New Survey Shows Students and Parents Find Admission Process Clear

Oct. 2010

Advocacy

Arlene Cash, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Spelman College

College admission and financial aid professionals, along with high school counselors and administrators, joined members of the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century initiative at a Forum 2010 session to examine and discuss new research regarding the complexity of the college admission process.

In earlier conversations, the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century had emphasized that “at its best, admission is about ‘fit’ between student and institution.” Anything that interfered with that process, including unnecessary complexity, was undesirable and a barrier to access.

The focus of this new report, Complexity in College Admission: Fact or Urban Myth, is a measure of student and parent perceptions of the complexity of the process and to examine the group by geography, level of family experience with postsecondary education, race/ethnicity and income.

The results showed that parents and students did not have difficulty navigating the initial application and submissions. The most confusing part of the process, as reported by students and parents, was understanding how admission decisions were made.

“As the report shows, neither students nor parents were really en masse sitting around waiting for us to tell them our colleges were a perfect fit,” said Arlene Cash, vice president for enrollment management at Spelman College in Georgia. “They weren’t even waiting for us to send applications. As bad as we think our websites are, they’re figuring out how to navigate our sites and get the information they need, and getting the application and getting it in.”

Cash described her experience as a parent helping two sons through the application process. One seemed to handle the multiple facets with ease, while the other son found them daunting. It varies even for students who don’t face demographic barriers, she said.

The results, drawn from surveys of about 700 students and parents, were encouraging, said Bruce Walker, vice provost for special projects at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century.

Among the highlights:

• About half of students completed a common application form when applying to college, and this form made the process notably simpler for most who used one.
• Knowing how to send test scores and high school transcripts to colleges was fairly clear to students.
• Students relied most heavily on their parents and high school counselors for help with the college application process.
• When parents had questions about the college application process, they most frequently visited the college’s website.
• College-educated parents were split on their perceptions regarding whether the college application process has become simpler or more complicated since they themselves applied.

For more information or to view the report, visit advocacy.collegeboard.org.