523: Busting College Admission Myths Using Data: Standardized Tests, Rankings, and the Cost of College with Akil Bello

Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
Hey Friends and welcome back to the podcast. So if you are into data and busting myths, this episode is for you. This is part one in a two part series. Today. We're talking about standardized tests rankings and the cost of college and some of the I want to say, like misinformation or ways that the media maybe has been leading you astray. My guest is Akil Bello, who I will tell you more about in just a moment. We get into some of the common myths out there, which is, for example, that colleges are returning to standardized tests in droves, or that most colleges are returning. We also talk about the myth that it's hard to get into college just point blank, or that, for example, the higher the ranking, the better the school, and then we get into the cost of college. Is it true that most colleges now are more than $100,000 a year? I'll explore this with my guest. He is a Kiel Bello, an educator, strategist, researcher and policy consultant, and he's an advocate for equitable access to education for more than 30 years, he's worked pretty much every job you can imagine related admission testing and college access, from a tutor to a test prep company founder to CEO, and he's now the Senior Director of Advocacy at fair test when he's not moonlighting reading college applications For a public university. He serves on several advisory boards, writes articles for Forbes and helps his wife parent their college freshman and high school junior. Fun fact, if you've ever heard the term highly rejective, which is a play on highly selective that was coined by Akil himself, hope you enjoy you


you. Hi, Kiel. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. So you know, on the intro I shared a little bit about some of the roles, some of the ways that you identify, educator, strategist, researcher, etc. But right before we jumped on here, I asked if you'd be willing to just humor me and to look at this roles and identities exercise and pick a couple other ways that you identify and just share a little bit about who you are beyond sort of the the resume, as it were. So what are some other identities that you connect with that resonate here from this list, and we'll put the list in the show notes, by the way, so that other people know what we're talking about. Sure, it was interesting list because it covered a lot of ground. I was looking for parent. I didn't see it on there, but I did see architect, which I'm not going to choose. I have a Bachelor's of architecture, which many people don't know, which is really interesting, just thinking about design and how that influences a lot of presentations. But not the one I chose. The two that jumped out at me are question asker and whole poker. I think, if


Akil Bello  2:48  
I think, if I were to define any of those things, or jump onto any of those things, that's the through line through so much of my work, my public speaking, my writing, it's not having any sacred cows and being willing to ask questions of all the things. And when I look back at high school, one of my favorite stories is I remember this day in high school, a teacher was going around asking, Do you have your homework? And the kids would take it out and show it to her. When she got to me, I said yes, and looked away


intentionally, answering her question, literally, but


also intentionally, you know, poking a little bit at


the opening that the lack of specificity that the question gave me, and I think I've done that a lot throughout my life, that's one of the consistent bees, paying attention to language, paying attention to how we say things, paying attention to what people don't say when they're expressing opinions, and what that hides or disguises. So I know that another identity that you have is Senior Director of Advocacy at fair test. Tell the folks who don't know what is fair test, and for most of us who don't know, what do you what do you do? What are you? What are you working on during the day? What do you spend your time on? What problems are you trying to solve? Sure, so fair test is a


40 odd year old advocacy organization that works for more limited, more reasonable, more transparent use of large scale assessments. So from K 16, our job is to tell people stop being crazy about test. Essentially, that's what we do. Specifically, I work mostly on higher ed so SAT test, optional list, act, testing policies, those sort of things, and doing research around the purpose of those tests, the use of those tests, why they're being overused, and what the alternative is to using those things. What are some of the kinds of things?


Ethan Sawyer  5:00  
Do you like to poke holes in


Akil Bello  5:03  
all the sacred cows? I don't like


worship for the sake of worship celebrity, for the sake of celebrity, brand, for the sake of brand. So one of the problems in college space that I have is it's almost impossible to find out the quality of education at an institution,


all we have is proxies for brand.


And to me, that's not meaningful. I'd like to know that the quality of education is good. Tell me about the teaching. Don't tell me about the you know about the endowment.


We can hope the endowment translates the teaching but, but how do you know? So I think one of the so for me, a lot of times, it's I'm going to ignore your brand positioning and ask important questions. And what I often find is people don't like that. They want you to walk in with the brand on a pedestal and then operate from there,


Ethan Sawyer  6:01  
and that's never how I've operated. So let's start with something that you've spent a lot of time thinking about and working on, standardized testing. So the first myth that I want to talk about is this one that most colleges are returning to standardized tests. Is it true? Not true. Give me some numbers. Give me some numbers, honestly, false. Sure.


Akil Bello  6:25  
In 2019


about 1000 colleges were test optional right before the pandemic. Right now, 2015


colleges are test optional, and that's using, using the world of college of about 20 304


year bachelor degree granting institutions, so almost all colleges are test optional or test free, right? And what often drives the narrative of colleges are going back. Colleges are going back. Are few highly rejected colleges that attract a lot of attention, and the New York Times loves them, and they have a,


let's call it, symbiotic relationship with the New York Times.


Somehow, Dartmouth had a whole profile about them going back in the New York Times. But when Michigan extended their test optional policy, there was no noise about it. When Emory extended their test optional policy, there was no noise about it. But brown going back that ended up in the New York Times. I now I'm gonna say it. Somebody did an analysis of the New York Times reporters. Guess where they probably went to school. There's a there's a unusual over representation of those colleges at that paper. So of course, they only write about those colleges, right? And they pretend that those colleges represent all good colleges, or all colleges period, which I think is just a huge problem to let you know the 1% drive the narrative for the 99% so, right now, looking at using a world of 2300 colleges that fit our criteria, give a bachelor's degree, 2015 of them, so about 84% as of this moment, right now, I'm Looking live in the database. 84% are test optional, allowing the student to choose whether or not to send test scores Okay. 5% have yet confirmed their policy for the upcoming year. 6% six and a half percent have require scores. A lot of those are in Florida, because Florida as a state required scores of all their public institutions, right? So only 7% or so of colleges require SAT scores, right? And then you have another 4% which is test free, like the entire UC system, which if you send a test score to them, they won't look at it no matter what. Right? So sure, let's say we add 10 colleges to the 156 that are requiring that's not going to move the numbers very much, right? You're talking about 156 out of roughly 2300 so a small percentage of colleges are requiring test scores. That number fluctuates a little bit year to year, but it doesn't. It's not a massive wave of schools going back to requiring the test


Ethan Sawyer  9:33  
and yet, this is what we hear about in the news more often than not, right, correct? And so say, say a little more about that. You know? Why is it that we're Why does it seem otherwise? I think


Akil Bello  9:44  
there's just an obsession. There's a brand obsession, right? There's an obsession with the schools that generate the most conversation because they have the most applications, because they're the oldest and have a certain amount of cache. Right? So the highly rejective colleges, which, which was funny because I tweeted that a while ago, and some people were mad at me for calling them highly like, you reject 96% of your students. Like, why would I call you selective? Why would I talk about the 4% and not the 96% right? But those colleges attract a lot of attention and news outlets often pretend that the policies of those colleges represent all colleges. I tried to dig into that a little bit. I wrote a piece called the hidden factors of college admissions because I wanted to explain that not every college does admissions the same way, right? Most colleges are really looking for, did you pass 12th grade and show me that you can do 13th grade work? Great. Come on in, right? A few colleges aren't so interested in, are you qualified? They're interested in, what cache do you add to our institution, right? So when you get to the, you know, sort of the schools that have the most, the smallest admissions rate, what you're often looking at, they're not admitting students based on ability, based on, are they qualified to do the work here, they're admitting students on the basis of, do we think you bring us something that we want? Do you think you fit an institutional priority?


Ethan Sawyer  11:25  
All right, here's another one. Universities are returning to standardized tests because they help attract students of color.


Akil Bello  11:39  
I don't please take nothing, I say as calling universities liars. Okay, let's look. Let's start there. I don't have their internal data. I will say there is no data I have seen in any way, shape or form, at any location that would allow that to be true, right? If you're talking about underrepresented students, whether it is first gen, low income, black, Hispanic, the test hurts them full stop. They're like they typically perform less well on the test than wealthier, whiter students, women perform worse than men. So then to tell me I'm going to use a test that these group do the worst on to help them is really weird. I have yet to see any data that can make that believable. Some of the institutional reports I've seen have basically amounted to strange admissions policies. To me. Like to look at a student and say, we like this student, we want to admit this student, this person looks like a great student, but since they didn't send me a test score, I won't admit them. Well, if you knew all the other stuff, and if you just had a test score, you're suddenly convinced of all the other things. That's that's strange to me, right? It would, it seems bizarre to to hold on to this test as the confirmatory piece of evidence for all other things in the universe. Essentially, what they're saying is we don't believe your schools, we don't believe your performance, we don't believe anything else until we have a test score that confirms that. So the only thing they will believe is a test score from college board that that seems like bad policy to me.


Ethan Sawyer  13:40  
Here's another, standardized test scores are a reliable predictor of GPA in college.


Akil Bello  13:46  
Sure? That's like saying, you know, height is a reliable predictor of ability to get into the NBA. The average height in the NBA is six foot eight. Less than 1% of the American population is six foot eight. So yeah, if you're six foot eight, you're probably have a good chance again in the NBA. So yes, good academic performance in school will correlate nicely with other pseudo academic things. I also bet you it would correlate nicely with spelling bee performance, but I don't want anybody using a spelling bee for college admissions either. So it seems to me that it is and if it correlates so well, we had it 400 years knowing that it correlates well with academic performance. It correlates fairly well, right? My first question is, then, why do you need it? We've long since confirmed this, right? We know that it tells you nothing new because matching up to GPA means it tells you nothing new. It tells you what GPA already told you, right, what it does that I think often they'll hold on to in research is depending on the institution you look at. It correlates within a narrow band with GPA, so you. Yes, S A T will predict, I don't know, maybe, like, I think there's a 15% differential between S A T and and G P A prediction of first year grades. So S A T of x might predict a 3.2 GPA will predict it at a 3.1 so if you add them together, maybe you get up to a 3.22 right? My question is, who needs that? Why? Why do you need to predict it that tiny difference better? And what does that actually mean? Because, to there's never been a study that shows below this Sat number students fail out of college that would be a number that's worthwhile. What they're using it to do is quibble between small differences in first year GPA. I don't understand how that's valuable to anyone. And then the other part of that is, let's pretend that that small difference in first year GPA, a point four difference in first year GPA prediction, is somehow useful. Do we really want to support a $2 billion industry with all the problems of testing and test preparation and advantaging the wealthy in order to get that point for difference GPA prediction? That's a very weird position to take, so


Ethan Sawyer  16:18  
I want to zoom back now, and I want to think about the larger process, beyond testing. Here's another myth, something that I hear a lot, that it's hard to get into college, or, as we sometimes see in the media, it's harder than ever to get into college. Yes


Akil Bello  16:33  
and no. It depends on how you want to be obsessed about things, how stressed you want to be. So someone asked me recently, because my son is a freshman in college, and someone had asked me, you know, was it hard for him to get in? And that question floored me, because we filled out an application. We push send on the application. It is not difficult to fill out an application. It is not difficult to choose what schools to apply to. It is not hard to apply and wait for them to say, yes, it might be stressful, but hard is a very weird word. You know, it's hard to build a building. It's not hard to apply to college, right? So there's that element of stressful versus difficult, which I think many people overlook. There's also the statistical standpoint of, are admissions rates going down? And that's a lot of people's positioning on hard. If the admissions rates are going down, it is harder to get in right which one can argue that if you look at a small subset of schools overall, still most colleges and something like, and I don't remember the exact numbers, but something like 70% of colleges admit more than half of their applicants. When we get it down to schools that admit less than 25% of their applicants. It's somewhere around one, 150, something like that, maybe 200 it fluctuates a little bit year to year, but we're talking about out of traditional colleges, right? Because that's the other part of this conversation that's difficult. What is a college, right? So there are 7000 colleges in the federal government's database, right? But what I think of as a college brings that list down to about 2200 or so, right? I think of four year residential, non profit bachelor's degree granting institutions, which includes some community colleges that give bachelor's degrees, right? So I think of TV college when I'm thinking of college, you live in a dorm and you're trying to get your Bachelor's right. So that takes your number down to about 2000 Well, if 200 of those 2000 admit less than only a quarter of their applicants, then the vast majority of colleges are pretty easy to get into, right? So most people follow media outlets that obsess about a small subset of colleges, and that creates a lot of anxiety. So is it hard to get into college? Not by any way that I measure it. Yes, it's hard to get into college, if you only want to look at a small list of colleges,


Ethan Sawyer  19:25  
and it seems like those colleges are the ones that show up in US News and World Report, right? They're the quote, unquote, highly ranked ones. So let's talk about that for a second myth number five, the higher the ranking, the better the school.


Akil Bello  19:40  
I mean, yeah, that's that's a huge problem. Newest news isn't even necessarily the worst culprit. New York Times, I did an analysis of higher ed headlines for two years from the New York Times, and essentially, I think it was 42% of their headlines for two years from their top higher ed report. Orders talked about Columbia and Harvard. So like, those are the only colleges that exist in the world, right? So it creates a narrative that is hugely problematic. Right us, news absolutely has contributed that since they started their first ranking. Right us, news is, I think the thing that's important to think about when we're thinking about data is data is not objective, right? Yes, numbers are numbers, but somebody chose which numbers to use, and us. News to me, is the best example of that, right? Almost everything they've selected to use in creating their ranking is a measure of wealth.


Ethan Sawyer  20:44  
So break this down for us, because there are people who are listening to this episode who have no idea how the US News World Report rankings, how they're even calculated. So back us up and share some of that context. Maybe.


Akil Bello  20:54  
So let me. Let me go way back first, like in the 80s, the first ranking sent mail to college presidents and Provost and asked one question, which of these colleges are good? So it was a it was a reputation survey among college presidents, where they were asked to rank colleges across the country whether they were good or not. Let's just think about how ridiculous that is, right? And then after that, they started adding more criteria year on year on year. So they change it every few years. So So one thing to recognize with the rankings right is that, like, if they're changing it every year, but the people, but the schools, don't move, that has to be intentional. So they are. There's a quote that I have in some presentations from a US News data scientist, who essentially says, we look at how the numbers work out, where we choose our factors, and then we use the ones we like, right? So they're choosing the numbers that to them allow arrives at a reasonable decision, right? If Harvard, if they choose a factor to consider, and Harvard ends up at 20, they're saying, we're not using that wow, because that can't be right. So it's essentially somebody's opinion filtered through math, right there. You know, they've decided that reputation should count as 20% of the score. So it went from 100% down to 20% 20% last year. They factored in graduation rate. I think they did. Pell graduation rate last year, and that's what made Vanderbilt upset. Vanderbilt sent them like they changed their ranking formula last year, which included something that essentially benefited public colleges. And Vanderbilt wrote a letter to all their alum saying, US News rankings are terrible. They're horrible because they fell three places, right? So all of that simply says to me, the ranking is us. News is opinion of what should count, and then they're justifying it by choosing what mathematical weight they will give to each of these factors so that it can present to the public as if it's objective, right? We can choose to say we want to weigh the ratio of male to female in the quality of a college. That's reasonable, but why not bearded men to non bearded men? We could turn all of that into a ratio and a metric and say, like, this is what counts, right? So when I look at the rankings, I just find that US News particularly doesn't measure things that I would value, and so they create impressions of and part of it the labeling, if you tell me this is best college. I think college, I think education. I think you're ranking education. If you told me you were ranking wealthiest colleges, I would have no issues, because I would have a different expectation, right? Money Magazine is clear we are ranking the best college for your buck. So it says it's a discounting thing. They're looking at. They're not weighing. They're like, the ratio of education to cost. That's pretty clear. But when you go best, I don't know what you're doing. What


Ethan Sawyer  24:12  
does it mean when a college is ranked sixth versus ninth versus 15th? Like, to what extent can you even nothing? Rank these. It


Akil Bello  24:23  
means absolutely nothing. It's it's false precision. It's a pretense of precision. I think the same thing. GPA, what's there between a 3.82 and a 3.83 absolutely nothing. There is no meaningful difference worth talking about, you know, and I think that we do that with a lot of numbers in the education space, the S, A, T, there is no meaningful difference. For 30 years of tutoring, I've tutored lots of kids, 1000s, 10s of 1000s of students, there is no meaningful difference in what a child who scores a 1500 knows versus. A child who scores a 1400 it's a pretensive precision. So that, to me, is part of the problem here. Now there is a difference between a 14 107 100. So if all of these things did bigger, broader cuts, it would make more sense to me, right? I, like some of the rankings, have started to do ratings where they just group colleges, level one, level two, level three, level four, level five. That starts to make more sense to me, because if I'm looking at a college and it's on anybody's top, 100 200 maybe even 300 I don't know how far I'm going to extend that, right, but if you're in the top 300 you're a good school, right? Cool, good school. Let's see what else you got, right? 300 colleges are still too many to apply to, so I need to start with top 300 and then narrow my way down, right? And once you start throwing in other factors, it becomes easier to do that.


Ethan Sawyer  25:59  
You mentioned being a question asker as folks think about the rankings. What are some questions that you would hope that people ask as they are using rankings, even in their sense of like, which schools to apply to, even if they're kind of going well, I don't know much about colleges, but these 50 seem to be, according to this publication, somewhat, you know, whatever it is, well resourced, what questions would you help people are asking?


Akil Bello  26:29  
So in my perfect world, people are just ignoring the rankings, because everything I want someone to do, to find a college will take care of everything the rankings do, if you really wanted to start with the rankings, I would maybe take as many rankings as I can, take their top 100 their top 200 pick a number that you like, and take all the schools from that. And this is my pool, because if it falls in the top 100 of anybody's list, it's a good school. And the only question that remains is, is it a good school for the child that's applying there? Right? MIT is a very good school, not if you want to study dance. So you have to figure out what good means to your family, right? And so I think that that's so rankings can be a broad starting point of I know nothing. Everything on this list is good, and it might allow you to discover some places you don't know of. You know, two years ago, I didn't know Williams, which is crazy. I've been in this space for 30 years, and I could tell you almost nothing about Williams two years ago, I don't know if I would have been able to tell you what, what part of the country it was in, right? And it's been a top ranked school on everybody's list for decades. Let's


Ethan Sawyer  27:57  
set rankings aside for a second. What are some questions that you would hope people would ask when they are developing a college list.


Akil Bello  28:05  
That's a great question, because I think most college lists are developed wrong. They're developed backwards, and most of the websites that exist for college search are built backwards. I think the questions people should ask are size, location, educational experience. So what's the major you want? Big classes, small classes, all of these things that distinguish one college experience from another, right? Do you want to be, you know, rural, you know? So by doing that, you're immediately narrowing down the list right? When my son was going through this process, he's like, Yeah, I know. I want a school that's not tiny. So that meant Kenyon was off the list great. Like, we don't have to think about it. We don't have to go any further. He also didn't want to see a school that was super urban. So like, NYU, NYU came off the list immediately. He didn't want to be in a place that was buildings in a city. So he wanted a campus, campus. Great. That meant I don't think about anyway you I don't have to think about Baruch, right? I don't have to think about all those places. So once you start, so I think the college process needs to start from what does the student want this next educational experience to be? And once you get there and you've narrowed it down to 3040, 50, school, something like that, then you might start throwing on, will I get in? Can I afford it? Even? Can I afford is a difficult question to ask at the beginning, because the best you're going to be able to do is estimate price, right? But I think a college search should really start with student factors that essentially ask, Do I want to go there? All right, aqui, let's talk


Ethan Sawyer  29:51  
about costs for a second. So myth number six, college is expensive. To what extent is this true?


Akil Bello  29:58  
All of the myths are. True ish. That's the problem. It's like, you take a true ish thing and somebody turns it into a newspaper headline, and then it starts to be perceived as true,


Ethan Sawyer  30:11  
right? And what's the, what's the problematic version of the headline that you that irks you?


Akil Bello  30:16  
College, all colleges now leave students $200,000 in debt. College cost $100,000 a year. Like all that is, is what really irks me, because it's not true.


Ethan Sawyer  30:32  
In what sense is it not true? Because it sounds like it's true, right? You said it's true ish, so


Akil Bello  30:37  
it's true? Ish, right, it's not true in the sense of broadly accurate for the industry you're broadly describing. If you say some colleges are $100,000 a year, you are absolutely right. A few colleges are $100,000 a year, Okay, we're good, but college starts to make it all of them, which becomes a real problem, right? A college recently crossed the $100,000 a year list price threshold, right? But I also know the average discount rate at colleges is about 50% so and for those who don't know discount rate, it basically means, like, colleges essentially give coupons. They call them marinade so, so if they list their price as 100,000 you don't really know how much you're going to pay up to that 100,000 right? If you are super wealthy, you may end up paying the 100,000 if you're dirt poor, you may end up paying zero, so you have no idea what the actual cost is, and for newspapers to talk entirely about the 100,000 I think it's disingenuous.


Ethan Sawyer  31:58  
Yeah, it sounds like it's misleading too. Yeah, I have it here that according to recent data, 87.3% of first time first year undergrads receive some form of financial aid, and an estimated $100 million in scholarship money goes unclaimed every year. I'll share links to these in the in the show notes for folks who are interested. But it seems like, Okay, so let's just click one deeper, like so, and why is that problematic? And for whom? Like, why is the narrative of like you can't afford college, problematic, and for whom?


Akil Bello  32:32  
Because let's think about who's going to run away from something they were told they were that was expensive without even looking right? That's the problem, right? It's it's the most vulnerable families. It's the families that were thinking about colleges, and then now they've been told they can't afford it. They've been pre told they can't afford it, without the full knowledge that maybe they can right? So it hurts those who are least in position to withstand false narratives, to have 10 friends around them who've been to college and not paid that number right. Just like if I live in a neighborhood where everybody has a college degree, then I know college is affordable. Everybody around me went like, I don't know what the number is, but if Joe can do it as Steve can do it, and Kwame can do it, and everybody around me did it, I can do it too, right? But if I live in a neighborhood where almost nobody has a college degree, and then you tell me college is expensive, well, yeah, clearly nobody around me went to college, probably because it's expensive, nobody around me also drives a Bugatti, right? Like, like, I don't have to look at the price of who got even though I can't afford it. Nobody has one. So that's part of the problem, right? Is that it hurts those who are who need the most support, all right? Number


Ethan Sawyer  33:56  
seven, and I'm gonna ask this in a particular way, so stay with me here. But x, like a particular thing is what gets you into college. And you know, you can apply this to a lot of different things, like a passion project is what gets you in, or essays are what gets you in. To what extent is it really one element that is the difference maker when it comes to, let's say, highly selective schools? Why is this narrative problematic


Akil Bello  34:24  
because the thing is immediately reductive and puts a lot of weight on one thing and makes all the other seem not important. I love this


Ethan Sawyer  34:38  
because I just recorded a video, a YouTube video on this, like, two weeks ago, about, Hey, y'all essays do not get you in FYI, I know you're a College Essay Guy, but so anyway, we're totally


Akil Bello  34:48  
that makes sense, right? Like, like, it would be and again, like, let me try to be a little bit fair to the businesses doing this, right? It's hard to run an essay business and go, essays aren't the. Tipping point of your life, right? How do you do that? Unless you're willing to to not booster your business as much as you can. So I really appreciate the people in this space who are willing to take nuanced position, knowing that the hyperbole sells, right? And I think that's what it often is. It's people who the people who say the passion project gets you in, they probably run a passion project business like you're paying me for my services. That's the magic key to open the tier all the kingdoms like so you know, your 1.0 GPA and zero score of the SAT just do that passion project and Ivy League. Here you come. Right, right. Like it doesn't get you. It might bump you over the top. It might distinguish you among applicants. It might not. I always. The first thing that always jumps to my mind when I hear stuff like that is, how do you know, right? It's very unlikely that a recent Admissions Office has shared with a business, with candidates, with anybody. This is the one magic thing that sold you


Ethan Sawyer  36:19  
much less across our entire class,


Akil Bello  36:22  
right, right? Much less across our entire class, right? And so I think that that it puts undue weight on one particular thing, which I think is not, it's just not honest, yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  36:34  
besides it being, like, morally questionable or just morally bad, like, why is it potentially problematic?


Akil Bello  36:44  
Because so often it's tied to something you have to pay for, yeah, and therefore, once again, excluding those who are most vulnerable, excluding low information, first generation, underrepresented students, the people who are least likely to have the support. So yeah, that's that's a huge part of the problem is that it just advantages those with money. So let's


Ethan Sawyer  37:07  
talk to students for just a second. We've talked about standardized testing on webinars before, but what are you mentioned being a question asker. What are some good questions that a student can ask themselves when they're considering whether or not to submit a particular test score for a particular institution. Sorry,


Akil Bello  37:26  
so the question actually isn't whether, well, the first question isn't whether to submit, right? Because submitting is the last step. So I think let's take it back a bit. Let's, let's reframe that question. Look, the questions start early. They start right after 10th grade. Should you prep for the test? So if you decide you're going to prep for the test, probably decision needs to be made this summer after 10th grade. Figure out whether you're going to prep. Then the next question becomes, should I take the test? And unfortunately, I think most people should answer yes to the first two, should you prep for the test? Probably, there's still some advantage to having a good you can still squeeze value out of having a good test score. So should you prep? Probably, should you take the test? Probably, if your prep has gone well, you got a number that's going to be helpful. Take the test. And the last question is, should you submit? Right? Because prep takes so long, testing takes so long, you have to kind of do it before you have a full college list. Should you submit? Is a question that you ask against the individual colleges on your list, and you're probably asking and you're probably answering differently depending on the schools. If Georgetown is on your list, there's no question you're submitting because they require it, right? If UCLA is on your list, you're not submitting because they don't require it. If you're a student in California who only wants to go to the UCS or CSU system, and that's only place you're going to apply, then no, you probably don't need to prep, right? So I think that the questions, unfortunately, the college list comes so late that you have to ask the questions about PrEP early, which means you probably should start prepping until that list is set. All right, let's shift gears a


Ethan Sawyer  39:16  
little bit. What is the data that you're interested in right now? Like, what are you paying attention to in the college admission space?


Akil Bello  39:23  
So the data that I'm most tracking right now is student enrollment, the percentage of students enrolling without test scores. So that's included in common data set that's included in iPads. So I've been paying more attention to that, because it tells me a lot about the impact of testing policies prior to the, you know, prior to 2000 maybe 23 on average, colleges like 105% of students submitted test scores. So. Right? Because some submitted both. Last time I looked holistically at the entire, you know, 2300 colleges, that number was down like 56%


Ethan Sawyer  40:09  
Wow. First of all, explain the 105% when you said some submitted both. Explain that. So what


Akil Bello  40:15  
the federal database tracks is the percentage of students submitting SAT scores and the percentage of students submitting a CT scores, they don't actually give us the overlap of the students who submitted both so I'm gonna ignore the overlap and just add it all up, which is why it gets above 100 Gotcha. So prior to the pandemic, 2020, when everybody went test optional, right? That number average across all colleges was 105% so suggesting that somewhere around 5% submitted both s, a T and a C, T, last time I looked, which was probably last year, that total was 56% so telling me less than you know, more than half of the enrolling students did not submit a test score.


Ethan Sawyer  41:00  
What are we seeing so far in the data in terms of who's applying and who's getting accepted?


Akil Bello  41:05  
So one year after is a bad time to try to look for impact. It's just too early. Admissions doesn't trickle down to student behavior that quickly. I would say it's also a messy year to try to draw conclusions about cause and effect. You know, MIT so post SCOTUS MIT's, I think black students plummeted maybe. I think it was 50% something insane, right? But also they reinstated testing. Fascia was a mess, right? We have all of these different things that could have contributed something to those impacts. So how do we know what caused it? So I'm paying attention to the data. Ed reform now and James Murphy have a nice blog. They're tracking about 50 schools, and they're adding data for every time schools release admissions, admissions data and what the impact on what the demographic breakdowns have been. But I also love that his blog basically says, take this with a grain of salt. We're not sure about anything. You know, schools report data differently. You know, even simple things like Pell rate, the percentage of students who enroll with a Pell Grant. Lots of colleges are bragging about their Pell rate going up. Well, the government changed the formula for Pell last year. So did colleges do anything to increase the number of Pell students? Or did the government just give Pell to more students? So there's a lot of weird things like that when you analyze data that you have to know about to try to get an understanding of what's happening. So so it's always important to think critically about what could have impacted these data and be careful about any reporting that wants to attribute something as complex as human behavior to a single factor. One


Ethan Sawyer  43:07  
of the things that I can't You can't leave this podcast without getting an essay question from me, and it's one that became more pertinent, I think, after the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admission. And it was students, you know, in webinars, students that I would meet, asking me, should they write about race or not? And First there was the question of, like, can I write about race? And we talked about this on the podcast with our mutual friend Jay Rosner, about Yes, students can write about race, but they need to connect it to skills, qualities, values, qualities of character that they'll bring with them into the college admission process. But I'd love to ask you, oh dear, your question asker, what are some good questions for students to think through if they are considering should I write about race or not in my college essay or application?


Akil Bello  43:57  
My first answer to that is almost to turn it around to you. Is there any topic you ban students from writing


Ethan Sawyer  44:08  
about, I think, in terms of banning so there's


Akil Bello  44:10  
just give a blanket No, don't ever write about that. Probably not. Yeah. I


Ethan Sawyer  44:16  
mean, there's common topics that they're definitely going to blend in with. You know, common sports, common instruments, I think mental health challenges should go in the Additional Information section, but, but there's not going to be something that I'm like you absolutely. I mean, maybe writing about a breakup, probably don't, but I guess somebody could write a good essay on that. I've just never seen one. But for in me, in my world, there's no bands. So


Akil Bello  44:38  
that, to me, is actually the answer to that race question, there's no ban, right? The only question there was, was there a legal ban, right? So if there's no legal ban, then absolutely you can write about it. So the real question is, do you want to write about it? And if you do write about it, how do you write about it in a useful, effective meaning? Faithful way So, and I think that's the real question there, right? Is that mentioning race in your essay is not going to do anything for anyone you know. People who are Ed bloom wants you to believe that if somebody writes I'm black in their essay, They're magically admitted to Harvard. That has never been the case. It never will be the case, and no one in their right mind is writing that right. So the real question of writing about race is you shouldn't. No one is probably writing about race. You are writing about yourself, and race is one of the things that may or may not define your experience. It is absolutely fair, good, useful, whatever. If you think that is important to add to your college application, then absolutely add it.


Ethan Sawyer  45:58  
Yeah. And for students who are listening, who are like, Yes, but how? There's a we'll link in the show notes to a super complete guide that's like, here's how to think about identities. Here's how to connect identities to different sides of you. And if race and culture are important to you, something that you want to include, you'll see a breakdown, really thorough breakdown, of like, an example essay, a personal statement and application of a student who did and was accepted to a highly as a kill, puts it highly rejective college. So as we wrap here, I'd love to just get your best advice now as a parent, even who has gone through this process pretty recently with a student, what advice? Let's go. Let's go both. Let's go. What advice? Let's start with parents. Actually. What advice would you give to parents who are navigating this process with students, and then we'll talk to students. What advice would you give to them as they're going through this process?


Akil Bello  46:50  
I think parents have to help their child get out of the rat race, or let's say that better, depending where the child is right? Because if you're in a highly competitive space that takes the approach of Duke or die, right, then I think my role as a parent is to tamper that down and help them understand there are lots of good schools, right, and that the challenge isn't really getting into college. Getting into a good college, the stress, the quote, unquote difficulty, comes from, if you obsess about a college, you make it difficult to get in, right because if you obsess about a college, and often when people obsess about a college, they obsess about college, which is that everybody else is interesting about so you're choosing to volunteer for a highly competitive experience in which you might not win. So I think it's the parents role to tamper the stress and all of the messaging that's sent to the child around if you don't go to this place, you won't be successful in life, right? I think on the other side, if you have parents who are, you know, parents of students who are questioning whether they will go to college at all, whether they can afford to go to college, whether college is right for them, whether they are prepared to go to college, right, then your role there is more of a cheerleader, like, absolutely you can. That's why I like to call college 13th grade, right? It's very weird that we, you know, we start talking about college as if, you know, the transition you did from eighth to ninth was a leap, the transition you did from ninth to 10th was a leap. We talked about college as if, oh, my god, only the special few can go from 12 to 13. Everybody can go from 11 to 12, but 12 to 13. Oh, that's a bridge too far, right? So I think it's part of the parents role to help students understand, yes, it's a step up in work, but we've done this before. We can do it again, right? So helping them understand, you can go, here's the parameters for what we're looking for. Here's what we can afford, because now college costs money, whereas K 12 doesn't. So, yeah, I think those are the two bits of advice I have for parents, is to think about where their child is and where they need to be the counterbalance to the external messaging that kids get about college. You know, I don't like the messaging of a test score means academic fit, implying that if you don't get a 1400 you can't do the work at college x right? There's a big difference between admissible and able. So parents role is to balance a lot of those things.


Ethan Sawyer  49:38  
Great. What advice would you give to students?


Akil Bello  49:42  
Try not to go crazy, try not to try not to compare yourselves too much. Don't do the Instagram announcement. If you can avoid it. You don't have to share all your business with everyone you know. Don't feel the need to compete with your friends. I figure out where you want to go to school and the experience you want, and then do what you can to capture that experience. I would also say, both for students and parents, the earlier you formulate your list, the better. One of the best things that happened to me was a friend of mine, Sheree, told us to apply in September to a couple of colleges that did essentially rolling admissions. So in December, November, we had three yeses and hadn't applied early decision anywhere. It was just that they were rolling. And so we were comfortable knowing that we had some good options, and we were looking for more, right? So the earlier you can get a win, the better it kind of is for everybody, right? It takes some of the stress off the student. It takes some of the pressure off the process. Say, Okay, cool. I now know I could go to this college, which I was really happy with when I got my Yes, and really now it's a question of upgrade or or differences. I don't even know if upgrade is the right word.


Ethan Sawyer  51:11  
I love that. Thank you. Akil, I appreciate your time. Oh, I appreciate you, man. Thanks friends for listening. As ever, you'll find the show notes linked at college essay guy.com/podcast with resources and all the things that we talked about in this episode. Stay tuned for Episode Two with our guest from the common app, Tara Nicola, where she's also busting some college mission myths, also with some data that one's co hosted by the lovely Tom Campbell, be well friends and stay curious. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai