College admissions and the BCS
I spent my recent Thanksgiving holiday weekend participating in many of the traditional activities, and these 3 Fs come straight to mind: food, family, and football. In addition to those staples, however, I also spent much of my time reviewing Early Action Round 1 applications to WPI. It struck me while watching college football that there may be some similarities between the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings and college admissions. Before you beat me to it: YES, I know that there is a strong argument that the BCS is flawed, and NO, I am not suggesting that college admissions is a flawed process.
As always, I’m writing about WPI, but you should keep in mind that each school has its and application review procedures, goals, priorities, and staff.
Quick background: the BCS is a system designed to rank the top teams in college football without bias and determine which teams will play each other for the national championship. The BCS also determines which other highly ranked teams will play in certain BCS bowl games. An important thing to know is that the system attempts to eliminate human bias, influence, and controversy from the final rankings by combining several polls and computer generated statistics.
Many people do not agree that the BCS ranking system is fair and would prefer a playoff system to determine the national champion. There are several points of contention with the BCS system, but one factor that I felt relates to college admissions is the notion that early losses are less detrimental than late losses, and late losses are by far worse than early losses and late wins. In the AP and USA Today human polls, teams and fans often feel that early losses don’t matter when the final rankings are released because the human voters overlook early pitfalls and reward late successes.
“Huh? I don’t get football. What’s he talking about? And why is he watching football while reading my application!?”
Look at it this way: you have four years of high school. When evaluating your application, I will be looking at the courses you have taken and the grades you have received in those courses. Essentially your curriculum and your performance. In football terms that would be your strength of schedule and your win-loss record.
The strength of your schedule (curriculum) is important because it tells us how you have been challenging yourself. Maybe you decided that you wanted to challenge yourself and take the strongest curriculum possible. Maybe you realized that you have strengths and interests in certain subjects and opted to take the highest level courses in those areas. Maybe you have a lot of out of school commitments and took strong courses in all areas but knew you weren’t able to handle the most challenging curriculum. Hopefyllu you’ve found the balance that works best for you.
Your win-loss record (grade performance) is important because it is the best indicator of performance and potential for future success. We look at grades for all four of your high school years. Sure we like to see great grades—in fact we love to see them! But in reality, you probably don’t have a 100% flawless record on your transcript. And that’s okay. But, when I’m looking at your transcript I would rather see a combination of “early losses” and “late wins” than vice-versa. That’s to say, if you don’t have a flawless record and there are some not-so-great grades, I’d rather see those be earlier with the trend pointing upward with a strong finish than the opposite.
Since I am a human being, I view each application differently. We do not use computers to evaluate or pre-evaulate applications. I (and the other staff members) physically look at and review each piece of information in each application. I have to make decisions based upon the information available to me, and we’re looking for students who have been successful and will be successful at WPI.
So what does all of this mean?
- You don’t need to have the strongest schedule an an undefeated record. What you do need to have is at least a strong schedule and a good record.
- Keep working hard, and don’t let senioritis get the best of you. We do not want to see your grades fall in the senior year when you’re in your hardest courses yet.
- Like I said, we’re more apt to overlook an early loss, so keep up the good work and show us that late win rather than that late loss!
- Focus your efforts on the big game. If you’re planning to study engineering, make sure you’re doing well in physics and calculus. If biology is your thing, keep that grade up. All of your grades are important, but we’re usually looking closest at the math and science ones.
Comments
This is an excellent post, Adam! My brother will be applying to colleges next year, and I am making him read this :)
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