9-21-16 Admissions and Enrollment Meeting Notes

9-21-16 Admissions and Enrollment Meeting Notes

In attendance: William Mullen, Robert Groven, Ann Impullitti, Stacy Freiheit, Catherine Bishop, Michael Wentzel, AaaronGriess,

Invited but not able to attend: Amy Gort, Rick Ellis, Jill Dawe, Rebekah Dupont, Marc McIntosh, AudreyLensmire

Proposed meeting schedule: The third Friday of each month through the academic year (no meetings in December, April, or May)

The meetings started with a few updates from the Enrollment Management division. Over the summer, a new Director of Financial Aid, and a New Director of International Student Recruitment were hired. These two positions replace existing, but redesigned, positions, and will bring in changes and expertise in the areas of financial aid and international student admissions. Additionally, this recruitment year the new Prior, Prior Year rule will go into effect. Students will be able to apply for financial aid starting October 1 for the next fall using income data from the prior year, or prior, prior year after January 1. There is little consensus as to how this will impact student behavior, but we plan to use the change to attempt to send financial aid awards to more admitted students in order to improve the yield rate, and ensure that all returning students get their applications and supporting paperwork in before the start of classes. Additionally, with the changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act, there will have to be changes to the level of staffing and personnel in the Admissions Department. A proposal will be sent to President Pribbenow in October. Finally, if that were not enough, a new CRM database is being implemented and utilized to enroll students starting spring 2017.

Over the summer enrollment managers at several institutions that have implemented, or are implementing test-optional policies were contacted to learn more about the decision and implementation process (an impact of the decision). Colleges contacted included: Pacific Lutheran College, California Lutheran, the University of Puget Sound, St. Cloud State University, Gustavus Adolphus College, and DePaul University. In almost all cases, AACRAO was used to help implement a non-cognitive variable assessment tool, and many institutions decided to use this assessment in place of standardized test scores. Others, like St. Cloud State and PLU, use it in addition to test scores and grades for students who show promise, but are slightly below academic standards. From these discussions, Michele Sandlin, former Director of Admissions at Oregon State University and consultant at AACRAO was contacted. She wrote a proposal for Augsburg to implement non-cognitive assessment based on similar work that is being conducted at California Lutheran. Michele argued that the use of anon-cognitive assessment tool should replace the college essay, not standardized test scores. She argues that essays are generally not reliable indicators of student potential, while there is evidence to suggest that standardized test scores, even with their flaws, do have some relationship to college performance.

From this discussion three questions arose. Should Augsburg pursue working with AACRAO and Michele Sandlin to implement a non-cognitive attribute assessment tool this year, with the intention of implementing it for fall 2018? Once implemented, should students be allowed to opt out of submitting standardized test scores, and use the results from this assessment in their place? Should we require some students to complete the non-cognitive attribute assessment tool based on a certain GPA or test score threshold, or should all applicants be required to submit it, and we use it in place of the essay?

There was some discussion about the essay. There are many colleges and universities that do not require essays. These tend to be larger institutions without holistic admissions review. At Augsburg there is not an exact measurement rubric that we use for evaluating essays, but it does give us a good idea if the student is a good fit with the institution.

The last part of the discussion centered around the impact of a number of variables on four-year graduation. Generally speaking, high school GPA tended to correlate more closely to successful four-year graduation than ACT scores (including sub scores), but the ACT scores did prove to have relationship with four-year graduation. Additionally, first-year Augsburg GPA, as well as the number of credits completed during the first year had a significant relationship with four-year graduation. A number of other factors such as on-campus housing, participation in CLASS, participation in CAP, and Pell eligibility all correlated with four-year graduation. We also noted that when broken into academic quintiles, the four-year graduation for the bottom quintile was 18%, which is very low, but given the academic profile for those students, probably better than predicted. Additionally, only 64.5% of the top quintile for students (measured by high school GPA) graduated in four years. This is worse than predicted.

There was some discussion about a four-year graduation guarantee, and how that may highlight some of the issues that students face, but in review of most four-year graduation guarantee, there are many caveats in small print that students need to meet. It was also suggested that Augsburg track how different majors perform at graduating students in four years, and that some majors (education) have external requirements which make it difficult or impossible for students to graduate in four years. But this committee needs to consider if the four-year graduation rate for the lowest quintile at 18% is acceptable, and a close look needs to be paid to why the highest quintile of the students only graduates in four years at 64.5%.