The growing complications of admissions to elite colleges

Morgan Hall at Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass. The very prestigious college, founded in 1793, accepts less than 15 percent of applicants.

— Photo by Tim4403224246 

 Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

What will highly selective colleges, of which New England has many, do to try to maintain student populations at least vaguely representative of the country and world if, as seems likely, the U.S. Supreme Court bans affirmative for racial minorities in admissions?

Should the Feds ban  the consideration  of race and ethnicity as part of a holistic evaluation of a student’s application? I’d rather leave that to the colleges’ judgment.

An example of an SAT "grid-in" math question and the correctly gridded answer.

The decision of many colleges to  no longer require that applicants for admission take the SATs  probably makes sense because,  in part,  of the increasingly unfair advantage that kids from affluent families have because their parents can afford to send them to such expensive SAT-preparation services as the Princeton Review.

I suppose something like SAT-prep services existed back in the mid-60’s when I was taking such tests but I didn’t hear of any then. My high school’s college-admissions chief, the red-faced, chain-smoking and stout Mr. Sullivan, simply announced that the next SATs would be on such and such date – always a Saturday in two weeks. He said: “Bring two {or was it three?} No. 2 pencils and try to get plenty of sleep the night before’’ (ensuring  that we wouldn’t sleep well).

And now the kids will take the tests on their own laptops and tablets. Hmm…will this favor more affluent students with more digital experience and could it make cheating easier? And what about kids who may not even own a laptop or tablet?