July 6

A ‘Rainbow’ Approach to Admissions

Like research universities all over the country, Tufts University asks applicants to submit their high school grades, various test scores, letters of recommendation, as well as the predictable essays about significant life experiences and so forth.

This year, applicants to Tufts will also have the option of answering very different kinds of questions. They might be asked to write a short story to fit the title “Confessions of a Middle School Bully” or “The End of MTV.” They might be asked to write an essay imagining what the world would have been like had Rosa Parks given up her seat on the bus or had John Paul I lived longer than a month as pope. Or they could create an advertisement or ad campaign for a product that doesn’t exist. Other exercises might be timed and prompted by videos. They could watch a film about a situation they might face in college — such as going to a professor to ask for a recommendation only to realize that the professor doesn’t know you — and write a short piece about what they would do.

To be sure, some colleges are more creative than others with their essay prompts. But at Tufts, these various essays and exercises won’t be evaluated as a new way of judging mastery of vocabulary or history, but with specific tools to measure creativity and other factors that aren’t strictly academic.

The process this year will be an experiment. Applicants can stick with the traditional application if they want. But if the experiment goes well — and Tufts officials are optimistic — some of this approach might be required soon. The idea is to change the admissions process from one that focuses only on a subset of analytic qualities — the kinds that can be measured by grades and test scores — and to look more broadly at ways to measure creativity and leadership potential. The approach is based on the work of Robert Sternberg, a psychologist who specializes in measuring intelligence and promoting creativity. Sternberg left Yale University last year to become dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts.

“If we are interested in developing future leaders, we need to expand the way we think about student abilities,” Sternberg said. The college admissions process to date focuses “on a sliver of what we need to know” and completely ignores “skills that are important for success in college and life.”

Unlike some colleges that are frustrated with the current admissions system, Tufts isn’t eliminating the SAT, curricular requirements or anything else. All of that matters, Tufts officials say, and the problem is making decisions solely on the basis of that information. In fact, Sternberg said that many of the admissions reforms considered at other colleges — talk about looking at “the whole applicant” and so forth — aren’t rigorous enough. The Tufts approach will be based on science, he said.

And while Tufts will be the first major university to try such a departure from the norm, Sternberg is this month releasing data tracking hundreds of students he has tested using the system. In an article just published in the journal Intelligence, he says that using this approach on top of traditional measures (grades and the SAT) significantly increases the ability of colleges to predict college success. In addition, his research found that when this approach — which he calls “the Rainbow Project” — is used, the differences in performance expected of different racial and ethnic groups is decreased.

Several leading advocates for reforms in college admissions were thrilled to hear about the Tufts experiment. “Colleges say that they want to educate people to be creative about knowledge and society, but the things that they look at in admissions don’t have anything to do with that,” says Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy, which is trying to shift the admissions process back toward more educational goals. “This is a bold move that could make colleges truer to their purpose.”

Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said Sternberg was “one of a handful of people” thinking of “truly innovative and exciting ways” to reform admissions. Nassirian said that the Tufts experiment could “contribute way beyond whatever it does at Tufts” — in part because Sternberg is an arts and sciences dean, not an admissions dean. “Substantive changes to the admissions process need to come from the academic side of the house,” he said.

Nassirian said he could not think of a competitive college doing anything on the scale of the Tufts experiment. But he added: “Shame on us that there aren’t 20 schools doing something like this.”

Tufts is undertaking this experiment at a time that it is attracting more and more applicants. More than 15,000 students applied this year and 27 percent were admitted, to produce a class of 1,275. These new measures will come into play after Tufts does its first cut on applicants, but the reality is that relatively few applicants are eliminated in that round. Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions, said that Tufts assigns all applicants an academic score of 1-7 (1 being the best) based on their ability to succeed academically at Tufts. This cut is only designed to weed out those who couldn’t handle the academics, and it eliminates only about 30 percent of applicants (those who receive an academic score of 5, 6, or 7).

The new system isn’t going to bump those rejected applicants up into the admit category, Coffin said. But it might mean that more 3’s and 4’s get in. And the reality, he said, is that when you are comparing these applicants based on the current admissions system, “an awful lot of them are pretty identical.” Coffin also said that the fact that everyone knows so many of the applicants are identical academically is part of what leads so many applicants and their families to distrust the admissions system.

Competitive colleges have long paid lip service, of course, to the non-academic side of applicants. “This is what we’ve always called ‘personal qualities,’ ” Coffin said. But he said that this part of the process is doomed to be of little importance when it is so “soft” in that it hasn’t been based on more than what you list on your activities. Does being student body president, he said, really mean something or was it just a popularity contest? In contrast, the “Rainbow Project” approach provides ways in theory to see how students respond to situations and how creative they can be in situations that they haven’t been rehearsing at SAT camp for the last five summers. With a scientific basis to evaluating creativity and leadership, Coffin said, admissions officers are likely to put more weight on such qualities.

The changes are also consistent with institutional values at Tufts, Coffin said. He noted that Lawrence S. Bacow, the president, talks a lot on the campus about promoting a sense that students should be engaged in the world, that ideas cross traditional boundaries of disciplines, and that public service matters. He is also raising money to move Tufts to need-blind admissions. While an extremely bright student body advances these goals, Coffin said, they are about more than just having the highest SAT scores.

Tufts took a step in the direction it is moving in last year, when it added some optional essays to the Common Application, which it uses. Coffin said that even though the essays were optional and on top of the full application, about 40 percent of applicants wrote one last year — so he anticipates getting a large enough sample in the coming year to get a real indication of whether the new system will work. He said that he could see parts of it becoming required within a year.

In the next admissions cycle, the experiment will play out in two ways. For the parts that involve optional essays, all applicants will receive the material and will decide whether or not to submit. For the parts that involve real-time prompts and videos, Tufts will hold a session for 150 applicants during a weekend that is part of the university’s efforts to recruit minority students. A similar session may be held at one or more urban high schools. Coffin said that one of the goals of the experiment is to find ways that better predict the ability of minority applicants, but he stressed that this weekend is open to all and said that white applicants as well would participate in this part of the experiment this year.

Sternberg said that diversity was a key goal of reforming college admissions. He said that he rejected the notion that the SAT doesn’t add anything to the college admissions process. But he said that the SAT tends to have the most predictive ability for those from wealthier parts of society. By broadening the measures looked at, he said, colleges can have better predictive tools for all students.

“It’s not that the analytical skills measured by the SAT aren’t important,” he said. “But they aren’t enough. We have to stop putting so much emphasis on only a sliver of the abilities that kids can bring to college.”

— Scott Jaschik

Comments

Tufts breaks the mold

Tufts new Dean, Robert Sternberg, and its President and faculty deserve a thunderous “Bravo” for this attempt to recalibrate the selective college admissions process. I remember reading an essay of Sternberg’s, “What Should We Ask About Intelligence?", in _The American Scholar_ about fifteen years ago. I was a college admissions officer at the time and was both startled and cheered by Sternberg’s redefinition of what it means to be academically “gifted.” If Tufts can demonstrate that there are critical, research-driven factors that predict both college and “life” success—factors which are *not* GPA and SAT—we might witness a genuine paradigm shift in a field long overdue for one. When , one wonders, will some of the other revolutionaries in intelligence research find their way to the Dean’s office? Before or after Tufts gets all the best students?

Brian R. Hopewell, at 7:40 am EDT on July 6, 2006

Diversity Uber Alles

I laughed aloud reading the convoluted reasoning behind the hew Tufts admissions policy.

I sighed with relief knowing that both my children have graduated from college and are successfully launched on their careers.

I felt sorry for those parents who will ante up over $30,000 a year for their children to attend Tufts and there be surrounded by classmates of dubious merit and suspect double standards when it comes of mental preparation, academic discipline and intellectual focus.

Does anyone still wonder why the best, brightest and moast creative American minds seek employment at places and in fields other than at universities?

Chuck, at 8:35 am EDT on July 6, 2006

I feel sorry for parents who gauge an individual’s success solely by “mental preparation, academic discipline and intellectual focus” at the expense of creativity, leadership, and social acumen. There are already plenty of the former who successfully complete the “intellectual” portion of their collegiate experience and successfully launch careers. One of them even grew up to be Ted Kaczynski.

AC, at 9:35 am EDT on July 6, 2006

What’s up, Chuck?

Sorry to refute your point, Chuck, but there are many of the best and brightest working at our institutions of higher learning. And, I can’t imagine where our nation would be in terms of advancements in science and technology, for instance, without them.

BTW, there isn’t an “a” in “most” ...

M. Clapp, research analyst, at 9:40 am EDT on July 6, 2006

Best and brightest?

Chuck, you mean like all those Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Genius recipients, etc, etc, etc? The founders of Google were grad students at Stanford — I wonder if they learned anything from the profs there? Nah, I’m sure all those scientists and mathematicians who teach there and were educated there are vastly overrated.

Phil, at 9:45 am EDT on July 6, 2006

What is college for?

While I think practices like this are fantastic, in general, I also wonder—isn’t part of the point of college to learn some of this flexibility, creativity, and critical thinking skills? It would be a shame for academically bright students to miss out on the opportunity to change and remold their skill set because an admissions officer decided they did not have the right skills to become a leader at 18, after going through the American public schooling system (which is hardly equipped to teach these sorts of skills).

Three more points:First, I’m not entirely convinced that an admissions process like this is going to change the profile of students who get admitted to college. After all, it is often the most intelligent students who are also think the most creatively. I’m sure in some cases it might weed out the hyperintense study wonks and the Kaplan addicts, but I really don’t think it will make a huge difference.

Second, I don’t know if this is the best approach to use for non-liberal arts colleges within universities. This is a great way to admit liberal arts students, but is this really the best mix of qualities in an engineering student?

Third, from a policy perspective, isn’t this strategy simply going to change the composition of middle class and upper class students who attend college—I don’t envision this strategy is likely to admit more indigent students to college. Frankly, our public schools are failing poor kids, and, as the article noted, this process isn’t going to help the 5s, 6s, and 7s get in. The money spent on this project would be far better spent on increased support for Upward Bound, other TRIO programs, and other projects that will really help level the playing field.

SRK, Attorney, at 9:50 am EDT on July 6, 2006

This was a telling soundbite: “And the reality, he said, is that when you are comparing these applicants based on the current admissions system, “an awful lot of them are pretty identical.”

As a former student, I always wonderedwhy a track captain, marching band leader, or editor of the school paper was making college more diverse. MOre likely, their presence meant things would “get done” at college—there wouldbe people who got involved.

I don’t think judging applicants on creativity (or other non-academic and/ or non-extra-curricular qualities)is any less valid.

On the other hand, the British system of admissions, based ENTIRELY on academics,offers a lot we could learn from. In orderto emulate it, we’d need tests which were more accurate than the SATs.

nonplussed, big city U, at 10:30 am EDT on July 6, 2006

The comment: “The college admissions process to date focuses “on a sliver of what we need to know” and completely ignores “skills that are important for success in college and life” raises several issues.

The first is that it is that one doesn’t need to have much of an educational program in at institution that admits only students who don ‘t need intellectual or ethical development. Alverno College built the proverbial better mousetrap several decades ago that, at last report I had, admitted over 90% of applicants and produced graduates with the high level thinking skills that are developed in a program that focuses on development of the upper Perry stages of thinking through a focus on student self-assessment. To me, Alverno seesms more concerned about meeting the educational needs of students than about maintaining a full employment service for admissions officers.

The second is that the “best and brightest” students (and parents) would do well to examine the kind of education Tufts is going to provide after admissions. The data from the National Survey for Student Engagement, not glossy recruitment brochures and claims by the institutions’ administrators, is the place the informed would start.

The third is the danger that sample essays on certain topics could be little more than litmus tests. The process seems loaded with opportunities for abuse by admissions officers whose values, politics, etc. may be challenged by the responses of otherwise fully qualified students. The result of such screening could be admission of students who mimic the biases of few admissions officers. What are the rubrics for evaluation of such essays? If the institution cannot provide these, run the other way! It’s impossible to obtain true education in a monoculture that where diversity of ideas or thinking has already been screened out.

The fourth is the faith that paper and pencil tests are appropriate for deducing skills that are important for success in life. The faith often, practiced daily in higher education, rests on largely unexamined assumptions.

Ed Nuhfer, at 10:40 am EDT on July 6, 2006

Option Only

It’s always fun to see how people read or gain information through their own filters. Tufts doesn’t sound as if they are revamping the entire admission’s process, but merely giving applicants an option to highlight nontraditional aspects. Many colleges, of course, already do that. The problem, I think, with the movement away from (or to supplement) objective criteria is that it leaves the system rife with possibilities for abuse. Does this become one more marketing tool for the burgeoning college counseling industry? I also agree with the posters who wrote that this will do little to improve the diversity at Tufts.For those unfamiliar with Sternberg’s work...He has compiled an impressive body of scholarship in a wide array of psychological areas. He is best known for his theories about intelligence, believing that traditional verbal/math tests account for only the analytic component of his three-pronged theory. The other distinct measures of intelligence are practical intelligence and creative intelligence.The challenge would be for Tufts, if they are serious about implementing Sternberg’s ideas, to work his theories into an overall campus climate. Good luck!

Patrick Mattimore, Psychology Teacher, at 11:35 am EDT on July 6, 2006

New?

The sorts of questions Tufts is proposing to introduce remind me very much of some of the applications I did. It was ten years ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure St. Johns College called for this sort of thing — possibly Colorado College did as well.

I think the news is that a big university is finally considering something that some SLACs have known for quite a while.

Paris, at 1:55 pm EDT on July 6, 2006

Measuring for Creativity

As the mother of an entering Tufts Freshman I read this article with delight. I’m also the CEO of a environmental engineering -health/safety consulting firm that is desperately looking for candidates who can think creatively. We have many wonderful employees with strong engineering and science backgrounds who are limited in their career potential because of their inability to think creatively and “out of the box". I realize now that the beauty of B.A. from Pitzer College (’73) (back when it was really considered wildly untraditional)is that they were willing to take a chance on someone that Tufts would probably consider a 4 at best! My creative thinking skills are what has enabled my firm to grow and flourish and provide employment to 60 staff members most of whom would be 1’s and 2’s at Tufts...but aren’t the creative leaders we need for the next generation at our firm. It’s back to the drawing board for me — this time to develop methodologies for teaching 40 year olds leadership and creative thinking!

Joann Copperud, at 2:55 pm EDT on July 6, 2006

It is about time

As both an educator at a University and a parent of a very creative leader who scored sub par on SAT’s, Chucks statement had me see red.

It is about time that creativity and leadership be considered in the admissions process at major universities. SAT’s test only test taking ability. Those that believe otherwise need to do some research.

The problem with an American Education is that we consentrate on left brain learning and left brain test ignoring right brain activity which is “thinking outside the box” and more aptly a predictor of problem solving leadership and development.

My daughter who graduated in the top 8th of her senior class and was heralded as the student peer leader, recipient of more awards than any other in her class and had a 3.5 GPA scored a miserable 970 on her SAT. Watching her suffer as school after school wait listed her was heart wrenching.

She just completed her freshman year where she was selected as the freshman ambassador, tutor, freshman literary, peer leader, soriety sister, RA and has a 3.7 GPA.

She accomplished this by working for the admissions office 20 hours a week.

I feel like coping her transcript and sending it off to every college who was short sighted enough to over look her due to SAT scores. She is without question one of the most creative minds I have known. She never thinks inside the box which is why she has such a difficult time with multiple choice questions.

So Chuck please reassess your closed minded position. Doesn’t the state of affairs in education and the world indicate change just may be a good thing?

CC, at 2:55 pm EDT on July 6, 2006

And What Happens Once You’re There?

The Tufts experiment is all about “who gets in.” In my view, the “educational experience” at the better schools — and I would put Tufts in that category — is at least as much a function of “who gets in“ as it is “what happens once you’re there.”

Move down the line of college and university “quality” and you will discover “what happens once you’re there” is not on a par with “who gets in,” it’s waaaay more important.

I put “educational experience” and “quality” in quotation marks because I am inclined to use those words, all the while being completely unwilling to try to define them.

By the way, I think AC’s sample-size-of-one data set renders his argument specious, not from a statistical perspective, but by virtue of the fact that, from everything I know about Ted Kaczynski, he would have tested out exceeding well vis-a-vis the new Tufts’ criterion. I mean, he may not have had “leadership” potential, but getting a Ph.D. in mathematics almost guarantees he has more than an ample supply of intuition, imagination, creativity, intellect, and the ability to think abstractly in the absence of stupid analogies involving boxes.

RWH, at 6:45 pm EDT on July 6, 2006

Tufts admissions

One is surprised about some of the comments on the proposed changes in Tufts’ admission policies. I would think that the critics would be pleased to watch the application of some of the most creative research on intelligence and learning to choosing college students, rather than relying on their prejudices and stereotypes. Sternberg may be wrong, but it clearly makes more sense to build admissions policies on scientific findings and then study if they work. Any of us who teach in higher education know that there are many superior students who performed at a mediocre level on their SATS, and vice versa.

Mark, Chair, Department of Psychology at Touro College, at 6:45 pm EDT on July 6, 2006

Just adding

This new Tufts experiment sounds great and all, but might I also remind readers that the University of Chicago has long been one research university where an emphasis on unique essay questions and intellectual capacities outside of standardized test scores have weighed heavily in admissions decisions.

The Uncommon Application at the U of C was designed to mock the Common Application rank and file method of college admissions with essay prompts written by students asking students about what to do with a jar of mustard or other bizarre, yet creative, questions. Similarily while the U of C retains a high SAT median, it also has a relatively high acceptance rate in the 30-40% that allows for the acceptance of intellectually capable students who are willing to put in the time for the Uncommon App, yet perhaps did not test in the upper echelons of the SAT brackets.

I would be interested to see how far the Tufts experiment stretches the work of uncommon college admissions criterion started by schools like the U of C.

HigherEdStudent, at 4:40 am EDT on July 7, 2006

Mark,I’m not at all sure how you will “see how this works". For example, do elite colleges ever have a sense of how well or poorly they have chosen a class of freshmen? Do you flag certain students as ones that would not have gotten in under the old system?Unless there is some attempt to revamp the entire teaching process at Tufts to incorporate the creative and practical aspects of Sternberg’s triarchic theory, what is gained by expanding a definition of intelligence admissability and then teaching to predominantly analytical skills that the SAT does an adequate job measuring?

Patrick Mattimore, AP Psychology Teacher, at 4:40 am EDT on July 7, 2006

I think people might be more open to these new ways of evaluating applications if they didn’t have to suspect it was a bit of subterfuge to try to increase the number of blacks and other minorities without having to do it in the easiest way: by giving Blacks a numerical edge in the application process, which U. Michigan did until the Supremes slapped them down and said it was illegal!

Alex Clinton, Real Motive, at 4:45 am EDT on July 7, 2006

Alex has exposed this charade

Alex has made the most perceptive and shrewdest observation, cutting through all the miasma and double-talk of the defenders of racial and ethnic double standards that are so amply (and predictably) represented here.

Let’s see some of these angry SAT and other test-haters actually define “creativity” or “critical thinking skills” in a logical and evidence-based way.

This is going to be amusing and revealing!

Chuck, at 2:00 pm EDT on July 7, 2006

Reply to Chuck

Chuck,I think that you are entirely wrong. Tuft’s current model of judging applicants should be applauded. A college can and should embrace very diverse minds of differing capabilities. Let the true brainiacs end up at the Ivy League schools. Many great philosophers have gravitated towards careers in higher education and will continue to do so for everyone’s benefit.

Barb H., graduate at Shimer, at 9:35 pm EDT on July 7, 2006

Hm, think about this though

Every college is different. Some accept those that are amazing intelligent. Others accept the brilliantly creative. Find the right school for you. Tufts is doing an amazing experiment. I’m seeing this through the applications i’ve done for others though—such as York College of PA which asks you if you woke up with superpowers, what would you do with them? You can tell so much from a creative essay topic. You can still judge on how detailed they are, how good the grammar is, etc and see if they’re fit for your curriculum. Judging is too square these days.

Ciera Peace, Student at Univ of Pittsburgh, at 12:15 pm EDT on July 10, 2006

I attended Tufts 35 years ago when it had some innovative programs and a pleasant atmosphere but a so-so administration and faculty and a notoriously apathetic and demoralized student body. Evidently things have dramatically improved but at the risk of aping the policies of long-established Tier I schools which skim off the world’s most precocious adolescents, rubber stamp them with frequently inflated grades and then send them on for further credentialing. Although I am highly skeptical of the “multiple intelligence” theory (e.g., I myself had fair musical and artistic ability as a youngster but also managed a 174 IQ score) I see no reason why Tufts should devote itself after decades of academic and social climbing to becoming a clone of Harvard. Training “leaders", in particular, is a vain and pretentious aspiration in an era when huge numbers of students (and a dismaying number of professors) are marginally literate and “diversity” is a code word for racial or sexual quotas amid ideological uniformity. If Tufts finds a way to admit large numbers of bright and interesting youngsters and also shape them up like a loving but demanding parent, it will have fulfilled its duty as an undergraduate college and justified its considerable expense. Naturally I hope the intended reforms add something beyond successful “rebranding” for Tufts and an extra page in Dean Sternberg’s resume.

seth halpern, at 4:35 am EDT on July 11, 2006

As a student, I find this a fascinating, if somewhat controversial experiment to further the selectivity of an elite university; another method in choosing that truly exceptional student over the masses of smart, but somewhat formulaic students who are denied in droves from universities such as Tufts and other prestigious institutions. His experiment can best be viewed as a “sixth sense,” that extra quality that can bring out the character of an applicant. I believe that Tufts, as a top-tier university, is committed to producing as it quotes “leaders,” but in a different sense from the inflated GPA’s of their Harvard neighbours. We must keep in mind that Tufts is concerned more with attracting great students who are also fascinated with the larger, global community; this new addition to the application may provide insight for admission officers when creating a globally astute class. In doing so, Tufts will (hopefully) be furthering its’ own name; something that should frankly be more recognized given the students it attracts today.

NEStudent, at 10:05 pm EDT on July 11, 2006

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