Ana Hetland Monahan 7/19/21 Ana Hetland Monahan 7/19/21

Does the SAT Still Matter?

I hate taking tests, always have. It didn’t matter how well prepared I was-- when the teacher handed out the blue test booklet or the multiple choice answer sheet, my heart would drop and my body would flood with panic. I had friends who loved tests, would sit up a little straighter with their sharpened pencils --that just wasn’t me. The panic would always dissipate a minute or two into the test, but I never could figure out how to skip that panic altogether.

There are few tests that are as hyped, as panic-inducing, as written about as the SAT. It is a billion dollar industry (in 2017 The College Board--the “non-profit” administrator of the SAT -- generated over $1.1 billion in revenue. And that’s not counting all the private courses and test prep tutors that affluent families engage to improve scores). And for decades, The College Board and the elite schools that use the SAT to justify their admissions practices have argued that it is an essential part of assessing an applicant's potential for success. Their claim is that SAT scores are a better predictor of who will graduate from college than other factors. The truth is that there is a very minor correlation between SAT score and GPA and graduation rate, but the SAT on its own doesn’t actually predict much.

A much bigger truth is that the SAT is fundamentally flawed and biased. Just Google “SAT” and you’ll find article after article examining its inherent bias and racism against black and brown students and its inherent favor for affluent kids. Go a little further and you’ll find that the data of The College Board shows these issues in clear black and white numbers. This has led to an ongoing movement to do away with the SAT and standardized testing in general.

In the midst of the pandemic, almost all US colleges and universities went test-optional. Test date cancellations and testing center closings all but necessitated this. Most of these schools are staying test-optional for the 2021-2022 application cycle, in recognition that this year’s rising seniors faced immense disruption in their high school careers. And there’s also the not inconsequential truth that applications at competitive schools that normally require standardized tests went through the roof in last year’s admissions cycle (Colgate’s applications went up by 104%!). These record application numbers help out in the… you guessed it, rankings. (Though this is a bit of a catch-22 because rankings also love SAT scores.)

So when our clients ask us, “does the SAT still matter?,” we would really love to say no. Sadly, the answer, like standardized tests themselves, is murky.

If you’re a rising senior, the SAT is likely to be optional anywhere you apply in the coming admissions cycle. We wish we could say that means don’t worry about it! But as we said above, it’s murky: most schools that were not test-optional prior to 2020 used the SAT for two purposes-- admissions and merit aid. They have secret formulas that they use to award merit aid, and SAT scores are almost always a factor. The murkiness comes from the fact that while they went test-optional for admissions, not all of them went test-optional for merit aid… and this information wasn’t shared. So there are lots of students who didn’t submit scores, got admitted to great schools, but were only considered for aid based on their FAFSA and other financial information, not their academic achievements and potential.

For younger students, it’s even more complicated. While the University of California system is no longer considering the SAT or ACT in its admissions process (this is a really, really big deal and advocates for doing away with the SAT and ACT altogether hope it’s just the tip of the iceberg), it remains to be seen if schools that went test-optional in the pandemic will stay test-optional long term.

So what’s our advice? Well, that depends. Do you have a lot of test anxiety or are they no big deal? Are you likely to qualify for merit aid and is this an important piece of your college-funding plan? Are you planning to apply to schools that may start requiring SAT and ACT scores again?

These are big questions and we would love to help you sort them out. Give us a call (617.851.9975) or send an email to info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat.

Beth Anne Cooke-Cornell 7/13/21 Beth Anne Cooke-Cornell 7/13/21

College Rankings

I love to rank things. Favorite books (#1 Their Eyes Were Watching God). Favorite movies (#1 Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood). Best concerts (#1Michael Jackson). Worst concerts (#1 Death Cab for Cutie). Best sports to watch (#1-10 Basketball). Best sports to play (#1-10 Basketball).

Ranking is fun. It orders information, choices, and possibilities and makes them more digestible. If I want to learn about the golden age of rap and hip hop, I’m not just going to dive in -- I’m going to find myself a ranked list of the best songs and artists.

When it comes to colleges, you’re probably most familiar with U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges rankings. Best Colleges ranks the best colleges overall; the best regional universities; the best regional colleges; the best colleges for veterans; the best HBCUs; the best undergraduate business programs; the best value schools -- you name it, it ranks it. It’s the place to which prospective college students and their families turn to help guide their college decisions.

Ultimately, though, ranking colleges is a lot like ranking your favorite songs. It’s subjective and it’s influenced by a host of factors, both seen and unseen. In a recent Forbes Magazine article, Susan Paterno explains that U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges is “an advertising and marketing powerhouse” that “manufactures competition to peddle products. Selling pseudoscience as an objective measure of academic quality, it leads worried and confused families to about 100 schools with the nation’s highest academic hurdles and lowest acceptance rates.”

This pseudoscience is the belief that there is an objective set of criteria against which to evaluate the overall quality of a college or university, or its suitability for a given student.

So how does the magazine arrive at these rankings? It’s complicated. And it’s a secret. Malcolm Gladwell’s recent podcasts, “Lord of the Rankings” and “Project Dillard,” attempt to get to the bottom of things, but ultimately, all he reveals is that they rely on colleges’ self-reported data and on the subjective opinions of college presidents and provosts.

In Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, Jeffrey Selingo explains a bit more about how the rankings have “signaled to students and parents what to emphasize when looking for a college--mostly the quality of incoming students rather than what undergraduates actually learned or what they did after graduation. Over decades, the rankings narrowed the view of seniors to focus on just a handful of schools.”

Scrolling through the U.S. News and World Report rankings is going to lead you to the same set of selective schools over and over again. But consider this:

The top 10 best value schools have an average acceptance rate of 11%.
The schools with the top 10 best 4-year graduation rates have an acceptance rate of 14%.
Top 10 colleges that offer the best return on investment (ROI) have an average acceptance rate of 14.8%.

There are 4,000 colleges in the United States. If U.S. News and World Report is focused on the same 100 mostly elite and difficult to get into colleges over and over again, then what about the other 3900? The truth is, many are doing some really interesting things, offering innovative academic opportunities, and one of them might just be the right price and fit for you.

Just as Esquire’s list of the 100 best movies of all time should be taken with a grain of salt (I mean, Paddington 2 is on it), so too should college rankings. And just like the movies, the right fit will be determined by your own interests, values, and budget.

We’d love to help you sort through and narrow the list of colleges that are best for you. Email us at info@yourmayfirst.com or give us a call (617.851.9975) and let’s chat.

Ana Hetland Monahan 6/21/21 Ana Hetland Monahan 6/21/21

Rethinking Car Stickers

Dad: “How many colleges are in the U.S.?”

Us: “Nearly 4000.”

Unsurprisingly, this dad had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that while there are 4000 different possibilities, he sees the same college stickers on the cars around town: Harvard (sometimes); UMass Amherst (a lot); assorted familiar locals (everywhere)...

So where are the stickers for the rest of those 3,980 schools? Are they less good? Is there something wrong with them?

The short answer: Nope. Not a thing. The real problem is a lack of exposure, and ultimately, a failure of imagination.

Over the last couple of decades, college mania has exploded. Ranking agencies have grown in scope and influence, rewarding colleges that invest in the things the rankings care about. This, in turn, makes colleges more concerned with rankings. Of course this then drives families’ desires to send their kids to schools that generate buzz and promise a future of elite networks and professional success. And all this keeps driving the rankings… it’s a never-ending cycle in which so many schools seem impossible to get into and nearly impossible to afford. It’s more than enough to make your head spin.

But is all this competition among colleges really that important? A lot of smart people are happy to tell you the answer is no.

A growing body of evidence shows that ultimately, it’s not where you go but what you do there that matters. (Frank Bruni’s book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania is a great place to read more about this.) It’s why we talk so much about best-fit in our work with clients and families. A top-ranked school may be your best-fit but don’t be seduced into thinking it’s because of its ranking.

If a college is your best-fit, it will be because it offers small classes that are taught by professors who are rewarded for teaching and who engage students in lively discussions that inspire and excite them. Or it will be a medium-sized school a little farther away from home with internships that encourage students to explore which career paths feel right. Or it will be a school where 90% of its students participate in study abroad and bring their globe-spanning experiences to enrich the experiences of everyone on campus.

If you limit your ideas of what college should be to the experiences being offered by a handful of schools, you will miss out on innovation and creativity and the opportunity for personal growth.

But we get it: it’s easy for us to encourage you to explore exciting and lesser-known options; it’s a little harder to be the car in the parking lot with a sticker from a college no one’s ever heard of.

Our advice is to embrace a healthy perspective: focus on what’s best for your kid and on the process-- it should be exciting and exploratory, not panicky and ulcer-inducing. Start by asking the right questions. Read about LOTS of different schools, not just the ten or twenty you’ve heard of. Learn more about the rankings and what they actually measure (hint: it’s really a measure of a college’s power, not the quality of education or the experience it provides).

In our work with students and families, we ask lots of questions. We work really hard to get to know our students and to think about what their experiences might be in different environments. We create best-fit lists of schools to explore that include variety. Sometimes we even throw in a few schools that we know aren’t going to be best-fits but will be really helpful for comparison. And we don’t worry about car stickers. They can be fun. But they shouldn’t get a vote in such an important --and potentially life-changing-- decision.

If you’d like to talk about how we look at schools and build our best-fit lists, give us a call (617.447.0186) or email us at info@yourmayfirst.com and let’s chat. We’d love to help.