Admissions Models for Inclusion

Black Issues in Higher Education, Oct 14, 1999 by Kenneth J. Cooper

Two New Admissions Strategies Could Reopen Doors the Anti-Affirmative Action Initiatives Have Closed -- at Least for the Most Disadvantaged Students of Color

They're not complete substitutes for affirmative action, their creators admit bluntly. But in states where affirmative action has been banned or is threatened, two new approaches to the college admissions process are attracting strong interest from flagship public universities. Why? Because they give diversity a fighting chance.

The Educational Testing Service's (ETS) new "strivers" approach to admissions has drawn the attention of admissions officers at the University of Florida, University of Virginia, University of Washington and University of Texas. The model provides a statistical basis for identifying and accepting motivated applicants whose test scores and grade-point averages have been depressed because of their difficult family backgrounds and poor high schools.

Using the Educational Testing Services' "strivers" approach, college applicants who score between 1,000 and 1,200 on the SAT -- a borderline range for many selective colleges -- but manage to exceed the historical average for students from similar backgrounds by at least 200 points would be deemed "strivers." These are the kind of go-getters with "fire in the belly" whom the best colleges say they are always eager to spot and recruit.

The reason Black and Latino students emerge in such dense numbers using the strivers model is "because there's a higher concentration of African Americans and Hispanics in these disadvantaged groups," explains Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale, the ETS official who has directed work on the admissions model. The strivers research will be unveiled officially in November.

Carnevale says the strivers research was conducted at the request of college admissions officers who were seeking to validate their informal practice of admitting strivers and at the request of civil rights advocates who were looking for new approaches to affirmative action. He has tested the program against the admissions results of "affirmative action as we know it" as well as other alternatives such as those adopted by the University of Texas (offering admission to the top 10 percent from each high school) and the University of California (offering admission to the top 4 percent). These trials have led him to conclude that the strivers model is a step in the right direction, but not a panacea.

"It won't substitute for the diversity we're getting with affirmative action as currently practiced ... It's a little more than halfway there," he says.

The use of race as a factor for consideration in the strivers model is optional. If race is not included, Carnevale says, strivers would capture less than half of the African Americans who selective colleges currently admit. Asked which Black students would be left out, he says: "It will knock out the kid who comes from an upper-middle-class family. They would have to compete head to head with other upper-middle-class kids."

Carnevale adds the children of college educated, professional African Americans now are regarded as good college prospects and that turning them away from the best colleges would reduce the transfer of high academic achievement to succeeding generations. "You would lose momentum," he says.

William Goggin, an independent Washington, D.C., researcher who has created a similar "merit index" that gives students credit for exceeding the average SAT scores of their high school classmates, has had the same problem with his model.

"It doesn't salvage all the students you would get by using preferences," Goggin says about the strivers approach. "It doesn't help save the middle- and upper-income student of color."

Interest High

"The theory sounds interesting. I'm guessing it would help," says Bill Kolb, admissions director at the University of Florida, the flagship university of a southern state where an initiative to ban affirmative action could be on the ballot next year. "Certainly, there is concern that the ballot initiative will succeed, and we'll have to find ways to build our community besides race."

Interest also is high at the University of Virginia, where the governing board of visitors recommended that the admissions office no longer consider the race of applicants (see related story, pg. 22). Jack Blackburn, Virginia's dean of admissions, calls the strivers model "very interesting" and notes that Goggin has already visited the Charlottesville campus to lay out his approach.

At the University of Texas, where the Hopwood court decision ended affirmative action, admissions director Bruce Walker sees the usefulness of biographical data about students in identifying who might achieve beyond what their SAT score might indicate.

After voters in Washington state approved a ban on affirmative action a year ago, the University of Washington in Seattle began looking at whether applicants came from high poverty schools or did better on the SAT. than would be expected, based on grade-point average.