
The Data Colleges Collect on Applicants - CrocodileStreet
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-data-colleges-collect-on-applicants-11548507602
======
com2kid
To summarize,

1\. Colleges are using off the shelf email list management programs. (Those
all track open rates and click throughs). Sounds like they have per-applicant
tracking IDs setup for each email.

2\. Colleges are using off the shelf analytics tools for their websites.
Sounds like they are tying this to the email campaign IDs from above.

3\. The author of this article doesn't mention how incredible fragile and
prone to losing track of individual IDs such systems are. Use a different
computer (school laptop VS home PC), different browser, or get an ID from
visiting the website then click through an email and watch as some poorly
configured system gets confused, etc.

And finally, an investigation of if these numbers correlate to student success
in any way shape or form would've been a nice bit of reporting.

~~~
pseudocoup
I work in higher ed admissions, using Slate, which is also used by at least 3
of the 4 schools mentioned. Fortunately or not admissions operations no longer
rely on spreadsheets and mailchimp to collate data and score applicants
(interest, merit or otherwise), and the software supporting them is getting
pretty advanced.

While I agree this tidbit is newsworthy and icky, what's more disturbing to me
is the lack of interest demonstrated by those responsible for educating
students...faculty. Any university admin can attest to this. The people most
qualified to judge an applicant's merits are surprisingly unwilling to do so
in a fair, objective and consistent way. Anecdotal evidence, but I've gotten
requests from professors of engineering (including CS faculty) not only to
print application PDFs but sort spreadsheets by GPA. As if they can't figure
out how to do that themselves.

I believe part of this trend is actually a response to that: admin staff look
for more tools/metrics to inform admissions decisions. Misguided or not it's a
sign of the times.

~~~
hopler
The word faculty means power, because faculty used to run schools, until the
coup by the parasitic Administrator class that has grown like a tumor.

------
philipodonnell
> The score includes about 80 variables including how long they spent on the
> school’s website, whether they opened emails and at what point in high
> school they started looking on the website (the earlier the better).

So a student who (wisely) uses browser tracking blocking or disables
images/tracking in their email client is negatively affected? That seems like
a terrible heuristic.

~~~
uberman
I understand this knee-jerk reaction. However it is completely wrong. It is
foolish to block tracking like this.

Blocking tracking on a university website or email correspondence would be
like setting your LinkedIn profile to private prior doing research on a job
opportunity.

This is the domain I work in at the moment and I can 100% assure you that
anonymous behavior hurts your admission chances significantly.

Don't ever visit a campus without letting them know you are there. Same goes
for email and web site visits.

~~~
hopler
That sounds miserable. Your job is to help institutions make bad decisions
that deny educational opportunities to children who aren't clued into how to
game the system?

The only mitigating aspet is that I suspect that this system isn't used at
schools that deliver educations worth paying for.

~~~
uberman
Actually, we do the _exact opposite_.

We help students make good decisions to optimize their chances of getting into
a top 100 university. I don't work for any institution.

We help candidates appear in their best light and once they have received an
offer we actively work against the interest of the college to help the student
get the best aid package possible.

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/LG4kHd](https://outline.com/LG4kHd)

------
ssttoo
My kid took psat (preparatory SAT exam) and she had to register with College
Board (SAT admins). Now she’s getting tons of spam from all kinds of schools,
both email and US post. They say they got the address from College Board. :(

~~~
uberman
College Board is but one vector. Everyone from Naviance and SAT (college
board) to grade 12 personality and career testing sells your children to
aggregators who then resell to colleges.

This is the domain I work in, and while I empathize that getting spam sucks
(digital and physical), in this case I think you can likely leverage it.

Every student should have a set of safety colleges. My guess is that among the
detritus, there are some colleges that might fit the bill. Finding a set of
reasonable safety colleges is a good thing. [Heads up, your child absolutely
needs a safety college both as a fallback and as a bargaining chip]

Secondly, and more importantly, some (but not all) colleges can be bargained
with using offers from these colleges. Some colleges will respond with counter
offers if you you can show them a better offer even from a college you are not
all that interested in.

My recommendation is to look through the junk and make sure you have colleges
of interest in three buckets "safety", "comfort", and "reach". If they are
sending you junk mail then they are already interested in you. Select a few
and see if it can work to your advantage.

The company I work for deal exclusively in this area and our negotiation tools
and strategies save candidates $5000 a year _ON AVERAGE_.

~~~
hopler
Or skip the nonsense and attend an affordable public college and let these
junk third teir private colleges die.

~~~
uberman
We don't help students apply to junk for-profit colleges. They are almost
always open admissions colleges anyways so there is nothing to help with.

On the other hand, the UC Berkeley sticker price (just tuition and fees) is
more than $38k a year should you happen to be from someplace other than CA.
They reject 83% of their applicants. This is a great college, with a high
price and high selectivity. We help students optimize their chances of
admission and aid packages.

------
gumby
I was cleaning out stuff from my parents' house and found a bunch of college
admission crud from 1981. Funniest was a postcard I was apparently supposed to
write my name, height and weight on and then mail to Yale.

~~~
analog31
I remember a few applications from that time period required a picture. Well,
they didn't _require_ a picture, but you know...

~~~
gumby
Remember how every application was different and needed different essays and
things? Nowadays it's one common application (My kid did it a couple of years
ago).

The old system was self-limiting in the number of schools you could reasonably
apply to but now you can apply to as many schools as you have the application
fees for.

