Author: Jon Boeckenstedt

Most colleges are still zodiac optional.

We’ve sort of known this was coming: The Department of Justice has been looking at the NACAC CEPP (formerly the SPGP) for a while.  But people were still surprised when, this week, NACAC announced that the DOJ had backed the organization into a corner, essentially telling them to eliminate some important, foundational provisions, or face […]

If you read this blog or have seen my presentations, you know I’m no fan of the College Board. There are lots of reasons, and I won’t rehash them here. So I was intrigued last week when the framework for the Environmental Context Dashboard (ECD) was released. I’m not a fan of the passive voice, […]

We in higher education enjoy an enviable competitive environment, probably unlike any you’ll find in other industries.  It’s not like when Komatsu summed up its entire strategic plan with two words: Encircle Caterpillar . We in higher education actually like when our rivals and competitors do well, and do good things.  This is, of course, provided […]

Yesterday, Bob Schaeffer of FairTest offered a stunning observation on the NACAC elist about lobbying efforts of ACT and The College Board to weaken “Truth in Testing” laws in New York and California.  For those of you who missed it, it is here: Withholding the July ACT test in California is part of a new […]

Intro Ok, I suspect you’re not surprised. Over the past few years, as more colleges do research on the value of standardized tests in college admissions, using their own data and thinking about their own missions against the context of access for students, more of them eliminate the requirement of standardized testing in the admissions […]

Within minutes of the New York Times breaking report that the Justice Department was going to investigate Affirmative Action in admissions to see if it discriminated against white people (not making this up), seven or eight people posted it in a Facebook group for college admissions people I moderate.  I’m not sure whether it was […]

I can’t even. On Twitter this morning, I saw this article in the Washington Post.  You should read the article to see how many things you think are wrong, but I’ll give you the one I love. If you took logic in college, and if you know anything about how college pricing works, you’ll see […]

A long time ago, some enrollment consultant told me something: Students who visit campus enroll at a higher rate than those who do not.  I already knew this, of course, as do most people who do admissions for ten minutes. But then, he came up with this gem: “So the goal of your admissions efforts […]

It happens every year: First, someone announces that a student, or several students, defied the odds and gained admission into some combination (or all) of the Ivy League universities, plus (sometimes) Stanford or other high profile institutions.  Usually, these students are students of color, and/or children of immigrants. Second, the media pick it up.  Regular, […]