CSHPE PhD student Julius DiLorenzo co-authors op-ed on the future of college admissions for Inside Higher Ed

CSHPE PhD student Julius DiLorenzo and co-authors recently published an op-ed in Inside Higher Ed about the future of holistic college admissions in the wake of the College Board’s decision to discontinue using Landscape. Landscape is a tool that provides data about a student’s high school and neighborhood—including median family income, local college-going rates and school resources—allowing admissions officers to understand students’ achievements in the context of their backgrounds. The discontinuation of its use marks a swing toward judging applicants solely by standardized metrics like GPA and test scores.

“Research led by Michael Bastedo at the University of Michigan demonstrated that contextual information about applicants’ high schools and hometowns helped create more equitable admission outcomes for students of lower socioeconomic status, laying the groundwork for what eventually became the Landscape tool,” explain the authors.

Without Landscape, the authors suggest ways in which admissions officers can continue the necessary work of contextual review. These include: Compiling standardized, high-quality contextual data; clarifying expectations with high schools; educating admission officers on contextual awareness; including supplemental questions about context as part of the applications for colleges and universities.

The authors write: “Far from harming those with resources, contextual review accounts for varying scopes of opportunity, allowing higher education to serve as a ladder of earned individual mobility rather than an amplifier of existing inequality.”