the Sam Jackson College Experience

Just a quick mention to get out this scary / funny word out: Our friends at ePrep wrote way back in February that SAT tests were being recycled, and no, I don’t mean the paper. FairTest Examiner wrote in April about the same issue:

The College Board cancelled the January 28, 2007 SAT scores of 900 Koreans because some students previously had access to the questions. The reason test items circulated in advance is that the exam was identical to the SAT administered in December 2005.

 

Though the December 2005 SAT was not made public under “Truth in Testing” provisions, which apply to questions and answers from only four of the seven SAT administrations each year, students post items from every exam on the Internet. In addition, some coaching schools have run sophisticated operations to collect entire exams, either by sending in teams of test-takers to memorize the exam or by obtaining entire forms.

 

The College Board offered no reason to believe that the prior-exposure problem was confined to one Asian nation.

Other thoughts: it must suck to be one of those test-question memorizers. I tend to remember the ones I think I missed, which haunt me until I get my scores… at which point they continue to haunt me.

Wait, it gets better. The College Board explanation for the repeated test?

The College Board, which owns the SAT, and its contractor, the Educational Testing Service, justified the test recycling practice by claiming that it costs “probably $350,000″ to create each new exam. But 326,000 students took the January SAT, paying a base registration fee of $41.50. That means test-makers took in more than $13 million at this administration. Given that huge revenue stream and the fat surpluses historically enjoyed by the College Board and ETS), the companies had no credible financial excuse for cutting corners.

The lesson from all this? Taking those practice tests could be even better than you first expected!

Oh, by the way, that official online College Board SAT prep course is still 100% free, check out my post on it from last year.

I was looking through my folder of old posts and I saw one from ePrep mentioning some Senate pressure last December for the ACT. I had a very interesting discussion about the SAT with some midwestern readers last year, and I thought I would just make a quick post for the record to explain why I never took the ACT.

There are two reasons I didn’t take the ACT, aside from its lack of trendiness here in the Northeast.

• Reason number one is that I had good SAT scores in hand by the time I had the opportunity to ever sit for the ACT.
• Reason number two is that although looking at practice books made the ACT look like a better and more fun test than the SAT, it was almost impossible to take from my then-HQ in Exeter, NH. There were one or two changes to take the ACT throughout the entire year–and both meant getting up around 4:30 and driving to Maine. I don’t know how bad the situation is back home around Boston, but the unavailability of testing centers in the Northeast scuttled my desire to take the ACT.

Now you know!

The Yale Online Course Information listings went live a little awhile ago but I had resisted the urge to start checking out classes–until now. I knew that if I dove into the thousands and thousands of course offerings, I would never escape! How right I was. But it sure does put a smile on my face to see so many courses that I want to take–the trouble is just picking which! Hopefully the shopping period in September will help sort me out, or I might go insane.

The main reason I haven’t been posting much on my blog the past week is that I have been doing a quick guest editing gig for IvyGate, which will finish up after this week. What have I been writing about? See for yourself:

• IvyGate, Fake News? For Shame!
• Yale ‘09 Biology Major Minoring in Illegal Assault Rifles Arrested, Suspended after Massive Weapons Cache Discovered
• Crimewatch: Penn Terrorized, Assaulted by Roving Gangs of 9 Year Olds
• Harry Potter Across the Ivy League
• Columbia Student Group May Be Overseas Extension of Communist Regime

Great stories all, go have a look!

In March the Yale Daily News ran a nice little piece about the growing admissions blogging trend nationwide. The key piece in it for me was the news that Yale had no plans to start a blog or similar transparency-promoting site anytime soon. Zachary Abrahamson reports:

Blogs Elucidate Admit Process March 9, 2007

Yale presently has no definite plans to establish an online admissions blog or moderated message board. While Director of Admissions Jeff Brenzel said Yale is “considering” an admissions blog, the University has not yet determined whether such a blog would be “truly useful.” …

While Yale does not maintain its own blog, the admissions office does keep tabs on College Confidential’s forum traffic to observe discussion about Yale, Brenzel said. “We occasionally review online discussions of admissions to better understand how applicants are feeling about the process, but we do not post to the online forums,” he said.

Longtime readers know where I stand on admissions blogging–I have at times gone so far as to call it my favorite kind of college blog. If Yale wants to justify its self-declared position as a leader in American Higher Education I feel it has an obligation to help clean up the mess of modern college admissions, especially given its role creating that mess in the first place! That means many things but one of them includes opening more communication channels with students awash in a sea of misinformation and helping them through the process. Yale wins at least as much as the students do in this hypothetical exchange.

I had written about 1000 words from here on out about why Yale should adopt admissions blogging, but in a freak Wordpress accident I lost it all. Rather than cry, I’ve decided to reproduce the 5-point list I made, remember to save things outside WP, and leave it at that. The title was originally”Yale Wavers on Admissions Blogging; Jeff Brenzel Foolishly Fence-Sitting” — imagine the blockquote-referencing essay that would have followed. Yale, I might add, is no great stranger to blogging–it had student blogs on its admitted-student only website. Likewise, MIT is not some alien cousin of Yale–they’re mentioned in the same CollegeConfidential breathless HYP acronyms–and its blog program succeeds famously.

5 of Many Reasons Why Yale Should Have an Admissions Blog

1. Yale has an institutional obligation to help set the course for modern college admissions if it wants to avoid undue hypocrisy and maintain relevancy. Especially as it seeks to reach out to students who might not traditionally be coming to Yale, the article notes that an admissions blog can be an excellent resource for those high-achieving students who come from environments which don’t adequately prepare or support them in the admissions process.
2. Misinformation online and off is a serious problem, especially for high profile schools like Yale. An admissions blog, as MIT and other schools interviewed agreed, is a good way to clear up confusion.
3. Competition makes this clear: Yale will be losing ground to more forward thinking institutions if it doesn’t act soon as the advantages become increasingly obvious.
4. The new media lifestyle is a reality for prospective Yale students and blogs are a good way to connect now and will be even more important in the future. A community with honest and open community is really very valuable–I had some great interactions with admissions bloggers and came to respect them and saw those good interactions reflect well on their institutions.
5. Chances to Learn should always welcomed, and the admissions team can learn as much from the readership and their questions as their readers will from them. See 4; two-way communication benefits both parties.

Maybe Yale feels it is special–such a different animal that it doesn’t need to worry about these things. I’m still going to New Haven this fall, blogs or not, but I think that Director of Admissions Jeff Brenzel is passing up some real opportunities here for no good reason. Harvard made big waves last year with its decision to drop its Early program (Princeton and UVA deserve some credit too); Yale can help set some trends too if it takes action on the blogging front. The other schools mentioned in the article–UChicago, Hopkins, UVA–merit applause for their efforts, but it wouldn’t hurt for Yale to help put some muscle behind the transparency movement given its prominent position.

I’ll put money on the line against Dean Brenzel that a Yale admissions blog would have real measurable value to the school–if he wants to take me up on that, I’ll be happy to put the wager in escrow pending a survey at the end of the first year of blogging.

Registration for my Higher Ed Experts webinar ends tomorrow night at 8pm EST; sign up now while you still can! Alternately, wait until later and then buy a recording. Remember, you get not only me but also Nancy Prater of Ball State University and Ben Jones of MIT in the three part series.

My section of Admissions Blogging 360 is described below:

July 31, 1PM-2PM ET
Meet the (Prospective) Student: What My Generation Expects to Read on Your College Blogs
Sam Jackson, a 2007 high school senior at Phillips Exeter Academy and a future freshman at Yale University, studied and analyzed on his popular blog the numerous marketing tactics he encountered while applying to colleges. Sam will explain what his generation expect to find on your blogs and how you can make them better.

Remember that not only do you get a really neat three part learning experience, you also get the fuzzy feeling of supporting my college education, since that’s where my proceeds are going–towards my burgeoning debt, woo! So what are you waiting for? Bust out your Visa / Mastercard and get to it. And, to all you higher ed people out there who aren’t interested right now- sign up for HEE anyways, since it is free and has some nice social networking features just for higher education people.