Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Leon Botstein & College Admissions

As an educator who works with high school students, college admissions is a constant topic.  Juniors, seniors, and I talk almost daily about college--what they want to study and where they wish to go.  Our college counselors and I touch base nearly every day on the news about individual students and the broad trends in the college admissions scene.  Prospective parents of students in fifth grade ask me how our students score on the SAT and ACT and which colleges our students attend after Bosque School.  The irony is that we’re a school that attempts to reduce the stress around the college application process and encourage students to go to the college or university that best suits them.

It is with this ubiquity of college in mind that I read a recent interview with the president of Bard College, Leon Botstein.  I have been a fan of Botstein’s since 1997 when I read his book, Jefferson’s Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, which is a call to arms to revamp American secondary education.  A true Renaissance man and iconoclast, Botstein is not only a classical music conductor, but he was also the youngest college president ever when, at the age of 23, he was named to that position at Franconia College, which is no longer in existence. Since 1975, he has served as Bard’s president.

In his interview, linked here, Bostein appeals to schools for a new approach to college admissions. In his typically candid manner, Botstein calls out the inherently subjective, and what he says are dishonest, elements of the college admissions process and proposes an alternate method that considers students’ curiosity and motivation.  In order to do this, and to see whether applicants can do the kind of work they will encounter in college, high school seniors applying to Bard can now write four essays, three of which are required and one that students can choose from the areas of math, science, humanities, or arts. These essays would take the place of filling out the common application and instead ask students to consider intellectual and philosophical questions that replicate the kind of work they would do at Bard.

According to Botstein, college admission officers should be less concerned with who is popular or who has jumped through the greatest number of hoops in high school. Colleges should attempt to ascertain whether prospective students are capable and engaged enough to do the work they will be assigned at college and whether they are ready to grapple with the kind of concepts and discourse they will experience in post-secondary institutions.  Botstein is very clear about the characteristics that Bard College wishes to see in its students--curiosity, motivation, and ambition.  Because they know what they want, Bard is giving students the opportunity to apply in a manner less “cookie-cutter” and more tailored to its institution.

However, one might ask, “Aren’t these three traits--curiosity, motivation, and ambition--desired at all colleges?  Wouldn’t every admission officer say that s/he is looking for these characteristics in each student who applies?”  I cannot imagine college representatives saying that their schools want applicants who are complacent, apathetic, and self-satisfied.  For this reason, I applaud Botstein’s critique of the college application process, and I commend Bard’s alternative application.  Having a college application process that is more personalized to the institution, less homogeneous, and more reflective of the type of work that students will encounter at college, rather than asking teens to participate in a rat race to acquire as many credentials as is possible in high school, might pose logistic challenges; nevertheless, it would offer colleges the chance to see if a student and a school are the truly the best fit.