Comparing Colleges: What Families Should Ask
Lisa Ransdell, Ph.D., IECA Associate Member (Colorado)
There is plenty of information out there about comparing colleges based on data points, much of it useful. Obvious factoids include total cost of attendance, average amount of student need covered, retention and graduation rates, and so on. Colleges and universities prospecting for good students are masters at showcasing themselves in the best light possible, and families are at times overly impressed at what they hear during admissions visits.
As a former higher education administrator who both conducted studies and utilized data to build and enhance student support programs, I appreciate ways in which statistics can both illuminate and obscure reality. A recent case in point is the ongoing scandal implicating Claremont McKenna College of California in the falsification of SAT scores of newly admitted students.
More so than misrepresentation by colleges, my bigger concern as an independent educational consultant is that families don’t always know what to ask of an institution, and secondarily, how to interpret the answers. For example, I suggest to my clients that they ask not just about the employment rate of recent graduates, but the percentage of recent graduates who are employed in their field of study.
I recommend especially that the parents of girls ask about the number of reported sexual assaults on campus over time, and suggest that they not be mollified by the number of blue-light emergency phones located near dorms and on the quad, but by prevention programs targeting student attitudes and risk factors—since the majority of sexual assaults on college campuses involve acquaintances and alcohol consumption, and don’t occur out of doors.
Similarly, while schools are delighted to report on their most popular majors and award-winning faculty members, few parents have heard of NSSE, the National Survey on Student Engagement, a research project that digs deeply into the quality and type of learning that occurs at many schools. In their latest report on 2.1 million students at 750 U.S. institutions, NSSE reports on wide-ranging practices and experiences associated with high levels of learning and development, from the number of hours spent studying each week, classes requiring research papers, conversations with faculty members outside of class, and percent of first-year students doing service learning in conjunction with freshman classes. Not every school participates in NSSE, and among those that do, outcomes may not be fully reported unless they are positive.
Independent educational consultants and college planners are among those in the know about some of the nuances of comparing colleges, and this likely accounts for some of the growth in our profession. I would love to know what my fellow IECs suggest that families examine in order to differentiate one school from the next in meaningful ways.
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Tagged: admissions, college application trends, college comparisons, college consulting, educational consulting, IECs, independent educational consultants
Dear Lisa,
Excellent blog and terrific points made especially as a lot of our students and families are heading out over the President’s Weekend to begin to visit schools. I am especially loving your comment on the Blue Lights and the NSSE surveys. I was on a tour of Atlanta schools last week and only one out of seven schools on the tour had a professor talk in detail about the school’s participation in NSSE and that was Oxford College of Emory University. I also encourage my families to check the Freshman Retention Rate which tells a lot about what is going on at a school…and to find out their FOUR-YEAR graduation rate! That gives a family a good amount of information about what schools are doing right as well…thanks for an enlightening blog!
With a smile,
Carolyn