Show Notes
On today’s episode, Ethan sits down with David Hawkins, Chief Education and Policy Officer at National Association of College Admission Counselors (aka NACAC), and they get discuss, among other things:
What are the most important factors colleges consider?
What significant changes has he seen in the college admission landscape in the past few years?
How has the emphasis on college essays (aka the personal statement) shifted?
Why has the emphasis in standardized testing changed?
What have the impacts been of the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admission?
How can students, counselors, and parents use the info in this report to make their college admission process easier?
For over 20 years, David Hawkins has worked in enrollment management and admissions to alleviate systemic barriers to accessing higher education. Hawkins has played a key role in setting NACAC’s strategic direction, which involved hearing and representing the collective voice of NACAC’s more than 25,000 high school counselors and college admission officers. His priorities include making NACAC a more effective learning organization, with an emphasis on ethics and redefining advocacy.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Play-by-Play
2:04 – Introductions
3:03 – What is the State of College Admission report?
5:48 – How can students, parents, and counselors use this report?
9:50 – Which factors of admissions decisions are most important to colleges?
13:34 – How are “positive character attributes” assessed?
18:00 – What are some specific qualities that are important to colleges?
20:46 – How do students show these qualities in their applications?
25:33 – How has the importance of the college essay shifted in recent years?
27:13 – Which colleges seem to value the essay more highly?
28:47 – How does a student’s interest in attending a particular school influence admissions decisions?
32:30 – How are counselor & teacher recommendations assessed?
33:58 – What are admissions officers looking for in extracurricular activities?
37:38 – Why is high school class rank dropping in rank of importance?
39:30 – Do colleges still want to see standardized test scores?
42:52 – Quick thoughts on creative portfolios, interviews, work experience, state exam scores, and subject test scores
44:49 – David shares predictions on shifts in equity and inclusion in the future of admissions
48:57 – Closing thoughts
Resources
A List of Activities You May Not Have Considered Including—But That Count!
How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation for College: Step-by-Step Guide for Students
How to Write a Letter of Recommendation: Counselor’s Guide + Samples
How to Write a Recommendation Letter for a Student: Teacher’s Guide + Samples
Podcast Episodes:
Show transcript
Ethan Sawyer 0:08
Hi friends and welcome back to the podcast. Guess what? It's season five. We're excited. You're here and welcome so one of the questions that I'm most often asked is, What do colleges want? Well, good news, the National Association of college admission counselors, aka NACAC, surveyed hundreds of colleges and asked this very question among others, and they've detailed their findings in something called the state of college admission report. So for season five, I thought, rather than try to do all of that in just one episode, I thought, let's do a whole series, and we'll do deep dives into each of these factors that college is deemed most important. So on today's episode, the kickoff, I sit down with David Hawkins, who's the chief education and policy officer at NAT Act. In fact, he's the one responsible for starting this epic report more than 20 years ago, and we get into among other things, what are the most important factors that colleges consider? Are there any big changes that he's seen in the college admission landscape in the past few years in particular, how has the emphasis on college essays and the personal statement shifted? Why has the emphasis in standardized testing changed? What have the impacts been of the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admission and how can students counselors and parents use this information to actually make the college admission process easier? For over 20 years, David Hawkins has worked in enrollment management and admissions to alleviate systemic barriers to accessing higher education. He's played a key role in setting NACAC strategic direction, which involved hearing and representing the collective voice of NACAC, more than 25,000 high school counselors and college admission officers. His priorities include making NACAC a more effective learning organization with an emphasis on ethics and redefining advocacy. I hope you enjoy our conversation. You
Hi David, welcome to the podcast.
David Hawkins 2:06
Hi Ethan, thank you for having me so tell us. You
Ethan Sawyer 2:10
know, for folks who may not know what a chief education and policy officer does, what do you spend your time thinking about at Macca? Well,
David Hawkins 2:18
you know, associations typically have to serve as the voice and the source of information for its members. And so for NACAC, a lot of what my responsibility entails involves the content, the substance of our work, of our field. My team covers research, so while gathering information about the field, advocacy, policy and practice, advocacy on behalf of our members, diversity, equity and inclusion work falls under my my purview. That's a very important priority for the association. We do also work with philanthropy and foundations that support our mission. And finally, we do the education and training work of the association, which is really the lifeblood of any association, is to enhance, strengthen and pull from the expertise of its membership. Awesome.
Ethan Sawyer 3:03
Yeah, I'm so grateful for your work. And it's, it's, it feels like it's sort of like the in some ways, the heart, or, I guess you could say maybe the brain, of a part of the brain of what the organization's doing. One of the questions I get most often asked by students, parents and counselors, is, what are colleges looking for. And for years, I've been directing folks to this state of college admissions report, as I felt, and still feel like it's one of the best ways to know what college admission offices are looking for. For folks who don't know, will you share us just briefly, what is the state of college admission report and how did it start? Yeah,
David Hawkins 3:40
it's actually kind of a fascinating origin story. First of all, it is a report that intends to share what we know as a profession about what colleges are looking for in the college admission process, as well as a few other things, a few other bits of data about the transition to college. It's our opportunity to truly say what we know to the public. First and foremost. Obviously, this could be a useful tool for our members, but the real audience is for the people out there who are interested in or going through this process. I often say that college admission is a lot like the weddings industry, and that you have a different crop of people going through every year, and some of whom have been through before, some of whom have not. And so there's really a need and a demand, in fact, for very basic information about how this thing works. What do I need to do next? And what are the what are the things that are important for me to keep in mind? And so the origin story for this was when I first started at NACAC, back in 2000 we were part of a group of organizations that put out a report about admissions every five years, if you can imagine the pace of data now, in 2023 it's hard to imagine something coming out every five years and being relevant, right? And our role in that was really very small. And I kind of felt like, when I came in and took over the research role here at NAT act that you know, we have a vast amount of expertise in this membership. We are the people. People who hold the knowledge about the college admission process, we should be the ones telling that story on a national scale, and we should be telling it every year, really, because people don't go through admissions every five years. They go through every year. And so we I actually started the state of college admission report back in 2002 with the thought in mind that we would satisfy the demand for the questions that inevitably came to us from the media, from policy makers, from our own members, about what the college admission process looks like. So from there, it really just took off. And like I said, the demand for this information, those of us who work in it maybe don't see it as much because we're so immersed at such deep levels, but the media and other people who are really dealing with it on a more superficial level benefit from having this very basic information put out there year after year.
Ethan Sawyer 5:49
One of the pieces I want to get into in just a minute is the factors in the admission decision fact sheet, because I think that's going to be most interesting to a lot of the folks listening. But to zoom back a second, what are some of the pieces of the Soca or the state of college admissions report, and how have you seen over the years folks using the report, in particular, students, parents and counselors?
David Hawkins 6:12
Yeah, well, we actually structure the report much like the transition to college itself. So in the first part, I should say report. We used to issue a paper report. Now we've moved to sort of an online data center. But the bottom line is, the structure is intended to say, Okay, first and foremost, you have sort of your landscape. What's happening? How many students are graduating from high school? How many are going on to college? What's the sort of application volume in the country? You know, some very basic statistics about the flow of students through the pipeline, then we move into the school counseling environment. You know, we want people to understand that school counselors and college advisors are a very important part of this process. So we do take a look at data about the availability of school counseling and college advising in high schools. We feel like that's been a very important policy component to this, maybe not as important to the students and families, but a very helpful very helpful policy component, an advocacy component. Then we move into sort of the college side of things. We look at everything from what colleges acceptance rates are from year to year, what their yield rates are from year to year, which has been a fascinating journey, and we probably talk about that a little later. Then we move into looking at some of the practices that they use, some of the strategies, like early decision and early application or early actions, excuse me, wait lists, things like that. And then we move into, really what I consider the heart of the report, which is the factors in the admission decision, which is where we ask colleges what matters to you in the application process. And of course, we collect information about the types of colleges that respond to our survey, and that allows us to say, well, this type of college tends to prefer this type of information, or, you know, this segment of colleges values this more highly than this other segment. So that's something that we found has been probably the most popular part of the report over the years. And I think, as you would imagine, with with data that's that sort of varied over the over the spectrum of this of this report, we have people using it in a lot of different ways. We have counselors using it to provide sort of like back to school information to students and families applying to college nights. There's a lot of valuable information about that you could put in a PowerPoint, for instance, to describe the process to students and families. Colleges will often use it to also communicate to students and families, to train their new staff in sort of what the overall admissions environment looks like. And we've also even had admission Deans sharing this information with the institutional leadership, presidents, boards of trustees, to help them get a better understanding of what the environment is, what the landscape of college admission is like, so they can better situate their own institutional perspective. And then the last thing I'll say is that the media has used this more than I would have probably ever, ever anticipated. We've had this data cited in if you name a news publication in the United States, I can almost guarantee you that they have used state of college admission data at one point or another in the last decade or so.
Ethan Sawyer 9:06
Yeah, I feel like this should all come with visuals, and by the way, for folks listening, we'll link in the show notes to a selection of this so you can actually see this thing that we're talking about. But I want to get into this part of the factors that you're calling the heart of the report, and I want to read to folks some of the information that's on here. And essentially, what, what it is, there's a table that has at the top percentage of colleges attributing different levels of importance to factors in admission decisions. And this is for first time, freshmen fall 2023 and you know, there was a little there was a gap, which I guess we could talk about. You know, where this is the one that's come out in the last, you know, maybe four years or so. But I want to tell you, read y'all to for the listeners. Here are some of the factors, and then I'd love to zoom in on some of these with you. David, so the first one at the top is high school GPA in college prep courses. And then underneath that, we've got total high school GPA. A in all courses, and then strength of high school curriculum. So maybe we'll just we can kind of group those, those, those are, you know, rated in terms of, you know, the at the top high school GPA and college prep courses, 76.8% of colleges deem those to be of considerable importance. Total high school GPA is 70 war. 74 attached considerable importance and strength of high school curriculum. 63.8% considerable importance. And when I was doing the little comparison between this report and the last one, it seems like this has sort of stayed the same. Is that, is that where you're at with this?
David Hawkins 10:37
Yeah, with one, with one asterisk, yeah, this. These three factors have been at the top of this table since we started doing the state of college admission report 21 years ago. And I think the bottom line here that the message that I always send to anybody who's listening is that colleges value what students do in four years of high school at the very highest level. Right? I know people in the past got kind of hung up about whether tests or grades were more important. The bottom line is, and it probably always will be this way to it to a degree, is that colleges are really, really leaning on what this student has done during four years worth of academic work. So that's that's probably the most important
Ethan Sawyer 11:18
message. What I'm hearing you say, because you mentioned Tess is, it's what the four years, the body of work as it were, that's, as opposed to how they performed in one particular scenario. It sounds like you're, you know, when we're talking about the the Final Four, you know, committee, you're trying to, you know, trying to figure out which teams are in the, you know, the college, you know, in the 65 teams, or, I guess, now it's 68 teams, but they're looking at the whole body of work, as opposed to just one game, as it
David Hawkins 11:42
were. That's right, and I did mention an asterisk right up front there. The one thing that's changed slightly over over time, or maybe it isn't so slightly, is that the gap between the top two, which is the high school grades in college prep courses versus the overall grades. Grades in college prep courses used to be significantly higher in terms of colleges rating that gap between college prep courses and the overall GPA has narrowed significantly over the last five to 10 years. And I suspect, even though we're not yet really into the deep dive on this discussion, it's more this is probably just a reflection that schools are understanding that there are disparities in college prep courses, availability in schools, and also that, frankly, students are taking sometimes so many that the two might be a little bit indistinguishable in some ways. So otherwise, though, I think the really important takeaway here is that it is the body of work over four years of high school that really matters.
Ethan Sawyer 12:38
Yeah, one way I've heard this described is language that's given to UC readers, University of California readers, and what colleges are looking and this applies to other things in this report that we'll get into, but colleges seem to be looking for, how have you made the most of the opportunities available to you? Right? And what I'm hearing you say is that it's, you know, there are certain there are colleges that are aware that certain students are going to have more opportunities available to them than others. So there are other factors that are taken into account. Like, for example, the next one that that zoomed up and that you know in the rankings is what we'll call and by rankings I'm talking about, you know what colleges consider important is this one called positive character attributes, which 28.3% of colleges give considerable importance to, and we've got 37 and a half percent of folks giving moderate importance to. Will you tell us what this is? What are these positive character attributes and how are they assessed? Yeah,
David Hawkins 13:34
this is a this is an interesting topic, and one that I think we will be dealing with for quite some time now. I'll say first, just to take a bit of a geological approach to this, we only started including positive character traits as an option for colleges to rate about six or seven years ago. Prior to that, anytime we added a new item, it usually came in somewhere near the bottom of the list. Well, positive character traits shot right into the upper half of the list. And as you can as you've referred to Ethan, that the it is now next after the body of work that you've done in school. And so what I think it's important to know about positive character traits is that for as long as I've been around college, at admissions, admissions officers have always said we're looking for something that is intangible. Oftentimes, we're looking for qualities that students might have, such as grit and determination and resilience and curiosity and integrity. The list goes on and on and on. We know that there's a substantial body of research in the academic world that can sort of link these traits to ability to succeed in an academic environment. So admissions offices know that these things can be indicators of success. But what I think is interesting to note, if you're if you're a student or a family supporting a student going through this process, is that many individual colleges will have ways in which they can, in one way or another, do. Document rate in some way or otherwise, interpret qualities and articulate qualities during the reading process that they that they think are valuable, and they usually are connected to other aspects that they see in the application. But I don't know, in terms of a standardized, sort of nationally applicable system that we yet have a really good standard way of describing how colleges do interpret and factor these these qualities. At this point, it nationally. I would have to say it's sort of, I know we know when we see it, and can and can recognize it in context. So I think it's really important. That's one of the things that NACA is going to be working to try to help. We don't want to standardize it too much, but we want to make sure that colleges are able to articulate to students and families what this entails, and maybe more importantly, since the Supreme Court recently mentioned that character was an important factor in the admissions process, as far as it's concerned, that colleges are going to have to be prepared to make sure they can document the way they the way they do this. I
Ethan Sawyer 15:58
already know I'm going to be getting questions from students and parents, asking, what are the qualities specifically and how do I then go do those things? I want to ask a leading question. But why do you think it could be dangerous to potentially standardize what those qualities are?
David Hawkins 16:16
Well, I think I can think of two things. Number one, I think it's fairly common knowledge among the profession, and I suspect that it's this way in public as well, that college admissions can be quote, unquote, gamed by a lot of people, or the perception is that it can be gamed. And the fear here there, one of the fears, is that perhaps students will start to latch on to Okay, so curiosity is important if, you know, if it's specifically named, and then they'll go out and hire a curiosity coach, or go out and, you know, enroll in some program that you know, gives you a certificate and curiosity so on the one hand, there's sort of an equity concern about it. On the other, though, standardizing something inevitably takes a little bit of the sort of subjectivity out of it for admissions offices, and oftentimes, as I said earlier, the traits sort of emerge from the patterns and the experiences that each student individually presents. So that the danger is, you don't want to you don't want to create some sort of rubric that results in admissions readers having to see specific words, or having to see specific experiences that you know, that are named in some way, that might leave a lot off the table. That's what the concern is, that said, you know, the sort of the flip side of this is that we know right now a lot is being left off the table by some of the more quantitative factors. So there's going to have to be a medium in there somewhere where colleges are able to articulate, listen, you don't need to do anything extra for this. You do what you do. Here are some of the qualities overall that we value. But you know, just know that this is going to come through in your application, and this is how we're going to interpret it and use it in our application process.
Ethan Sawyer 18:00
I want to talk in just a second about how students can potentially show some of those qualities in their application. But before we get to that, for those who are really hungry for like, Wait, what are even what qualities are we even talking about? You mentioned curiosity as one example. Another one that I can think of that's been kind of a buzz word for years is something like intellectual vitality. Just for the sake of, let's assume that there are 200 of these qualities. I'm just picking a number, and because I want this to be a very non exhaustive list, could I Could you name, maybe, like, you know, just a couple more of these qualities, just so we're kind of folks, we're kind of in the range. And for folks who are really curious about, well, what kind of qualities are we talking about here that are important to to communicate in the college application. Yeah,
David Hawkins 18:41
yeah. Well, for those hardcore folks who might want to really look into this, there are some places like the character lab that Angela Duckworth runs, and the Jubilee Center, which is over in the UK actually, but it's done a lot of work on virtues. But just to give you some examples, you know, there are some buckets that you can kind of create, resilience and determination are two that kind of fall into a bucket of, you know, cheese. This student has faced some considerable challenges, and they didn't let it slow them down, like they really, they really, for instance, we hear this story a lot. These students might have gotten a B or a C in a class, but they did it despite, you know, the fact that they had to take care of a sick parent, or they had to, you know, work to support their family. And there's all these different ways that a student might progress, and maybe even their grades improve over time, or or something there gives you some evidence of of a student persisting despite considerable odds. That's, that's a, that's a bucket that I think college admission officers recognize. There's other buckets, you know, I'd say that there's sort of almost a moral or ethical component to it, where they might see a student who was had the opportunity to I don't know, perhaps there was, there was a way to take an easy way out, or perhaps there was a way to prove or show in the application process that a student made a tough decision that. Advantage them. I'm having a difficult time thinking of what something like that might be. But, you know, there are times that that students may have to, I mean, perhaps they write an essay about the fact that they lost, you know, half of their friend group because they decided to speak out for social justice. You know, there's a, there's a sort of moral, ethical component to this. And I think that the the other one, I think, you know, the curiosity that that's almost a whole bucket in itself. You can almost see like, let's say, a student has a record of mediocre grades, but there's this one class where they absolutely killed it, and they, you know, I saw a student once who actually designed an electronic voting booth in high school as her senior project. And it's, you know, that's the kind of curiosity and passion that says, Wow, that person can really do some incredible things. You know, we just have to make sure they're in the right place. Yeah,
Ethan Sawyer 20:46
you're you're pointing to some things, some what we'll call, for lack of a better word, soft skills, that I think students don't often think are quote, unquote important when it comes to applying to college. And I want to be more, even more specific in the United States, because I think that in the US, we have a pretty particular set of things that are kind of like, it's the water we're swimming in. We're like, of course, you would look for these things, but it's not necessarily, you know, the case in other educational systems. And you're pointing to some of these things you mentioned, the moral, ethical that are a little bit more like, as you said, kind of subjective, and we don't have a rigorous definition or a set of like, you know, X, Y and Z equals curiosity, but just to name a few more, you know, Harvard's making caring common project points to some different, some buckets like compassion and gratitude, and you mentioned grit, the growth mindset, you know, perspective, taking, purpose, self control. So you know, when we name some of these qualities, how do students show these qualities in their application? What? What's, what's your sense?
David Hawkins 21:56
Well, traditionally, where these have come through have been in the essay, perhaps in teacher recommendations. And here we're again. I appreciate you clarifying that this is the US model, because it is quite particular to the US. And I'll go one step further and say that not all institutions ask for recommendations or essays either, right? But in in the traditional sort of admissions process, it has really had to come from outside the academic body of work, so interviews could be another place visits, you know, if you happen to have a high school visit or a college fair visit, but you know, again, that information is going to be very unevenly distributed across those different platforms and across the students that you meet or see in the process. One thing that we've really been quite interested in is that K 12 grading systems are starting to evolve. We've been involved in a project that has been focused on performance assessments in high schools, and does give a lot more nuance and contextualized views of what a student actually does in class, rather than just throwing up a letter grade and letting that be that these performance assessments create records of students strengths in their classes. And so I mentioned that voting booth example that came out of a performance based system, and the way I found out about it is that the student was able to upload this video about this senior project into a portal that admissions officers could actually access and see, wow. This student did this as their senior project, and this is the way they did it. Another student might have just collaborated and gone out and created, you know, some sort of coalition in their community, or another student might have done a very complicated sort of mathematical model, but, but it's, it's embedded in the in the K 12 curriculum, and maybe one day in the future, could be available to admissions officers through a portal. So there is some promise that we might actually be able to see this information in a more standard, more evenly distributed way by virtue of what students are actually doing in the classroom.
Ethan Sawyer 23:58
Yeah, it seems like in some cases, I hear you say, evenly distributed. It seems like in some cases, the burden is really being put on students to demonstrate these things. You know, I'm thinking about, for example, you know, the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admissions. You know, that seems like there the onus is on students even more to to one know what these factors are, to be able to sort of think about, okay, well, how do I demonstrate my social, you know, community context in my application? And that just seems like a lot to put on students and counselors, frankly, because counselors are overworked too and don't especially new counselors don't often know what are these things that I need to put, for example, in my high school profile, or what are, what are the things that I need to put in my rec letter? So I'm excited by the prospect of that. Yeah,
David Hawkins 24:53
in fact, in fact, the idea that we need to minimize what we're asking students to do outside of the classroom is something that. Articulated in a policy context as a way in which we should probably try to redesign the college admissions process. It's almost akin to you doing four years of work and getting up to the line at the DMV or something and handing them this comprehensive body of work, and they they glance at it and then throw it in the trash and ask you to do 12 more things. Now clearly, colleges do value that information, but they only get a tiny, tiny, little superficial layer of what you've done in those four years. So we really feel strongly that admission, that the admissions process, could be more fully immersed in what students actually did in school. Well, you mentioned
Ethan Sawyer 25:33
essays. Let's talk about essays. You know, I want to talk about them because I'm the College Essay Guy. So I could talk about them all day, but they're the next on the sort of list of what colleges are looking at, according to this latest report. So 18.9% of colleges give considerable importance to the essays. 37.3% give moderate importance. Now, essays weren't always the next one listed. It used to be, you know, standardized tests say a little bit about that. What? What do you feel like has changed?
David Hawkins 26:04
Well, I do think the essay has become more important in his po in his poised to really occupy a place of significance after the Supreme Court decision that ended race conscious admissions at colleges and universities. So given that this data was collected right around the time, right after that decision came down. It wouldn't surprise me if colleges were considering leaning on the essay or saw no no other way but to lean on the essay to glean information about a student's background. But I also think that one of the things that I know colleges have struggled with over the years is that we have, in 2023 fully, sort of moved into a mass market for college admissions. I mean, there was a time in our lifetimes when when admissions felt a little less mass marketed and a little more individualized to the institution. And I do think one of the big struggles that I've heard admissions officers talk about over the years is just they need to get to know the students that they're that they're reviewing it. It's one thing to review some paper files and some information about what they've done in high school. It's another to get a really, really good sense of who that student is, and I think the essay is one of the very few ways in which they can actually glimpse that on a large scale. One
Ethan Sawyer 27:13
of the things you mentioned earlier was that you feel like there are certain colleges that value certain parts of the application. Let's apply that to essays for a second. Which colleges, based on the data, seem to value the essays most? If you if you know, yeah,
David Hawkins 27:30
yeah. Actually, over the years, it's been very consistent. The more selective colleges tend to value the essay more highly, and that's primarily because you think about the grades and test scores are all aggregated at the very top of the top of the scale, so to speak. So they really have to go into a different level to start to differentiate between who they you know, who they would like to see on their campus based on their own interests. And then also smaller colleges, smaller and typically private colleges, because their applicant pools tend to be a little smaller, they have a little more time to review the applications, and frankly, oftentimes they're crafting a class that is very specific to their institutional mission and approach. So those two have reliably been the more selective, including the public flagships and the very selective privates, and then the smaller privates have valued the essay more highly. I'm
Ethan Sawyer 28:20
curious if any data has been collected at all on personal statement versus the supplemental essays, for example, that a small college will ask about. Maybe it's a why this major? Why do you want to go to this major? Why do you want to attend our college in particular? Is there any data on that? You
David Hawkins 28:35
know, we don't have it, and I don't know if anyone does. I haven't seen it in the years that I've been here, but it could be a potentially interesting modification to this, because it's we're always looking to more finely calibrate this. So maybe that's something we'll explore in the future.
Ethan Sawyer 28:47
Cool, Next, we've got students interest in attending. And some of you in the college world, you've maybe heard of this as demonstrated interest. We've got, you know, students interested in attending, 15.7% giving this considerable importance, and then 27.6 moderate importance. Explain to folks briefly what even this is, because some folks are listening, going, What do you mean students interested in attending, and how have you seen that shift over the years?
David Hawkins 29:13
Yeah, first of all, colleges and universities are engaged in this delicate dance where they they want to maintain their acceptance rates that are attached to their institutions, or rather, I should say that they are attached to and so what they try to do is they try to figure out, How many students do we need to accept in order to make sure we yield our class, that of the admitted students, we fill our seats the way we need to fill them. And for a lot of colleges, part of the art, slash science of figuring that out, of doing that math, is trying to get a sense of how likely is this student going to be to attend our institution if we accept them, and for a lot of reasons that we don't have to get into that matters to. Colleges. They want to make sure they make their budgets for the next year, and they want to make sure they fill their seats. So this is this has been something that has evolved over, I'd say, the last 20 years or so, where, again, in this mass market, where colleges are awash in applications, which only got more intense when the rise of the Internet and the online application, where students could fire off a lot more applications. You know, common application as well. Colleges are looking for some indication of how serious a student is about attending that institution. So we like the positive character attributes. We actually only started asking about this about 10 years ago or so, and this is another one that popped right into the middle of the chart. So it's very clear that for colleges that, again, I think we're mostly talking about smaller colleges. We're talking about some selective colleges and some colleges, maybe even public regional colleges that you know that have some measure of selectivity, they're really trying to do that delicate balancing act of figuring out, are you serious about coming here? If you do appear to be serious that oftentimes, can work in the applicant's favor.
Ethan Sawyer 31:07
For folks who are listening, rest assured that we're going to be doing an even deeper dive on these things later. So there, we're going to do a whole episode on demonstrated interest really soon. But in the show notes, we'll have a link to a guide to demonstrated interest. So you can, kind of know, what are those bullet points of what those what colleges are looking for. I'd love to hear from your perspective. David, have you seen this number shift over the years? In other words, do you think that colleges interest in demonstrated interest, which I know sounds weird, has shifted over the years?
David Hawkins 31:40
We have again, we only started measuring this about a decade ago, and it's been remarkably consistent. The the number of colleges or the percentage of colleges that value this demonstrated interest. The biggest surprise to me was that it that it came in right in the middle of the pack, and to me, that signaled that this is very clearly a part of the college's calculations, that they really are looking for the genuine applicant versus the maybe the student who just dashed one off because they felt either maybe their parents went there and they felt they needed to. So it's been remarkably stable right here in the middle of the pack, and we ideally, what we ask colleges to do is be very upfront about whether they consider a student's interest or not. The institution where my son attended was very clear right up front, we care about your interest in attending. So please, if you are serious, make sure we know that. Talk
Ethan Sawyer 32:30
to us for a second about counselor and teacher recommendations. And if you can, in your experience, or from what you've seen, which colleges seem to care most about counselor and teacher recommendations.
David Hawkins 32:41
Yeah, again, these, these factors, have been part of our framework for for as long as I've managed this, this project, and they've pretty consistently been in this, this middle, middling range, which I call the tip factors, right? That are there are things that where you can get information beyond what, what's on the high school record, and they've always been a pair, just back to back, just like this. And the council recommendation has always been one step above the teacher recommendation. I think that's part of this. I think is a legacy of an admissions process that has been around for a very long time. Some institutions, these same institutions I mentioned earlier, very selective institutions, smaller private institutions. These are very much seen as important elements in crafting the narrative about an applicant. I think for some institutions, recommendations might be areas where perhaps institutions don't need them. You and I talked a little while ago about the equity concerns that there often aren't enough counselors to serve the students in a school, and even sometimes the teachers are so overwhelmed they're not able to help in this way. So there is a segment of students who really has a hard time getting recommendations, and it's possible that some institutions don't need them. But by and large, these, again, are these tip factors that have remained remarkably stable over the years,
Ethan Sawyer 33:58
below teacher and counselor X. We've got extracurricular activities with really low like 6.5% giving considerable importance to extracurricular activities, and a whopping 44% of colleges giving moderate importance to extracurricular activities. Say a little more about extracurricular activities in the relative importance of this process.
David Hawkins 34:18
Yeah, this is something that probably we get the most questions about I'll note, you know, even if, even if the listeners can't see this, this chart right this minute, if you are able to look at it, you will see a very large number of these, what I'm calling tip factors, show up under the moderate importance column. And you know, this is one where I think students and families want to know, how much is this? How many extracurriculars Should I have? Or, you know, what is the, what are the way in which colleges are going to look at these? And what? What I always say again, this is information that your highly selective institutions, your your smaller privates tend to look more closely at, but what they're looking for, I would say, in in listening to admissions officers. Over the years is they're certainly looking for quality over quantity. And again, I think earlier, we were talking about character traits and other other attributes, this is another place where they show up. You know, you might have been the captain of a sports team or, you know, you might have played in the marching band, as I did, and endured four years of grueling practices and taunting at the hands of your classmates. Those are things that build character as well. And I think, I think what, what institutions like to see there is just that, you know, whatever you've participated in, that you've really been engaged in it. You know, you don't have to have 15 extracurriculars. You could have two, but you could really be, you know, for instance, my son founded the Minecraft club at his high school. So he was the founder, right? You know, a lot of people think of Minecraft. Well, what does that do? Well, he showed enough initiative to go set up the club, rent the space, you know, and keep the club going. To my knowledge, it's still going. So these are things I think that colleges are looking for again to kind of season the application a little bit. Yeah. And
Ethan Sawyer 35:57
you mentioned equity earlier. I'm curious in your conversations with college admission officers, how are colleges these days talking about extracurricular activities as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion? Yeah,
David Hawkins 36:10
you know, I think colleges are speaking in a much more broad sort of fashion about extracurricular activities. Because I know, you know, when we tend to hear that term, we think of, you know, Spanish club and football and, you know, debate club and things like that. What this really, I think, captures is more, a more holistic view of a student's life. We know, for instance, that there are a lot of students that cannot afford to spend three hours after school at marching band practice. They might have to go to a job, they may have to go to, you know, to sort of care for younger siblings. So colleges really are looking at basically what happens outside of school, and I think that sort of falls in to this extracurricular activity bucket. So it is, in fact, broader than what the name implies,
Ethan Sawyer 36:54
yeah, for students who are interested in well, then what are activities I spent some time a few years ago, talking to counselors about what are some of those activities that students may not have considered including in their application, but that count, and if you literally Google that phrase, or if you Google activities that count, College Essay Guy we'll link to in the show notes, you'll see a big list of what, what are some of these other things that that do count and that that colleges would be Interested to know more about, and also, because I'm talking about the show notes for those who are wondering about recommendation letters, like, what do I include? And you know what goes in that? We've got separate guides that we'll link in the show notes to getting a great counselor recommendation and getting a great teacher recommendation. We've got guides for students and counselors on that. Next we've got high school class rank, 5.5 considerable importance. 22 moderate and a 43 give limited importance to class rank. Say more about this?
David Hawkins 37:47
Yeah, that's that's one of the more interesting ones in in our long term history, because class rank used to, used to come in right up above essay writing sample and character attributes, so almost right behind grades and test scores. So this is, this is a factor that has precipitously dropped over the last two decades. And basically, you know, probably the reason why this is this has been the case is that ultimately, colleges are comparing students in the applicant pool against sort of each other as a as a big group. They, do pay attention, of course, to where a student might fall on the on, sort of the general distribution of students in their high school, but as a primary consideration, again, it's the grades. It's what they've done themselves. It's sort of like playing against the course in golf. You know, you you're looking for how a student performed during four years of school, whether or not they were first or 12th or 40th or 50th is just not as important and not as indicative of future success in college as the primary source, which is the grades. So that really has gone from quite a significant consideration in admissions to one that almost is an afterthought. And I'll say that probably the institutions that fall in this in either considerable importance or moderate importance, are likely places where, for instance, in some states, you have class rank acceptance policies at the state policy level, such as Texas and California and Washington. And in others, there may be a state standard that says you either have to have an X, GPA or BX in your class to, you know, to be eligible for admission. So really, quite a, quite a drop in in how colleges see and value rank in class.
Ethan Sawyer 39:30
Speaking of quite a drop. Next, we have admission test scores from, you know, 4.9 considerable importance to, you know, 25% giving moderate importance. And if I, if I check back to the one the previous report in 20 I guess this was first time freshman in Fall 2017 you know, this is it had 45% giving emission test scores has dropped down to four. And then 37 has dropped down to, you know, what is it? 2025 and. What happened?
David Hawkins 40:01
Well, the pandemic happened number one. And you know, there was already a substantial number of colleges, around 1000 before the pandemic, that were test optional but, but the pandemic really short circuited the conversation that colleges typically would have to have, which could often be very difficult, because a lot of people in higher education are very attached to those tests outside of the admissions office, but when the pandemic came around and became apparent that we couldn't actually administer the tests and students couldn't get in to take them, most colleges in the US went test optional. And what they figured out during the pandemic was, geez, we really don't, you know, we can still do admissions without the tests, and given the fact that research suggests that they only get sort of a marginal increase in the ability to predict, to predict student success beyond what they already know with grades, tests, sort of started to feel like a bit of a deviation from what students really ought to be going through as they make the transition to college. So while there are still a number of institutions that require tests, the vast majority are test optional or even test free, where you won't even consider test scores if they're sent in. So basically, the pandemic moved us from a country where the majority of colleges required admission tests to where the vast majority of colleges do not, in fact, require admission tests any longer. So that's a dramatic change. Even though colleges were had had been sort of falling out of love with tests over the last 20 years in terms of their sort of the relative importance compared to students test scores. This was a drop that is really a significant shift in the landscape. A
Ethan Sawyer 41:38
question that I get from students is often, can I really believe colleges when they say they're test optional? In other words, what I hear them saying is like, can I still apply without test scores and get in what is your sense, either from data or, you know, from your experiences, do colleges are they for real when they say it's truly test optional, that they will accept students whether they have test scores or
David Hawkins 42:01
not, yeah, yeah, colleges, I think they can take them at face value. Colleges are, in fact, test optional, and that it it means what it sounds like. I think the only instances where, if a student really wants to take the test, they should feel free to take the test and send in the scores, colleges are treating this information now, much like they're treating any other sort of ancillary information that they might get outside of the students grades, which is, you know, if it helps and it makes you feel better as a student to submit them. Feel free. Colleges will will include them in part of their calculations. But if you haven't taken the test or you don't feel like submitting your scores, there's absolutely no need to do so. Colleges will evaluate your application without penalty, without any sort of flag that you didn't submit the scores, because, quite frankly, there are 10s of, you know, hundreds of 1000s of students who are not submitting scores right now.
Ethan Sawyer 42:52
Yeah, and for those interested, we've got a we'll link in the show notes. We've got sort of our crash course and standardized testing that that'll answer a lot of folks questions. And there's an upcoming podcast with Jay ROSNER on just this topic. So we're getting sort of to the bottom one. So I'm going to kind of just rattle these off, rather than kind of going one by one, and just curious to get your thoughts on anything that you found interesting over the years, or, you know, anything that you think of, it's worth noting here. We've got portfolio, which is, you know, students submitting, for example, artistic work, creative work. We've got interview. We've got work so work experiences, working a job. We've got State grad, graduation exam scores and then Subject Test Scores at the very bottom, with 1% giving considerable importance. So as you see the sort of bottom of the table here, what do you what's worth noting?
David Hawkins 43:39
Well, two things, number one, work. I think the fact that 31% of colleges assign moderate importance to work reinforces what we talked about when we suggested that extracurricular activities was, in fact, a broader concept, and that work probably should be part of that, or is part of that. The second thing, though, is the other factors that you mentioned are all sort of at the fringes or at the margins of the national landscape for college admission. Highly selective institutions typically are the only ones that require interviews graduation exam scores. I'm sorry, subject test scores, there are a very few state institutions that are that are looking at state graduation exam scores that really has not been a trend that has caught on, and then really it's your sort of, your art institute, your art institutions that are looking at portfolios, and small number of other other colleges using the portfolio model. So these are areas where I think, as you look at the national landscape, chances are you're probably not going to run into many institutions that consider these factors to save for work. That's again, in the extracurricular bucket. But if you're applying to a more specialized or a highly selective institution, you may well run across one of these.
Ethan Sawyer 44:50
You mentioned, I want to zoom back a second. You mentioned equity being important to NACAC as an organization. I believe it's important to colleges as well. Given. Equity and inclusion is a big part of the dialog and is a big focus, both sort of theoretically and, I think in many cases practically, in you know, in terms of where colleges are putting their time and their resources, if you had to predict, how do you see things shifting in the coming years when it comes to equity and inclusion?
David Hawkins 45:21
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think in the short term, we're a little concerned, because of the Supreme Court decision, that we might have a drop off in the number of underrepresented students who are moving into post secondary, particularly four year post secondary institutions. But in the long term, the way we see equity sort of changing the landscape is number one, it's a reality. Our students are becoming or more diverse than they've ever been, and only continue to be that way. From the institutional perspective, there is a lot of conversation right now about redesigning the college admission process. I think even whether you're an open enrollment or a highly selective institution, it's apparent that the model that we're using right now by and large. I mean, there's exceptions all over the place, but is relatively static and has been around since, you know, the early 1900s really. And so we are seeing a lot of innovation around, what is the what does it mean to apply to college, and is it necessary that we call it an application? You know, I can see a future where there's going to be a lot more sort of simplicity of the process. In fact, we've seen some institutions move to direct admissions and something called reverse admission, where you're, you know, the college essentially applies to the student. And the idea, I think, again, going back to something we touched on earlier, we really want to take as much of the burden off of students in this process, because they've worked hard for four years. They all they want to do is continue their education, and in the name of equity, to ask students to go and do a whole other process that's unrelated to what they're doing in school just seems to be a little unfair. So I do think we're going to see institutions trying to figure out how to open the gates a little wider, a lot wider, hopefully, and I think the result of that will be a more vibrant and open system that hopefully will become a little little easier for students to navigate.
Ethan Sawyer 47:07
What are some things that you're excited about or problems that you're excited to work on as it relates to college admissions in the coming couple years? Yeah,
David Hawkins 47:16
number one at the top of the list is equity. Frankly, it's an exciting adventure, because we know that, first of all, institutions thrive when they have a diverse student body. Moreover, we know from students. We used a Harris Poll recently of students, 75% of students said diversity was a critical part of their post secondary experience, and this was in anticipation of their experience. So these were students moving in. So it's important to students. It's important to institutions on campus. And then it's, you know, it's important if our country, if our institutions, want to survive in this global environment, we need to be preparing for everyone to interact with this global environment and also be a place where the global environment is nurtured. So that's, the first thing. I think the second thing that we're excited about working on is that, you know, college admissions is a profession, believe it or not, for those of students and families see it as a monolithic sort of all seeing, all knowing thing in this space. But these are people who work very hard to balance a lot of interests, and who, frankly, are spread pretty thin. And we're excited about trying to develop the profession bring more people and bring more young people into it, because you can change lives in this profession. We also want to, we also want to make sure that when people do end up in this profession, that that we're professionalizing things, that we have a really, sort of well articulated set of standards and education, just like other entities might have, like a consultant or, you know, a doctor. I don't think we'll ever get to medical school levels of education, but you know, for students and families, I think it's important to see the human face of the admissions office, and that's that's something that NAC actually excited to try to help with.
Ethan Sawyer 48:57
Well, for folks listening, we've got practical guides for a lot of the areas that we've talked about here, and we're going to have podcasts where we do a deeper dive on some of these different factors. But as we close here, David, I'm just curious what advice would you like students and parents to hear as they're navigating this college admission process?
David Hawkins 49:17
Yeah, listen, I'm the luckiest parent in America. Both of my children have been raised and put into college while I was here at NACAC. And the reason I'm the luckiest parent in America is because I've had anywhere between 4000 when I first started and now 27,000 College Admission Counseling professionals telling me some of the sort of giving me some of the best advice that I could possibly get, and number one is let the student drive the process to the extent possible. Clearly, there's going to be some family considerations like money and finance, but this is the chance for the student to take their first step into adulthood. Let them drive. And then secondly, don't foreclose on any opportunities that there are so many amazing colleges and universities out there that. Don't fall victim to that sort of prestige game, to that idea that somehow, that there's these brand name colleges, that they're really the ones you need to go to, we found that the most important thing that you can do is not enroll in the highest brand name college you can find, but really maximize the experience you have wherever you end up, because that's going to be what really matters. So I think those two things are what, what I learned from our members and what really served me well in my own process of guiding my students through the transition.
Ethan Sawyer 50:28
Oh, I love that. I just recorded with Anne Morano from colleges that change lives and in. The title is about, you know, a student driven process. So I'm so in that mode, and I'm so with you as you share that. David, I just want to say thanks. Thanks for all your work that you do for this profession. It's, it's, it's substantial, and I'm grateful, and I'm grateful for this conversation today.
David Hawkins 50:48
Well, Ethan, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the work that we do, and I will likewise, thank you for all the good work that you do. Thanks again.
Ethan Sawyer 51:02
Thanks friends for listening. As ever, you'll find the resources we discussed in the show notes at college. Sa guy.com/podcast keep an eye out for our next episode, where we get into the details of GPA course selection rigor and how do you make the most of the academic opportunities that are available to you. Finally, are you on our newsletter yet? Because, if not, it's the best way to learn about upcoming webinars, resources and all things college admissions. You can find that by going to college essay guide.com and, you know, clicking the things be well and stay curious. You
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Show transcript
Ethan Sawyer 0:08 Hi friends and welcome back to the podcast. Guess what? It's season five. We're excited. You're here and welcome so one of the questions that I'm most often asked is, What do colleges want? Well, good news, the National Association of college admission counselors, aka NACAC, surveyed hundreds of colleges and asked this very question among others, and they've detailed their findings in something called the state of college admission report. So for season five, I thought, rather than try to do all of that in just one episode, I thought, let's do a whole series, and we'll do deep dives into each of these factors that college is deemed most important. So on today's episode, the kickoff, I sit down with David Hawkins, who's the chief education and policy officer at NAT Act. In fact, he's the one responsible for starting this epic report more than 20 years ago, and we get into among other things, what are the most important factors that colleges consider? Are there any big changes that he's seen in the college admission landscape in the past few years in particular, how has the emphasis on college essays and the personal statement shifted? Why has the emphasis in standardized testing changed? What have the impacts been of the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admission and how can students counselors and parents use this information to actually make the college admission process easier? For over 20 years, David Hawkins has worked in enrollment management and admissions to alleviate systemic barriers to accessing higher education. He's played a key role in setting NACAC strategic direction, which involved hearing and representing the collective voice of NACAC, more than 25,000 high school counselors and college admission officers. His priorities include making NACAC a more effective learning organization with an emphasis on ethics and redefining advocacy. I hope you enjoy our conversation. You Hi David, welcome to the podcast. David Hawkins 2:06 Hi Ethan, thank you for having me so tell us. You Ethan Sawyer 2:10 know, for folks who may not know what a chief education and policy officer does, what do you spend your time thinking about at Macca? Well, David Hawkins 2:18 you know, associations typically have to serve as the voice and the source of information for its members. And so for NACAC, a lot of what my responsibility entails involves the content, the substance of our work, of our field. My team covers research, so while gathering information about the field, advocacy, policy and practice, advocacy on behalf of our members, diversity, equity and inclusion work falls under my my purview. That's a very important priority for the association. We do also work with philanthropy and foundations that support our mission. And finally, we do the education and training work of the association, which is really the lifeblood of any association, is to enhance, strengthen and pull from the expertise of its membership. Awesome. Ethan Sawyer 3:03 Yeah, I'm so grateful for your work. And it's, it's, it feels like it's sort of like the in some ways, the heart, or, I guess you could say maybe the brain, of a part of the brain of what the organization's doing. One of the questions I get most often asked by students, parents and counselors, is, what are colleges looking for. And for years, I've been directing folks to this state of college admissions report, as I felt, and still feel like it's one of the best ways to know what college admission offices are looking for. For folks who don't know, will you share us just briefly, what is the state of college admission report and how did it start? Yeah, David Hawkins 3:40 it's actually kind of a fascinating origin story. First of all, it is a report that intends to share what we know as a profession about what colleges are looking for in the college admission process, as well as a few other things, a few other bits of data about the transition to college. It's our opportunity to truly say what we know to the public. First and foremost. Obviously, this could be a useful tool for our members, but the real audience is for the people out there who are interested in or going through this process. I often say that college admission is a lot like the weddings industry, and that you have a different crop of people going through every year, and some of whom have been through before, some of whom have not. And so there's really a need and a demand, in fact, for very basic information about how this thing works. What do I need to do next? And what are the what are the things that are important for me to keep in mind? And so the origin story for this was when I first started at NACAC, back in 2000 we were part of a group of organizations that put out a report about admissions every five years, if you can imagine the pace of data now, in 2023 it's hard to imagine something coming out every five years and being relevant, right? And our role in that was really very small. And I kind of felt like, when I came in and took over the research role here at NAT act that you know, we have a vast amount of expertise in this membership. We are the people. People who hold the knowledge about the college admission process, we should be the ones telling that story on a national scale, and we should be telling it every year, really, because people don't go through admissions every five years. They go through every year. And so we I actually started the state of college admission report back in 2002 with the thought in mind that we would satisfy the demand for the questions that inevitably came to us from the media, from policy makers, from our own members, about what the college admission process looks like. So from there, it really just took off. And like I said, the demand for this information, those of us who work in it maybe don't see it as much because we're so immersed at such deep levels, but the media and other people who are really dealing with it on a more superficial level benefit from having this very basic information put out there year after year. Ethan Sawyer 5:49 One of the pieces I want to get into in just a minute is the factors in the admission decision fact sheet, because I think that's going to be most interesting to a lot of the folks listening. But to zoom back a second, what are some of the pieces of the Soca or the state of college admissions report, and how have you seen over the years folks using the report, in particular, students, parents and counselors? David Hawkins 6:12 Yeah, well, we actually structure the report much like the transition to college itself. So in the first part, I should say report. We used to issue a paper report. Now we've moved to sort of an online data center. But the bottom line is, the structure is intended to say, Okay, first and foremost, you have sort of your landscape. What's happening? How many students are graduating from high school? How many are going on to college? What's the sort of application volume in the country? You know, some very basic statistics about the flow of students through the pipeline, then we move into the school counseling environment. You know, we want people to understand that school counselors and college advisors are a very important part of this process. So we do take a look at data about the availability of school counseling and college advising in high schools. We feel like that's been a very important policy component to this, maybe not as important to the students and families, but a very helpful very helpful policy component, an advocacy component. Then we move into sort of the college side of things. We look at everything from what colleges acceptance rates are from year to year, what their yield rates are from year to year, which has been a fascinating journey, and we probably talk about that a little later. Then we move into looking at some of the practices that they use, some of the strategies, like early decision and early application or early actions, excuse me, wait lists, things like that. And then we move into, really what I consider the heart of the report, which is the factors in the admission decision, which is where we ask colleges what matters to you in the application process. And of course, we collect information about the types of colleges that respond to our survey, and that allows us to say, well, this type of college tends to prefer this type of information, or, you know, this segment of colleges values this more highly than this other segment. So that's something that we found has been probably the most popular part of the report over the years. And I think, as you would imagine, with with data that's that sort of varied over the over the spectrum of this of this report, we have people using it in a lot of different ways. We have counselors using it to provide sort of like back to school information to students and families applying to college nights. There's a lot of valuable information about that you could put in a PowerPoint, for instance, to describe the process to students and families. Colleges will often use it to also communicate to students and families, to train their new staff in sort of what the overall admissions environment looks like. And we've also even had admission Deans sharing this information with the institutional leadership, presidents, boards of trustees, to help them get a better understanding of what the environment is, what the landscape of college admission is like, so they can better situate their own institutional perspective. And then the last thing I'll say is that the media has used this more than I would have probably ever, ever anticipated. We've had this data cited in if you name a news publication in the United States, I can almost guarantee you that they have used state of college admission data at one point or another in the last decade or so. Ethan Sawyer 9:06 Yeah, I feel like this should all come with visuals, and by the way, for folks listening, we'll link in the show notes to a selection of this so you can actually see this thing that we're talking about. But I want to get into this part of the factors that you're calling the heart of the report, and I want to read to folks some of the information that's on here. And essentially, what, what it is, there's a table that has at the top percentage of colleges attributing different levels of importance to factors in admission decisions. And this is for first time, freshmen fall 2023 and you know, there was a little there was a gap, which I guess we could talk about. You know, where this is the one that's come out in the last, you know, maybe four years or so. But I want to tell you, read y'all to for the listeners. Here are some of the factors, and then I'd love to zoom in on some of these with you. David, so the first one at the top is high school GPA in college prep courses. And then underneath that, we've got total high school GPA. A in all courses, and then strength of high school curriculum. So maybe we'll just we can kind of group those, those, those are, you know, rated in terms of, you know, the at the top high school GPA and college prep courses, 76.8% of colleges deem those to be of considerable importance. Total high school GPA is 70 war. 74 attached considerable importance and strength of high school curriculum. 63.8% considerable importance. And when I was doing the little comparison between this report and the last one, it seems like this has sort of stayed the same. Is that, is that where you're at with this? David Hawkins 10:37 Yeah, with one, with one asterisk, yeah, this. These three factors have been at the top of this table since we started doing the state of college admission report 21 years ago. And I think the bottom line here that the message that I always send to anybody who's listening is that colleges value what students do in four years of high school at the very highest level. Right? I know people in the past got kind of hung up about whether tests or grades were more important. The bottom line is, and it probably always will be this way to it to a degree, is that colleges are really, really leaning on what this student has done during four years worth of academic work. So that's that's probably the most important Ethan Sawyer 11:18 message. What I'm hearing you say, because you mentioned Tess is, it's what the four years, the body of work as it were, that's, as opposed to how they performed in one particular scenario. It sounds like you're, you know, when we're talking about the the Final Four, you know, committee, you're trying to, you know, trying to figure out which teams are in the, you know, the college, you know, in the 65 teams, or, I guess, now it's 68 teams, but they're looking at the whole body of work, as opposed to just one game, as it David Hawkins 11:42 were. That's right, and I did mention an asterisk right up front there. The one thing that's changed slightly over over time, or maybe it isn't so slightly, is that the gap between the top two, which is the high school grades in college prep courses versus the overall grades. Grades in college prep courses used to be significantly higher in terms of colleges rating that gap between college prep courses and the overall GPA has narrowed significantly over the last five to 10 years. And I suspect, even though we're not yet really into the deep dive on this discussion, it's more this is probably just a reflection that schools are understanding that there are disparities in college prep courses, availability in schools, and also that, frankly, students are taking sometimes so many that the two might be a little bit indistinguishable in some ways. So otherwise, though, I think the really important takeaway here is that it is the body of work over four years of high school that really matters. Ethan Sawyer 12:38 Yeah, one way I've heard this described is language that's given to UC readers, University of California readers, and what colleges are looking and this applies to other things in this report that we'll get into, but colleges seem to be looking for, how have you made the most of the opportunities available to you? Right? And what I'm hearing you say is that it's, you know, there are certain there are colleges that are aware that certain students are going to have more opportunities available to them than others. So there are other factors that are taken into account. Like, for example, the next one that that zoomed up and that you know in the rankings is what we'll call and by rankings I'm talking about, you know what colleges consider important is this one called positive character attributes, which 28.3% of colleges give considerable importance to, and we've got 37 and a half percent of folks giving moderate importance to. Will you tell us what this is? What are these positive character attributes and how are they assessed? Yeah, David Hawkins 13:34 this is a this is an interesting topic, and one that I think we will be dealing with for quite some time now. I'll say first, just to take a bit of a geological approach to this, we only started including positive character traits as an option for colleges to rate about six or seven years ago. Prior to that, anytime we added a new item, it usually came in somewhere near the bottom of the list. Well, positive character traits shot right into the upper half of the list. And as you can as you've referred to Ethan, that the it is now next after the body of work that you've done in school. And so what I think it's important to know about positive character traits is that for as long as I've been around college, at admissions, admissions officers have always said we're looking for something that is intangible. Oftentimes, we're looking for qualities that students might have, such as grit and determination and resilience and curiosity and integrity. The list goes on and on and on. We know that there's a substantial body of research in the academic world that can sort of link these traits to ability to succeed in an academic environment. So admissions offices know that these things can be indicators of success. But what I think is interesting to note, if you're if you're a student or a family supporting a student going through this process, is that many individual colleges will have ways in which they can, in one way or another, do. Document rate in some way or otherwise, interpret qualities and articulate qualities during the reading process that they that they think are valuable, and they usually are connected to other aspects that they see in the application. But I don't know, in terms of a standardized, sort of nationally applicable system that we yet have a really good standard way of describing how colleges do interpret and factor these these qualities. At this point, it nationally. I would have to say it's sort of, I know we know when we see it, and can and can recognize it in context. So I think it's really important. That's one of the things that NACA is going to be working to try to help. We don't want to standardize it too much, but we want to make sure that colleges are able to articulate to students and families what this entails, and maybe more importantly, since the Supreme Court recently mentioned that character was an important factor in the admissions process, as far as it's concerned, that colleges are going to have to be prepared to make sure they can document the way they the way they do this. I Ethan Sawyer 15:58 already know I'm going to be getting questions from students and parents, asking, what are the qualities specifically and how do I then go do those things? I want to ask a leading question. But why do you think it could be dangerous to potentially standardize what those qualities are? David Hawkins 16:16 Well, I think I can think of two things. Number one, I think it's fairly common knowledge among the profession, and I suspect that it's this way in public as well, that college admissions can be quote, unquote, gamed by a lot of people, or the perception is that it can be gamed. And the fear here there, one of the fears, is that perhaps students will start to latch on to Okay, so curiosity is important if, you know, if it's specifically named, and then they'll go out and hire a curiosity coach, or go out and, you know, enroll in some program that you know, gives you a certificate and curiosity so on the one hand, there's sort of an equity concern about it. On the other, though, standardizing something inevitably takes a little bit of the sort of subjectivity out of it for admissions offices, and oftentimes, as I said earlier, the traits sort of emerge from the patterns and the experiences that each student individually presents. So that the danger is, you don't want to you don't want to create some sort of rubric that results in admissions readers having to see specific words, or having to see specific experiences that you know, that are named in some way, that might leave a lot off the table. That's what the concern is, that said, you know, the sort of the flip side of this is that we know right now a lot is being left off the table by some of the more quantitative factors. So there's going to have to be a medium in there somewhere where colleges are able to articulate, listen, you don't need to do anything extra for this. You do what you do. Here are some of the qualities overall that we value. But you know, just know that this is going to come through in your application, and this is how we're going to interpret it and use it in our application process. Ethan Sawyer 18:00 I want to talk in just a second about how students can potentially show some of those qualities in their application. But before we get to that, for those who are really hungry for like, Wait, what are even what qualities are we even talking about? You mentioned curiosity as one example. Another one that I can think of that's been kind of a buzz word for years is something like intellectual vitality. Just for the sake of, let's assume that there are 200 of these qualities. I'm just picking a number, and because I want this to be a very non exhaustive list, could I Could you name, maybe, like, you know, just a couple more of these qualities, just so we're kind of folks, we're kind of in the range. And for folks who are really curious about, well, what kind of qualities are we talking about here that are important to to communicate in the college application. Yeah, David Hawkins 18:41 yeah. Well, for those hardcore folks who might want to really look into this, there are some places like the character lab that Angela Duckworth runs, and the Jubilee Center, which is over in the UK actually, but it's done a lot of work on virtues. But just to give you some examples, you know, there are some buckets that you can kind of create, resilience and determination are two that kind of fall into a bucket of, you know, cheese. This student has faced some considerable challenges, and they didn't let it slow them down, like they really, they really, for instance, we hear this story a lot. These students might have gotten a B or a C in a class, but they did it despite, you know, the fact that they had to take care of a sick parent, or they had to, you know, work to support their family. And there's all these different ways that a student might progress, and maybe even their grades improve over time, or or something there gives you some evidence of of a student persisting despite considerable odds. That's, that's a, that's a bucket that I think college admission officers recognize. There's other buckets, you know, I'd say that there's sort of almost a moral or ethical component to it, where they might see a student who was had the opportunity to I don't know, perhaps there was, there was a way to take an easy way out, or perhaps there was a way to prove or show in the application process that a student made a tough decision that. Advantage them. I'm having a difficult time thinking of what something like that might be. But, you know, there are times that that students may have to, I mean, perhaps they write an essay about the fact that they lost, you know, half of their friend group because they decided to speak out for social justice. You know, there's a, there's a sort of moral, ethical component to this. And I think that the the other one, I think, you know, the curiosity that that's almost a whole bucket in itself. You can almost see like, let's say, a student has a record of mediocre grades, but there's this one class where they absolutely killed it, and they, you know, I saw a student once who actually designed an electronic voting booth in high school as her senior project. And it's, you know, that's the kind of curiosity and passion that says, Wow, that person can really do some incredible things. You know, we just have to make sure they're in the right place. Yeah, Ethan Sawyer 20:46 you're you're pointing to some things, some what we'll call, for lack of a better word, soft skills, that I think students don't often think are quote, unquote important when it comes to applying to college. And I want to be more, even more specific in the United States, because I think that in the US, we have a pretty particular set of things that are kind of like, it's the water we're swimming in. We're like, of course, you would look for these things, but it's not necessarily, you know, the case in other educational systems. And you're pointing to some of these things you mentioned, the moral, ethical that are a little bit more like, as you said, kind of subjective, and we don't have a rigorous definition or a set of like, you know, X, Y and Z equals curiosity, but just to name a few more, you know, Harvard's making caring common project points to some different, some buckets like compassion and gratitude, and you mentioned grit, the growth mindset, you know, perspective, taking, purpose, self control. So you know, when we name some of these qualities, how do students show these qualities in their application? What? What's, what's your sense? David Hawkins 21:56 Well, traditionally, where these have come through have been in the essay, perhaps in teacher recommendations. And here we're again. I appreciate you clarifying that this is the US model, because it is quite particular to the US. And I'll go one step further and say that not all institutions ask for recommendations or essays either, right? But in in the traditional sort of admissions process, it has really had to come from outside the academic body of work, so interviews could be another place visits, you know, if you happen to have a high school visit or a college fair visit, but you know, again, that information is going to be very unevenly distributed across those different platforms and across the students that you meet or see in the process. One thing that we've really been quite interested in is that K 12 grading systems are starting to evolve. We've been involved in a project that has been focused on performance assessments in high schools, and does give a lot more nuance and contextualized views of what a student actually does in class, rather than just throwing up a letter grade and letting that be that these performance assessments create records of students strengths in their classes. And so I mentioned that voting booth example that came out of a performance based system, and the way I found out about it is that the student was able to upload this video about this senior project into a portal that admissions officers could actually access and see, wow. This student did this as their senior project, and this is the way they did it. Another student might have just collaborated and gone out and created, you know, some sort of coalition in their community, or another student might have done a very complicated sort of mathematical model, but, but it's, it's embedded in the in the K 12 curriculum, and maybe one day in the future, could be available to admissions officers through a portal. So there is some promise that we might actually be able to see this information in a more standard, more evenly distributed way by virtue of what students are actually doing in the classroom. Ethan Sawyer 23:58 Yeah, it seems like in some cases, I hear you say, evenly distributed. It seems like in some cases, the burden is really being put on students to demonstrate these things. You know, I'm thinking about, for example, you know, the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admissions. You know, that seems like there the onus is on students even more to to one know what these factors are, to be able to sort of think about, okay, well, how do I demonstrate my social, you know, community context in my application? And that just seems like a lot to put on students and counselors, frankly, because counselors are overworked too and don't especially new counselors don't often know what are these things that I need to put, for example, in my high school profile, or what are, what are the things that I need to put in my rec letter? So I'm excited by the prospect of that. Yeah, David Hawkins 24:53 in fact, in fact, the idea that we need to minimize what we're asking students to do outside of the classroom is something that. Articulated in a policy context as a way in which we should probably try to redesign the college admissions process. It's almost akin to you doing four years of work and getting up to the line at the DMV or something and handing them this comprehensive body of work, and they they glance at it and then throw it in the trash and ask you to do 12 more things. Now clearly, colleges do value that information, but they only get a tiny, tiny, little superficial layer of what you've done in those four years. So we really feel strongly that admission, that the admissions process, could be more fully immersed in what students actually did in school. Well, you mentioned Ethan Sawyer 25:33 essays. Let's talk about essays. You know, I want to talk about them because I'm the College Essay Guy. So I could talk about them all day, but they're the next on the sort of list of what colleges are looking at, according to this latest report. So 18.9% of colleges give considerable importance to the essays. 37.3% give moderate importance. Now, essays weren't always the next one listed. It used to be, you know, standardized tests say a little bit about that. What? What do you feel like has changed? David Hawkins 26:04 Well, I do think the essay has become more important in his po in his poised to really occupy a place of significance after the Supreme Court decision that ended race conscious admissions at colleges and universities. So given that this data was collected right around the time, right after that decision came down. It wouldn't surprise me if colleges were considering leaning on the essay or saw no no other way but to lean on the essay to glean information about a student's background. But I also think that one of the things that I know colleges have struggled with over the years is that we have, in 2023 fully, sort of moved into a mass market for college admissions. I mean, there was a time in our lifetimes when when admissions felt a little less mass marketed and a little more individualized to the institution. And I do think one of the big struggles that I've heard admissions officers talk about over the years is just they need to get to know the students that they're that they're reviewing it. It's one thing to review some paper files and some information about what they've done in high school. It's another to get a really, really good sense of who that student is, and I think the essay is one of the very few ways in which they can actually glimpse that on a large scale. One Ethan Sawyer 27:13 of the things you mentioned earlier was that you feel like there are certain colleges that value certain parts of the application. Let's apply that to essays for a second. Which colleges, based on the data, seem to value the essays most? If you if you know, yeah, David Hawkins 27:30 yeah. Actually, over the years, it's been very consistent. The more selective colleges tend to value the essay more highly, and that's primarily because you think about the grades and test scores are all aggregated at the very top of the top of the scale, so to speak. So they really have to go into a different level to start to differentiate between who they you know, who they would like to see on their campus based on their own interests. And then also smaller colleges, smaller and typically private colleges, because their applicant pools tend to be a little smaller, they have a little more time to review the applications, and frankly, oftentimes they're crafting a class that is very specific to their institutional mission and approach. So those two have reliably been the more selective, including the public flagships and the very selective privates, and then the smaller privates have valued the essay more highly. I'm Ethan Sawyer 28:20 curious if any data has been collected at all on personal statement versus the supplemental essays, for example, that a small college will ask about. Maybe it's a why this major? Why do you want to go to this major? Why do you want to attend our college in particular? Is there any data on that? You David Hawkins 28:35 know, we don't have it, and I don't know if anyone does. I haven't seen it in the years that I've been here, but it could be a potentially interesting modification to this, because it's we're always looking to more finely calibrate this. So maybe that's something we'll explore in the future. Ethan Sawyer 28:47 Cool, Next, we've got students interest in attending. And some of you in the college world, you've maybe heard of this as demonstrated interest. We've got, you know, students interested in attending, 15.7% giving this considerable importance, and then 27.6 moderate importance. Explain to folks briefly what even this is, because some folks are listening, going, What do you mean students interested in attending, and how have you seen that shift over the years? David Hawkins 29:13 Yeah, first of all, colleges and universities are engaged in this delicate dance where they they want to maintain their acceptance rates that are attached to their institutions, or rather, I should say that they are attached to and so what they try to do is they try to figure out, How many students do we need to accept in order to make sure we yield our class, that of the admitted students, we fill our seats the way we need to fill them. And for a lot of colleges, part of the art, slash science of figuring that out, of doing that math, is trying to get a sense of how likely is this student going to be to attend our institution if we accept them, and for a lot of reasons that we don't have to get into that matters to. Colleges. They want to make sure they make their budgets for the next year, and they want to make sure they fill their seats. So this is this has been something that has evolved over, I'd say, the last 20 years or so, where, again, in this mass market, where colleges are awash in applications, which only got more intense when the rise of the Internet and the online application, where students could fire off a lot more applications. You know, common application as well. Colleges are looking for some indication of how serious a student is about attending that institution. So we like the positive character attributes. We actually only started asking about this about 10 years ago or so, and this is another one that popped right into the middle of the chart. So it's very clear that for colleges that, again, I think we're mostly talking about smaller colleges. We're talking about some selective colleges and some colleges, maybe even public regional colleges that you know that have some measure of selectivity, they're really trying to do that delicate balancing act of figuring out, are you serious about coming here? If you do appear to be serious that oftentimes, can work in the applicant's favor. Ethan Sawyer 31:07 For folks who are listening, rest assured that we're going to be doing an even deeper dive on these things later. So there, we're going to do a whole episode on demonstrated interest really soon. But in the show notes, we'll have a link to a guide to demonstrated interest. So you can, kind of know, what are those bullet points of what those what colleges are looking for. I'd love to hear from your perspective. David, have you seen this number shift over the years? In other words, do you think that colleges interest in demonstrated interest, which I know sounds weird, has shifted over the years? David Hawkins 31:40 We have again, we only started measuring this about a decade ago, and it's been remarkably consistent. The the number of colleges or the percentage of colleges that value this demonstrated interest. The biggest surprise to me was that it that it came in right in the middle of the pack, and to me, that signaled that this is very clearly a part of the college's calculations, that they really are looking for the genuine applicant versus the maybe the student who just dashed one off because they felt either maybe their parents went there and they felt they needed to. So it's been remarkably stable right here in the middle of the pack, and we ideally, what we ask colleges to do is be very upfront about whether they consider a student's interest or not. The institution where my son attended was very clear right up front, we care about your interest in attending. So please, if you are serious, make sure we know that. Talk Ethan Sawyer 32:30 to us for a second about counselor and teacher recommendations. And if you can, in your experience, or from what you've seen, which colleges seem to care most about counselor and teacher recommendations. David Hawkins 32:41 Yeah, again, these, these factors, have been part of our framework for for as long as I've managed this, this project, and they've pretty consistently been in this, this middle, middling range, which I call the tip factors, right? That are there are things that where you can get information beyond what, what's on the high school record, and they've always been a pair, just back to back, just like this. And the council recommendation has always been one step above the teacher recommendation. I think that's part of this. I think is a legacy of an admissions process that has been around for a very long time. Some institutions, these same institutions I mentioned earlier, very selective institutions, smaller private institutions. These are very much seen as important elements in crafting the narrative about an applicant. I think for some institutions, recommendations might be areas where perhaps institutions don't need them. You and I talked a little while ago about the equity concerns that there often aren't enough counselors to serve the students in a school, and even sometimes the teachers are so overwhelmed they're not able to help in this way. So there is a segment of students who really has a hard time getting recommendations, and it's possible that some institutions don't need them. But by and large, these, again, are these tip factors that have remained remarkably stable over the years, Ethan Sawyer 33:58 below teacher and counselor X. We've got extracurricular activities with really low like 6.5% giving considerable importance to extracurricular activities, and a whopping 44% of colleges giving moderate importance to extracurricular activities. Say a little more about extracurricular activities in the relative importance of this process. David Hawkins 34:18 Yeah, this is something that probably we get the most questions about I'll note, you know, even if, even if the listeners can't see this, this chart right this minute, if you are able to look at it, you will see a very large number of these, what I'm calling tip factors, show up under the moderate importance column. And you know, this is one where I think students and families want to know, how much is this? How many extracurriculars Should I have? Or, you know, what is the, what are the way in which colleges are going to look at these? And what? What I always say again, this is information that your highly selective institutions, your your smaller privates tend to look more closely at, but what they're looking for, I would say, in in listening to admissions officers. Over the years is they're certainly looking for quality over quantity. And again, I think earlier, we were talking about character traits and other other attributes, this is another place where they show up. You know, you might have been the captain of a sports team or, you know, you might have played in the marching band, as I did, and endured four years of grueling practices and taunting at the hands of your classmates. Those are things that build character as well. And I think, I think what, what institutions like to see there is just that, you know, whatever you've participated in, that you've really been engaged in it. You know, you don't have to have 15 extracurriculars. You could have two, but you could really be, you know, for instance, my son founded the Minecraft club at his high school. So he was the founder, right? You know, a lot of people think of Minecraft. Well, what does that do? Well, he showed enough initiative to go set up the club, rent the space, you know, and keep the club going. To my knowledge, it's still going. So these are things I think that colleges are looking for again to kind of season the application a little bit. Yeah. And Ethan Sawyer 35:57 you mentioned equity earlier. I'm curious in your conversations with college admission officers, how are colleges these days talking about extracurricular activities as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion? Yeah, David Hawkins 36:10 you know, I think colleges are speaking in a much more broad sort of fashion about extracurricular activities. Because I know, you know, when we tend to hear that term, we think of, you know, Spanish club and football and, you know, debate club and things like that. What this really, I think, captures is more, a more holistic view of a student's life. We know, for instance, that there are a lot of students that cannot afford to spend three hours after school at marching band practice. They might have to go to a job, they may have to go to, you know, to sort of care for younger siblings. So colleges really are looking at basically what happens outside of school, and I think that sort of falls in to this extracurricular activity bucket. So it is, in fact, broader than what the name implies, Ethan Sawyer 36:54 yeah, for students who are interested in well, then what are activities I spent some time a few years ago, talking to counselors about what are some of those activities that students may not have considered including in their application, but that count, and if you literally Google that phrase, or if you Google activities that count, College Essay Guy we'll link to in the show notes, you'll see a big list of what, what are some of these other things that that do count and that that colleges would be Interested to know more about, and also, because I'm talking about the show notes for those who are wondering about recommendation letters, like, what do I include? And you know what goes in that? We've got separate guides that we'll link in the show notes to getting a great counselor recommendation and getting a great teacher recommendation. We've got guides for students and counselors on that. Next we've got high school class rank, 5.5 considerable importance. 22 moderate and a 43 give limited importance to class rank. Say more about this? David Hawkins 37:47 Yeah, that's that's one of the more interesting ones in in our long term history, because class rank used to, used to come in right up above essay writing sample and character attributes, so almost right behind grades and test scores. So this is, this is a factor that has precipitously dropped over the last two decades. And basically, you know, probably the reason why this is this has been the case is that ultimately, colleges are comparing students in the applicant pool against sort of each other as a as a big group. They, do pay attention, of course, to where a student might fall on the on, sort of the general distribution of students in their high school, but as a primary consideration, again, it's the grades. It's what they've done themselves. It's sort of like playing against the course in golf. You know, you you're looking for how a student performed during four years of school, whether or not they were first or 12th or 40th or 50th is just not as important and not as indicative of future success in college as the primary source, which is the grades. So that really has gone from quite a significant consideration in admissions to one that almost is an afterthought. And I'll say that probably the institutions that fall in this in either considerable importance or moderate importance, are likely places where, for instance, in some states, you have class rank acceptance policies at the state policy level, such as Texas and California and Washington. And in others, there may be a state standard that says you either have to have an X, GPA or BX in your class to, you know, to be eligible for admission. So really, quite a, quite a drop in in how colleges see and value rank in class. Ethan Sawyer 39:30 Speaking of quite a drop. Next, we have admission test scores from, you know, 4.9 considerable importance to, you know, 25% giving moderate importance. And if I, if I check back to the one the previous report in 20 I guess this was first time freshman in Fall 2017 you know, this is it had 45% giving emission test scores has dropped down to four. And then 37 has dropped down to, you know, what is it? 2025 and. What happened? David Hawkins 40:01 Well, the pandemic happened number one. And you know, there was already a substantial number of colleges, around 1000 before the pandemic, that were test optional but, but the pandemic really short circuited the conversation that colleges typically would have to have, which could often be very difficult, because a lot of people in higher education are very attached to those tests outside of the admissions office, but when the pandemic came around and became apparent that we couldn't actually administer the tests and students couldn't get in to take them, most colleges in the US went test optional. And what they figured out during the pandemic was, geez, we really don't, you know, we can still do admissions without the tests, and given the fact that research suggests that they only get sort of a marginal increase in the ability to predict, to predict student success beyond what they already know with grades, tests, sort of started to feel like a bit of a deviation from what students really ought to be going through as they make the transition to college. So while there are still a number of institutions that require tests, the vast majority are test optional or even test free, where you won't even consider test scores if they're sent in. So basically, the pandemic moved us from a country where the majority of colleges required admission tests to where the vast majority of colleges do not, in fact, require admission tests any longer. So that's a dramatic change. Even though colleges were had had been sort of falling out of love with tests over the last 20 years in terms of their sort of the relative importance compared to students test scores. This was a drop that is really a significant shift in the landscape. A Ethan Sawyer 41:38 question that I get from students is often, can I really believe colleges when they say they're test optional? In other words, what I hear them saying is like, can I still apply without test scores and get in what is your sense, either from data or, you know, from your experiences, do colleges are they for real when they say it's truly test optional, that they will accept students whether they have test scores or David Hawkins 42:01 not, yeah, yeah, colleges, I think they can take them at face value. Colleges are, in fact, test optional, and that it it means what it sounds like. I think the only instances where, if a student really wants to take the test, they should feel free to take the test and send in the scores, colleges are treating this information now, much like they're treating any other sort of ancillary information that they might get outside of the students grades, which is, you know, if it helps and it makes you feel better as a student to submit them. Feel free. Colleges will will include them in part of their calculations. But if you haven't taken the test or you don't feel like submitting your scores, there's absolutely no need to do so. Colleges will evaluate your application without penalty, without any sort of flag that you didn't submit the scores, because, quite frankly, there are 10s of, you know, hundreds of 1000s of students who are not submitting scores right now. Ethan Sawyer 42:52 Yeah, and for those interested, we've got a we'll link in the show notes. We've got sort of our crash course and standardized testing that that'll answer a lot of folks questions. And there's an upcoming podcast with Jay ROSNER on just this topic. So we're getting sort of to the bottom one. So I'm going to kind of just rattle these off, rather than kind of going one by one, and just curious to get your thoughts on anything that you found interesting over the years, or, you know, anything that you think of, it's worth noting here. We've got portfolio, which is, you know, students submitting, for example, artistic work, creative work. We've got interview. We've got work so work experiences, working a job. We've got State grad, graduation exam scores and then Subject Test Scores at the very bottom, with 1% giving considerable importance. So as you see the sort of bottom of the table here, what do you what's worth noting? David Hawkins 43:39 Well, two things, number one, work. I think the fact that 31% of colleges assign moderate importance to work reinforces what we talked about when we suggested that extracurricular activities was, in fact, a broader concept, and that work probably should be part of that, or is part of that. The second thing, though, is the other factors that you mentioned are all sort of at the fringes or at the margins of the national landscape for college admission. Highly selective institutions typically are the only ones that require interviews graduation exam scores. I'm sorry, subject test scores, there are a very few state institutions that are that are looking at state graduation exam scores that really has not been a trend that has caught on, and then really it's your sort of, your art institute, your art institutions that are looking at portfolios, and small number of other other colleges using the portfolio model. So these are areas where I think, as you look at the national landscape, chances are you're probably not going to run into many institutions that consider these factors to save for work. That's again, in the extracurricular bucket. But if you're applying to a more specialized or a highly selective institution, you may well run across one of these. Ethan Sawyer 44:50 You mentioned, I want to zoom back a second. You mentioned equity being important to NACAC as an organization. I believe it's important to colleges as well. Given. Equity and inclusion is a big part of the dialog and is a big focus, both sort of theoretically and, I think in many cases practically, in you know, in terms of where colleges are putting their time and their resources, if you had to predict, how do you see things shifting in the coming years when it comes to equity and inclusion? David Hawkins 45:21 Yeah. Well, first of all, I think in the short term, we're a little concerned, because of the Supreme Court decision, that we might have a drop off in the number of underrepresented students who are moving into post secondary, particularly four year post secondary institutions. But in the long term, the way we see equity sort of changing the landscape is number one, it's a reality. Our students are becoming or more diverse than they've ever been, and only continue to be that way. From the institutional perspective, there is a lot of conversation right now about redesigning the college admission process. I think even whether you're an open enrollment or a highly selective institution, it's apparent that the model that we're using right now by and large. I mean, there's exceptions all over the place, but is relatively static and has been around since, you know, the early 1900s really. And so we are seeing a lot of innovation around, what is the what does it mean to apply to college, and is it necessary that we call it an application? You know, I can see a future where there's going to be a lot more sort of simplicity of the process. In fact, we've seen some institutions move to direct admissions and something called reverse admission, where you're, you know, the college essentially applies to the student. And the idea, I think, again, going back to something we touched on earlier, we really want to take as much of the burden off of students in this process, because they've worked hard for four years. They all they want to do is continue their education, and in the name of equity, to ask students to go and do a whole other process that's unrelated to what they're doing in school just seems to be a little unfair. So I do think we're going to see institutions trying to figure out how to open the gates a little wider, a lot wider, hopefully, and I think the result of that will be a more vibrant and open system that hopefully will become a little little easier for students to navigate. Ethan Sawyer 47:07 What are some things that you're excited about or problems that you're excited to work on as it relates to college admissions in the coming couple years? Yeah, David Hawkins 47:16 number one at the top of the list is equity. Frankly, it's an exciting adventure, because we know that, first of all, institutions thrive when they have a diverse student body. Moreover, we know from students. We used a Harris Poll recently of students, 75% of students said diversity was a critical part of their post secondary experience, and this was in anticipation of their experience. So these were students moving in. So it's important to students. It's important to institutions on campus. And then it's, you know, it's important if our country, if our institutions, want to survive in this global environment, we need to be preparing for everyone to interact with this global environment and also be a place where the global environment is nurtured. So that's, the first thing. I think the second thing that we're excited about working on is that, you know, college admissions is a profession, believe it or not, for those of students and families see it as a monolithic sort of all seeing, all knowing thing in this space. But these are people who work very hard to balance a lot of interests, and who, frankly, are spread pretty thin. And we're excited about trying to develop the profession bring more people and bring more young people into it, because you can change lives in this profession. We also want to, we also want to make sure that when people do end up in this profession, that that we're professionalizing things, that we have a really, sort of well articulated set of standards and education, just like other entities might have, like a consultant or, you know, a doctor. I don't think we'll ever get to medical school levels of education, but you know, for students and families, I think it's important to see the human face of the admissions office, and that's that's something that NAC actually excited to try to help with. Ethan Sawyer 48:57 Well, for folks listening, we've got practical guides for a lot of the areas that we've talked about here, and we're going to have podcasts where we do a deeper dive on some of these different factors. But as we close here, David, I'm just curious what advice would you like students and parents to hear as they're navigating this college admission process? David Hawkins 49:17 Yeah, listen, I'm the luckiest parent in America. Both of my children have been raised and put into college while I was here at NACAC. And the reason I'm the luckiest parent in America is because I've had anywhere between 4000 when I first started and now 27,000 College Admission Counseling professionals telling me some of the sort of giving me some of the best advice that I could possibly get, and number one is let the student drive the process to the extent possible. Clearly, there's going to be some family considerations like money and finance, but this is the chance for the student to take their first step into adulthood. Let them drive. And then secondly, don't foreclose on any opportunities that there are so many amazing colleges and universities out there that. Don't fall victim to that sort of prestige game, to that idea that somehow, that there's these brand name colleges, that they're really the ones you need to go to, we found that the most important thing that you can do is not enroll in the highest brand name college you can find, but really maximize the experience you have wherever you end up, because that's going to be what really matters. So I think those two things are what, what I learned from our members and what really served me well in my own process of guiding my students through the transition. Ethan Sawyer 50:28 Oh, I love that. I just recorded with Anne Morano from colleges that change lives and in. The title is about, you know, a student driven process. So I'm so in that mode, and I'm so with you as you share that. David, I just want to say thanks. Thanks for all your work that you do for this profession. It's, it's, it's substantial, and I'm grateful, and I'm grateful for this conversation today. David Hawkins 50:48 Well, Ethan, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the work that we do, and I will likewise, thank you for all the good work that you do. Thanks again. Ethan Sawyer 51:02 Thanks friends for listening. As ever, you'll find the resources we discussed in the show notes at college. Sa guy.com/podcast keep an eye out for our next episode, where we get into the details of GPA course selection rigor and how do you make the most of the academic opportunities that are available to you. Finally, are you on our newsletter yet? Because, if not, it's the best way to learn about upcoming webinars, resources and all things college admissions. You can find that by going to college essay guide.com and, you know, clicking the things be well and stay curious. You Transcribed by https://otter.ai
