University should reform admissions

As high school seniors across the country transition from the college application to the college admissions process, it is more important than ever that USC reflect upon its own admissions practices and recognize that building a world-class university begins with the applicant pool.

The Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, which formed last year, is a group of more than 90 universities that have pledged to improve the admissions process for students and college affordability. The coalition plans to research and develop a free online platform to level the playing field in college admissions and provide resources to students and parents to better prepare them to apply for college and for the universities to better evaluate candidates.

Out of the top 25 universities named by U.S. News and World Report, a staggering 19 of them are part of the coalition, the only schools absent being Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkeley, MIT, UCLA and USC. We need to continue building our University starting from the applicants and moving upward. A university is only as good as its students. Joining this coalition would be the next logical step.

Motives are key. USC should not join the coalition just because Harvard, Yale and Stanford are a part of it; it should join because these are schools that have pledged to put students first by employing the most holistic and fair approach to college admissions, and it ought to do the same. If USC really wants to invest in its future as a top-tier university, then it is time it begins viewing admissions as a process from the applicant’s point of view.

The Coalition is utilizing the most up-to-date research on college admissions to find the most effective ways to evaluate applicants.

For example, the first piece of this research released late last month by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, outlines concrete ways that universities can modify application processes to make them fairer and more accessible. In fact, some of the Coalition schools have already vowed to implement the recommendations cited. These suggestions include restricting the number of community service involvements that an applicant could list, but emphasizing how meaningful each commitment has been, as well as discouraging applicants from enrolling in too many AP courses as a way of demonstrating academic rigor.  The report also calls for schools to take into account familial responsibilities and part-time work that could limit a student’s extracurricular or scholastic involvement. Another aspect of the research is a call to minimize the weight that university admissions places on standardized testing because it can put low-income students at a disadvantage.

With more schools across the country joining the Coalition and committing to be allies of the student in the admissions process, USC should strive to stand at the forefront amidst rapid change. The University has an opportunity to not only show that they are committed to student well-being but also to usher in a new era of college admissions that promotes more than just competition.

Over the course of this past year, the USC administration has been criticized by student leaders for their unwillingness to enforce a tuition freeze, lack of proactivity when it comes to addressing issues of diversity on campus and instances of sexual assault during which they did not act as an advocate for its students.

Thus, it is paramount for the University to decisively show that they are working for the best interest of students, a pact that needs to be made even before students set foot on campus as freshmen. By joining the Coalition and engaging in the research, USC is saying once and for all that they are a university for the students, above all else, and that it strives to be a school based off of the holistic merits of students rather than applicants’ abilities to play the rigged admissions game. USC has a duty to students — both current and future — because an investment in admissions is an investment in a brighter future.

Daily  Trojan Spring 2016 Editorial Board