The impact of early admissions on senior performance
Joseph Price
August 8, 2006
Motivation:
One of problems attributed to early admission is that it removes the incentives for students to work hard during their senior year. This is similar to the argument made about the tenure system.
How large is this drop in performance? What about students that are motivated by becoming valedictorian? Do they continue to perform well and does it come at the expense of taking easier classes?
Strategy:
I will do a survey at IHS and ask students when they were admitted to the school that they wanted to attend. Note that I will also need to know about other schools that they applied to and when the decisions on these schools were made. The real question is at what point did your performance in high school no longer have any impact on your placement to college.
I have quarter by quarter information on grades as well as behavioral measures and attendance.
The three main points that I want to explore is (1) how much performance drops for those admitted early (if it does) are for what subgroups is it the largest (gender, SES, etc.). (2) What is the impact of still being in the running for valedictorian (the analog in academics is the nobel prize or other honors)? (3) How do admitted seniors affect the performance of the students around them?
Inside Higher Ed.: Aug. 8
The Earliest Early Admissions
Ken Fox, a college and career counselor at LadueHortonWatkinsHigh School, in St. Louis, says that more and more seniors come up to him each year just after summer break and proudly exclaim that they’ve gotten into college. “I try to share their enthusiasm,” says the long-time counselor, ”but, on the inside, I say ‘Boy, he or she really didn’t have the chance to consider all of their options.’ ”
According to new information gathered by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, institutions are increasingly admitting students before they ever take the first class of their senior year of high school. Some juniors, in effect, are making commitments to attend an institution just as they would in traditional early decision programs.
More than 100 directors of admission have reported that they “accept regular decision applications and provide notification of admission prior to September 1 of the high school senior year.” A range of institutions — including several smaller liberal arts private and public colleges, state universities, and even a few more selective institutions — have provided information to the association that confirms the practice.
The NACAC survey was sent to the directors of admissions of every four-year institution in September, and the survey was completed by a combination of admission officers and institutional researchers. Six hundred and sixty institutions responded to the questionnaire, a response rate of approximately 30 percent.