All Posts Tagged With: "admissions"

Moving may boost the odds of medical school admission

Kyla Adams (right) teaching first-aid in Whitehorse. Richard Lam.

From the 2012 Maclean’s Professional Schools Issue, on newsstands and iPad now.

It has been a long road for 33-year-old Kyla Adams from her high school years—when there was no question in her mind that she’d one day become a physician—to today, when the British Columbia native feels she finally has a decent shot at medical school.

In Adams’s second year of university, the academic and social stresses of life at the University of British Columbia caught up with her and she flunked out of school, temporarily shelving her ambition. After several years of selling running shoes, travelling and working as a personal trainer, Adams wrote the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) at the age of 26. She surprised herself with a decent score, which inspired her to enrol at the University of Victoria, where she earned a double degree in biology and earth sciences. She rewrote the MCAT, boosted her score and applied to medical school.

But the rules had changed. She was no longer allowed to drop those crummy decade-old marks from her application as she had thought. She applied to UBC’s medical school and didn’t get in. She applied again, and was rejected again. She applied a third time. No luck.

Continue reading Rx: Get out of town

Students can be admitted without provincial exams

Photo by daryl_mitchell on Flickr

The University of Saskatchewan is hoping to attract more students from Alberta, British Columbia and the territories by “levelling the playing field,” reports the StarPhoenix.

The university will now waive provincial and territorial final exam marks and will base admissions and scholarships decisions entirely on the grades teachers assign throughout grade 12—should those marks be higher.

For Albertan students, diploma exams count for 50 per cent of students’ final grades. Clearly, if they can choose whether to include the test or not, it means some students will be considered by Saskatchewan who might not have been in the past.

The reason for the change is equity, Dan Seneker, undergrad recruitment manager for the U of S told the newspaper. He argued that admissions standards haven’t changed. “We’re not dropping our average, we’re not dropping our scholarship averages or anything like that, we’re not increasing space in programs. We’re keeping everything status quo, we’re just admitting students on a more equitable basis,” he says. A message on the U of S website echoes that sentiment. It reads: “we don’t want to penalize you if you have a bad test day.”

Continue reading USask “levelling the playing field”

University apologizes to 2,000 applicants

Christopher Newport University, in Virginia, accidentally sent emails to 2,000 prospective students informing them that they had been accepted into the university. Sent around 2:30 pm on Wednesday, the emails, titled “Welcome to CNU!,” were retracted with apologies by the evening. Acceptance letters received in the mail are still valid. The mistake was the result of human error.

Students scramble for spots ahead of 2012 tuition increase

Applications to British universities are at a record high as students scramble for spots before tuition fees triple in 2012. There are an additional 8,000 students applying this year over last, or a 2.5 per cent increase. The month of November saw a 20 per cent increase over last year while October saw a five per cent boost. “Thousands of young people denied a place last autumn have reapplied for courses, fuelling the surge in applications,” the Guardian reported. Applications for professional programs, including medicine, law and dentistry are on the rise as applications from older students also increase. Applications for subjects such as languages, philosophy and history have declined. In December the British Parliament raised the cap on tuition fees from 3,000 pounds to 9,000 pounds, or $14,000. The increase, which will affect students who start university in 2012 sparked, student rioting across the country.

Are some people just mentally unfit for university?

Many years ago, a student sat in my office as I explained what he needed to do to write a good literary essay. Let’s call him “Dave” to protect his privacy and since  I have no idea what his name actually was (I hope it wasn’t really Dave). Dave sat patiently as I explained that the essay cannot just be an account of the poem or story or whatever it was; he needed to come up with a claim about the meaning of the text. He had to really do some analysis and say something beyond the obvious.

After a pause, Dave looked up and said dully, “But I can’t think of anything.”

At that moment I knew there was nothing I could do for him. It was time for Dave to find another line of personal development.

I have often wondered since then how many students produce substandard work because they haven’t given it their best effort, and how many students produce substandard work because their best effort, try as they might, just isn’t very good. And for that latter group, the Daves as it were, how many of them simply lack the basic mental acuity to be able to ever do the work?

Questions like this sometimes lead me to doubt my university’s more or less open admissions policy. Should we really be admitting students who have little chance of succeeding? Doesn’t admission itself imply that with some effort, results are possible? Did they cheat Dave by not sending him elsewhere in the first place? Sometimes I think they did.

Other times I think that it should be up to the students themselves to decide whether they want to enroll and take their chances. Maybe it’s not up to the university to decide ahead of time who has a chance — whatever their high school grades might have been.  Maybe it’s like buying a gym membership: being a member gets you in the door to use the facilities, but there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get fit.

On the other hand, gym memberships don’t cost thousands of dollars a  year (I assume: a quick look at me will attest that I have never been a member of a gym). They don’t require full-time effort, and the government isn’t picking up half the tab for those whose time on the treadmill is never going to amount to anything.

In the end, I guess I will have to take solace in the fact that one can never know for sure. Like political ideologies, ignorance and stupidity look the same at the extremes. Maybe some day another Dave will be in my office listening with all his might and suddenly the light will go on. He’ll get it, and a whole new world will be opened to him.

And maybe some day, I’ll get fit. You never know.

Study claiming ethnic, gender inequality is out-of-date, says Oxford

The Guardian recently reported on a study conducted by academics from Oxford, Manchester and London University on the admissions of students at Oxford University.

The study analyzed 1,700 UK students who applied to 11 Oxford colleges in 2002, according to the article.

The study covered details such as their predicted A-level results — a qualifying test most commonly recognized by British universities for admissions— and type of high school they attended.

The results concluded that men are twice as likely as women to be offered a place in science programs and 1.4 times as likely in arts programs.

From a gender perspective, white applicants are five times more likely than those of south Asian heritage to be offered place in science programs.

Based on the type of high school students attended the study found applicants from state schools were more likely to be offered a place in arts programs than private school applicants.

Director of undergraduate admissions at Oxford Mike Nicholson, who was quoted in the article, said that the study did not represent current admissions statistics.

Nicholson offered up more recent 2009 statistics to squash what the study appears to imply are unequal gender and ethnic admissions practices.

The article itself says, “Last year, the proportion of undergraduates at Oxford was 50.2 [per cent] females and 49.8 [per cent] male.”

I’ve recently been reading the book The Numbers Game by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot that tries to demystify the use of statistics as the shock factor in daily news.

After the first few chapters, my fear that it’s sometimes easy to misrepresent unjustified statistics in the media was confirmed.

While I’m not faulting the Guardian of shoddy reporting, I feel it’s easy to just quote numbers without giving context to where they came from, like with this article.

To me, there are several apparent holes in the methods and findings of the study as reported.

For starters, of the 1,700 UK students used for the study, it is not discussed whether a proportional sample of male and female and those of different ethnicities were polled, or how that ratio was decided upon.

While the study likely covered these bases, it would be nice to know the breakdown of where the data is coming from in the article and what ratio of students actually applied to Oxford in 2002.

The article also elaborated on the question posed to students for the study of whether they had attended or participated in certain “cultured” events or activities in the past year and concluded that this information had no reflection in the results of their study.

Jobs and qualifications of the applicants parents were also assessed.

It seems, especially from those aspects, the study was trying to uncover the truth behind the possible stereotype that white males from “cultured” upper-class families are favoured at prestigious institutions.

According to Nicholson’s current data, that idea was not proved or disproved.

Based on that knowledge, I’m having a hard time figuring out how the statistical results of one year of admissions implies a gender and ethnic disparity at an institution, especially if current statistics reflect that male and female admissions are nearly at par and more recent ethnic admissions do not reflect the findings of the study, as Nicholson says.

If the study had, perhaps, compared data over several years of admission to imply an ongoing trend, I may be more inspired to join co-author Alison Sullivan in proclaiming the results “striking” (she is quoted as saying) in terms of inequality.

While I hope that all universities would consider applicants on the basis of academic merit, cynicism kicks in and tells me this is highly unlikely for all schools.

Regardless, I still want the proof.

Whether or not the article or the study is lacking, I think more background is needed to make a judgment call on the issue of unjust admissions.

What do you think about the article and study? Leave your comments below.

- photo by Stewf

Politicians submitted names of sub-par students, who received preferential treatment

Following an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, officials at the University of Illinois have announced that they will suspend “Category I” — an internal list of well-connected student applicants who receive preferential treatment.

In a series of articles that began last Friday, the Tribune reported evidence stemming from a Freedom of Information request that sub-par applicants had been admitted to the school under the political sponsorship of state lawmakers and university trustees over the past five years. That investigation also revealed that acceptance decisions, at times, occurred over the objections of admissions officers.

Last week, officials from the university issued statements saying that they “mostly get it right.”

During its investigation, the Tribune found instances in which the school’s lobbyists overruled rejections, blew up at admissions staff and forwarded veiled threats from politicians who wanted candidates admitted. According to documents, both Democrat and Republican politicians had asked lobbyists to track the status of more than 500 applications, which made up more than half of the names on the “Category I” list.

The paper says the so-called “clout list” creates an awkward situation in which university officials are taking requests from legislators who hold the school’s purse strings and trustees who are, in essence, their bosses.

School officials have announced plans to appoint a panel to investigate the practice and suggest how to make sure in the future that admissions decisions aren’t subject to political pressure.

“The review will examine how contacts from legislators, trustees, alumni and others have been managed in the past, what best practices are at peer institutions and what changes should be made going forward to ensure the integrity of the admissions process,” said the university’s statement.

A new study finds negative stereotypes can mask people’s academic abilities

Consider the following scenario: university admissions officers have narrowed applications for the final place in an engineering program down to two. The candidates have similar credentials and identical test scores; the only difference is that one is a woman and the other is a man. Who should they choose?

The answer may come as a surprise. According to a paper slated for publication in Psychological Science, the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about the intellectual capacity of women in math and sciences likely led the female applicant to underperform. Though her test scores may be the same as those of her male counterpart, the woman has a “significant untapped potential,” says University of Waterloo professor Steven Spencer, who co-authored the study with Stanford University’s Greg Walton. Put simply, she’s the better choice.

Test scores and grades have long shown an academic achievement gap between genders and ethnicities. In the past, this discrepancy has been explained by factors like poverty and poor schooling, which, it has been believed, lead to real differences in ability. Latent Ability: Grades and Tests Systematically Underestimate the Intellectual Ability of Negatively Stereotyped Students makes a new and very different case for affirmative action.

While Spencer and Walton don’t deny that socio-economic factors play a role in academic performance, their research, gleaned from a compendium of studies that include 19,000 students in Canada, France, Germany, Sweden and the U.S., has identified stereotype threat as another cause.

According to Spencer, stereotype threat comes into play whenever “you feel you can be judged based on a negative stereotype about your group.” As he explains, for non-Asian minorities and women (in quantitative fields), the belief that they don’t belong, or that the odds are stacked against their success, causes these students to “become excessively careful” when answering questions, a strategy that’s particularly ill advised on standardized tests. At the same time, he says efforts to “tamp down thinking about a stereotype … actually eats up a lot of their cognitive resources,” reducing the capacity of short-term memory. The feeling of belonging may be an abstract concept, but the implications are very real.

On the SAT, for example, the professors say black and Hispanic students score about 40 points below their true ability, and on the math portion, women score about 20 points under where they should. And it’s not just on college entrance exams. Spencer says that stereotype threat in high schools and even junior highs mean grades and test scores could underestimate the ability of these students for the majority of their academic careers.

But there is hope. Compared to factors like poverty and poor schooling, says Spencer, reducing stereotype threat is relatively easy. Simple interventions, such as telling college students that there is no group differences on a particular test or getting junior high kids to write about values that are important to them can “make a big difference in performance,” he says. To eliminate it completely, he says academic institutions must work to identify at-risk groups and develop long-term strategies to make them feel accepted.

“That feeling of belonging is really the antidote to this [belief] that you’re going to be judged based on stereotypes about your group,” says Spencer. In the meantime however, he says admissions officers should take stereotype threat into account when making decisions-not because women and minorities need a boost to succeed, but because tests hide the fact that they already have.

Will implement tougher “verification measures” to help detect admissions fraud

The Toronto Star is reporting that Osgoode Hall Law School will tighten admissions procedures following revelations that a third-year student used a phony degree to enter the York University law program.

The school’s dean, Patrick Monahan, says admissions integrity is of utmost importance and they are “investigating additional verification measures that could be put in place to detect cases of fraud in the admission process.”

When even one student gets admitted improperly, he says, it hurts the admissions chances of another student in addition to damaging Osgoode’s reputation.

The Star says student Quami Frederick was found to have used a degree purchased from an Internet diploma mill to get accepted into the law program in 2006. More recently, Frederick submitted photocopies of transcripts in which her Osgoode Hall marks were inflated when she successfully applied for an articling job at the Bay St. law firm Wildeboer Dellelce, LLP.

Frederick, 28, now faces an Osgoode Hall disciplinary hearing that could lead to expulsion. The law firm has withdrawn its job offer.