I like to write, and I especially like to tweet and blog, because I can dash off some thoughts without too much concern about getting it just perfect. Most of what I put here is essentially a first draft, sometimes with a quick review for grammar, spelling, parallel construction, dangling antecedents and other obvious mistakes. […]
Have you heard? It’s the end of April, which means it’s almost May 1. If you don’t know what that means, or why it’s so important to people like me, you’re not in admissions or enrollment management or financial aid. We all know. And it has nothing to do with dancing around poles with streamers. May 1 […]
Admissions people, far and wide, it’s time to cool it. In the last couple days the heat on Suzie Lee Weiss seems to have turned up. I even got into it with a blog post about her a couple of days ago, implying, but not saying that she was a “spoiled, vapid teenager.” My point […]
I don’t remember when I first heard about Goodhart’s Law, but it was probably several years ago. But as I think about the higher education in general, and admissions specifically, it seems to be more and more relevant to our daily lives. Goodhart’s Law was first articulated by Charles Goodhart in a 1975 paper, as “As soon as […]
We continue to read more each day about SAT score reporting irregularities at some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. And now that another has joined the crowd, there are calls from people to fix the “problem” and suggestions about how to do so. Only one problem: There is no problem. Don’t get […]
I graduated from high school in 1977 (I’m 54…to save you the math). Up until then, I had lived my whole life in Dubuque, a great place to be from, and a city that is probably in better shape today than it was then. In our family, you went to Catholic School, but after sophomore […]
I used to have lunch almost every day with a group of faculty who were from the sciences, economics, and finance. Occasionally someone from English or Political Science would join the table, but the types of discussions that went on scared some people and seemed to repulse others. Although I’m a long way from Libertarian, […]
I’m back from the USC CERPP Conference on non-cognitive variables in the college admissions process, where I gave a presentation on the results we’ve seen at DePaul, and offered some commentary on the whats and whys of what we as a profession are doing. In a nutshell, here’s what I said in my presentation: Most […]
A recent article in USA Today lauded the ways in which Notre Dame football is Number 1 in graduation rates of its players. And of course, they’re now Number 1 in the AP Poll and BCS rankings for College Football, too, a rare accomplishment that seems to make the always-proud alumni base even more sanctimonious […]
I’m not even going to link to the stories, as they’re so abundant and common: Over the past several years, many colleges have been caught (or sometimes admitted without getting caught) doing things to inflate the profile of the incoming class. Usually, this is the freshman class and SAT manipulation (Emory, Baylor, Claremont McKenna); sometimes it’s class […]
