Choosing Students: Higher Education Admissions Tools for the 21st Century

358 Pages·2005·16.06 MB·English

by  Jacky Lumby

CHOOSING STUDENTS
HIGHER EDUCATION ADMISSIONS TOOLS
FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
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CHOOSING STUDENTS
HIGHER EDUCATION ADMISSIONS TOOLS
FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Edited by
Wayne J. Camara
Ernest W. Kimmel
The College Board
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
2005 Mahwah, New Jersey London
Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
Cover design by Sean Sciarrone
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Choosing students : higher education admissions tools for the
21st century / edited by Wayne J. Camara, Ernest W. Kimmel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-4752-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Universities and colleges—United States—Admission.
I. Camara, Wayne J. II. Kimmel, Ernest W.
LB2351.2.C54 2004
378.1'61'0973—dc22 2003062651
Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-
free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Contents
Preface vii
Part I: Diversity in Higher Education
1 Competition in Higher Education and Admissions Testing 3
Lee C. Bollinger
2 What Is It We Think We Are Trying to Fix and How Should We 13
Fix It? A View From the Admissions Office
Robert Laird
3 Who Is at the Door? The Demography of Higher Education 33
in the 21st Century
Ernest W. Kimmel
4 Broadening Criteria of College Success and the Impact 53
of Cognitive Predictors
Wayne J. Camara
5 Broadening Predictors of College Success 81
Wayne]. Camara
Part II: Improving Current Practice
6 The Performance-Diversity Tradeoff in Admission Testing 109
Paul R. Sackett
v
Vi CONTENTS
7 Prospects for Improving Grades for Use in Admissions 127
Warren W. Willingham
8 Evaluating College Applicants: Some Alternatives 141
Robert L. Linn
Part III: New Constructs and New Measures
9 Augmenting the SAT Through Assessments of Analytical, 159
Practical, and Creative Skills
Robert]. Stemberg and The Rainbow Project Collaborators
10 The Case for Noncognitive Measures 177
William E. Sedlacek
11 Broadening the Performance Domain in the Prediction 195
of Academic Success
Neal Schmitt, Frederick L. Oswald, and Michael A. Gillespie
12 Assessing the Personal Characteristics of Premedical Students 215
Patricia M. Etienne and Ellen R. Julian
13 Access and Diversity in Law School Admissions 231
Peter]. Pashley, Andrea E. Thornton, and Jennifer R. Duffy
14 Toward a Science of Assessment 251
Isaac I. Bejar
Part IV: Admission in the Context of K-16 Reform Efforts
15 The Integration of Secondary and Postsecondary Assessment 273
Systems: Cautionary Concerns
Stanley Rabinowitz
16 Rethinking Admission and Placement in an Era of New 285
K-12 Standards
Michael W.Kirst
17 Proficiency-Based Admissions 313
David T. Conley
Author Index 331
Subject Index 343
Preface
Although colleges and universities have long cherished their right to choose
the students they will teach, the manner in which they make those choices
is under intense scrutiny during the first decade of the 21st century. Gone
are the days when it was widely assumed that higher educational institutions
act for the public good. Students, parents, legislators, litigators, and judges
have challenged both particular admissions decisions and the process by which
those decisions were made by colleges, graduate, and professional schools. This
scrutiny of the way in which each institution chooses its students occurs in the
context of increasingly severe competition among students for admission to
those institutions that are perceived to be "best." Admission to higher educa-
tion has become both the perceived and the real gateway to success in the
American economy and society. As President Bellinger points out in the open-
ing chapter of this volume, this scrutiny of the admission process also occurs in
the context of unparalleled competition among institutions to be perceived as
best. National and regional rankings by the media have become the Scoreboard
of higher education. Winning "the gold" becomes the obsession of higher edu-
cation—and those who make admission decisions are held responsible for pro-
ducing a "winning" entering class.
A subtext of the debate over how universities make admission decisions
is a concern for fairness. Yet there is no consensus over the meaning of fair-
ness in the distribution of educational opportunities. Parts of American soci-
ety argue that fairness requires that members of gender, racial, language, or
ethnic groups be provided access to educational opportunities in proportion
to their representation in the general population—or in the applicant pool.
vii
Viii PREFACE
Others, however, argue that fairness means that each individual is judged on
his or her qualities, abilities, or past achievements in comparison with all other
applicants, without regard to gender, race, ethnicity, or other personal char-
acteristics. Still others, typically university administrators, maintain that any
selection process must recognize that institutions have a wide variety of needs
that give reasons for choosing some students because they are promising ath-
letes or musicians, because they are the offspring of alumni, faculty, or major
contributors, or because they have some unique experiences or talents that
will create a diverse freshmen class.
A debate on the admissions process almost invariably involves a debate
about the tools used in the admissions process. Most admission decisions are
made using tools that have been around for 50 years or more: teacher grades
from the previous level of education; scores on standardized tests; essays alleg-
edly written by the applicant; recommendations by harried teachers or pro-
fessors who may or may not really know the applicant. Teacher grades, from
the previous level of the education process, are criticized for reflecting behav-
iors other than academic performance (e.g., attendance) and/or for being too
tightly "bunched" at the top of the scale and, thus, providing little informa-
tion for differentiating among candidates. The current admissions tests are
criticized as being too narrow, or insufficiently responsive to high-school cur-
riculum. Essays and recommendations are thought to provide little reliable
information. This volume seeks to broaden the debate about the attributes of
the candidates that are valued in making admissions decisions as well as the
tools used in the admission process to assess those attributes. Significant atten-
tion is given to finding new variables that may have less of a disparate impact
on poor or racial/ethnic students, as well as reliably measuring a broader range
of talents and skills related to college success.
Running throughout this volume is the recognition that the initial debate
needs to be on what we, as a society, mean by college success. Too often, aca-
demic success has been operationally defined as a high grade point average
(GPA) or some other indicators. What additional criteria can be used to rep-
resent those other attributes that higher education claims to develop? Con-
tributors to this volume provide useful suggestions on ways to improve current
admissions practice; others argue for new constructs and measures of those
constructs, as well as providing conceptual models for developing such new
measures. Still other contributors deal with the implications for higher edu-
cation of the ubiquitous state-defined academic standards and their related
assessments. This volume is best read as part of an ongoing conversation about
the purposes of higher education and the many factors than can, and, perhaps,
should, enter into decisions about choosing students.
PREFACE IX
In chapter 1, Lee Bollinger provides a university president's reflections on
the nature of competition in higher education and the role that admissions
testing has come to play in that competition. Robert Laird, the former Direc-
tor of Undergraduate Admissions for the University of California-Berkeley,
provides, in chapter 2, a view from within the process. He highlights both the
struggle over the definition of fairness and the extraordinary efforts required
to fairly evaluate large numbers of applicants. In chapter 3, Ernest Kimmel,
formerly an Executive Director of Test Development at the Educational Test-
ing Service, describes the group of students who will be seeking to enter higher
education during the next 10 years or so and points out that most of the pro-
jected growth is among Hispanic and Asian young people. He analyzes a num-
ber of factors that could affect the number who apply and raises the question
of whether universities will be prepared to move beyond current practices to
meet the needs of this more diverse population of students. Wayne Camara,
Vice-President for Research at the College Board, argues in chapter 4 that it is
fruitless to develop preadmission measures of additional characteristics if those
measures are going to be judged solely on their ability to predict academic suc-
cess; new criteria of college success are needed. In chapter 5, Camara draws on
research in the occupational, as well as in the educational, arena to highlight
promising nonacademic attributes.
Paul Sackett, a psychologist whose work has focused on issues of fairness in
recruitment and selection in work settings, provides, in chapter 6, a sobering
analysis of the challenging tradeoffs between performance and diversity. In
chapter 7, Warren Willingham, a veteran researcher on issues of admissions
and college outcomes, reports on some of the limits and promises of the ways
in which grades are assigned. Robert Linn, a distinguished researcher in the
field of educational measurement, provides a thoughtful critique of current
practices in chapter 8.
Robert Sternberg, a major voice in shaping contemporary conceptions of
intelligence as developed expertise, examines in chapter 9 ways of broadening
both our concept and our measurement of cognitive abilities. William Sedlacek,
a long-time advocate of considering multiple factors in evaluating students,
especially those from racial/ethnic or other nontraditional backgrounds, makes
the case in chapter 10 for using noncognitive measures in the selection process.
Neal Schmitt, Frederick Oswald, and Michael Gillespie provide, in chapter
11, insight into the measurement of additional performance criteria, as well as
variables that might predict these criteria. In chapter 12, Patricia Etienne and
Ellen Julian describe the motivation of the Association of American Medical
Colleges to broaden the set of predictors used in choosing medical students
as well as the developmental process to create measures of certain personal