists, even if The Princeton review rank us 2nd in ability to take a bus to the airport (no, that's not a category, but there are some odd ones on that list). Each year, we brainstorm ways to improve our rankings and secretly hope that those above us on the lists don't maintain their positions.

I admit that I get caught up in this. I'd love to believe that people analyze school websites and course catalogues before deciding that one school is "better" than another. I have to face facts, though. The guidebooks and ranking issues affect the perception of quality.

But, I want to know why. Why do YOU care about the rankings? If you comment, I'd love to know if you're a student, parent, colleague, etc.

Where are the admission blogs?

About a week ago, I emailed a listserve made up of my colleagues asking for links to any blogs being written about the admission process. The results were a little disappointing. Plenty of emails came in asking me how to set up a blog, but not many came in with URLs for others.

I did some Googling and came up with the short list on the sidebar of this page. I was very surprised by the lack of "issues" oriented blogs. Most are newsletter style, telling students information that they can find elsewhere (Our deadline is coming up!). We aren't exactly lacking in "hot button" topics in this field. Perhaps people just don't want to take a side for fear that their opinion will reflect poorly on their institution. Or, perhaps, many of us think we're too busy or not savvy enough to write in a blog.

If you know of a good admission blog, please share it via the comment function. If you want help starting a blog, contact me (leave your email address in the comment box) and I'll walk you through it. There should be other admission officers blogging out there!

A little help for NOLA

I've already written about my love for New Orleans. For those "in the know", yes JazzFest ran the last two weeks and no, I wasn't there this year. MSN had a live stream for some of the shows, so I got to watch a bit of the festivities. Another local blogger posted a link to some photos from the weekend.

Anyway, scrolling through my Headline News this morning (a daily email about UVA in the news), one of the stories jumped out at me:

U.VA. ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS COMPETE TO REBUILD NEW ORLEANS

Of course I had to check it out.

The students competed with professionals and were recognized for their talents from the 275 entries. The judges selected two winners, three commended projects and about 20 others for exhibition.

Projects by finalists are currently on display at New Orleans’s Ogden Museum of Art and will be exhibited at the American Institute of Architects convention in Los Angeles in June. Winning designs will be published in the June issue of Architectural Record magazine with selected designed posted on the McGraw-Hill Construction Web sites.

I'll definitely be picking up Archtectural Record (okay, maybe reading it in the aisle at Barnes & Noble) when the next issue comes out.

I know I usually focus on "issues" on this blog and stay away from being a newsletter, but this was such a great story that I had to post about it.

It's been a while...

...since I posted a picture.

When we go "on the road", it's with mixed emotions. On one hand, we know we're going to meet great kids and see colleagues who have become our friends over time. On the other hand, it's time away from home, often with a grueling schedule, unhealthy food and non-stop repetition of the same answers to the same questions.

Despite this, I've always loved my trips to NYC for the spring college fairs (maybe because I grew up in the area!). One afternoon on this year's trip, I found myself taking the subway all that way out to the last stop in Brooklyn with my friends from Kenyon to the fair at Poly Prep. The walk to the school was like any other walk in Brooklyn, but when we turned into the school's gate, I saw a first: a live chicken.

I'm a "city kid". I've only seen chickens on the dinner table. I never saw a live chicken before and I was delighted! The college counselor at the school said the chickens come from people who want to get rid of Easter chicks that have gotten too big to keep (they toss them over the fence at night!). Regardless, the Poly Prep campus has a slew of chickens running around.

On my way out of the campus, I snapped a few pictures. Scratch that. I chased some chickens and took their pictures. I wonder what the high school students thought of the crazy admission dean running after their chickens.

Waitlist, Part 2

I guess I should lead this off by saying this blog is about my take on the admission process. Please do not interpret my blog as the gospel according to UVA.

Here's what I think about the waitlist at UVA. It's big. There's no way around that. We have to bring in a class that will maintain that 2/3 : 1/3 ratio for Virginian and non-Virginian students. So, think of the waitlist as two main groups, in state and out of state. Next, consider that we have to fill four different schools within the university: College of Arts & Sciences (CLAS), School of Engineering (SEAS), School of Architecture (SARC) and School of Nursing.

Now, we don't break up the waitlist into smaller groups, so don't think of this as eight separate waitlists. It's still just one bunch with no ranking.

By May 1st, all the admitted students are supposed to have mailed their enrollment confirmations, saying that have either accepted or rejected our offer of admission. It usually takes a week for all of those letters to get to us. Only when the enrollment confirmations are counted do we know what will happen with the waitlist. We might realize that the Architecture school needs a few more students or that there's room in the College for a few. While keeping the in-state/out of state ratio in mind, we then go to the waitlist.


The time between April 1st and May 1st is always an uneasy one for us. It seems as though students are applying to more schools than ever (I met a student who applied to 20 at my last institution) and as a result, we always worry that a tiny fraction of the students who receive an offer will accept us back. Just yesterday at our retreat, our dean told us about a time when he'd accept just a few hundred more than the class needed because yield wasn't a huge issue. People were applying to 1-3 schools back then, so if they got accepted to a school, the odds were high that they were going there. Because of the uncertainty on the yield side, we have to maintain a sizeable waitlist.

Yes, the waitlist is still quite large. I wish we didn't have it at all. I remember the state of limbo I was in as a waitlisted student a one of my top picks. Thankfully, I wasn't admitted and wound up where I belonged.


For a future post: Why I think everyone feels the need to apply to 20 schools.

Waitlist, Part 1

In early April, we start taking "decision calls" in our office. Those are calls from parents asking why we made the decision we did for a certain student. For the first two weeks of the month, the calls are almost non-stop. The most popular question: "Why was my child waitlisted?"

Now, I've always worked in the private college sector where we didn't entertain these conversations at all (and not many people called to question our decisions). However, at a state school, we try to be responsive to our constituents and respond to each and every call.


There's a reason this is titled "Part 1". I'll continue this tomorrow. I'll be on retreat with the office for the rest of the day, discussing how we'll change strategies for next year's admission cycle.

For now, take a look at my colleague's blog at Johns Hopkins. He wrote a great entry about the waitlist a few weeks ago. Interestingly, they have a waitlist similar in size to ours at a school that doesn't have state and individual school ratios to maintain.

Message Boards...where armchair counselors and anxious students meet!

At 1:23 PM, a student posted a link to my blog on a fairly popular message board run by a private counseling firm. Traffic to this blog exploded (though that term is relative when it comes to blog traffic), with 20 hits coming within minutes of the post. New readers are, obviously, always welcome, but I'm afraid anyone coming from that site will be disappointed by the lack of "secrets" posted here. This is more of an issues-related blog where I react to things happening at UVA and in the admission field.

Anyway, welcome new people! Feel free to comment if you have something to contribute (read: swears, rants, and rude comments do not belong here).

Now, you'll notice I'm not linking to the board. There's a reason. While much of what goes on over there is the typical chatter about college admission, there's a lot of problematic info given out as well. I saw one post state with authority that UVA practices "yield protection", which means we deny students we think will turn down our offer of admission (absolutely untrue). I see post after post telling high schoolers "you're in" in response to a list of stats (an entire forum is called "What are my chances?").

The fact is, admission isn't a science (to quote the first Dean for whom I ever worked) because it's about more than calculations and stats. College admission is a mysterious thing that even surprises those of us in the field. I don't think the "armchair counselors" out there are doing any service by suggesting that one can "handicap" chances of admission.

So, be careful if you frequent the admission message boards. I know it's great to have others with whom you can chat about admission when your friends/colleagues/classmates are sick of it, but remember that the anonymity of the web allows some people to sound very knowledgeable when they might not have all the answers.

Psst...you're allowed to comment on this blog

This blog gets a good number of hits each day. I can see how visitors get here (referral pages), their general location and how much time they spend on the page.

I was pretty surprised by the number of visitors I have from Google, but realized that searching for "UVA Admission" brings up the University's page and then this blog. I was not surprised at the number of referrals from cvilleblogs, an aggregator site for local blogs to which I've become addicted in a very short amount of time.

Location has really been interesting. While there are plenty of locals reading, it seems there are people as far away as India checking in every so often. Too bad I only know French and Spanish.


Despite all the hits, there are almost no comments. What gives? Are my posts so laden with nuggets of wisdom that no comments are needed? I doubt it. Tell me what you think! I love a good discussion and was hoping to incite some good conversations with this thing.

College Admission on Steroids

At lunch today, a few of us talked about private admission coaches and whether we are able to spot applications that have been polished by professional counselors before being submitted. I'm not sure I can. I imagine I've seen plenty of these applications already, though I only read one application this year with essays that seemed too sophisticated to be the work of a 17 year old.

When I first heard about private college counselors, I figured a bunch of opportunistic folks decided to cash in on the fear and anxiety parents and student experience during the college search. I knew one woman personally who became a private counselor after retiring from her job in guidance at a public high school and couldn't reconcile the move, especially when I found out how much she was charging for her services.

A writer from the New York Times recently compared the hiring of private admission counselors to the use of steroids in baseball (In College Entrance Frenzy, a Lesson Out of Left Field).

CONSIDER this situation. An ambitious and talented person, having worked extremely hard for a decade or more, sees a competitor suddenly performing at an inexplicably higher level. That first person comes to believe the second must be obtaining secret, unacknowledged help. So, rather than risk being left behind, he pays for the same stealthy assistance.
* * * *
Under the pretense of fair competition, tens of thousands of high school students and their families employ the scholastic equivalent of steroids — test-prep courses, private consultants, Internet mills for massaging if not entirely creating their essays, exaggerated or cynical accounts of their community service.

I'm so conflicted about private college counseling. On one hand, those at schools where guidance counselors are overwhelmed by triple-digit case loads might need the extra help. On the other hand, an application that's been massaged and cleaned up by a third party shouldn't just have one person's name on it.

I'd love for someone to convince me to fall on one side of this fence.

Your MySpace is our MySpace

I've been asked more than once whether UVA looks applicants up via the web, using Google, MySpace, LiveJournal or one of the many other websites that allow students to create webpages and blogs.

For the most part, the answer would be no. We don't really have time to search for all 16,000 applicants online. However, if an applicant mentions involvement in something in particular, we might just take a look at it. One of my colleagues reviewed the application of a student who claimed to be involved in producing a fairly popular website. Curious, my colleague looked him up and couldn't find any mention of him on the site. Items he said he wrote were attributed to another person. This student wasn't extraordinary and his claims didn't help his case at all.

While UVA might not be looking for student information online, officials at some other schools are. Newsweek and USA Today (here and here) have written about this. There are numerous instances of information posted on websites like MySpace coming back to haunt students. I keep reading that students consider this an invasion of privacy. Why do they think this? Isn't it called the World Wide Web for a reason?

It was only a matter of time

According to The Chronicle, the first lawsuit against The College Board for the scoring snafu that came to light last month has been filed.

The lawsuit, filed in early April in a state court in Minnesota, was brought on behalf of an unidentified high-school senior in Dix Hills, N.Y. The lawyers who brought the case are seeking class-action status to allow any student who took the test in October, except those who received falsely high scores, to join the lawsuit.

UVA was affected by the errors. A few of our applicants had scores that went up and the CB says they won't tell us if anyone had scores that went down after the error was found. The problem I have is that now, we can't give students our SAT stats without a big conversation about how they might be off a bit. It's bad enough that we have no history with this exam, now we're back at square one.

In a way, though, this problem is getting more people, both in admission and outside of it, to see things in a more realistic light. Application review as a holistic process, not one based on formulas and rubrics. If the SAT ceases to be reliable, maybe more educators will see it for what it is: a four hour, standardized test. Nothing more, nothing less.

Accepting the Best

A few days ago, we announced an articulation agreement with Virginia's community college system (VCCS). The agreement stipulates that VCCS students who maintain a 3.4 GPA while earning their Associates Degree (there are some additional stipulations) will gain admission to UVA. I thought this was a great move. There are so many smart students out there who don't fit the traditional mold; who might not have been ready for UVA (or ready to pay for it) when they were seniors in high school. It feels great to know we're helping "non-traditional" students come to UVA. I also think students benefit from being exposed to classmates who've been out in the real world or spent time elsewhere before arriving at UVA. I hope more community college students see UVA as a viable option because of these agreements and the press they've generated.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as positive about the possible influx of community college students as we are. A recent graduate wrote a letter to the editor of The Cavalier Daily in response to an article they ran earlier this week about the articulation agreements.

Such a system would allow a lazy high school student to go to a community college where he or she could do just enough to get by and would then reward such behavior with admission to one of this nation's finest schools.

I wonder how many community college students this alum knows. I wonder if he realizes that many juggle full time jobs, families, and school. I wonder if he realizes that some of our faculty teach courses at PVCC, our local community college. I wonder if he realizes that there were plenty of VCCS students in his graduating class; Students who were admitted as transfer students in his second and third year.

Just yesterday, I was celebrating the fact that our students are aware of the world outside their campus bubble. I guess a few get through here without a wake up call.

I am certainly not saying that all people who attend community college are lesser people

Hm.

Activism alive and well at UVA

At my first institution (and at my alma mater, too), a huge issue that faculty and administration tried to address was student apathy. The majority of Wall Street Journals went immediately from the mailbox to the recycling bin. Almost nobody watched the news networks or even the evening news. Most students were content with living in the pretty bubble of campus.

I have to admit that I'm pleased to see that UVA students are more aware of issues and will act when they feel they can bring about change. Perhaps that's one of the benefits of "student self-governance", which gets a lot of talk around here. Most of us (myself included) use UVA's Honor Code as an example of student self-governance. But to be frank, there's a long history to follow with The Honor Code and while aspects of The Code change now and then (the single sanction is a hot topic on grounds right now), The Code and how it's administered isn't rocket science.



A group of 17 students have started a sit in at Madison Hall, where the President and other top administrators have their offices. They're advocating for a living wage ($10.72 per hour) to be paid to all University employees (the current hourly wage is $9.37). I only heard about this at 5:30 PM, when I got home and turned on the news (I knew there was a rally, but didn't realize students had started a sit in). When I came to work this morning, I saw some students outside Madison with a sign counting this as the second day of the sit in. I had to laugh, since this whole thing started at 5:30 last night. Or so I thought...

One of the students involved is keeping a blog, though it hasn't been updated since yesterday. They actually arrived around 9 AM yesterday morning. I'm kind of surprised that word didn't really travel around that they were there until late in the day. Anyway, according to the living wage campaign's website, they were allowed to stay in Madison Hall overnight. I'm anxious to see what gets added to the blog today.

EDIT: I had a feeling that President Casteen didn't set the minimum wage for UVA employees. At the very least, the Board of Visitors (our version of a Board of Trustees) made those decisions and I imagine that there's a bit of influence from the legislature involved as well (I'm still relatively new to UVA and the state system, so I'm not entirely certain). A statement on Casteen's website talks about this. I wonder when the next Board meeting is?

Buttons, ribbons and shirts (oh my!)

As I was walking home yesterday afternoon, I ran into a small crowd of students and administrators wearing black shirts that said "gay? fine by me." My first thought was that I hadn't heard about any rally going on (similar to when I didn't hear about the petting zoo at the amphitheatre...thanks for the invite, Second Year Class Council!). Then I started thinking about awareness campaigns I've seen here at the University since I got here last summer. The black ribbons and door hangers given out in response to racially motivated incidents in September are most prominent in my mind.

My college years were the height of the wearing a ribbon practice. It seemed as though every cause had its color. As a student back then, I wore anything that was handed to me. Breast Cancer awareness? Can't argue with that. Peace in Eastern Europe? Pin me! Save the Madagascan Aye-Aye? Sure, he's a funky little creature!

Our students have gotten even more creative with their campaigns. The "merch" they make rivals the items for sale in the bookstore. Instead of picking up a 99 cent roll of ribbon at the craft shop, our students are designing logos and contracting vendors to mass produce promotional give aways.

I guess these gimmicks rope in more people than a ribbon would, but do they foster conversation about their cause? Because of the cost involved, they can't possibly canvas the entire campus with their freebies. So, because I didn't get my black shirt yesterday, am I seen as intolerant? If that's the case, bring back the ribbons!

Hiatus

I've been on hiatus for the application season. I have no excuse except to say that as a newer staff member, I was overwhelmed by the amount of work each of us did to review 16,252 applications for first year admission (and about 3,000 transfer applications).

In case anyone is reading this thing, the hiatus is over.

Stories that should make the front page

It's a little frustrating that the "good news" stories don't always make it to the front page...or even to the 10th page.

The Hook has a cute article about a UVA football player who visits one particular fan in the hospital every week (and calls him when he's on the road). What a great kid! We need to showcase more of these sorts of stories.

Feeling less helpless...UVA's response to Hurricane Katrina

All day long, I kept MS-NBC streaming at work, listening to what was happening down on the Gulf Coast. Just a few months ago, I was scurrying around NOLA with my friends during JazzFest, staying up all night (the grids!) and looking for a distant relative's art in antique stores. It was probably one of the best trips I've made in the last few years and I was certain that I'd be returning to NOLA each year for JazzFest. 

Well, now I'm listening to the reporters saying that the Hyatt has no windows, that tourists are holed up in the Sheraton and the Ritz, that the Superdome is in horrible shape. Friends from the area are slowly checking in via text messages because for some reason, cell phones aren't working, but text messaging is. A friend who works as a DJ at a radio station in Baton Rouge has been on the air for 18 hours, comforting callers and also broadcasting pleas for help. When one local hospital was dangerously low on formula, she announced this on the air and Baton Rouge residents, who weren't affected as badly as those near the water, arrived with supplies within an hour. 

 Being so far away while watching this [sometimes] live footage and hearing these calls for help, the feeling of helplessness is overwhelming. Of course my first reaction was to send money to one of the relief agencies, but while that made many of us feel better after the tsunami, that didn't make me feel like I had made an immediate impact. By the end of the day, that changed. 

 At 5 PM, our Dean gathered all of us who were around and said that we were going to help in the way we were best suited to: giving NOLA students a temporary home. 

Tomorrow morning, we'll start taking names of Virginians who were supposed to be starting school at Loyola, Tulane, Xavier and other NOLA schools. They'll be welcome at UVA until their schools reopen. We have housing, open spots in plenty of classes, and a campus full of people ready to welcome them. 

It doesn't fix the massive, gaping wound down in New Orleans, but it feels so good to be doing something at this point.

What are fraternities all about?

According to one student, fraternities are about exactly what the stereotype indicates.

The Beta Theta Pi International Fraternity, Inc. had its charter revoked early in the summer by the General Fraternity, the fraternity's international governing body, for failing to comply with the General Fraternity's regulations.

The chapter subsequently lost its membership in the University's Inter-Fraternal Council.
...

Kennedy said Beta Theta Pi is dedicated to building its program called "Men of Principle."

"They want us to be a model fraternity with the best, gentlemanly guys with the most class and the least amount of drinking," Kennedy said. "It's almost like taking away what fraternities are about -- People getting together and having a good time, and most times it involves drinking."-The Cavalier Daily, 8/24/2005

Being new around here, I wasn't sure what to make of that quote, but I'm liking UVA's student newspaper for printing it!

They definitely gave me my first laugh of the day

Here's how we get over 730 clubs at UVA

I started browsing the list of student clubs and organizations today and came across one that completely shocked me. The UVA Cornhole Club. Anyone with friends or family in Ohio knows what Cornhole is...it's an obsession there! Ohio's stadium parking lots are littered with games of Cornhole before concerts and sporting events (notice multiple games going on in this photo from a Bengals game). I've been known to play a game or two when I'm in the Buckeye state.

I started wondering how such a random club could exist (look at the membership page...only a couple members). I tried to see how easy it was to start a club at UVA. It looks like as long as you have two people willing to be officers, you have a club. There's a form to fill out that gets approved by the student organizations group and then the Office of Student Life. From there, a club can apply for funding and be officially recognized. Pretty sweet! Maybe I'll start a...Displaced Bostonian Club!

By the way, someone at The Today Show must be from Ohio because they did a story about the game. Perhaps Cornhole is going to travel now? Perhaps between The Today Show and our students, games will be popping up in other states? I'm crossing my fingers!

Here we go...

It's been one week of forgetting names, getting lost on campus (Grounds, excuse me) and being wilted by 8:30 AM. A week without seeing the ocean, eating a [good] bagel or seeing Red Sox highlights on the news.

But I like it here.

I'm the new Assistant Dean of Admission at the University of Virginia. I thought it might be interesting to record my experiences over my first year here. Feel free to comment, whether you're a student, colleague or just a random person who landed here through some surfing.