Test-optional admissions: A year hence

If you’re a visitor to this site, you know about DePaul University’s decision to become test-optional for freshman admission.  With just a few days to go before our final, official count of freshmen (the fall census), the results from our first admissions cycle are interesting: About ten percent of all applicants applied as test-optional About […]

College Admission: The Kardashian Effect

The other night my wife and I were sitting on our deck with guests and long-time friends Nancy and Al Maly from Grinnell.  Among us we have about 60 years of college admission experience, so naturally the topic tends to come up when we get together.  That, and Al’s fascination with the proper way to […]

Some more thinking about Test Optional

This week at DePaul begins a series of farewells as Helmut Epp leaves the position of Provost that he’s held for seven of his 38 years at DePaul.  The Newsline Story that should be out tomorrow contains a brief summary of an amazing life led by a remarkable man.  But this copy, taken from the […]

A Response to Flowing Data

This morning, after being out of the office for a long weekend because of NATO in Chicago, I checked traffic on this blog.  It was far higher than usual, most of it coming from this post by Kim Rees at Flowing Data, who was very condescending about my post on visualizing ACT Scores. I like […]

Jobs Data

It appears some people are coming here looking for my BLS Jobs Data Visualization.  Frankly, WordPress is not very good at embedding Tableau visualizations, so I put it on my other blog. It’s here.

Rankings: Something old, nothing new

There are more revelations about test score manipulation, this time in New Jersey.  And all the old arguments are re-surfacing: Colleges cannot be trusted, rankings are to blame for all the evils in college admissions, there oughta be a law…. I’ve often said I’m no fan of rankings because they measure inputs more than outputs, […]

College Admissions: A Modest Proposal

Today, it seems, is the day.  You know the one I’m talking about. The day our national obsession with selective college admissions comes to a head.  The day we check to see if any of the Ivy League Institutions (ILIs) has cracked the zero percent admit rate to which they all seem to aspire.  I’m […]