Teaching - College Admission Counseling

Choosing a High School or School District To Boost College Admission Chances

Jared Hobson — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:18:33 +0000

I received an email from a reader this morning that wondered whether it was worth it to move to a different school district where the schools have a better reputation, in order to give his kids a boost in the college admissions process.
Here’s his question:

My answer is equivocal, in some sense. Generally, a big move is not going to give you a big advantage. However, it is important to investigate the quality of teaching at your kids’ schoools. Here is my response:
The factor of high school rigor is usually factored into the equation. For example, a student in Lexington or Wayland may get an extra “brownie point” for living there, rather than in Saugus or Chelsea. They are interested in the academic rigor of the offerings, not the “ranking” or “reputation.” the irony is, however, that ambitious (and wealthy) parents all flock to the same towns, hoping to give their kids an edge in college admissions. But if 14 kids from Lexington apply to Harvard each year, only 1 or 2 (or sometimes 0) will get in. However, a really amazing kid from Chelsea? Since he’s a stand-out, he has a good chance, too, despite his lack of town-based “brownie points.”
If you are really thinking of moving to a place where your kid has the best chance of getting into college, I have three recommendations: Wyoming, North Dakota, and Mississippi. Top flight colleges are always seeking qualified applicants from those states. But if you live in Woburn and are thinking of moving (at great expense) to Dover, I’d tell you to focus, instead, on providing great opportunities for your kids, undergirding their extracurriculars, promoting their academic interests and talents, and being involved in their education. The “edge” you might get from moving is slight, and certainly would not be enough to make it or break it in admissions at the most selective colleges.
However, I have one caveat. You do need to consider the quality of teaching at the school your kids attend. This especially important when it comes to the AP and IB classes. I have seen kids earn straight As in AP courses at some schools (or in some subjects) and yet fail the AP exams. This is silly. The tests are nationally normed, and a grade of A ought to correspond to the rigor of the test. Experienced AP teachers will grade classwork in this way: if they expect that the work would earn a perfect 5 on the AP test, then the kid is awarded an A in the class. But if teacher is over-the-moon about a kid’s classwork, and then that same kid flunks the exam…well, the teacher isn’t aware of the level of proficiency required, and isn’t calibrating his or her expectations to the national norm. Some teachers in my own kids’ school will sometimes even give out a conservative grade in the AP course, but then change the grade if the student aces the AP exam. Thus a kid who received a B in the course but a 5 on the exam can ask to have the course grade boosted to the A. So the bottom line: be on the lookout for grade inflation, especially when it comes to these high-stakes, nationally normed exams. Just because the school labels a course “Advanced Placement” doesn’t necessarily mean their kids are passing the exams with flying colors.
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

The post Choosing a High School or School District To Boost College Admission Chances first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Teaching with Twitter

Jared Hobson — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:16:58 +0000

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted an interesting article on professors using mediums like Twitter and Facebook in the classroom. Sugato Chakravarty, a professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University, is testing a software called Hotseat that allows students to posts questions from their cell phones or laptops via Facebook or Twitter.
The results of the experiment are definitely mixed. In some lectures, students take control and post questions that are off topic, often taking the lecture in an unexpected direction. These unexpected questions can often lead to great learning opportunities. However, Charkravarty has also caught a student cheating by posting a question to a classmate during a quiz. (The student thought the posting would be anonymous, but requiring students to log in allowed Chakravarty to track the post.)
This is definitely taking teaching in a new direction and allowing professors to reach students through a medium they are comfortable with. Some professors see this experiment as “potential for disaster,” but isn’t that part of the educational process?

Educational Consultant

The post Teaching with Twitter first appeared on College Admission Counseling.

Adjunct Faculty and Student-to-Faculty Ratios: What Universities Don’t Know

Jared Hobson — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:19:48 +0000

I recently wrote a post blasting the idea of student-to-faculty ratios as a bogus measure of educational quality. It turns out that universities themselves don’t have a solid measure of what the ratios really are, or even keep track of the percentage of students taught by tenure-track professors–as opposed to adjunct, part-timers, or graduate students.

Yesterday Inside Higher Ed‘s Scott Jaschik reviewed a new book entitled Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education, which documents what we know and don’t know about the impact of adjuncts in higher education. The authors also explore the reasons for the growth of adjunct faculty at some of the country’s research institutions.

I won’t spend the time to repeat Jaschik’s review…give it a read. I plan to read the book.

Suffice it to say, however, that college administrators and boards of trustees have little idea about how much teaching is performed by non-tenure track faculty. Their policies–and enforcement of whatever policies may exist–are fuzzy at best, and these trends do have an impact on the educational experience of undergraduates.

[And if senior university administrators don’t have any idea about the impact of adjuncts at their own institution, you can jolly well bet that admissions counselors won’t know! If you ask, you’ll just get the party line based on goofy statistics that don’t mean a thing.]

One finding at the University of Michigan bears out what one of my readers commented about with regard to student-to-faculty ratios: often the non-tenure track faculty have much better teaching evaluations than the tenured faculty. Adjuncts are often better teachers. This fact does beg the question whether tenure is really a useful institution in the 21st century university.

We may also inquire as to whether the accepted wisdom that “good research informs teaching” holds any grain of truth. Research faculty obviously believe in this link. But to read undergraduate teaching evaluations, it appears that most students do not believe it–or at least to not experience the benefits of that research in the classroom.

What does all this mean for you as you seek the best college for you? First, treat student-to-faculty ratios with skepticism, and second, make sure you seek out the best teachers you can find once you are on campus–regardless of their job title.

College Consultant

The post Adjunct Faculty and Student-to-Faculty Ratios: What Universities Don’t Know first appeared on College Admission Counseling.